Page 169 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

The Polaroids.

Andy had been the first person to whom Laura had told the truth about who’d beaten her. “You’re right, sweetheart. It wasn’t love. Not at the end.”

Andy smoothed together her lips. She seemed to vacillate between wanting to know everything about her birth father and not wanting to know anything at all. “What was it like? The last time you saw him?”

Laura didn’t have to think very hard to summon her memories of being on the witness stand. “I was terrified. He acted as his own lawyer, so he had a right to question me in open court.” Nick had always thought he was so much smarter than everyone else. “It went on for six days. The judge kept asking me to speak up because I could hardly do more than whisper. I felt so powerless. And then I looked at the jury, and I realized that they weren’t buying his act. That’s the thing with con men—it takes time. They study you and figure out what’s missing inside of you, then they make you feel like they’re the only one who can fill the hole.”

Andy asked, “What was missing inside of you?”

Laura pursed her lips. She had decided to spare Andy the details of Martin’s sexual abuse. On good days, she was even able to persuade herself that she was holding back for Andy’s sake rather than her own. “I had just turned seventeen when Andrew brought Nick home. I’d spent most of my life alone in front of a piano. I only got a few hours at school and then I was with a tutor and then...” Her voice trailed off. “I was so desperate to be noticed.” She shrugged. “It sounds ludicrous, looking back on it now, but that’s all it took for me to get hooked. He noticed me.”

“Is that where you went when you disappeared on weekends?” Andy had moved away from Nick again. “Like when you went to the Tubman Museum and brought me back the snowglobe?”

“I was meeting with my WitSec handler. Witness security.”

“I know what WitSec means.” Andy rolled her eyes. She considered herself an expert on the criminal justice system since she’d been on the lam.

Laura smiled as she stroked back her hair. “I was on parole for fifteen years. My original handler was much more laid-back about the whole thing than Mike, but I still had to check in.”

“I guess you don’t like Mike?”

“He doesn’t trust me because I’m a criminal and I don’t trust him because he’s a cop.”

Andy kicked at the ground with the toe of her shoe. She was clearly still trying to reconcile Laura’s sordid past with the woman she had always known as her mother. Or maybe she was trying to make peace with her own crimes.

“You can’t tell Mike what happened,” Laura reminded her. “We’re damn lucky he hasn’t figured it out.”

Andy nodded, but still said nothing. She no longer seemed to feel guilty about killing the man they had all started calling Hoodie, but like Laura, she struggled to forgive herself for her part in jeopardizing Gordon’s safety.

The night Andy had fled the house, Laura had sat on the floor of her office, Hoodie’s dead body a few feet away, and waited for the police to bust down the door and arrest her.

Instead, she’d heard men screaming on her front lawn.

Laura had opened the door to find Mike lying flat on the ground. Half a dozen cops were pointing their guns at his prone body. He’d been knocked out, likely by Hoodie. Which served him right for lurking around her front yard. If Laura had wanted the US Marshals Service involved in the Jonah Helsinger affair, she would’ve called Mike herself.

Then again, she shouldn’t be too hard on him, considering Mike was the only reason that Laura had not been arrested that night.

Andy’s text had been fairly nondescript:

419 Seaborne Ave armed man imminent danger pls hurry

If Laura was adept at anything, it was subterfuge. She’d told the cops she’d panicked when she saw a man outside her window, that she’d had no idea it was Mike, that she had no idea who’d hit him, and she had no idea why they wanted to come into the house but she knew she had the legal right to refuse them entry.

The only reason they had believed her was because Mike was too dazed to call bullshit. The ambulance had taken him to the hospital. Laura had waited until sun-up to call Gordon. They had waited until sundown to take the body from the house and put it in the river.

This was the transgression Andy could not get past. Killing Hoodie had been self-defense. Gordon’s involvement in covering up her crime was more complicated.

Laura tried to assuage her guilt. “Darling, your father has no regrets. He’s told you that over and over again. What he did was wrong, but it was for the right reason.”

“He could get into trouble.”

“He won’t if we all keep our mouths shut. You have to remember that Mike wasn’t following you around to keep you safe. He was trying to see what you were up to because he thought that I was breaking the law.” Laura held onto Andy’s hand. “We’ll be fine if we all stick together. Trust me on this. I know how to get away with a crime.”

Andy glanced up at her, then looked away. Her silences had meaning now. They were no longer a symptom of her indecision. They were usually followed by a difficult question.

Laura held her breath and waited.

This was the moment when Andy would finally ask about Paula. Why Laura had killed her instead of grabbing the empty gun. What she’d whispered in Paula’s ear as she was dying. Why she had told Andy to tell the police that she was unconscious when Paula had died.