I reach my limit with that question. “What does that have to do with anything?” It’s pure torture watching Natalie talk about this shit again. The experiences of her teenage years might always be part of her, but she shouldn’t be forced to constantly relive it. I can’t bear it.
“We’re looking into Mr. Rogers’s business dealings.”
“All of them or just the ones that involve my wife?”
“All of them.”
She squeezes my hand. “I paid for the rest of college with loans and by working two jobs.”
“A run of your credit shows that your loans were recently paid off in full. Can you explain how that transpired?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I paid off her loans.”
“I was asking Mrs. Godfrey.”
“What he said. How do you think I suddenly paid off thousands of dollars in loans when I recently lost my job?”
I bite my lip to hold back a smile.
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to Mr. Rogers?”
“More than six years. I never saw him again after he delivered the documents to the home where I was living.”
“Talk to him?”
“No. I had no need to. I hired him to do a job for me. He did it. I paid him. End of story. Until…”
“Until?”
“Until I appeared at the Golden Globes with Flynn, and David sold me out to the media.”
“And how do you know it was him?”
“He was the only one who knew me by both names.”
“You never told anyone else what your new name is? Not even the family you lived with?”
“No. I told no one. I’m still April to the family I lived with and the few other people who remained in my life after the attack.”
“In all the years after you changed your name, you never told anyone about your former name, your former life in Lincoln?”
“The point of changing my name was that I didn’t want anyone to know who I used to be. I never told anyone. I hadn’t even told Flynn the full story before it hit the news. He learned my birth name from reporters.”
“Where did you live while you were in college?”
Again she looks at me, as if to ask what the meaning of this is. I’m wondering the same thing.
“The first year, I lived in a dorm and then in an apartment the other three years.”
“Roommates?”
“A few. Here and there.”
“I assume you made some friends there, in classes, jobs, activities? Boyfriends?”
“What’re you getting at, Agent Vickers?” Emmett asks, saving me the trouble.
“Yes, I had some friends. People I did things with. But I didn’t date, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’m just having a little trouble believing that in all that time, with all those people you came into contact with, lived with, did things with, you never told anyone about Stone or the trial or anything about your life before college. I have a daughter. She talks about everything.”
Her eyes flash with anger. “Was your daughter attacked and repeatedly raped by a man she trusted when she was fifteen? Did your best friend lure her to his home, hold her down, take her virginity, her innocence, and ruin her life? Did your daughter’s parents disown her when she refused to back down from bringing charges against your best friend and boss? If not, then you certainly have no place to judge me or the choices I made after I was attacked.”
I want to stand up and cheer. I’ve never been more proud of her or more impressed by her than I am in that moment.
“You went to college in the same state in which you helped to send the governor to jail. No one recognized you?”
“I’d changed my appearance by then. I’d changed my hair color from reddish brown to the current color, and until this week, I wore brown contacts that changed my eye color. I was also older by then, and I had matured in the years since the attack and trial. No one ever so much as suggested that I might be April Genovese. They were college kids. What did they care about the girl who brought down the governor? Most of them probably didn’t even know it had happened.”
“When you heard the media was reporting that Flynn Godfrey’s new girlfriend was the same girl who brought down the governor of Nebraska, what did you think?”
“I knew right away that David had cashed in on what he knew about me. It had to be him, because no one else knew.”
“Since the story went public, have you spoken to anyone you knew before in Lincoln?”
“Only my sisters, who I hadn’t spoken to since before the attack.”
“You didn’t speak to Rogers?”
“Why would I? Flynn’s lawyers were handling the situation with him. I had bigger concerns, including the loss of my job and livelihood. I had no desire to speak to the man who’d given me a new identity and then stolen it from me when it served his purposes.”
Both men look at my wife with admiration while my heart swells with love and respect. She’s magnificent.
“Have we answered all your questions?” I want him gone so I can be alone with her.
“For now. We’d like you to remain available while the investigation continues.”
“We’re going to London for about forty-eight hours this weekend for the British Academy Film Awards,” I say, “but we’ll be back in LA early next week.”