Fidelity Files (41 page)

Hannah's young, carefree voice came through the speaker. "Hey, Jen! It's me," the message began. "So, next week is Halloween and I just wanted to let you know that this will officially be my last year of trick-or-treating because, you know, next year I'll be thirteen, and Olivia said that thirteen is way too old to be going door-to-door asking for free candy."

See,
I reassured myself,
it's your adorable little niece, whose untainted innocence and trivial little concerns about trick-or-treating always manage to make you feel better when you're down.

"Oh," Hannah's voice continued, "and I also called to tell you that I got another letter from that person. You know, the one who thinks your name is Ashlyn, and—"

I quickly reached over and shut off the answering machine. So much for that idea. I should have known. When did
anyone
I know
ever
call with good news? Oh, no. I was like a bad news magnet. And not just one of those wimpy little refrigerator magnets in the shape of a hot dog or a teapot. I'm talking one of those high-power, superconducting, propulsion magnets that NASA is developing as a way to launch objects into outer space.

I wanted to forget all of it. I wanted to make it all disappear. And the only way I knew how to do that was to sleep.

When I woke up I looked at the clock. It read 2:45. And I seriously wasn't sure if it was 2:45 in the morning or 2:45 in the afternoon. My body clock was completely out of whack. But to be honest, I didn't really care. What did I have to be late for? Another assignment? Nope, no more of those. A date with Jamie? Nope... definitely no more of those.

Time was an illusion, anyway. Pacific Time, Eastern Time, Central Time, Daylight Savings Time. Those were all just man-made words used to keep us all in line. And, of course,
on time
.

Because without time, how would we be able to set appointments? Make dates? Measure driving distances in Southern California?

Well, screw that. All of it. I reached down and violently yanked the clock plug from the socket.

I would be the first person to live entirely without time. I would revolt against the very institution of time. I would rage against the machine. Defy the system.

According to Einstein, time didn't even exist.

So why should I change my whole life around just to adhere to something that doesn't even exist?

I would sleep when I felt tired, eat when I felt hungry, and watch whatever TiVo had recorded when I felt bored. It was the Zen routine of the twenty-first century.

Although at this point all I felt like doing was the sleeping part.

The thought of fishing my cell phones out of my bag and listening to all the messages from people trying to get ahold of me with more bad news made me feel tired.

The thought of getting up and getting some food out of the refrigerator made me want to close my eyes and go to sleep again.

So I did.

But I woke up to the sound of my home line ringing.

"Hello?" I said groggily into the phone.

"Good morning, Jenny." My mom's cheerful voice vibrated into my ear.

"Hi, Mom."

"Were you still sleeping?"

I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was blank. Then I remembered unplugging it after my whole time-doesn't-exist phase a few hours ago. Or was that days ago? I fell onto my back and rested my palm on my forehead. "What time is it?"

"It's eleven-thirty," my mom replied.

"Oh."

"Have you called your father yet?"

I pulled the pillow over my face. "No. And I'm not going to."

"I thought you said you would!"

I threw the pillow to the floor. "Well, I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that, Mom."

There was a long, meaningful pause on the other end, and I could almost hear my mother's disappointment come through the phone. "Honestly, Jenny, I think it's about time you grew up and started acting like an adult."

Her words stung me. "I've been acting like an adult for the past sixteen years, Mother. If anyone should be allowed to act like a child and wallow in her misery, it's me!"

My mom sighed. "I don't know what you're talking about, but you're going to have to learn how to forgive your father or else..."

"Or else what?" I shot up in bed. "What, Mom? This I would love to hear. What if I don't forgive him? Ever? What if I stay mad at him for the rest of my life? Would that be so terrible? I'll tell you one thing, it certainly wouldn't be as terrible as what he did to us. To our family. And he kept it a secret for over a decade... maybe longer. Who knows? As far as I'm concerned, I have at least eight more years of feeling bitter and angry before my dad and I are even. The only thing I've ever learned from my father is that men can't be trusted. And if they can't be trusted, then they certainly don't deserve our forgiveness!"

My mom was silent, and I immediately worried that I had gone too far, said too much. I was about to open my mouth to apologize when she replied, "You're obviously not ready yet, honey. But don't worry, you'll be ready someday."

I wasn't quite sure what to make of that response. It was as if overnight my mom had transformed into a Buddhist monk. Had she been taking meditation lessons at the local community center or something? Where was the sudden need to forgive and the "you're not ready" speech coming from? It was like something straight out of the
Spiritual Guide to Raising Children
book.

"You're right, Mom. I'm not ready to forgive yet. And I'm not sure I'll ever be."

I hung up the phone feeling worse than I had when I picked it up. I'm sure my mom was just trying to help. That was, after all, what moms did. But I wasn't used to getting help from her. Sure, she was always around to help me with homework, or raise hell when a teacher gave me an unfair grade, or help me pick out decorations for my first college dorm room. But I never went to her with the big stuff.

In fact, I never went to anyone.

I had always felt alone when it came to dealing with my personal problems. And so I had always managed to solve them myself. Or at least I thought so.

But given the state I was in now, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that maybe you can't do
everything
alone.

I eventually pulled myself out of bed long enough to walk to the living room and plop myself right back down on the couch.

I turned on the TV and started an episode of
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
That always used to cheer me up. But it was slowly becoming obvious that my old tactics weren't going to cut it anymore. All my problems weren't going to just vanish into thin air, no matter how many episodes of
Extreme Makeover
I had stored up on my TiVo and no matter how many sets of white satin sheets I had folded up in my linen closet. And this time, no amount of staring into a wooden box with a list of names inside was going to change anything that had happened in the past few weeks.

I suddenly longed for the days when everything in my life fell nicely and neatly into two independent categories: Ashlyn and Jen. The cheating, the infidelity, the sinful touch of a married man could always be successfully tucked away inside an alias that I could turn on and off with the touch of a button.

And it was worlds away from Jen's world.

It wasn't even real.

But now the line, once as stable and sturdy as the Berlin Wall, had officially crumbled.

And it was real.

And it was personal.

And it was all happening right in front of me.

The doorbell rang a few hours later. But I must have fallen into some kind of trance because it felt like only a few minutes had passed.

"Get out of bed," Zoë said as soon as I opened the door.

I looked down at my feet. "I am."

"Physically yes, but mentally, you're still in bed."

I considered this. She was probably right. "Sophie told you what happened, huh?"

"Every painstaking detail. Sophie doesn't miss a word, does she?" She stepped by me and plopped down on my couch. "What are we watching?"

I closed the door and sat down next to her. "I don't remember," I said with a despondent sigh.

"Oh, no," Zoë groaned. "You're not turning into one of
those
girls, are you? Please don't turn into one of those girls. Once you're gone, I'll be the only normal one left!"

"Which girls?" I mumbled.

"You know
exactly
what girls I'm talking about. The kind that bury themselves in their bedroom for two weeks because of some stupid guy."

"Clearly, I'm not buried in my bedroom."

"But you would be if your TiVo was in there."

Damn, she knew me too well. And all along I thought I was so unpredictable. "I knew I should have bought a second TiVo for the bedroom."

Zoë grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and clicked on the "Now Playing" list. She started scrolling through my recorded programs. "Some brilliant lunatic with a wannabe license almost killed me on the way over here. So I literally risked my
life
to come here. Which means I'm eventually getting you out of this house."

I curled up into the fetal position in the corner of the couch and pulled the white cotton throw around my legs. "Leave me alone," I whimpered. "You know my problems run much deeper than just a stupid guy."

"I don't care if your problems run all the way to the freaking center of the earth! They're not just going to magically disappear while you're lying in bed all day. You need to get up and deal with them!" She continued browsing with the remote.

I knew she was right.

Raymond Jacobs wasn't going to just all of a sudden, for no good reason, decide to stop sending obnoxious letters to my niece. The server that held all the information for
www.dontfallforthetrap.com
wasn't going to just spontaneously combust. Jamie Richards's wife wasn't going to just evaporate into thin air so I didn't have to face her with an answer. And Sophie's fiancé wasn't going to just test himself and then send me the results via FedEx.

Yes, I knew all that. But it's not like I knew what to do about any of it. Or else I'd be out there doing it!

"Um, why do you have an episode of
Desperate Housewives
in Spanish?" Zoë said, stopping at the most recent recording on the list.

Still curled up in my ball, I turned my chin toward the screen. "I don't know, when was it recorded?"

Zoë clicked to display the program's details. "Yesterday," she read aloud. "While you were traveling."

I tucked my hands under my chin and closed my eyes. "I guess Marta must have been watching it while I was gone."

I heard rapid dialogue in Spanish and I opened my eyes to see Zoë had started playing the recording. "What? You're actually going to watch it? You don't understand a word of Spanish."

She shrugged and set the remote down next to her. "Nothing else on this thing but
Extreme Makeover.
"

I closed my eyes again.

"Ooh," I heard Zoë cry out. "This is a good one. I saw this one. It's when Gabrielle turns all that stuff over to the FBI that leads to her husband's conviction."

It took a moment for me to register Zoë's brief episode synopsis, but once I did, I opened my eyes again and sat up. "What do you mean? She turned in her own husband?"

She nodded. "Don't you remember? She found all those documents in the safe that implicated him in the crime he was pleading not guilty to. And she was so pissed off that he had been hiding them from her, she handed the information over to the feds. Then he was found guilty for laundering money or whatever and they sent him to jail."

I racked my brain. The story line was definitely familiar. I had seen every episode of the show, so it had to have at least rung a bell. But at this moment, I couldn't believe the idea hadn't crossed my mind before.

I reached over and grabbed the remote. "Let me see that scene."

I fast-forwarded through three quarters of the episode until I found the event Zoë was referring to. And sure enough, there it was. Of course, it was in Spanish, and I really only understood about every other word that was being said. But the intention was pretty clear, no matter what language was being spoken.

She betrayed her own husband – in a selfish act of revenge.

All because he had betrayed her first.

"
^?
Es tan simple!"
I cried out, jumping off the couch in my first burst of energy since I had left Jamie's hotel room.

Zoë looked at me like I had suddenly become possessed by some type of Spanish-speaking,
Desperate Housewives
–watching demon, and she feared she might have to start looking through the yellow pages for an exorcist. "What's simple?"

"And positively genius!" I hurried into the office like a crazy mathematician off to chart out his next thirty-page equation on an old dusty chalkboard.

Zoë warily pulled herself off the couch and followed after me. Most likely just to make sure I hadn't completely lost it and retreated into my office to fetch my book of magic spells.

Instead she found me kneeling on the floor in front of the closet. The mirrored doors were slid all the way open, and inside was a metal file cabinet, one that I used to keep locked up with a hidden key so that anyone who was inside my house wouldn't accidentally happen upon it and come face-to-face with the truth about my life that I had carefully concealed for more than two years. But now there was really no point in hiding it anymore. It seemed like these days just about everyone knew my secrets.

I pulled out the bottom drawer, and immediately began thumbing through the maroon-colored hanging file folders. "I can't believe I didn't think of this before," I said, mostly to myself, but Zoë just happened to be there to hear it.

"What are you talking about, Jen? Have you eaten anything today?"

I ignored her question as I continued rummaging through the drawer, mumbling incoherently to myself.

"Jen?" Zoë demanded an explanation.

I stopped my mad file search long enough to look up, and with sheer excitement in my eyes replied, "I think I just figured out how to take down Raymond Jacobs."