“I need the truth this time,” I said to Sylvia Avery.
“I told you.”
I could see people needing new identities and vanishing because they’d been accused of pedophilia or had upset members of a drug cartel or had been battered by brutal husbands or had witnessed a mob hit. But I didn’t see why a man involved in a college cheating scandal would have to vanish for life-even now, even after Archer Minor was dead.
“Natalie’s dad never ran away, did he?”
She didn’t reply.
“He was murdered,” I said.
Sylvia Avery seemed too weak to protest anymore. She sat there, still as a stone.
“You told Natalie that her father would never, ever, abandon her.”
“He wouldn’t,” she said. “He loved her so. He loved Julie too. And me. Aaron was such a good man.”
“Too good,” I said. “Always seeing just the black-and-white.”
“Yes.”
“When I told you that Archer Minor was dead, you said, ‘Good riddance.’ Was he the one who killed your husband?”
She lowered her head.
“There’s no one who can hurt any of you anymore,” I said, which was only partially true. “Did Archer Minor kill your husband, or was it someone his father sent?”
And then she said it: “It was Archer himself.”
I nodded. I had figured that.
“He came to the house with a gun,” Sylvia said. “He demanded that Aaron give him the papers that proved he’d cheated. You see, he really did want to escape his father’s shadow and if word got out he cheated…”
“He’d be exactly like his father.”
“Yes. I begged Aaron to listen to him. He wouldn’t. He thought Archer was bluffing. So Archer put the gun against Aaron’s head and…” She closed her eyes. “He smiled when he did it. That’s what I remember most. Archer Minor was smiling. He told me to give him the papers or I’d be next. I gave them to him, of course. Then two men came by. Men who worked for his father. They took Aaron’s body away. Then one of the men sat me down. He said if I ever told anyone about this, they’d do horrible things to my girls. They wouldn’t just kill them, he said. They’d do horrible things to them first. He kept stressing that. He told me to say that Aaron ran off. So I did. I kept the lie up for all those years to protect my girls. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I do,” I said sadly.
“I had to make my poor Aaron be the bad guy. So his daughters wouldn’t keep asking about him.”
“But Natalie wouldn’t buy it.”
“She kept pressing.”
“And like you said, the lie had darkened her. The idea that her father had abandoned her.”
“That’s a horrible thing for a young girl to think. I should have come up with another way. But what?”
“So she pressed and she pressed,” I said.
“She wouldn’t leave it alone. She headed back to Lanford and talked to Professor Hume.”
“But Hume didn’t know either.”
“No. But she kept asking questions.”
“And that could have gotten her in trouble.”
“Yes.”
“So you decided to tell her the truth. Her father hadn’t run away with a coed. He hadn’t run away because he was afraid of the Minors. You finally told her the full story-that Archer Minor had murdered her father in cold blood while smiling.”
Sylvia Avery didn’t nod. She didn’t have to. I said good-bye then and left.
So now I knew why Natalie was in that high-rise late that night. Now I knew why Natalie had gone to visit Archer Minor when no one else would be around. Now I knew why Maxwell Minor never stopped looking for Natalie. He isn’t worried about her testifying.
He’s a father who wants to avenge his son’s murder.
I don’t know this for sure. I don’t know if Natalie shot Archer Minor with a smile on her face or if the gun went off accidentally or if Archer Minor made threats when she confronted him or if it was self-defense. I don’t even ask.
The old me would have cared. The new me doesn’t.
Class ends. I start across the commons. The Santa Fe sky is a blue like no other. I shade my eyes and keep walking.
That day a year ago, with the bullet still in my shoulder, I watched Natalie start to walk away. I shouted, “Not a chance” when she asked me to promise not to follow. She wouldn’t listen to me or stop. So I got out of the car. The pain in my shoulder was nothing compared with the pain of her leaving me again. I ran toward her. I wrapped my arms, even the one aching from the bullet wound, around her and pulled her close. Our eyes squeezed shut. I hung on to her, wondering if I had ever felt such contentment before. She started to cry. I pulled her even closer. She lowered her head into my chest. For a moment, she tried to pull away. But only for a moment. She knew that this time I wouldn’t let her go.
No matter what she might or might not have done.
I still haven’t let her go.
Up ahead, a beautiful woman named Diana Weiss wears a wedding band that matches mine. She has decided to teach her art class outside on this glorious day. She moves from student to student, commenting on their work, offering guidance.
She knows that I know, even though we’ve never talked about it. I wonder whether that was part of her leaving the first time, if she felt as though I could never live with the truth about what she’d done. Maybe I couldn’t back then.
I can now.
Diana Weiss looks up at me as I approach. Her smile shames the sun. Today my beautiful wife is glowing even more than normal. I may be thinking that about her because I’m biased. Or I may be thinking that because she is seven months pregnant with our child.
Her class ends. The students linger before slowly drifting away. She takes my hand when we’re finally alone, looks into my eyes, and says, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say.
She smiles up at me. The gray has no chance against that smile. It vanishes in a wonderful haze of bright color.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harlan Coben is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty previous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Stay Close, Live Wire, Caught, Long Lost, and Hold Tight, as well as the popular Myron Bolitar series and more recently, a series aimed at young adults featuring Myron’s nephew, Mickey Bolitar. Winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards, Coben lives in New Jersey.
