Innocent or Guilty?. A. Taylor M.
He nods at me, as if it’s all understood, a done deal, as if he knows that, somehow, someday, I’ll get him out of this, out of prison, even though I have no idea how, and wish that he’d tell me. Mom and Georgia are crying, albeit quietly, as Ethan is led away, and when I turn to look at Dad, he’s dumbfounded, his face a mask of stupefied tragedy like I’ve never seen it before. I want to reach out to all of them, to be pulled back into their orbit, but I feel detached from them now, a satellite circling them, no longer a part of the home planet. Mom and Georgia look so similar huddled together, the same size and shape, small and compact, shoulder to shoulder. Ethan and I always took after Dad more, and when I look at him now I wonder if I’m seeing my twin in thirty years’ time, face crumpled and destroyed by sudden loss, transfixed by a horror no one ever saw coming. And then I make a decision, putting my arms around them all, pulling them towards me, pulling them into my own tilted orbit; the strange, circling satellite, and like that we walk out of the courtroom together.
“Did you ever doubt him?” Kat asked, swirling the wine in her glass around so it shone in the candlelight. “Did you ever think he might have done it?”
“No,” I said.
“Really?” She said, her head pulled back in surprise, her voice going up. “Not even once?”
“We shared a womb. It breeds a certain amount of trust.”
“So, you guys are like, really close?”
I took a sip of wine, licking my lips after, “We weren’t when it all happened … when Tyler died, we hadn’t been close for years, not since we were nine, ten.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, trying to think back that far. It had all seemed so important then. “We were just really different. We still are.”
“But you’re close now?” Kat was leaning forward, her arms resting on the table. It felt casual, but it wasn’t and I wondered for a second if she was recording the whole thing.
“It’s a little difficult to be close when there’s an entire prison system between you, but yeah, I guess you’d say we were close.”
“I’d really like to meet him. To go and see him, but I don’t think he’ll see me without you there.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, my palms beginning to itch.
“Because that’s what he told me.”
“You’ve spoken to him already?” I asked with a sideways glance at Daniel. He was drinking from his glass of wine and didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t be here unless I had done. Look, Olivia,” she said, rearranging herself in her seat, settling in for something, “you can’t take this lightly. We go all in on a subject and a case when we research it. We want the truth and we want some kind of resolution, and it can be really painful and uncomfortable for a lot of people, even the innocent and the victims. If we do this, we’re going to be dredging up your whole family’s past. Yours, Ethan’s, pretty much everyone who was involved in the investigation. So, you have to know what you’re getting yourself into. And Ethan really has to know, because it’s going to affect him the most. I need to see it in his eyes that he understands everything that we’re going to do in the process of making this podcast, otherwise it’s not going to happen. I need that from you too.”
The birthday party was still roaring with delight at the table next to us, and the couple on the date had descended into distractingly awkward and prolonged silences. Waiters and waitresses were passing our table constantly, eyeing up our rapidly depleting carafe of wine with professional interest, stopping to drop by some dinner menus. But it was as if the four of us, hell the two of us – Kat and I – were all alone in that din. She was staring at me with such intensity, my natural inclination was to look away, but I couldn’t. She demanded attention. I reached for the stem of my wine glass, needing something to touch, something to do, and finally I shrugged, feigning a kind of natural indifference I felt a million miles from, and said, “Of course.”
“Okay,” Kat said, suffusing that one word with a sense of boundless relief and animation, and leaning back in her seat with a wide grin before reaching over to pick up one of the menus that had been left for us, “So, what’s good here?”
I sank back in my own seat, mirroring her and said nonchalantly, “Here? It’s all good.” But it was a nonchalance I didn’t feel – does anyone ever feel truly nonchalant? – and when I picked up the menu to see what was on offer tonight, I felt like I’d set something in motion that I’d never be able to stop. I wasn’t used to feeling so out of control. Ever since Ethan had been arrested, I’d done everything I could to maximize the sense of control I had over my life, and that of my twin brother’s. It was the whole reason I’d gone to law school, the reason I’d stayed in Oregon, so close to a home that had so thoroughly rejected me and my family; I was going to clear his name. But I’d never imagined doing it this way, with microphones and journalists, and a whole audience watching. Or listening, at least. So, why did I? Maybe it was Daniel’s luminous eyes staring so expectantly at me, as bright as a child’s; or maybe it was Kat’s, hard, dark and defiant, the face of true tenacity. Or maybe it was the thought of Ethan’s, so similar to mine – identical in fact – staring at me in horror and disbelief, an unasked, pleading question hidden within them on the day he was pronounced guilty. I knew that he’d given up thinking that anyone, least of all me, would be able to get him out of there by now. I’d gone to college for him, surprised everyone and got into law school for him, and yet I still hadn’t been able to do the thing that really mattered, and have him exonerated. Or maybe I said yes to the podcast, because I’d finally figured out that control was an illusion; a net the size of the world trying to catch just one single butterfly. And that chaos always managed to creep in, flap its wings, and change everything forever.
So, we ordered dinner, a bright pink beetroot risotto with bright white beads of goat cheese melting into it for Kat who turned out to be vegetarian, a shared beef bourguignon for Daniel and Ray who most certainly were not, and a cedar plank salmon for me. By the time we were ready for dessert, the restaurant had quieted to a lull, the birthday party having moved on to a bar, the flaccid date disbanded in near-silence, and my roommate Samira came out to join us, bringing more desserts than we’d ordered with her.
“You have to try the apple, cheddar and caramel pie,” she declared, skootching in next to me on the bench, “all anyone’s ordered tonight is the chocolate freakin’ torte.”
“Well, if you didn’t make it so freakin’ delicious maybe they wouldn’t order it so much,” I said.
“I’m not going to argue with you there, all I’m saying is it’s a crying shame that only four people so far have tasted this sensational delight. It’s served with rosemary ice cream for Christ’s sake,” Samira said.
I took one of the servings of pie from her and introduced her to Kat and Ray. “Shadow of a Doubt?” she said, her eyes widening, “Man, this is an honor. I do my best pastry making listening to you guys.”
It was Samira who had got me listening to Shadow of a Doubt in the first place. She’d told me about it before Daniel had even realized he’d gone to college with the often referred to, but rarely heard producer, ‘Ray’. Shadow of a Doubt had been my introduction to true crime podcasts, and now I listened to them constantly, voraciously, omnivorously. Funny ones, sentimental ones, sincere ones, straight down the line ones. At first I’d thought I’d be too close to it to enjoy any of them. Both as a lawyer and as my brother’s sister. But it turns out the opposite was true; I loved them just as much as anyone did. And boy, did everyone seem to; our collective blood lust undimmed since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets and sold out newspapers, and the