Page 154 of The Five Year Lie

There’s a rap on the window. I lift my eyes to see Woody standing there, Buzz on his hip. My little boy is smushing his nose against the glass, trying to see.

“Can you wave?” I ask, releasing his hand. “I wouldn’t ask, but Buzzy wants to know you’re okay.”

“Oh yeah,” he says, opening his eyes. “Tell him the Toy Story marathon starts tomorrow.”

He slowly waves, and Buzzy bangs on the glass in delight, which sends two nurses scurrying toward the window to shush him.

I take my first full breath in hours.

54

SEPTEMBER

“Do you see a spot?” Jay asks me as we creep past the preschool in the Jeep. “Where’s a guy supposed to park around here?”

“There. She’s leaving,” I say, pointing at a car with its taillights illuminated.

Parking was never an issue when I used to ride the bike. But Buzz has officially outgrown the kiddie seat. And Jay wasn’t about to miss the first day of school.

He zooms into the spot as soon as it’s free. “Okay, kiddo. Let’s do this school thing.”

My son is ready. He unbuckles himself and hops out, backpack in hand.

Another little boy races up to him on the sidewalk. “You got a red car? Jeeps are cool.”

“I know!” Buzz says. And then, with obvious glee, he adds, “There’s a bullet hole in it!”

Oops. I should have asked Buzz not to mention that.

When I look up, about a dozen other parents are openly gawking at us. The bullet hole isn’t the only reason, either. They’re staring at Jay. I’ve never arrived at school with a man at my side. That’s the kind of gossip these women live for.

Meanwhile, the Cafferty family drama has dominated Maine news coverage for three solid months, with no sign of letting up. Myuncle is currently out on bail, wearing an ankle monitor and awaiting trial for multiple crimes, including corporate fraud charges and accessory to my father’s murder.

There’s talk he’ll make a deal with the prosecutor in exchange for nailing Bryan Zarkey on multiple drug charges and murder.

Ray and I don’t speak, but my mother fills me in, whether I ask her for details or not. I hear he’s keeping a whole team of lawyers busy defending him. They claim he wasn’t aware of the fake judges, or Ward’s video stalking, or Amina’s death.

Although it was Ray who swapped my father’s pills for the ones that Zarkey’s sister had made for him. But he says that Zarkey double-crossed him with the lethal dose, to ensure his silence. He says he was in over his head with Zarkey, the psychopath.

That’s the most believable part of his whole defense. But it’s still Ray’s fault. He turned a blind eye because he and Zarkey had a plan to build an AI company that would dwarf the success of Chime Co.

But after Jay put a wrench in their plans, they quietly sold the LiveMatch technology to a competitor at the fire-sale price of forty million dollars, and Zarkey allegedly still consults on the product, which is how he tracked me to Michigan. So neither one of them will have trouble paying their legal bills.

They can both go to jail, for all I care. Someone should pay for Zain’s death. That’s the part I’ll never get over.

Jay is recovering from his gunshot wound, though. And his legal troubles aren’t as bad as they could have been. In exchange for his complete cooperation in the matter of Chime Co.’s corporate sins, his identity fraud charges will be downgraded.

Jay’s file cabinet full of evidence is finally seeing the light ofday, and our lawyer expects him to receive a sentence of probation and community service.

The unfortunate result is that our little family has become rather infamous. It’s all over the papers, which is why the other parents are watching our approach to preschool like we’re the latest episode to drop on some grizzly HBO crime series. I don’t even blame them.

But Jay is oblivious. “Wait, wait,” he says, corralling Buzz in front of the preschool building. “Don’t run inside yet, I need a picture.”

“We did the picture at home,” Buzz argues.

“That was theat homepicture. This will be the school picture.”

Amused, I wait on the sidewalk as Jay photographs Buzz near the door.