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[TRANSCRIPT]

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She said it was the right thing to do. That the gravy train had to stop at some point, and that she wanted to get off before she became a casualty of it. I think that’s a pretty fucking presumptuous thing to assume—plenty of thieves don’t get caught and we were good. And, besides, she could have just quit! She didn’t have to be doing what she was doing, but when she found out about Pete…

When I’ve said that I never knew much about Pete’s life, that was true. Mostly. I really never did know anything about his personal life or what he’d been doing before putting together this crew. I never asked and he never volunteered any information. 

But that wasn’t the whole truth. I didn’t know much about his life then but Harry…Harry filled in some blanks. 

Pete wasn’t just an art thief. It wasn’t all penthouses and auction houses for him, apparently. He started with banks. And something like ninety percent of all bank robbers get caught, but Pete was…the best of the best. The feds had no clue who he was, barely even had his height and race. And then, one off the robberies went bad and he—a few people died. Three people. 

So he came back to his hometown of New York to disappear among the millions. He cooled his heels and then he started in again, just on a higher brow racket. 

I don’t know how Harry figured this out. We…we didn’t get to that point in our conversation. (scoffs) “Conversation”, there’s a euphemism for it. Argument? Screaming match? Dropping a nuclear bomb into our tentatively okay existence? I was a little more focused on the revelation that the person I’d been living with for six years had betrayed me and the people we cared about. The revelation that my mentor had killed a few people…

I don’t know. I’m still not sure…Harry has no reason to lie. Not about this. And, I guess, there were things through the years that made me think Pete’s past was a lot more checkered than even your typical thief. But I wasn’t lying when I said he always seemed like a stand-up guy to me. He was. He was good and kind and fair and the fact that he made his money through illegal endeavors felt really secondary to all of that. 

I’m not sure the knowledge that he’s killed people—multiple people and not—not entirely by accident, not like—

It should change things. I know it should. And it isn’t that I don’t believe Harry, even not knowing how she found out about it, it—I don’t think she would have done what she did unless she’d been certain. I’ll give her that. But it hasn’t reshaped who Pete is in my head. 

He took me in, mentored me, was a friend. He made me his ally when he could have just as easily made me an enemy. He saw something in me. Something worth…something worth attention and care. And I hadn’t had that since my father died and I—

I’ve thought a lot about what I would have done if I’d known before. I’ve shared nearly every other thought I’ve had in my head besides these ones, because I had to make room somehow, over this past—god, year, since I learned the truth. 

What if Harry had come to me first before going to the feds? What if I’d been the one to uncover Pete’s past and not her? What would I have done?

I wouldn’t have betrayed him, that’s for sure and fucking certain. I probably would’ve confronted him about it. Maybe. I would’ve wanted to hear his side of things. I would’ve wanted to know why he did what he did, how he felt about it now. And maybe I wouldn’t have—well, I wouldn’t have understood it, the way I do now, if I’d known before, because if I’d known, we never would’ve been arrested and I’d never have killed Billings and—

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I still think I would’ve been sympathetic. Empathetic. I don’t know. I would’ve given him…grace. Forgiveness. Even if it isn’t mine to forgive. I would’ve loved him just the same. 

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Harry said that she could never—she said that she wasn’t honest about how she felt because she was too swallowed up by guilt, was too scared to tell me the truth and have me run away and too scared to start anything when she had this secret but what if it wasn’t that at all? What if the way she felt about me—the way she’d ever be able to feel about me—changed the moment Billings hit the pavement? She found the truth out about Pete and stopped caring for him in a blink. She saw what I did, so surely—

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Well, in any case, I guess she was right. I did run away. 

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