The Ones We Trust

“I would say I have absolutely no doubt you will. But that doesn’t change my answer.”

“Actually, dear, you haven’t told me your answer.”

I open my mouth to say no. Helping Jean write Zach’s story isn’t just sticking a toe into the early-spring sunshine. It’s stepping into the sun at high noon, without clothes or blankets to keep me warm, without SPF or shades to protect myself from the sun’s harsh glare.

And yet I find myself considering the possibilities.

Because all those things that made me want to become a journalist are still there, have always been there, lurking just under the surface. Discipline and determination and temerity and a curiosity that, as evidenced by the very fact that I’m still sitting here, on a chair in Jean’s sunny backyard, just won’t stop.

But do I have the courage to try again, to trust myself not to make the same mistake I made with Chelsea all over again this time around, with Jean? That my words will not do someone harm?

Then again, they wouldn’t be my words, would they? They’d be Jean’s.

So how could any words poison her or her family, when essentially what she’s asking is for me to help her write hers? How would helping Jean be any different from what I’m doing now, with health care? The content would be all hers. I would just be curating it.

Jean reaches across the ferns, wraps her bony fingers around mine. “At least tell me you’ll think about it, will you?”

Before I can stop myself, before I know that I even intended to speak, I find myself saying to Jean, “I will.”

Part Two: Wicked Lies (#ulink_46a39537-7c0d-5816-bc33-c2e229443702)

10 (#ulink_e8a8c21c-bffc-51d4-87aa-f27bda95e5c4)

On Saturday, I steer my car across the border into Maryland, and the tax brackets rise like floodwaters all around me. The houses grow progressively bigger, their lots stretch wider and deeper, their lawns become greener and lusher. Minivans and hatchbacks give way to eight-cylinder SUVs and expensive German sports cars. They weave in and out of afternoon traffic on their way to the gym or the driving range or the mall, zipping around runners and pedestrians with diamond rings the size of marbles.

It’s here, at the tail end of a quiet residential street in Bethesda, that I find my brother Mike’s ten-thousand-square-foot monstrosity of stone and shingles. I ease to a stop behind my sister-in-law’s navy Range Rover, pluck the gift from the passenger’s seat and head up the herringbone walkway to the bleached oak double doors.

I punch the bell, and from somewhere inside a dog barks, a baby screams and my brother yells at both of them to quiet down. And then a door opens to reveal my niece, Rose, wearing a bright pink princess dress covered in what I sincerely hope is tomato sauce.

“Abbyyyyyyy! You came!” She pounces on me, wrapping herself around my right thigh like a monkey. Their dog, Ginger, comes sliding around the corner, and I brace for her attack to my other leg.

“Of course I came, goofball. I wouldn’t miss your third birthday party for the world.”

She looks up with wide and impossibly green eyes. “No, I’m four!”

“Silly me. I guess that’s why I got you a present, isn’t it?”

“But you already got me a present.”

Admittedly, I might have gone a little overboard with the giant pink-and-purple castle playhouse I paid the toy store to install in her backyard this past week, but I adore this child, would throw myself in front of a bus for her, hope if I ever have a daughter of my own she will be exactly like my adorable niece.