“Do you remember where the house was?” Serena asked.
“No.”
“Do you remember anything about it?”
“No.” Then Andrea blinked, as if a memory had come back like the flash of a camera. “There was a castle.”
“A castle? Like a children’s playhouse?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. I just remember running past a castle. It made me think of princesses locked away.”
“Wasn’t your sister worried when you disappeared from the party?” Serena asked.
“Denise? She probably didn’t even notice I was gone.”
“Where did you go?”
“I ran home. I just wanted to forget it. I wanted to pretend it had never happened. But you can’t wish things like that away. I was like you. Every day, every single day, it was there with me. It was with me when I married Robin. It was with me when I married Jon. I didn’t tell either of them. Nobody knew. It was my dirty little secret. As far as I was concerned, I was going to keep it forever. I probably would have, too, if Devin hadn’t run for Congress. It was hard enough seeing him as the Attorney General. Really? Him? The state’s top lawyer? But when he ran for Congress, I kept seeing his face on television, and I kept him hearing him pretend to be something he wasn’t. A defender of women’s rights. What a hypocrite. I had to do something. I couldn’t stay quiet. I had an attorney draft a letter telling my story. I really just wanted to scare him. I thought if he knew I was out there, if he knew the truth might come out, he’d drop out of the race and save himself the scandal. Instead, someone leaked the letter to the press. All of a sudden, everyone was looking for me. The only story in the whole world seemed to be about the anonymous woman accusing Devin Card of rape. And if they found me — do you have any idea what that would have been like?”
“I think I do,” Serena said.
“I was going to be crucified. They’d destroy me. If my name got out there, they’d tear open everything in my life. Believe me when I tell you I wasn’t strong enough to handle it. I spent that whole summer living in terror that some reporter would figure out it was me.”
Serena let the silence stretch out. “And Ned Baer did?”
Andrea nodded. “He came to see me. He had an old yearbook from my high school class. He said he was looking into a big party crawl that happened around the time of the allegations, and he had reason to think Peter Stanhope and Devin Card had been at some of the parties that night. He was interviewing girls from our high school yearbook to find out what they remembered. He had no idea I was the one, but I was panicked by his questions, and I think he could see that. I’m sure I gave it away. After that, he must have been looking for ways to confirm it was me. He began following me. I think he broke into my house, too. I kept waiting for him to come back, and a few weeks later, he did. That was late August. He said he knew it was me, that he wanted to interview me about the rape, but that he had enough evidence to print it one way or another. He was going to expose me. I was desperate, Serena.”
Serena could see the fragility in this woman’s face. Thirty years later, and she was still seventeen. She had never known this woman before; she’d only known the stories Stride had told, of her coldness, of her distance, of her obsession with her first husband. But suddenly Andrea Forseth was a real person. And they had something in common.
“What did you do?” Serena asked.
Andrea stared across the living room and said the last thing that Serena wanted to hear.
“I told Stride,” she said. “I finally told him everything about my past, and I told him what Ned Baer was going to do to me. I begged him for help. I said if he loved me, he would find a way to make sure Ned Baer didn’t print that story. I said he had to stop him.”
11
Stride lay in bed with his hands laced behind his head. Cool air blew through the open windows in the small bedroom. He kept the lights off, with only a pale glow in the room from the streetlight outside the cottage. He stared at the rotating ceiling fan above him, not entirely sure if he was awake or asleep. He’d had the nightmare about Andrea and Ned so many times lately that he couldn’t be certain what was real anymore. It made him reluctant to close his eyes.
The door opened with a ghostly creak of the hinges. Serena slipped into the bedroom, and he knew he was still awake. She was quiet as she undressed on the other side of the room. She peeled down her jeans, then pulled her T-shirt over her head, mussing her black hair. Her profile was a silhouette portrait. She grabbed one of his flannel shirts from the closet and slipped it over her shoulders, but she left the buttons undone.
“This thing with Cat scares me,” she murmured, sitting next to him on the bed.
“It scares me, too, but we’ll find whoever is doing this to her.”
“My own experience with stalkers isn’t good. I know how these things can end.”
“I remember, believe me.”
“Is Brayden reliable? Do you trust him?”
“All the reports on him are good. He’s responsible. He promised me he wouldn’t let Cat out of his sight.”
“Okay.” Serena was quiet for a while as she stroked his bare chest with her fingernails. “Confession time.”
“You or me?”
“Me first,” she said. “I know about Andrea and Devin Card and Ned Baer.”
“Serves me right to marry a smart cop,” Stride said. “I was going to tell you tonight. I wasn’t going to keep it a secret.”
“What about Maggie? Are you going to tell her the truth, too?”
“No. I’m sure the investigation will lead her to Andrea on her own. Until then, I don’t want to be the one to expose her. In the end, it’s still her secret, not mine.”
Serena nodded. “Just so you know, Maggie asked me to be a spy. She wanted me to hand off information behind the scenes. To protect you.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I won’t tell her anything,” Serena replied, “unless you end up at risk. Then all bets are off. I won’t let you sacrifice yourself.”
“I’m not at risk.”
“I don’t know, Jonny. Did you hear K-2 brought in Dan Erickson to lead the case?”
“I did. Dan still can’t prove something that never happened.”
“Maybe not, but the circumstantial evidence looks bad,” Serena said. “Let’s not kid ourselves. If the truth about Andrea comes out — and we both know it will — Dan will have a body, a motive, and a lie from the principal suspect, who also happens to be the last person to see the victim alive. Plus, you admitted to Maggie that Steve made a dying declaration that implicates you. Prosecutors have made cases with less. And even if Dan doesn’t go after you with formal charges, the suspicion alone may make it impossible for K-2 to bring you back to the force.”
“All true,” Stride said.
“You don’t even sound like you care.”
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” he admitted.
“Well, I care. I care a lot.”
“Then you and I better figure out what really happened,” Stride said.
“Isn’t that a little hard when we’re both banned from the case?”
“Well, we can’t investigate Ned’s murder directly, but I’m pretty sure that the mystery didn’t start seven years ago. It was thirty years ago. That’s where we go.”
“You mean Andrea’s rape,” Serena murmured.
“Yes.”
“Then I have another confession,” she went on. “I went to see her. Right after you did.”
“She talked to you?”
“Not at first. At first, she just wanted to yell at me. But then she opened up. I think she began to realize that our backgrounds aren’t totally dissimilar. We found some common ground.”