Page 62 of Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man)

TJ’s mouth falls open. “How do you know?”

“Mother intuition.” Then she adds, “Also, Aimes tell me Xander come to her wanting to do big exposé.”

“I see.” His voice comes out weak. He barely recognizes it. “Yes. That was what happened. The thing is, with Xander, it was…different. When I first signed him as a client, he made it clear that he wanted it to seem like we worked really closely with each other. He wanted to sell this image of having a talent manager who was basically at his beck and call. It didn’t mean much to me at first. I was fine playing along. He’d write these captions about how we often had long phone calls into the middle of the night, strategizing his career growth, and how he could call me up for literally anything, like if he got a flat tire or something.”

“Interesting,” Vera says. “Why?”

“I guess for clout? Made him seem more legit, if his manager is willing to spend all this time on him. And he was actually a really low-key client in real life, so I didn’t mind. Compared to myother clients, like I told you, Xander was low maintenance. I hardly ever heard from him. Until that day. The day before he died. He came to my office. I was so surprised. That was the first time I had ever met him in person, and he had come in unannounced. He told me he wanted to come clean online, tell everyone the truth, that we’d never even met and I only played a small role in his life, all that stuff. He said it had to do with some big bad secret he wanted to reveal.”

“And you say no.”

“Of course I said no!” TJ cries. “That was about a month after the fallout with my other client, the one that Robin emailed. I couldn’t afford another scandal. That would’ve ended me. And I’d profited off Xander’s lie. I’d gotten clients precisely because they said they saw Xander’s posts about how attentive I was. I couldn’t possibly do what Xander wanted me to do.”

“How Xander react when you tell him?”

“Not well.” TJ squeezes his eyes shut at the ugly memory. “He told me people like me are the reason why this country is morally bankrupt. I mean, I don’t disagree with him,” TJ says with a bitter laugh. “Then he said, ‘I’m gonna do it anyway, with or without you.’ And I freaked out. This is my livelihood. I got scared. I—I told him if he did, I would sue him for all he was worth. I told him if he even uttered my name publicly again, he would hear from my lawyer.” TJ grimaces. It’s almost physically painful reliving that day. He can still remember the blinding hot surge of rage that had overtaken his entire body. How his brain had felt like a heart thumping and thudding and burning. “I was despicable,” he moans. “I was so hateful. And he looked so disappointed. He said I was one of the few people he thought he could count on, and then he left. And the next day, he was dead.”

“Is that why all this time you acting so shady and not wanting me to look into his death?”

“Yeah. Because I’m a coward, Vera. And it’s so painful thinking of Xander. I just want to push everything that has to do with him out of my mind. I know it’s selfish. I know.”

“Yes, it is selfish, but I also understand why you acting selfishly. You are parent. Not just to Robin but to Kit and Lomax. You feel responsible for them, so you cannot afford to risk this and that. I know. I am parent too.”

Something inside TJ breaks, and he digs his knuckles into his eyes like a little kid. He wants to blot out the world. He wants to stop existing, just for a little while. “When the cops came to talk to me about Xander, I was so scared. And confused. They told me Xander wasn’t who he said he was. I mean, what was that all about? I told them the truth, that I didn’t know anything about Xander aside from him being an influencer, and they said from his posts, it sounded like I knew a lot more than what I was telling them. My god, I practically crapped my pants, Vera. I told them he may have embellished a little. I felt like complete shit. They looked like…like I was something sticky they’d accidentally stepped on.”

“Ah, no, that is just cop being cop; they always look like they smell something bad.”

Somehow, despite everything, TJ chuckles. “Yeah, they do, don’t they?”

“I ask Selena once, you know, my future—”

“Daughter-in-law, yes, you’ve mentioned once or twice. Or three times.”

“Well, I ask her once, why cop have that face? And she say, ‘What face?’ I show her and she laugh, then she say, ‘I don’t know, maybe because we deal with scumbags all the time?’ ”

“Scumbag, yep, that’s me.”

“Aiya, TJ, stop being so drama. Oh my goodness, you young people. Okay, so cops know that you not really have close relationship with Xander, so what? They don’t care about that, they only care about whether or not you kill him. And you didn’t, so what is problem?”

“I mean, when you put it that way…” TJ sighs. “I’m sorry I tried to talk you out of investigating his death. I would like to know what happened to him too. Even if it turns out he killed himself because everyone around him let him down. I should face it, take responsibility for what I did.”

“Yes, don’t worry about it, I was never going to listen to you, anyway.”

“True.”

“And Robin…”

“I know it’s not her fault,” TJ says.

“Well, sort of, but if you think about it, she get so angry when she hear that someone mistreats her father. Is quite touching, isn’t it? Show you that you raise a fighter, someone who want to protect her family.”

A warm, golden feeling spreads across TJ’s body. He gazes at Vera in wonderment. “Yeah. You’re right. All this time, I’ve been so carried away by the fallout, I never really spent any time thinking about the why.”

“I think it show that you raise her so well.”

TJ’s cheeks burn, but it’s not a bad feeling. “Do you really think so?” He’s not even embarrassed by how needy his voice comes out sounding.

“Yes,” Vera says simply. “Otherwise, I would not take her as granddaughter. I have very high standards, you know.”

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