Page 6 of Love and Lies

As I ate, I drew a pile of mail toward me that had lain untouched on the far side of the counter. I started sifting out the bills and marketing flyers, but when I saw the last envelope, I stopped dead. It wasn’t the letter itself that stopped me in my tracks—it looked like a wine promo—but the name on the envelope. Adam Coldwell.

The letter was addressed to my brother.

I let out a breath, my heart beating painfully against my ribs. It wasn’t even that unusual for me to get Adam’s mail. It had happened all the time after I moved in. Every month I’d sat down and gone through it all, writing letters and emails to the senders—mostly marketing agencies—to let them know my brother was no longer alive. It had been a kind of ritual, a recurring torture from which I’d hoped in vain for respite. But for the last few months there had been nothing in my mailbox for Adam, and I’d thought it was over. How stupid of me.

As if it would ever be over.

I scrunched up the flyer and tossed it, with all my strength, as far away from me as I could. But that shitty piece of paper snagged on the edge of the couch and dropped onto the cushion, bright white against the dark green, eyeing me accusingly—or so it felt. So I got up and fetched it, to put it in the trash. But when I sat down to eat again, my omelette suddenly tasted like cardboard, and my thoughts were darker than ever.

After my father died when I was fourteen, I’d thought I’d been through the darkest period of my life. Far from it. Adam’s death had knocked me off my feet far worse than anything else ever had. Maybe because he was the second important person in my life who had gone before their time. Perhaps, as well, because I hadn’t been around to stop him making a fatal mistake. The mistake of falling in love—with a woman who led him first into her world… and then dragged him over the edge to his death.

Valerie Weston.

3 Helena

Outside, New York City greeted me with an icy wind, but I didn’t take it personally—harsh weather was normal for this time of year, and in some ways I’d even missed it. So instead of turning back, I took out my hat and pulled it on before setting off in the direction of Central Park.

Not even half a minute had passed before a car honked somewhere nearby, and someone else responded in kind. I swerved a dog walker with ten different dogs on one leash, none of them very well trained. I wasn’t bothered by it, but the older lady furiously giving the guy a piece of her mind clearly was. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. New York City was too big, too loud, too much for some people, but I loved it. I loved the fact that you could be among a crowd of people and yet totally alone. That every culture, every nationality, every unique personality was a tiny part of the melting pot that made this city so vibrant.

Cambridge was idyllic, and no doubt for a lot of people the absolute dream location for college, but I’d never really felt happy there. I’d grown up in New York City and truly believed I could spend my whole life here without getting tired of it. I used to wander the city by myself, discovering its unknown corners bit by bit along the way—the quaint shops and hidden parks, the little oases that Manhattan had to offer among all its fast-paced chaos. And I’d fallen in love with it even more.

I wandered uptown past the Guggenheim Museum, feeling the urge to go inside, but I parked that thought for now, crossing Fifth Avenue instead and disappearing into Central Park. The lungs of the city. Although there wasn’t really that much green on show at the moment—there was a thin dusting of snow on the grass and the trees were completely bare. But spring would bloom again here soon. I was already looking forward to sitting on the grass again with Valerie and…

I stopped in my tracks. The pain was fleeting, but fierce enough to make me catch my breath. It didn’t often happen anymore, my brain tricking me into thinking Valerie was still here. Almost three years was a long time to come to terms with losing someone… and yet not long enough. It would never be enough. How was I supposed to get over it when her memory was tainted by what they’d done to her, the awful injustice of it? When every time her name popped into my head, I couldn’t help but remember the way Adam’s family had raked it through the mud?

As if on cue, I saw the high-rises of Midtown in the distance, reaching pompously into the heavens, in contrast to the stylish buildings of the Upper East Side and Upper West Side. Some said they were the future. That they represented the city’s evolution. To me, they were just a blight, born of pure pretension. Especially the skyscrapers, standing tall in the center, flaunting their shining facades.

Coldwell House was finally finished, then—despite the efforts of my parents and many others to halt its construction. Not that it was a surprise. Trish Coldwell had no sense of decency or decorum; she was a ruthless, manipulative ice queen who would stop at nothing to get her way. There was no one in the world I detested more than the woman who blamed my sister for her son’s death and had done everything in her power to make sure the rest of the world believed it too. But one thing was certain: she would regret it. I wasn’t like my parents, who believed it was beneath us to talk openly about Valerie. No, I was going to find out the truth and go public with it for everyone to hear, just like Trish had done with her lies. I would restore Valerie’s reputation. That was what I’d come back here to do, after all.

Today, though, I had other plans. So for now I simply gave Coldwell House the finger—what a ridiculous name, anyway—and carried on through the park, past the iced-over lake to Belvedere Castle, which I had loved as a child. I gazed out over the city for a while before setting off toward the Central Park West exit. I was pretty frozen when I finally made it out on the corner of Eighty-Second Street, so I decided to pay a spontaneous visit. Instead of getting breakfast at the Magnolia Bakery on Columbus like I’d planned, I ordered a takeout coffee from the nearest café, along with a cappuccino and a bag of doughnuts, beaming a little too avidly at the server as I paid, perhaps—but it was just so good to hear a New York accent again. I thought I’d picked up something of a British one over the last few years in Cambridge, but I was bound to lose it again before too long, now that I was back.

My destination was a few hundred yards away: a nondescript building with concrete walls long blackened by the wind and weather. Only the slightly ominous aura of the place and the gold lettering to the left of the door gave any indication to passersby of what was behind those walls: the NYPD’s Twentieth Precinct. Usually people found themselves here when they got on the wrong side of the law, or for some other unhappy reason—I wondered if I was the only person ever to feel excited as I pushed open the door and stepped inside.

A wide corridor with a flecked linoleum floor led directly into the main area. It looked like a slow day; save for one or two uniformed officers sitting at their desks, there was no one to be seen—with the exception of a lone man in handcuffs on a bench behind a partition. I set my coffee and the paper bag of doughnuts down on the counter.

“Hi. I’d like to report something,” I said to the young man on the other side, flashing him a smile as he looked up. “A missing persons case. Helena Weston. I just wanted to let you know that she’s been spotted.”

At that moment, farther in back, a head whipped around and a chair turned jerkily toward me. The young woman sitting in it stared at me in disbelief before jumping up.

“Len?!” she yelled, completely unfazed by the fact that everyone in the station—including the guy in handcuffs—was now looking her way. Before I could say a word, she popped open the partition and wrapped me in a hug. “What are you doing here, hon? I thought you were going to call when you got back.”

I hugged her back as hard as I could.

“I wanted to surprise you,” I said, grinning as she let me go. At least Malia seemed happy I was back.

“Well, you did a good job.” She looked around at her colleagues, then gestured toward a door. “Come on, we can use the break room; it’s empty right now.”

“You sure it’s okay to leave your desk?” I really just wanted to say a quick hello and bring something by for her. I knew she’d be on duty, of course, and might not be able to make time for me.

She waved it off. “Sure, my chief is cool. Anyway, there’s not a lot going on today, as you can see.”

Hesitating, I followed her behind the counter and through two more doors until we came to a windowless room that had little to offer besides a coffee machine. Malia pushed aside a few newspapers on one of the tables and leveled a gaze at me.

“So what’s going on?” she asked.

“Nothing.” I shook my head with a smile. “You look great. The uniform suits you.” She’d only just started her training when I left New York. Now she was already on active duty.

Malia gave a twirl, curtsied, and sat down. “You look great too, Len.” She leaned forward and touched my leather jacket. “I like the new style. Very mature.”