“You must be so relieved that he doesn’t have to do any prison time.”
“I am. We both are.” Aimee leans back to allow the waitress to put down the drinks.
I hold mine aloft. “Cheers!”
We clink glasses.
“To your book. Such a success!” she says.
We each take a big sip. “Good, right?”
“Mmm.” She nods in agreement. “I knew you had once wanted to be a writer, back before you worked in PR. But a whole book? Now, that’s impressive.”
“What, you thought Anton was the only one with talent?”
“No, it’s just a lot of work.”
“Between you and me, I hired someone, this quasi-successful thriller writer from Bethesda, to ghostwrite the thing. I mean, I gave her notes and lots of random pages, but she put it all together using articles and police reports. Stuff like that.” I thinkback on some of the suggestions that she gave me, and some of the changes she thought I should make. “She helped me see that I had to make myself look bad at some points. I mean, exaggerate some stuff, you know, just to make it more believable. People don’t like reading about perfect characters.”
“Makes sense. Will you sign it for me while I’m in Miami? I have a copy in my hotel.”
“Of course. Duh.”
Aimee takes another sip of her drink. “Some of the things you changed, right?”
“Like what?”
“I mean, you can’t really know that Lisa thought any of those things—about losing my friendship or being jealous of you.”
“I sensed it, you know? It was intuition.”
“And what you wrote about her sleeping with her college roommate’s boyfriend, was that true?”
I shrug. “Poetic license. People like an over-the-top villain. And it turns out you can’t slander the dead. Anyway, you can’t hold that against me. The bitch was sleeping with my husband.”
“True.” Aimee laughs. “Yet, you also wrote things from my perspective, and you couldn’t have known what I was thinking or feeling.”
“I did my best, Aimee.” I reach out and squeeze her hand. “I hope I didn’t upset you. I would never do anything to jeopardize our friendship. This project was like therapy for me. I mean, it literally saved my life.”
“Oh, well, having my life put on display for the world to see… Why would I be upset?” She laughs again. “The only thing is, a couple of details left me confused.”
“Well, it’s fictionalized.”
“That’s not it.”
“Hmmm?”
“Like the journal, the one you found that had all of Anton’sinterviews with Cathy Stocker in it? In the book, you say you left it at the house in Frederick when we went to confront Scott’s mom.”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t. You didn’t leave it there. I saw you take it.”
I blink twice. “I guess I thought it was more dramatic that way.”
“Right. Except why would that be more dramatic? So, I started thinking, why else would Gwen write that?” She snaps her fingers. “Because she wanted to explain why she couldn’t produce that journal later on. After all, I never saw it with my own eyes. You read to me from it in the car, but I didn’t see it.”
“What are you saying?”