Harlan Coben: Fool Me Once

“I heard you had a knee replacement. Are you okay?”

I wave off her concern. We both smile.

It’s a good day.

“How are your kids?” I ask.

“Great. Did I tell you Missy is teaching at Vassar?”

“She was always a smart one. Like her mother.”

Eileen puts her hand on my arm and leaves it there. We are both still single, though we’d had our moment way back when. Enough said there. We ride the rest of the way in silence.

By now you’ve all seen the video from that nanny cam Maya put above the Farnwood fireplace — they used to call it “going viral” when something got that big — so I’ll tell you the rest of what I know.

That night, after Maya convinced me to keep an eye on Hector and Isabella, she called someone who worked with Corey the Whistle. I never learned the person’s name. No one did. They set up a live feed using the nanny cam. In short, the world was able to watch everything that went on in the Burkett house that night. They watched it live. Corey the Whistle was a pretty big deal already — this was in the days when that kind of transparency was in its infancy — but after that night, his site became one of the biggest on the web. I obviously had a personal beef against it for putting our mission up. But in the end, Corey Rudzinski used the publicity Maya got him that night to do a lot of good. Scared, wounded, powerless people who’d been afraid to tell the truth suddenly had the courage to come forward. Corrupt governments and businesses toppled.

So in the end, that had been Maya’s idea: expose the truth for the world to see in live time. It was just that nobody expected that ending.

A murder right before your eyes.

The elevator doors open.

“After you,” I say to Eileen.

“Thank you, Shane.”

As I follow her down the corridor, still limping with the new knee, I can feel my heart swelling in my chest. I admit that as I get older, I get more emotional. I’m more prone to cry at life’s good moments.

When I turn the corner and enter the hospital room, the first person I see is Daniel Walker. He’s thirty-nine years old now and stands six four. He works three floors up as a radiologist. Next to him is his sister, Alexa. She’s thirty-seven with a little one of her own. Alexa does digital design, though I don’t really know exactly what that is.

They both greet me with hugs and kisses.

Eddie is there too, and his wife, Selina. Eddie was widowed nearly ten years before he remarried. Selina is a wonderful woman, and I’m happy that Eddie found happiness after Claire. Eddie and I shake hands and do that guy thing where we half hug.

Then I look at the bed where Lily is holding her new baby girl.

Ka-pow. My heart explodes in my chest.

I don’t know if Maya went to the Burketts that night knowing that she was going to die. She left her gun in the car. Some theorize she did that so the Burketts wouldn’t be able to claim self-defense. Maybe. Maya left me a letter that she wrote the night before her death. She left Eddie one too. She wanted Eddie to raise Lily if anything happened to her. Eddie did that in spectacular fashion. She wrote that she hoped Daniel and Alexa would be good older siblings to her daughter. They were that and then some. I was to be Lily’s godfather, Eileen the godmother. Maya wanted us to stay in her life. Eileen and I did that, but with Eddie, Daniel, Alexa, and then Selina, I don’t think Lily needed us.

I stayed — I still stay — because I love Lily with a ferocity a man usually saves only for his own child. And maybe I stay for something else. Lily is like her mother. She looks like her mother. She acts like her mother. Being around her, doing things for her — stay with me here — is the only way I get to keep Maya with me. That may be selfish, I don’t know. But I miss Maya. Sometimes, like when I used to drop Lily off after a baseball game or movie, I would almost feel like I was rushing somewhere to tell Maya all about the day and assure her that Lily was doing well.

Silly, right?

From her bed, Lily looks up and smiles at me. It is her mother’s smile, though I rarely saw it beam like this.

“Look, Shane!”

Lily doesn’t remember her mother. That kills me.

“You done good, kid,” I say.

People talk about Maya’s crimes, of course. She did kill civilians. She did, whatever justification you might give, execute a man. Had she survived, she would have gone to prison. No question about it. So maybe she chose death over life in prison. Maybe she chose to make sure the Burketts went down and couldn’t be in her child’s life over rotting in a cell and taking the risk. I don’t know anymore.

But Maya claimed to me that she never felt guilty about what she did overseas. I don’t know about that either. Those horrible flashbacks tore through her every night. People who feel no remorse aren’t haunted by their actions, are they?

She was a good person. I don’t care what they say.

Eddie told me once that he sometimes felt as though death was a part of Maya, that death followed her. It’s an odd way of putting it. But I think I get it. After what happened in Iraq, Maya couldn’t silence the voices. Death had stayed with her. She tried to rush forward, but Death would tap her on the shoulder. It wouldn’t leave. I think maybe Maya saw that. I think, more than anything else, she wanted to make sure death didn’t follow Lily.

Maya didn’t leave a letter for Lily to open at a certain age or anything like that. She hadn’t told Eddie how to raise her or why she had chosen him. She just knew. She knew that he would be the right choice. And he was. Years ago, Eddie asked me for my take on what to tell Lily about her biological parents and when. Neither of us had a clue. Maya often said that kids didn’t come with instruction manuals. She had left it up to us. She trusted that we would do what was best for Lily when the time came.

Eventually, when Lily was old enough to understand, we told her.

The ugly truth, we decided, was better than the fanciful lie.

Dean Vanech, Lily’s husband, bounces into the room and kisses his wife.

“Hey, Shane.”

“Congrats, Dean.”

“Thanks.”

Dean is military. I bet Maya would like that. The happy couple sit on the bed and marvel at their child the way new parents are supposed to. I look back at Eddie. He has tears in his eyes. I nod.

“Grandpa,” I say to him.

Eddie can’t answer. He deserves this moment. He gave Lily a good childhood, and I’m grateful. I will always be there for him. I will always be there for Daniel and Alexa. I will always be there for Lily.

Maya knew that, of course.

“Shane?”

“Yes, Lily.”

“Would you like to hold her?”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of clumsy.”

Lily won’t have any of that. “You’ll do just fine.”

Bossing me around. Like her mother.

I come to the bed and she hands me the baby, making sure to put the tiny head in the crook of my arm. I stare down at her in something approaching awe.

“We named her Maya,” Lily says.

I nod now because I can’t speak.

Maya — my Maya, the old Maya — and I saw a lot of people die. We used to talk about how dead was dead. That was it, Maya used to say. You die. It’s over. But right now, I’m not sure. Right now, I look down and I think maybe Maya and I got that one wrong.

She’s here. I know it.

The author (that would be me) wishes to thank the following: Rick Friedman, Linda Fairstein, Kevin Marcy, Pete Miscia, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel T. Mark McCurley, Diane Discepolo, Rick Kronberg, Ben Sevier, Christine Ball, Jamie Knapp, Carrie Swetonic, Stephanie Kelly, Selina Walker, Lisa Erbach Vance, Eliane Benisti, and Françoise Triffaux. I’m sure they made mistakes, but let’s go easy on them.