Like everybody else involved, Brian thinks I’m a piece of shit. I can just tell. After all, I stand by my guilt. I don’t dispute the claim that I lured my dying next-door neighbor Georgina Lucas into helping me embezzle the money from the joint account I shared with Skye. I can’t tell Brian that I’ve never had a conversation with Mrs. Lucas, or that Heather visited her multiple times a week. I can’t admit to him that I truly don’t know where the two million dollars is; he probably thinks I spent it on drugs or buried it in the woods upstate somewhere only I know the coordinates. Anything I can say to help my case will incriminate Heather. And I won’t do it—I just won’t. Garrett and Hope and Maggie will already have to live with the knowledge that their father is a fraudster who let them down. I won’t let them think the same about their mom, too.
I wish I could talk to Skye, but I haven’t seen or heard from her since our meeting in the city in January. I texted her a couple times since then, just to let her know I’m thinking of her, but she never responded.
Late February, the day of the plea hearing finally arrives. I wake early so I can make it to a six A.M. AA meeting at the rec center, which helps calm my nerves. Afterward I head back to Todd’s, where I shower and brush my teeth and put on a clean suit, per Brian’s directions. Todd has already made coffee and eggs, but I feel too sick to eat. He drives me to the train and the sky is white and a Frank Sinatra song that Grams used to love is on the radio, and I feel so sad I can’t form answers to any of Todd’s questions. We ride in silence.
When he slows to a stop in front of the station, I thank Todd for everything and climb out of the car. From behind me he calls something—something that might’ve been Good luck, Burke or maybe You’re a good man, Burke—but it’s a gusty morning, and his words are lost in the cold gray wind.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Heather
Dear Dr. K,
I got to work right away on my new plan to obliterate Burke, willing fury into fuel. Skye’s Instagram stories—which I watched from an anonymous handle—gave me a glimpse into the new Mr. and Mrs. Michaels’s Italian honeymoon. It was almost too much to take, but I stared at the app obsessively nonetheless, watching as they climbed the Duomo in Florence and moseyed blissfully through the Tuscan vineyards, stopping every ten minutes for a fresh pour of Chianti. Each snapshot was more idyllic than the last, and I counted the seconds until it would all be over, until Burke would plummet from Skye High to Rock Bottom.
Because he would plummet—I was going to see to that.
The idea for the New Big Plan came to me just a few days after the wedding, one evening when I was drinking wine in bed and staring at Skye’s Instagram, seething. After Burke’s text, my obsession with Skye had intensified, resulting in a daily journey down the rabbit hole of her online presence, which led me to visit burkeisskyehigh.com for the umpteenth time. But that night, I noticed something I hadn’t before.
Though Burke had hardly told me anything about the wedding over the summer, I’d pried enough to know that he’d paid a bunch of opioid addicts from Langs Valley to act as his groomsmen, one of whom was our old friend Andy Raymond. On the wedding website Skye had listed her bridesmaids, including her maid of honor, Andie Roussos. That’s when it clicked—the coincidence of Andy R and Andie R. That was the lightbulb moment.
I could tell the story any way I wanted, Dr. K. I had plenty of information to work with—information Burke had provided himself in the early days of the Big Plan, when we were still teammates. Burke told me how he first lied to Skye in Montauk about being an alcoholic, and how he came clean during their ramen dinner at Ippudo. He told me when Skye treated him to the chef’s tasting menu at Le Bernardin, and when they first said “I love you.” He even told me, back in the spring—before he really started to drop off the face of the earth—that they’d chosen September 21 as a wedding date because Skye loved the Earth, Wind & Fire song and wanted it to be their first dance. Though I often had to pry the details from him—more at the end—he’d still revealed so much of their relationship to me over the past year. So many little snippets, precious moments. And I remembered all of them, because how could I forget?
So yes, the story was mine to tell. And I would tell it the way I wanted. I’d rewrite the narrative. I’d use my power to tell another version of what had happened—the version I’d share with the world through Burke’s electronic diary.
I worked diligently and around the clock, the days and nights blurring together as I composed Burke’s eleven fictitious diary entries. I pictured Burke and Skye gallivanting around Italy and used the resulting pain as ammunition. I scrutinized my work, triple-checking every detail to make sure it all lined up, that the entries conveyed a believable version of the truth.
The special sauce behind the New Big Plan was that even if someone questioned the authenticity of the digital diary, Burke would still plead guilty. He would take the fall, and the last thing he’d ever do would be to take me with him. He would never, ever do that to our children. This was my armor.
Besides, Burke was guilty. He’d committed bigamy, willingly, and not on my watch. He’d made his own fucking bed.
By the time I’d finished the diary and decided it was bulletproof, Skye and Burke were a little over a week into their honeymoon. I’d watched them make their way from Tuscany to Rome, where they stuffed their faces with rigatoni alla carbonara and gelato. They’d since ventured down the coast, from Pompeii to the beaches of Positano, where one particularly sickening photo showed them kissing under a tree of lemons.
But reality would soon enough hit, I continued to remind myself. In five days, as soon as the lovebirds touched back down on American soil, I would leak the diary.
In another part of the New Big Plan, I’d still wind up with the two million dollars. Luckily, I still had the information I needed. When Burke had first opened the joint account with Skye back in the spring—back when we were still in on the Big Plan together—I’d made sure he sent me the mobile banking log-in information as well as the list of security questions and answers, so I could keep track of it all. Not surprisingly, the moron hadn’t bothered to change his Bank of America password.
Still, things were a lot more complicated now that Burke wasn’t involved. I wasn’t going to flee the country alone, so I had to figure out a way to effectively steal and keep the money without incriminating myself.
The idea unfolded rather spur of the moment. I’d been so preoccupied with writing the fake diary, I hadn’t given ample consideration to the money piece. But then I remembered something, Dr. K. I remembered Mrs. Lucas.
Mrs. Lucas had taken a turn for the worse, I’d learned during my last visit almost two weeks earlier. I realized, with a pang of guilt, that I hadn’t been to see her since. I’d been so consumed by my own devastation after Skye and Burke’s wedding, I’d forgotten to check in on my dear friend.
Tragic as it was, recalling this was another lightbulb moment. I popped over for a visit that evening, praying I wouldn’t find her already gone. Relief flooded me when the nurse answered the door and said that Mrs. Lucas was awake and lucid, and feeling okay. Better than yesterday.