Chapter 2.

2.

I took a long, hot shower and washed the blood from my hair as I reflected on my sister’s advice. I tried to understand how I’d screwed up so badly, how I’d raised someone capable of making such disastrous choices. I didn’t like dwelling on the recent past, but Tammy seemed to think I could learn a lesson or two from it, and maybe she was right.

After Maggie finished college, I hoped she would move back home and take a job in Allentown or Reading. But she insisted that all the best career opportunities were in Boston. She needed a place to live, so I cosigned the lease on the basement studio apartment and I agreed to pay her rent for the first year until she got on her feet. I knew it was only a matter of time until someone recognized her value and paid her a real salary.

In the meantime, she worked thirty hours a week at Dr. Cell Phone, one of these rinky-dink places that repairs the cracked glass screens of electronic devices. I only visited the “store” once, and my first impressions were not positive. It was a cluttered and stale room with bad artificial lighting. The carpet was worn. The windows were smudgy. In many ways, you could say the business was a reflection of its owner. Oliver Dingham was forty-six years old with pale, blotchy skin and a bad comb-over. Most days he dressed in nylon tracksuits, though it was hard to imagine him running on a track or any other surface. He’d inherited the business from his father, and he showed zero interest in growing it. Outside work, he was a self-described AFOL—an adult fan of LEGO—and he’d filled his two-bedroom condo with intricate three-thousand-brick re-creations of Hogwarts Castle and the Millennium Falcon . And if I sound like I’m being overly critical of the man, it’s only because he was clearly infatuated with his new twenty-one-year-old employee.

“Not true,” Maggie insisted, after I confronted her with my fears. I told her she was blind to the basic calculus of the situation. Oliver was a balding middle-aged incel who hadn’t been on a date in years. Maggie was a bright and beautiful young woman. And together they spent thirty hours a week in a tiny room that saw little foot traffic. They might as well have been marooned on a deserted island. I pleaded with her to quit and find another job—at a restaurant, or a bowling alley, or anyplace she’d be around other young people. “You shouldn’t be cooped up all week with that guy. You’re wasting the best years of your life.”

But my concerns fell on deaf ears. Maggie claimed that any job in technology would look good on her résumé. And she pointed out that Oliver was paying her twenty-two dollars an hour, well above minimum wage—which to me was just another red flag. She insisted that Oliver never made a pass, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I started searching the help wanted ads on my daughter’s behalf, looking for any kind of job that would get her away from Dr. Cell Phone. I sent her all kinds of leads but she never followed up on them, and I suppose this is when our relationship started to deteriorate. She called me meddling and hypercritical. I called her lazy and unfocused. Is it any wonder she stopped calling home? Or that our conversations became less and less frequent? When she announced she was staying in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving and Christmas, to celebrate with friends, I was gutted.

Then one Saturday morning in February I woke to the sound of a car pulling into my driveway. It was early and still dark, just a little past five-thirty. The vehicle pulled all the way up my driveway and around the back of my house, and then I heard a car door quietly open and close. As if the driver was taking pains not to disturb anyone. I hopped out of bed and went downstairs to my kitchen, arriving just in time to see my daughter unlocking the back door.

“Surprise,” she said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

She was dressed in ripped jeans, a dirty green sweatshirt, and beat-up Nikes, and she looked exhausted. I welcomed her with a hug and I thought I smelled cigarette smoke in her hair, but I decided to let it slide. She explained that she’d been struck by a bout of homesickness, so she’d driven through the night to visit me—and now she was desperate for a shower and a nap. I made her scrambled eggs while she cleaned herself up and changed into fresh clothes. And while she slept, I did a little work on her car, topping off the fluids and checking the tire pressure and vacuuming the crumbs out of her floor mats.

Later that morning it started to snow, so we stayed around the house all day. Tammy came over with two of her foster kids and the five of us made an enormous vat of chicken soup and loaves of fresh-baked bread. Once the yard was blanketed in white, Maggie took the kids outside to make snow angels and build an igloo while Tammy and I watched through frosted windows with mugs of hot chocolate. After dinner we put on some Billy Joel CDs and taught the foster kids how to play Euchre and Aw Shucks, and it was pretty much a perfect day from start to finish.

Sunday morning, Maggie seemed different. She’d emerged from her bedroom looking shaken. I’d heard her on the phone having a strained conversation, but I’d resisted the urge to eavesdrop. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said she was fine. We drove over to the Waffle House for brunch and the waitresses welcomed her back like a homecoming queen. I ordered my usual farmer’s omelet and Maggie got the strawberry pancakes, but she barely touched her food. She seemed anxious to get back to Boston. I tried to make small talk and I asked about her job search, but I didn’t push too hard. She seemed frustrated by her lack of progress and I didn’t want to make her feel any worse.

We were back at the house by eleven that morning, and she gathered her things to leave. I remember walking her out to her car, which had remained parked in my backyard all weekend. “Oh, listen,” she said as she unlocked the driver’s door. “Could I ask you for a favor?”

“Of course, kiddo. Shoot.”

“If anyone asks what time I got here, could you say you’re not sure?”

Maggie slipped inside her little Honda and rolled down the window to hear my answer. Like she’d just asked me to water her plants or borrow twenty dollars.

“You got here Saturday morning.”

“Right, and I’m asking if you could be a little less specific. Like say you went to bed Friday night and never heard me come in. Because I have my own key. And when you woke up Saturday morning, I was asleep in my bed.”

“But you weren’t asleep in your bed. You were awake in my driveway.”

She replied with a long, exasperated sigh, as if I was missing the point. “You don’t have to lie. You just have to pretend you didn’t see me pulling in.”

“That is lying. That’s not what happened.”

“It’s what almost happened. If you didn’t wake up so fucking early, you would think it’s the truth. Because you would have found me in my bed, and I would have told you I was there all night.”

My pulse started to quicken. This was bad; I knew it was bad. “Maggie, get out of the car, please. Let’s go inside and talk about this.”

Instead she started the engine. “I have to leave.”

“I’ll help you, but you need to answer some questions.”

“Since when? What happened to Mr. No Questions Asked?”

This was always my rule back in high school, when Maggie started going to parties and staying out late. I told her that if she ever needed a ride home or any other kind of assistance she could call me at any hour and I would rush to get her—no questions asked.

“That’s who I need right now,” she said. “I need Mr. No Questions Asked. Please don’t overcomplicate this, okay?”

She was already backing out of the driveway as she made her final plea. She was going a little too fast and clipped my trash bin before rolling off the curb and veering out into the street. Then she shifted into drive and sped out of sight.

I walked back inside the house and started to rehearse my story. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew a call was coming and I wanted to be ready. I’d gone to bed early Friday night, and I didn’t hear Maggie come in. When I woke up Saturday morning, I found her asleep in her bed.

That night I had leftover chicken soup for dinner. It was usually better the second day, but not this time. After I finished washing the dishes, I emptied my kitchen trash and carried the bag out to my driveway. When I lifted the lid on the bin, I noticed there was another bag already inside. It was a ten-gallon bag but mostly empty, and I knew I hadn’t put it there. I pulled it out and carried it to the privacy of my backyard and then patiently worked out the knot. Inside were Maggie’s ripped jeans and dirty green sweatshirt. And her socks, sneakers, bra, and underwear. Plus a pair of cheap yard gloves and a plain navy ballcap. I put it all back in the bag, then put the bag back in the bin, and then I dragged the bin out to the curb so it would get picked up the following morning. It was a long and mostly sleepless wait until sunrise, when I heard the low groan of the garbage trucks turning onto my street. They carried away all the evidence but none of my worries.

The days passed, then weeks, and then a full month, and I almost allowed myself to relax. It seemed like Maggie was correct: everything was fine. No one called me with any questions, and I’d been seeing problems where problems didn’t exist. I sent a few casual texts to my daughter and asked how she was doing; her replies were brief but friendly. She told me that she’d stopped working for Dr. Cell Phone and found a new job as a barista. Meanwhile, she was emailing lots of résumés and hoping to find a better gig. All positive signs for a brighter future.

And then Maggie got the offer from Capaciti. She called me to share the good news and we celebrated for close to an hour. It was her first professional job in a brand-new office in downtown Cambridge, with a modest entry-level salary plus performance bonuses, Blue Cross health insurance, and a slew of corporate benefits. Capaciti employees had free access to the Museum of Fine Arts and the New England Aquarium. They received 10 percent off all purchases from Hertz, Avis, Southwest Airlines, and a hundred other businesses; she read from a list that went on and on. And I remember feeling so proud of her. I knew it was hard to get your foot in the door when you didn’t have any personal connections, and Maggie had risen to the challenge. The road to this point had been a little bumpy, but she’d finally made it. Now her future was wide open, and I sent her a large bouquet of flowers with a card: Congratulations! You did it!

About three weeks later I came home from work to find a white Chevy Impala parked in front of my house. At my arrival, the driver opened his door and waved to me. He was a Black man dressed in a shirt and tie, and there was something in his demeanor that reminded me of my father. Not so much his age (he was only a half generation older than me) but his overall attitude. He had the kind of leisurely gait that I see on a lot of older guys who choose to work well past their retirement age. The pensions are locked up, so all the pressure’s off, but they’re enjoying themselves too much to quit.

“Mr. Szatowski?” He was walking up my driveway. “I’m Leonard Summers. I work with the state fire marshal of Massachusetts. Could I ask you a couple questions?”

“Was there a fire?”

“Yes, sir. Pretty big one. Margaret didn’t mention it?”

“Is she all right?”

He nodded and said my daughter was safe, and then he repeated his question: “She didn’t mention any fire?”

“I haven’t spoken to her in a while. She just started a new job.”

“Right, I heard about that.” He reached into his pocket for a tiny notebook and opened it. “Something called Capaciti, right? Spelled with two i ’s?”

Up until this moment, I’d hoped that Leonard Summers was mistaken, that he’d come to the wrong house for the wrong Margaret Szatowski. But evidently not.

“That’s correct,” I told him. “C-I-T-I.”

“Gosh, my mother would have hated that,” he said with a smile. “She taught second grade in Roxbury, and she was a stickler for spelling. Always railing against Froot Loops and Kool-Aid for making her kids illiterate. And nowadays it’s so much worse. Lyft, Chick-fil-A, Capaciti with two i ’s. It’s good she’s not around to see it, you know?”

He spoke like we had all the time in the world, and I just smiled politely and endured the anecdote and wondered why this man had come to see me.

My next-door neighbor opened her front door and stepped outside, making a pretense of reaching into her mailbox but clearly just eavesdropping. Leonard Summers offered her a friendly wave and called out, “Good afternoon!” and then suggested we speak indoors.

We went into my kitchen and I offered to make coffee. He said he never drank coffee after lunch because the caffeine kept him awake, but a glass of water would be nice. So I poured two glasses of water and joined him at the kitchen table.

“I want to ask you about Margaret’s previous job,” he explained. “Last week, I arrested a man named Oliver Dingham. Have you ever met him?”

“Once.”

“When was that?”

“A couple months ago. I went to Boston to visit my daughter and she showed me where she worked.”

“So you’ve been to the store? Dr. Cell Phone?”

“Briefly but yes, I’ve been there.”

“Good, good, good. That saves me some time. About two months ago, on the night of February 7, Oliver Dingham started a fire that destroyed the entire building.” He removed a laptop from his satchel, then opened the screen to show me photos of the wreckage. The building had been reduced to a smoldering pile of rubble and twisted steel. “Now, I have been doing my job for a long time and I have met some very bad arsonists, but Mr. Dingham is easily the worst. The poor fool made just about every mistake in the book. For example, most accidental fires can be traced back to a single point of origin—a space heater, say, or a dropped cigarette. But the fire at Dr. Cell Phone had three separate and distinct points of origin. Three giant red flags screaming ‘Not an accident,’ do you follow? And on top of that, we found traces of acetone all over the interior, which simply makes no sense. If it was a nail salon, sure, you’d expect to find acetone, toluene, formaldehyde, lots of highly flammable chemicals. But not in a phone repair shop. There’s no reason for him to have so much liquid accelerant on-site. Just another huge red flag.”

He paused to take a sip of his water, and perhaps to give me a chance to speak, but I just rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants and waited for him to continue.

“So I visited Mr. Dingham at home to ask why he kept so much acetone in his store, and it was the shortest interview in the history of my career. Within five minutes the man just cracked like an egg. Crying and apologizing and fessing up. So we arrested him on charges of first-degree felony arson and felony homicide.”

“Homicide?”

“That’s the worst part of the story. One of the first responders was a firefighter named DeShawn Wilson. Twenty-nine years old. The floor gave way and DeShawn fell into the basement. Half the building came down on top of him.” He paused to show me a photograph of the deceased hero: DeShawn posed in his firefighter’s cap and uniform with a young woman and a baby boy. “That’s his widow, Kim, and their son, DeShawn Junior. Are you sure your daughter hasn’t mentioned any of this?”

“She’s been really busy. With her new job. There hasn’t been a lot of time for phone calls.”

He nodded and then made a small notation on his pad. “Well, I’m sure you’re busy, too, so let me cut to the chase. Mr. Dingham is getting sentenced on Friday and I’ve been helping out the prosecutors. We want the judge to have all the relevant information. And the more I get to know Mr. Dingham, the less I understand his motivation. Why burn down the business? He says he did it for the money. But when I asked why he wanted the money, how he planned to use the money, he couldn’t answer me. He had no idea. Isn’t that strange?”

I lifted my glass to my lips and swallowed some water and tried to look like I was thinking. “Maybe he had financial problems.”

“I thought the same thing! So I looked into it, Mr. Szatowski. And you know what? Turns out his grubby little business did all right! When you charge people sixty bucks for a little piece of glass, you make a real nice profit margin. Plus the man has zero debt. No sick relatives, not much family at all. And no real ambitions, which was the biggest surprise. Arson is a lot of hard work. A massive endeavor. And I got the sense Mr. Dingham never really worked hard at anything. He seemed happy to coast along at his store, build his crazy LEGO models, and watch a staggering amount of internet pornography. All of which led me to wonder if mayyyyybe Mr. Dingham had a partner.” He paused for another drink of water, then asked, “Did you know he was paying Margaret twenty-two dollars an hour?”

“I think he really valued her.”

“Oh, I agree. I think he valued Margaret a real lot. I’ve read a couple hundred of their text messages, and it’s clear they were very close.”

I didn’t like what he was insinuating. “The man was forty-six years old. If he had feelings for my daughter, I’m sure they weren’t reciprocated.”

“I have some images suggesting otherwise. Found them on his phone. ‘Boudoir photos’ is what I think they’re called. Not the sort of pictures you’d normally share with your supervisor.” He tried swiveling his computer to show me but I held up my hand, indicating that I did not wish to see them. “Anyway, I visited your daughter earlier this week. I asked her about the fire and she said she was home that weekend. Visiting you and—” He checked his notes. “You and Aunt Tammy. Does any of this sound familiar?”

“Very familiar. There was snow on Saturday and Tammy came over with her foster kids. Maggie played with them in the backyard.”

He smiled at my use of the name Maggie and scribbled something on his notepad. Then he placed a little paper calendar on the table between us. It showed all the weeks and months of the year, and he pointed to the first weekend in February. “Is this the Saturday you’re describing? February seventh?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It’s better for me if you’re sure. Can you say with absolute certainty that Maggie was here in this house on Saturday, February seventh?”

“Yes, I am absolutely certain.”

“And what time did she arrive?”

I repeated the question word for word: “And what time did she arrive ?”

Leonard Summers allowed himself a small smile. I suppose in that moment he knew he had me. “Correct, Mr. Szatowski. You said there was snow on Saturday afternoon, and your sister Tammy came over with her foster kids. So I’m just asking you to think back a tiny bit further. What time did Maggie get to your house?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, it’s really important that you do. It’s the reason I drove all this way to speak with you.” He sat back in his chair and drank his water and then let his eyes wander around my kitchen. “Just take your time and think back.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m drawing a complete blank. I have no idea.”

He nodded, like this was precisely the answer he expected. “I know I’m putting you in the hot seat. This is your daughter we’re talking about. Your only child, am I right? So here’s what I’m going to do. Before I repeat the question, as a show of good faith from one father to another, I’m going to lay all my cards on the table. I think this fire was Maggie’s idea. I think she read somewhere that eighty percent of arsons are never solved and she decided those odds were pretty good. So she convinced Oliver to start the fire and split the insurance money.”

“Is that what he says?”

He shook his head. “No, sir.”

“Then what proof do you have?”

“Not a whole lot, since I’m being honest. But we did find two sets of footprints in the lot behind the building. A men’s size eleven and a woman’s size seven. Both with traces of acetone. Do you know your daughter’s shoe size, Mr. Szatowski?”

“I haven’t bought her shoes in a long time.”

“She’s a size seven.”

“So are lots of women.”

“True, but Oliver Dingham doesn’t know lots of women. He doesn’t know any women. I’ve been through his phone; I’ve been through all his contacts and photos. He had a pretty solitary existence before your daughter came along. He certainly didn’t have anyone sending him boudoir photos.”

Some part of me knew he was telling the truth, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. “I don’t know anything about the photos. But she’s not a criminal.”

“Oh, I think we’re all criminals to some degree. There’s a whole wide spectrum of illegal and immoral behavior.” He drew an arc in the air to help illustrate his metaphor. “At the one end, you’ve got your Jeffrey Dahmers and your Ted Bundys. And on the other end, you’ve got millions of morally upright citizens who cheerfully drive ten miles over the speed limit because they know they’ll never get ticketed. And we’re all at different places on this spectrum, don’t you agree? I bet your Maggie’s somewhere right in the middle.”

“She’s never been in trouble!”

“Well, that’s hardly true. Wasn’t she caught shoplifting? As a kid?”

“All kids shoplift.”

“But she got in fights, too. That’s rare for girls.”

I shook my head. “No. She never got in fights.”

“I guess you didn’t hear about them. But there’s video online, if you look back far enough. Kids love sharing this stuff. They post a fight on YouTube and ten years later they forget all about it, but the internet never forgets. Maggie had a pretty explosive temper back in high school, wouldn’t you say?”

“She lost her mother. Those were tough years.”

“Of course they were, Mr. Szatowski. And I’m sorry for your loss. But college was tough for Maggie, too, right? That whole sorority business? Selling answers to tests?”

“She had nothing to do with that.”

“Right, right, all the blame went to that other girl. The one who dropped out of school, Jessica Sweeney. You know I called her the other day, to get her side of the story? She lives in Arizona now. Back home with her parents. Trying to put her life together. She told me your daughter was ‘a narcissistic sociopath.’ I wasn’t familiar with that term, so I had to go home and look it up. It’s a kind of person who doesn’t feel any empathy or guilt. No close friends, just lots of superficial acquaintances. People she can manipulate to get what she wants.”

I reminded him that Maggie was completely exonerated, so what was the point of listening to a nutcase like Jessica Sweeney?

“Because her story fits my pattern, Mr. Szatowski. And I see this pattern continuing, escalating, accelerating. If we don’t stop it now, if we don’t get Maggie the help she needs, where does it go from here?”

I reminded him that she had a new job, that she had a whole bright future ahead of her.

“Maybe so,” Leonard Summers said. “Or maybe she just keeps on making bad choices. I think there’s a real risk of that happening. I once heard a doctor say that the human brain isn’t fully developed until the age of twenty-five. Which means there’s still time, if we get her the help she needs. Or else she keeps going down this same path, and I don’t know where it ends.”

“She’s on a good path now,” I told him. “She’ll have a bright future.”

He sighed, as if he’d reached the conclusion that he was never going to convince me. “I didn’t come here to argue about Maggie’s future,” he said, and again he tapped the paper calendar on my kitchen table. “I’m just asking what time she arrived at your house on Saturday, February seventh. And I encourage you to answer the question very, very carefully.”

After he drove away, I poured myself a drink to make my hands stop shaking. Then I went over to my computer and searched for information on DeShawn Wilson. YouTube had a television clip from WCVB, one of the local Boston news affiliates, titled “Watertown Firefighter and Father Dies After Battling Blaze: ‘Tragic Loss.’” His wife, Kim, had rushed to the scene of the accident, and the news anchor was interviewing her in front of the smoldering wreckage. She was wrapped in a gray emergency blanket and cradling her infant son and openly weeping. She said, “This is a terrible, terrible day,” and I had to turn it off; I couldn’t bring myself to watch.

Then I called my daughter and told her about my visitor. “It’s over, Maggie. He knows everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The fire. Dr. Cell Phone.”

“Dad, I had nothing to do with that fire. I was at your house that weekend, remember?”

She spoke like there was an unknown third person sharing the line and listening to our conversation—and who knows, maybe there was.

“You need to tell the truth, Maggie.”

“It is the truth.”

“I’m going to help you. I’ll hire another lawyer.”

“I don’t need a lawyer. I didn’t do anything.”

“Maggie, listen to me. He asked about February seventh. He asked what time you came to my house.”

“And?”

I took a deep breath, like I was getting ready to dive underwater. “I said you got here Saturday morning. Just before sunrise. About five-thirty.”

“You lied?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“I got there Friday , Dad. Almost midnight.”

“No, Maggie.”

“You were already asleep. So I came through the back door and went to bed.”

“Enough, Maggie. It’s time to come home.”

“Fuck you.”

“Maggie!”

“Why would I come home? Why?”

“So I can help you.”

“This isn’t helping! I asked you for one thing. One thing!”

“We’ll make things right—”

“No. Never. I don’t want to see you anymore.”

“Maggie, come on—”

“Stay out of my life, do you understand?”

After she hung up, I went to Tammy’s condo and told her what happened, and she tried reaching out to Maggie on my behalf, all to no avail. We resigned ourselves to the fact that she would be arrested and arraigned on charges of arson and homicide. Instead, she flew with her corporate coworkers to a weeklong sales conference in Cabo San Lucas and five nights of luxury at a Four Seasons resort. I never received any official explanation, but my understanding (based on the trial transcripts) is that Oliver Dingham refused to name Maggie as an accomplice or conspirator. He insisted that he acted alone and refused to place her at the crime scene, so all the prosecution’s evidence was strictly circumstantial. And since Oliver was the sole beneficiary on the insurance claim, the state was happy to prosecute him and put the whole matter to rest. He was sentenced to ten years in a medium-security prison but only lasted six months before dying in an “inmate-related dispute.”

And in the years that followed, I’ve come to see the situation from Maggie’s point of view. As parents, we always say we’d do anything for our children—but would we really? CNN just ran a story about a forty-year-old mother who leaped from the deck of a cruise ship to save her daughter from drowning. All I had to do was tell a simple white lie—and instead I’d nearly sent her to prison.

As Maggie pulled the rest of her life together—as she demonstrated she was capable of making an honest and successful living with a real job at a real company—I felt worse and worse about my decision. I wished I could go back in time and give Leonard Summers a different answer. It would have been so easy to play dumb, to say I’d gone to bed early and never heard Maggie come home.

And now I was facing the same choice all over again.

Could I really stand by my daughter’s side as she prepared to make the biggest mistake of her life?

Or would I choose to walk away, with the knowledge that I would never see her again?