Sliver of Truth by Lisa Unger

and ambiguous a role to prosecute for Project Rescue on anything but possible conspiracy charges, they decided to close the case,” Jake began. “All the major players—Max, Alexander Harriman namely—were dead. Everyone else who might have been involved in the shadow side of the organization was a ghost. There were no records. Project Rescue was a labyrinth of dark connections, impossible to navigate.”
    “I know all this,” I told him, sitting on one of Jake’s work chairs.
    He nodded. “Those were hard days for me, Ridley.”
    “I know,” I said softly, remembering. I thought maybe I hadn’t been there for him like I could have been, but the truth was that I didn’t have a whole lot to give on the subject; I wasn’t exactly standing on solid ground myself.
    “I just couldn’t get past it,” he said. “I just couldn’t accept that there were things about my past that I’d never know. That the people responsible for fucking with so many lives would never face any consequences. It ate at me.”
    This was the point where Jake disappeared from the relationship, mentally and emotionally. It was like being in love with an addict. He could never be present because he was always jonesing, always fidgeting and preoccupied with his next fix.
    “So I went to see Esme Gray.”
    I felt a lump in my throat. I used to love Esme like a mother; now the thought of her made my stomach clench.
    “What? When?”
    Esme had been briefly taken into custody around the same time Zack—her son, my ex-boyfriend—had been. The conditions of her release were still unknown to me. She never stood trial for anything involving Project Rescue, I knew that much. I also knew that she’d retired from nursing. (Zack, though he was never prosecuted for his role in Project Rescue, stood trial, was found guilty, and is serving ten years in a state penitentiary for attempted murder—the attempted murder of me and Jake, by the way. But that’s another story. Even after all that he has done to us, it’s still hard to think of him in prison, of what has become of his young and promising life. He blames me, of course, and has told me so in numerous disturbing letters that I can’t keep myself from opening.)
    “I looked in your address book and found out where she lived. I followed her around for a couple of days. I broke into her house and was waiting for her when she came home. I wanted her afraid and off guard when I approached her,” he said. “But she wasn’t. It was like she’d been expecting me.”
    A year ago we’d talked about Esme as being the last remaining person who might know what had happened to Jake when he was a child, other than my father (who denied all knowledge). I knew someday he’d pursue that.
    “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
    “I know you’ve been trying to forget. I can’t blame you for that.”
    I nodded, waited for him to go on.
    “I was rough with her—not violent, but loud. I wanted her to think I’d come unhinged. But she stayed calm, sat down on the sofa and said, ‘After the kind of men I’ve been associated with, you think I’m afraid of a punk like you? You might as well cut the shit and sit down if you want to talk.’”
    I had to smile to myself. On the outside, Esme looked like everybody’s mom: pretty and roundish with a honey-colored bob and glittering blue eyes. She was pink like a peach. But at her core, she was metal. When we were all kids—Ace, Zack, and me—she, along with my mother, never had to yell or threaten; just a look and all bad behavior ceased.
    “She told me if I cared about you, I’d give up on finding out what happened to me. She told me I should start my own family and move forward. She said, ‘If you continue to insist on dredging up the past, you might find things you can’t put back to rest.’”
    It was an echo of something she’d said to me once and it made me go cold inside. I didn’t say anything, just listened as he recounted his