Best-Laid Plans

by Jeanette Vanausdall

Grecia Harvey woke that morning with a sense of having all her ducks in a row, which was always a satisfying feeling, however accustomed. The housekeeper had come yesterday afternoon and been charged with all those little touches that were not usually part of the service, but which made Grecia feel an extra measure of confidence in having a houseful of guests this evening. The caterer had been confirmed. The flowers, delivered yesterday morning, were promised to peak today. Her nephew, Richard, was set to pick up the guest of honor at the airport precisely at 3:47 and was taking the afternoon off so as to insure that he would not be held up at the last moment, as he so often was, in his role as a prominent city councilman. Grecia had nothing to do now but contemplate her wardrobe and rest.

She pattered down to the kitchen where the coffeemaker had just finished brewing, poured herself a cup—her one vice—and make a slow circuit of the dining room, living room and capacious entry hall. The flowers were glorious and so did the day outside appear to be. She stood gazing out the leaded-glass French doors into her small garden as she sipped her coffee and thought about the evening ahead.

In a mere eight hours she would be welcoming Pittsburgh author Kyle Pitchkind for an intimate, very exclusive cocktail party before shepherding him to the auditorium for his author talk. Then back to the house for a buffet dinner at which the entire university board and a good number of her second-tier friends and associates would be included. It was for this yearly event that Grecia had remained a trustee of the university all these years. The annual author series, now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, drew the biggest literary names in the country to the small and otherwise obscure urban college. Grecia had been the board chair in the program's inaugural year, and since she lived in very close proximity to the campus, had been the obvious choice to host the events around that first author's visit. She had found it to be so personally gratifying that she had declined to relinquish the honor when she was obliged, three years later, to turn over her board chair position. Her role as hostess for the event had become such a tradition that hardly anyone questioned it anymore. Oh, there had been an upstart five years ago-- a new trustee who fancied herself a “literati” by virtue of having earned an MFA in creative writing, of all things -- who thought Grecia should not have to bear the burden alone. At least not ever y year.

Grecia had put a stop to that little coup real fast. It was, after all, through these yearly visits that she had entertained novelists and poets, anthropologists and theologians, prominent writers and thinkers of every stripe in her home. She insisted that they be her guests for the duration of their stay in the city, even when they objected. Hotels were so sterile and impersonal! In the history of the program, Grecia had only not prevailed with one author, whose near obsession with privacy—that was all you could call it-- was more than a match for her hospitality. That particular author was not among her favorites anyway.

Grecia opened the morning paper with complete confidence that there would be a nice profile of her author and a mention of herself as hostess. She used her influence with the paper's social editor selectively, choosing her favors strategically. And there it was, a nice little column and a lovely photograph of Mr. Pitchkind, who was reasonably attractive for a man in his late fifties. The article even quoted Grecia on Pitchkind's thought leadership in the field of family sociology. His most recent book, which was not at all academic, was a tender homage to the joys of fatherhood later in life. Something of a radical in his younger days, Pitchkind was now an outspoken advocate of the traditional family and the charmingly attentive father of a two-year-old son. The book had quickly topped the best-seller list. People did so love a poignant transformation, didn't they, an epiphany visited upon one in maturity? Especially when it all ended so happily.

After she had put the paper aside, Grecia showered and dried her hair, then retrieved the mail, which always arrived promptly at 11:00. She tossed through the flyers that were of no interest to her, smiled at a post card from a friend who was vacationing in Portugal, and set aside two bills for later attention. Then she had a bite of chicken salad, leftover from her luncheon at the museum yesterday afternoon, watched the midday news on television, and took a nap. That left the bulk of the afternoon for choosing an ensemble and waiting for the caterers. She selected a tunic-length beige silk twin set paired with drapey mushroom-colored slacks, a long strand of faux pearls that had the appearance of costing nearly as much as the real things, and stud earrings that were , in fact, the real thing. The caterers arrived at 4:30 on the dot to set up for cocktails and hors d'oeuvres and Grecia waited happily for Richard and Mr. Pitchkind's arrival, due around five o'clock, assuming the flight had been on time. As she hadn't heard to the contrary, she assumed that all was going as planned.

Five o'clock came and went and still she waited. The guests were to arrive at 6:00, leaving nearly an hour and a half for cocktails before the short trip to the auditorium for the 7:30 program. Grecia tried Richard's cell several times, but it seemed to have been turned off, which irritated her no end. At 5:30, she called Olivia, Richard's wife. Olivia had heard nothing from Richard, but was nearly ready to leave for the reception; surely one of them would have heard from Richard by the time she arrived. But alas, Olivia and a goodly number of the guests arrived at 6:05, with still no sign of Richard or the guest of honor.

Grecia composed herself and assured her guests that “the entourage was en route.” Every time she asserted it, she looked hopefully at the clock and then, more despairingly, out the front window at her long, flagstone drive. By 6:45, it was apparent to all that something was terribly wrong. Repeated attempts to call Richard's cell had resulted in nothing. The airport had been contacted and had confirmed that the flight had arrived safely, although officials would not confirm what passengers had or had not been aboard. A page had been made, for either Kyle Pitchkind or Richard Harvey, with no result. Richard's executive assistant assured Grecia that Richard had managed to leave at noon, as he had planned, with the intention of running some errands before going to the airport to pick up his guest. He had signed out at the security desk and nothing had seemed amiss to the guard.

At 7:15, everyone progressed to the university; there seemed nothing else to be done. At this point, if the men were just running late, they would presumably go directly there. It was a somber caravan, almost like a funeral cortege, as the stricken look on Olivia's face belied Grecia's repeated assurances that heavy traffic, or something equally benign, would account for the delay. The rest of the group took seats in the auditorium while Grecia and Olivia waited in the lobby with the manager, who met and worried with them. At 7:40, the manager made an announcement about the delay, appealing for patience. At 7:50, Grecia herself walked to the podium and announced that the program was being cancelled due to unforeseen travel difficulties, and apologized profusely.

They had no choice but to return to the house, where many concerned and, it had to be said, puerile guests would be congregating as per invitation. The atmosphere was painfully awkward; no one wanted to be the first to fill a plate. The caterers stood at laden tables and two open bars, but they looked so solemn as to be uninviting.

“Please,” Grecia said, gesturing to the food and drinks magnanimously. “Please, help yourselves to the food. There's no reason not to eat, as planned. I'm sure this will all be cleared up shortly.” She moved through to the kitchen, grabbing the arm of one of her nephew's colleagues on the way and charging him to leverage his council office to demand information and, if necessary, police action.

Within minutes a patrol car had appeared at the house and two officers had been ushered in. Assuring Grecia and Olivia that others were working with the airport and on area hospitals and accident reports, the officers asked routine questions and then lingered. Eventually a call was received by one of the officers, who then relayed the information that Mr. Pitchkind had indeed arrived safely and that he, or someone, had retrieved his luggage. Airport security had thoroughly searched the airport, the parking garage and all access roads within a certain mile radius. No accident reports and no hospital admits that would fit the time parameters or descriptions of the two men existed, which was good news.

By 10:00 p.m. the guests had evaporated after some perfunctory offers to stay, which Grecia and Olivia declined, professing a desire for privacy. The officers strongly suggested that Olivia spend the night with Grecia, as both had become progressively more unnerved. Should anyone else be called to come wait with them? No, there was no one else; Grecia and Richard were the last of their Harveys in the area, and Richard and Olivia, both only children whose parents were gone, had not been blessed with children. As Grecia closed the door on the last of the caterers, the women looked at each other. They had never had much to say to one another. Like a balloon deflating, Olivia dropped to the sofa and wept. Grecia moved awkwardly to sit beside her, putting a hand on her knee, but offering no words of comfort or hope. She didn't see that there were any that would ring remotely true under the circumstances. They simply sat waiting for events to unfold.

Richard Harvey woke in the very early morning with a powerful feeling that there was something important he was supposed to have done. It was dark, except for the lights of a large office building through a window that he didn't recognize. He rose laboriously to his elbows and tried to focus his eyes. With the dawning realization that he was in a hotel room, memory came at him like an assailant and he jumped out of bed, as if to dodge the images and escape with his life. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. He stumbled to the nightstand, slapped his glasses to his face and focused on the alarm clock. Four fucking a.m.! What was happening here?

There'd been a guy and an early afternoon assignation; that he could remember. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened with the guy, someone he'd met the night before at a pubic hearing, whose name he couldn't remember either, if he had ever known it. But he did remember that he had built in plenty of time to get to the airport and pick up the stupid author. Which he had no memory of doing. Shit! This was such a big deal to Grecia; how was he ever going to explain his failure? He couldn't even explain it to himself, but he did remember having a drink. He'd ordered room service and remembered slipping into the bathroom when the drinks arrived, in the event that the bellhop might recognize him as a public official. He remembered that they'd started drinking and messing around, but very shortly after that…. nothing. Was it even remotely, fricking possible that this guy had drugged him? That was the only possible explanation, but why? Didn't you drug somebody to take advantage of them? Obviously, he'd planned to be a willing participant. That left robbery. He fished the wallet out of his discarded trousers and opened it with shaking fingers. He'd had over a hundred dollars and it was all still there, as was his driver's license and all his credit cards. So, what the hell? The only thing left was blackmail. Had there been photographs taken for later exposure? That had to be it.

But he couldn't think about that right now. For the moment, there was the pressing concern of his failure to show up last night. My God, Olivia would be frantic and Grecia would be furious. He didn't know which woman was going to be more painful to confront. He needed to know where he stood, how things had played out. Pitchkind would surely have caught a cab as time passed, or someone else would have been summoned to pick him up—the writer had Grecia's cell and house number in addition to Richard's, so somehow he would have been taken care of, right? Maybe if the program and reception had gone off well, Grecia would by now be more worried than angry.

He searched for his cell phone, but it was nowhere to be found. He was sure he'd had it with him when he came to the room. But maybe not… because why would that be the only thing the guy had taken? He couldn't call home from the hotel phone. The call could be traced later, should that become necessary. Maybe it was serendipitous, that he couldn't call just yet; how would he account for himself at this point? He needed time to regain his senses and to think. If he could just come up with a plausible explanation as to where he'd been all night, he could still recover from this. What he needed desperately was a good story. And some strong coffee.

Olivia awoke leaning awkwardly on the arm of the sofa with a painful crick in her neck. Grecia had stretched out the length of the sofa at some time during the night and when Olivia sat up, she accidentally elbowed her in the forehead. So now they were both painfully, abruptly awake and the circumstances of their night on the sofa dawned quickly upon them. Olivia looked at her watch. It was 6:30. She felt among the sofa cushions for her cell phone, which she remembered clutching as she had drifted off to sleep. There were no messages; no missed calls. Only yawning absence and growing apprehension.

“I'll make coffee,” Grecia said, rubbing her forehead and staggering to the kitchen. In the worry and confusion of last night, setting the coffee maker had been the farthest thing from her mind, but now coffee seemed an urgent necessity. The other necessity was to turn on the morning news, but she was half afraid to. She knew that they would have heard directly, if anything had been discovered, but she also knew that by now the television stations would be on to the story of the missing councilman, not to mention a nationally prominent author. By now, it would presumably be topping the news in Pittsburgh too. Pitchkind's wife would have been notified by the Pittsburgh police.

Grecia heard the powder room toilet flush and braced herself for dealing with Olivia. Olivia was not a particularly well woman, in Grecia's opinion. Overly emotional, she had always represented a bit of a challenge to Richard. Socially awkward and unattractive now that she had let herself go in middle age, she was becoming progressively more needy. She would have been a political liability, had she not been reasonable about keeping herself in the background. The couple had married in their early forties—late bloomers, both of them--and Grecia had often wondered if Olivia's inability to have children hadn't been, even subconsciously, part of her appeal for Richard. He had never seemed particularly interested in children; he was so taken up with his civic responsibilities. But this morning, Grecia actually felt sorry for Olivia. She looked like the hell Grecia knew she was in, as she walked into the kitchen. Olivia accepted the proffered cup of coffee wordlessly and sat heavily at the kitchen table.

Bracing herself, Grecia switched on the news. A commercial for yogurt, then wrinkle cream, then dog food. The ads seemed interminable, but at least they were a way of easing into whatever was coming, a reminder of a banal world in which they had been comfortably living, but probably would be no more. And sure enough, when the newscast resumed, a solemn anchorman was flanked by photos of both Richard and Pitchkind, as he intoned, “A prominent local leader and a visiting celebrity have been missing since early yesterday evening when they failed to arrive at a scheduled event.” The details unfolded—the flight number, the planned pick-up at the airport, a disappointed capacity crowd at the auditorium, the preliminary police investigation. Within minutes Grecia's phone began to ring, as did Olivia's cell, and they were kept busy for some time instructing concerned callers (or voyeurs, depending upon how you looked at it) that they needed to keep all lines open. Eventually, the calls subsided and Olivia began to cry quietly.

“Let's remain hopeful, Olivia,” Grecia said gently. “There could be any number of explanations…” But the platitude fizzled. There really were no scenarios that, this late in the game, would be pleasant. The women sat for the next two hours watching the same news report play over and over.

“I need to go home for a while, Grecia,” Olivia said finally, rising and collecting her purse and suit jacket.

“Are you sure you should be alone?” Grecia returned, surprised to realize that it was maybe she herself that didn't particularly want to be alone.

Olivia persisted; being alone in her own home was exactly what she needed right now. Back at the house, Olivia shed her skirt and blouse and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water pommel her aching neck as she reviewed the events of the last eighteen hours again and again and thought hard about what she should do from here. There was absolutely nothing she could do but wait.

Richard had been chugging the coffee that he'd ordered to be left outside his door, and it was slowly working its magic. The fog had lifted ever so slightly. He had been formulating his fiction for several hours now. He had selected a nice understated story about having been mugged as he cut through a network of alleys after grabbing lunch at the city market. Hit very hard, he had only come to sometime during the night and staggered to his car, where he had again passed out, having just awakened shortly before he arrived at the emergency room today. By far the best plan was to keep details to a minimum; it would be easy enough to claim a fuzzy memory of the event.

By now he was feeling lucid and fortified enough to turn on the news. Surely neither Olivia nor Grecia would have done something crazy like filing a missing person report. But he couldn't be sure. Left to their own devices, probably not, but they'd had a whole goddamned houseful of friends, colleagues and constituents who would have been prodding them to act. Even the best-case scenario that he could envision felt daunting. He steeled himself and switched on the television. Traffic report. The usual tie-ups all over the city due to summer construction. He used the time to relieve his bladder. He was examining his haggard visage in the bathroom mirror when he heard the teaser. “When we return, breaking news about the discovery of a body on the far west side, believed to be that of missing Pittsburgh writer, Kyle Pitchkind.”

“What the hell ?” This was bad. This was very, very bad. He sank to the bed and blazed through the other local channels, but every station seemed to be in commercial. He waited with an increasing sense of horror for the full report. Time was of the essence now; he had to present himself, account for the last eighteen hours and distance himself, in person, from whatever had happened to Pitchkind. The longer he was unaccounted for, the more time for speculation and rumor.

He dressed quickly and took a back stairway down to the lobby, where he scoped out the area around the elevator to underground parking, picked his best moment and descended to the garage. In a moment of great good fortune (maybe his last) the garage was empty and he nearly cried with relief as he found his car where he had left it, slipped behind the wheel and exited the garage.

He drove around until he found a suitably isolated area, pulled his car part way into a fenced dumpster alcove where he would not be seen, then dropped and rolled on the dirty asphalt, dragging himself a little bit for extra effect. He felt his shirtsleeve split. He lifted his elbow and saw blood through the tear. Nice touch. He brushed his hands through some oily grit and then ruffled his hair, as if he were applying mousse. Now he had to do the really hard part. He lay on his back, lifted his head and let it drop. He hoped it would not be hard enough to cause him to pass out, but just enough to produce a nice goose egg on the back of his head. He rolled over a few more times for good measure and then staggered to his car and drove to the nearest emergency room where he appealed to the woman at the admission desk. “I'm councilman Richard Harvey and I think I was mugged.”

Olivia learned the latest development from the relative comfort of her own bedroom. The body of a man had been found dumped along a country road about ten miles from the airport. Her heart skipped crazily as the report continued. Identification found on the body indicated that it was most likely that of Pittsburgh author Kyle Pitchkind, who had been scheduled to address an audience the night before, but who had been missing since he had deplaned. The cause of death and other circumstances related would not be released until a positive identification had been made. On a related note, local councilman, Richard Harvey, was still missing. Mr. Harvey, who had been scheduled to pick Pitchkind up at the airport, had not been seen or heard from since he left his office close to noon.

Where was Richard, for God's sake? Olivia wondered how long it would be before the police showed up to ask her more questions, now that they had found Pitchkind. A missing person was one thing; a missing person and a murdered person, who were supposed to have been together, was quite another.

When she did hear from the police, however, it wasn't for more questions; it was for some answers. A female officer arrived to escort her to the emergency room, where her husband was being checked out. He seemed fine, but he had apparently been the victim of an assault and robbery and was still quite shaken. Fortunately all that had been taken was his cash and cell phone. The assailant had left his credit cards and driver's license. Olivia sat rigid and utterly silent all the way to the hospital. She had no questions. The officer wrote it off to shock, which was not at all uncommon in such situations.

The ER doctor assured them both that Richard would be fine. “You should not have driven your car, however, Mr. Harvey.”

“I wasn't thinking exactly clearly, as you can imagine. I didn't have my phone and I just wanted to get to help.” Richard was thinking very clearly now, though. The adrenaline was pumping. He was weighing every word he uttered and what the implications might be for future accountability to both law enforcement and his wife. The less said the better.

Evidently Olivia felt the same way. She had been eerily quiet since walking into the ER. She had offered a perfunctory “are you alright?” but had then stood off to the side, clutching her bag tightly in both hands and probing him with her enigmatic gaze.

The officers told them that Richard should go home and get a good day's rest, but that the next morning, he would need to come in to make a full report about the mugging, as well as to answer some questions about his plans to pick the deceased up at the airport.

“Well, of course, I never got there, so clearly I know nothing about what happened to Mr. Pitchkind.”

“Understood,” one of the officers said dispassionately. “Just routine.”

In the privacy of Olivia's car, Richard feigned drowsiness due to head trauma and asked to defer conversation until he was feeling better.

“Of course,” she said. Richard leaned his head back and closed his eyes for the duration of the trip, though his brain was in overdrive. He wouldn't be able to put Olivia off for very long.

The concurrent stories unfolded over the next two days. The dumped body had been positively identified as Kyle Pitchkind. He had been bludgeoned repeatedly with a tire iron and left with fatal head wounds in a ditch on a rural road. The number of strikes pointed to rage, and therefore suggested acquaintance, rather than random robbery or assault. This changed the complexion of the investigation. The police were in the process of trying to determine if anyone in the city had known Pitchkind prior to his visit. The press had, of course, been hounding the Harveys; Richard's mugging, though not nearly as interesting as his disappearance had been, had become front-page news in its own right. The coincidence of that event with the murder of the person he was supposed to be meeting at the airport, simmered just below the surface of every news story and personal inquiry.

Richard was becoming exhausted with the energy it was taking to keep up his meager alibi. The police kept asking the same questions over and over again. The story of the mugging was sounding progressively more implausible, even to him. Should he have copped to being in a hotel with a woman? Maybe they had fallen asleep and slept through the night to their horror and embarrassment the next morning? That scenario would be easier on his reputation, and maybe even his marriage, but then the police would want to speak with the lady in question, and there wasn't one! What if he admitted to being with a man? In light of a murder, an afternoon tryst with another man seemed pretty benign. Maybe if he just came clean about that right now… But no, it didn't even bear thinking about. Richard was repulsed by his own proclivities, as would too many of his friends and associates be. Besides, hotel guy—if he could even be found—would hardly own up to drugging a councilman. God! What were the odds that an anonymous encounter, gone weird, would happen on the same day that he had an obligation to Grecia and a whole auditorium of friends and constituents! Of all the goddamned luck.

But then something dawned on him. Those odds were very slim indeed. It was almost too coincidental. What if… what if hotel guy was the murderer? Maybe this was someone who knew Pitchkind, had a grudge or a celebrity obsession of some kind, and saw an opportunity to connect with Pitchkind himself? It was a tenuous connection, but it was a connection, the only one that really made any sense at this point, and maybe the police should know about it. But no, if he changed any part of his story now, it would just further complicate things for him personally. He would have to let things unfold as they would. He had set his course and he'd have to follow where it led.

Olivia's silence since the incident was more unnerving than Richard would have expected. There were times when he wanted to force a conversation himself in order to clear the air, so that he could stop twisting in her inscrutable passivity. But every time he prepared to do it, he was too afraid that he couldn't sustain the fiction adequately, should she really begin to probe. But Olivia seemed neither curious about details nor concerned about him. She seemed… He couldn't characterize it.

Grecia on the other hand was being particularly solicitous, calling several times a day to inquire about his headaches, which were actually quite real, and Richard took some solace in her support as the days passed. At every turn he reminded both women that he had been very fortunate, all things considered. He was terribly sorry about Mr. Pitchkind, of course, but at least Richard had not been killed or badly hurt, right? They were very fortunate in that regard. He held his head up at the office, accepting the murmurs of concern from his colleagues, but always adding, “it's Kyle Pitchkind's widow that we should be concerned about, poor woman.”

One Saturday afternoon, as Richard sat on the front porch watching Olivia plant impatiens at the base of their coach light, a patrol car arrived and the two officers, by now quite familiar, asked to join the Harveys inside the house. They declined offers of refreshment; the one who did all the talking got right to the point.

“A man has come forward with some difficult information. A male escort.” Richard's temples pulsed and he could feel a droplet of sweat begin a slow meander down his shirt collar. “He claims that he met you, Mr. Harvey, at a hotel room the afternoon of Mr. Pitchkind's disappearance. He claims that he drugged you, took your phone and left you to sleep it off.”

“Why would he say such a thing?” Olivia sputtered indignantly. She looked desperately at Richard.

“He felt he had information that would help us connect events,” the officer answered. And then they just waited.

Options caromed desperately in Richard's consciousness, but he could not land upon a viable one. Olivia's alarm was palpable, but almost worse was the interminable silence of the police. Questions would at least be some clue as to what he should say. Shouldn't they be pelting him with questions? ‘Connect events,' they'd just said. Had they really been able to do that? Did they think they could pin the murder on him? But how could they? There was no connection. Hotel guy never would have come forward if he had been involved in the murder, would he? Richard had lost all sense of how long the silence had been hanging there. He'd have to say something pretty damn soon.

But the officers were not looking at Richard anymore. They spoke directly to Olivia.

“This man claims that he lured your husband to a hotel room at the bidding of a woman who said she needed to get councilman Harvey out of the way for a while, and paid him twenty-five hundred dollars to do it. She told the escort that an important bill was coming up for a vote and the councilman's absence was necessary. The compromising circumstances would ensure that Mr. Harvey would not report the incident. The escort was fine with that, but when he realized the connection to the murdered writer, he felt he had to come forward. He described the woman who hired him, Mrs. Harvey. His description looked so remarkably like you that we showed him a picture, and what do you think he said?”

Olivia flat-lined then. Her eyes were not to leave the hydrangeas on the sofa table from then on and when she finally spoke, her voice was barely audible. “I couldn't think of any other way to get rid of Richard for the evening.”

“Why did you want to get rid of him?”

“So I could pick Kyle up at the airport myself. ”

“I would have been more than happy for you to pick him up,” Richard interjected obtusely. He was still trying to figure out what Pitchkind had to do with Olivia. Why, come to think of it, she had just called him Kyle.

“I didn't want you to know . It had nothing to do with you . ”

“You were acquainted with Mr. Pitchkind?” the officer continued patiently.

“Yes, I was acquainted with Mr. Pitchkind,” Olivia said thickly. She shook her head.

“All the guy had to do was get Richard to a room—hardly a difficult thing to do, by the way—get him to have a drink with some of that what-do-you-call-it, and leave him.” She was quiet for a few moments and then she put her face in her hands and the collapse of her shoulders conveyed defeat. “Oh God,” she breathed. “I just wanted to talk t o him.”

“Did you kill Kyle Pitchkind, Mrs. Harvey?”

“I seem to have.”

She had met Kyle Pitchkind in college, Olivia explained to her attorney later. Two months after they began dating, Olivia was pregnant and terrified. “You don't know what it was like back, then,” she intoned impassively. “What my parents were like.”

“Did he know about the pregnancy?” the attorney asked, handing her a box of tissue.

“Of course he did, but he was so goddamned arrogant and full of himself back then. I didn't see it of course. I admired his idealism .” She had flared up, but just as quickly reverted to dispassion. “He had these strong political views about everything. He was morally opposed , he said, to bringing children into such a flawed world. He said that if I wanted a life with him, I would have to get rid of it. He said that if we ‘took care of it,' our parents would never know the difference and we could go on with our lives, realize all our dreams.”

“But you didn't.”

“No, of course not! Months after the abortion, he was on to other things. Other relationships. At one point, I threatened to tell what had happened, but he knew how to manipulate my worst anxiety. He asked me what I would accomplish by telling, other than to hurt and disappoint my poor parents. There was no undoing it, he said, so why would I want them suffer for something that was over and done?”

“But it wasn't over and done for you,” the attorney concluded.

“I transferred after that semester and I was suicidal for two years. It was another few years after that before I even found out that I would never be able to have children. Something had been botched.”

Olivia began to cry at that point. Richard felt a surge of sympathy. His hand sought hers, though hers was utterly unresponsive.

“Did you have any contact with him after you transferred?”

“No. I never wanted to know what became of him. I just tried to forget about the whole thing. Sometimes I thought maybe I had. But then in the last few years his name started popping up in the media. I started seeing his books in stores. Once he was on television when I was flipping channels and--I couldn't help myself--I watched. And when it was over I had to be sick.”

Richard couldn't believe what he was hearing. “It's been forty years, Olivia,” Richard offered, not unkindly. He didn't know why that fact seemed germane to him, but somehow it did.

“Oh, men always think it's a function of time, don't they?” She addressed herself to the attorney and when she finally looked at Richard her eyes were completely opaque. He couldn't see himself reflected in them anywhere. “The abortion was forty years ago, but I have lived with the results the rest of my life, haven't I? All I ever wanted was to be a mother. He took that from me. Then and forever.”

“And then you found out that he was coming here and that your husband's aunt was going to be hosting him.”

“That was a nightmare, yes. All those years he'd been at a safe distance and I could ignore him as much as possible given his growing notoriety. But I had a plan. I would just play sick and stay home and avoid the whole thing. “

“So what happened?”

“A week ago he was on the Today Show. He was peddling this latest stupid book, the one that's made him the fricking poster child for fatherhood! Renewing everyone's faith in the nuclear family, blah, blah, blah. How stupid are people? You know how he ended that interview? He said, ‘If I'd known fatherhood was going to be so wonderful, I'd have done it years ago.'”

“The joys of fatherhood was going to be the subject of his talk at the college that night, wasn't it?”

“I couldn't let that happen without him acknowledging what he'd done to me. I thought I just needed a chance to talk with him. I thought we could clear the air and I could get some kind of closure and then he could go on with his stupid presentation. I wouldn't be there, but I could survive his being here.”

“But it didn't go that way.”

“Well, to start with, when I picked him up at the airport, he didn't even recognize me. Okay, I've put on some weight and my hair's grey now, but I don't think he actually once looked at me closely enough to be able to recognize me. It was just another indignity at his hands.”

“How did you introduce yourself?”

“I just said I was his driver and he followed me to the car, talking on his cell phone the whole time.”

“Then what happened?”

“He had no interest in interacting with me. The minute he was in the car he just started messing around on his Blackberry. He was paying no attention to where I was going. I just drove out into the country waiting for the right time to reveal who I was. Finally he looked up and realized I was driving away from the city and asked what the hell was going on. I stopped the car out in the middle of nowhere and introduced myself. He seemed surprised and maybe a little uncomfortable, but not at all embarrassed or sad or apologetic. I said everything that I had wanted to say for forty years. And you know what he said to me ? That we were just stupid kids back then. That, for God's sake, Olivia, it had been forty years !”

She looked pointedly at Richard, who closed his eyes.

“You wanted him to apologize,” the attorney said.

“All he had to do was say he was sorry.” She laughed humorlessly. “Actually he finally did say he was “sorry;” he was sorry that I had let a stupid mistake forty years ago ruin my life. But he didn't feel he should have to apologize for not letting it ruin his . He said it all so condescendingly, so dismissively. Then, it was like I was on fire. I had pepper spray on my keychain. I grabbed it out of the ignition and I sprayed him in the face! He managed to open his door and roll out of the car. He was groaning and swearing at me and trying to crawl away. I opened the trunk and took out the tire iron. I wasn't thinking about killing him. I just wanted to hit him until he was sorry. I don't know how many times I hit him.”

“Did you think he was dead when you left him?”

“I didn't know. I didn't care.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I drove around for awhile and then I stopped and vomited and hurled the tire iron out into a cornfield. I'd never be able to find the place again, so don't even ask. Then I went to the party.”

“You must have been pretty shaken at the party.”

“I was in a fog. And it was pretty easy, because everyone just assumed I was rattled because Richard was missing.” She gave a little snort of a laugh, as if that was some huge irony. Richard felt the last piece of his heart break.

Richard resigned his council seat after Olivia was convicted of first-degree murder. He returned to full-time practice of the law, though it took several years of subsistence living before he was back on track professionally. He moved in with Grecia in order to make ends meet but also, he had to admit, because they were all each other had. And Grecia needed him. She was “getting up there,” and they were, after all, the last of their Harveys. Grecia had relinquished her role as hostess to visiting authors, though her plan had been to remain on the university board. But even that had become untenable, as had most of her social activities. People she thought had been friends seemed delighted, in an outwardly supportive fashion of course, over the Harveys' fall from grace. Life for the Harveys became very circumscribed. They began to plan for obsolescence.