“I said, stand up.”
I stand and she crosses over to me and I want to run away, but I hold my ground. She unzips my jacket, opens it wide and looks down at my round bel y. After a minute she lets my jacket drop. She walks toward the desk at the far end of the room and I zip my jacket back up, wrap my arms around myself protectively. I start to shiver, despite the heat from the fire. She takes a checkbook from the desk, uncaps a pen, and looks at me.
“How much?” she says.
“What?”
“How much to be rid of you?”
She can’t have understood me. I haven’t explained properly. I’m too emotional, too messy. I try again. “Michael—” She cuts across me.
“I don’t wish to discuss it further. I am, in fact, wil ing to pay you to ensure that this story is not told again, anywhere, at any time, to any person. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Laura? I wil pay you, and you wil be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
If you breach that agreement, the consequences wil be terrible.”
I stand there for what must be minutes. I think that she doesn’t believe me, that I need to try again. I try, for the thousandth time, to think of any proof I can lay before her to show her that Michael has lied. Surely if I can show proof of even a smal lie, she wil start to believe me? But then, as I look at the cool, remote expression on her face, I think of everything Tom ever told me about her (which was so, so little—she’d barely been in his life) and I begin to understand. She doesn’t care. Not if Tom kil ed himself, not if he was murdered. She doesn’t want a public scandal. Maybe she doesn’t want conflict with the Dandridge family. I don’t know what their business or social dealings might be. What I know for sure is that she doesn’t want me and she doesn’t want anything to do with Tom’s baby.
I feel like I’m going to vomit, my vision darkens at the edges and I think I am going to fal . The feeling passes, and I am stil standing. I think about Michael and what he said he would do to me. I think about my baby. I think about Tom. And then, very deliberately and very careful y, I sit back down on the armchair. And I tel her I want two mil ion dol ars. That wil pay for a home in a safe place, far from here. It wil pay for health insurance, and schools and music lessons and sports, and col ege too, when the time comes.
“About the nondisclosure agreement,” I say. “The agreement must be two-way. You must never speak to anyone about what we talked about tonight. Especial y Michael Dandridge.” I look her right in the eye. “If you do, the consequences for you must be terrible.”
She agrees. And she adds a requirement of her own—that I wil sign away any possible right to claim on Tom’s estate, on the family trust. She makes me wait for an hour while she talks to her lawyer.
He faxes her an agreement, we both sign. She makes me a copy of the agreement and she writes me a check. I walk away down the drive and cal a cab from the gate. I go to a nice hotel and pay two hundred dol ars for a room. They want a credit card number too, it’s policy. I don’t have a credit card. I’m so tired that I start to cry and the woman checking me in (she’s already noticed my bel y, I saw the glance) takes pity on me. I give her another hundred dol ars, a deposit for incidentals, and she takes me to my room herself.
So here I am. I’ve ordered room service (a burger and fries, ice cream—comfort food) and it should be here soon. I’m wearing my pajamas and I’m wrapped in a soft hotel robe. Tomorrow morning I’l go straight to the bank and deposit that check. I guess it might take a few days to clear. That’s okay. I already have my return ticket to Boston. I can get on the bus and tomorrow night I’l be back at my shitty apartment. I won’t be there for long.
I think . . . I think everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to leave al of this behind me. I’m going to take the money and build a life and I’m going to forget about Michael Dandridge and my father and everything bad that has ever happened. God help me, I’l even forget about Tom if it means I’l be a better person. I have to be better, for my baby. Everything I do from here on, everything, is going to be about being a good mother. My whole life wil be about my child.
I’m finished with this diary. I’m done.
Hannah
TWELVE
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30, 2019
The meeting room in Greensvil e Correctional Prison was windowless, deep inside a maze of a building, with grubby wal s and furniture screwed to the floor. Almost exactly as Hannah had expected it to be, from a hundred movies and a hundred TV shows, actual y, but no amount of television could have prepared her for the impact of being there. The smel of body odor, old linoleum, and disinfectant. The claustrophobia from the shitty air and from being so far underground. The simple intimidation of the security procedures —the guards had been so humorless, so fil ed with latent hostility.
And on top of that she was stil so much more nervous than she had expected to be. Somehow, with al her planning, she had never imagined that there would be a moment where she would be face-to-face with him.
“You okay?” Sean asked.
“Fine,” she said. But she wasn’t. She had to work hard to keep her turmoil from showing. “Wil it take much longer?”
Sean shrugged. “Sometimes it’s ten minutes, sometimes half an hour. There’s nothing we can do but wait.”
Fifteen minutes passed before they heard movement in the corridor, the door opened, and Michael Dandridge was shown into the room. He looked nothing at al like his mug shot, which was the only photograph Hannah had ever seen of him. The mug shot had been in black and white, and showed a thirty-five-year-old Dandridge, too thin, with a shaved head and a look of utter confusion in his eyes. Now he was forty-six years old. His head was shaved even tighter—he would have been largely bald if he hadn’t shaved— and he’d put on some weight. He was tal er than she’d imagined from the description in the diary. He wore glasses, little steel-rimmed glasses that might have given him the look of a col ege professor, if it wasn’t for the orange prison jumpsuit. His wrists were in handcuffs behind his back as he entered but the guard removed them before leaving, and Dandridge shook Sean’s hand, then turned and offered a hand to Hannah. She hesitated, barely a moment, but perhaps it had been noticeable, and then she found herself shaking his hand.
She wanted to vomit. She wanted to lash out. For the first time in her life she found herself wishing for a weapon. A gun. A knife. She could use it too. She would be capable of it. Here was pure destruction. A psychopath who had kil ed her father, destroyed her mother, and even now was attaching himself like a leech to good people.