As soon as I got back to the dressing room, my cell phone buzzed.
“Hey, sis,” I answered as I kicked off my heels and settled into one of the station’s cozy armchairs.
“Mongoose! You were fantastic.”
I smiled, warmed by her compliment. I wiped my palms on my pencil skirt and let out a deep breath. I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been until that very moment.
“No, seriously. You were great. I’ve missed seeing you on television.”
“It was okay. I messed up during that one cut to break, and I feel like the interview with the sheriff could’ve been edited more—”
“Stop, silly. You were amazing.”
A knock on the door. “Hold on one sec,” I said to Annie.
Vaughn was standing in the doorway. “Ratings out the roof, Allison. Wonderful, wonderful job,” he boomed, then lowered his voice slightly when he saw I was on the phone. “Come out when you’re ready. We’ll be celebrating.”
I felt jazzed. I’d done it. Hard to believe I’d almost missed out on the opportunity altogether. After I’d come back to Philadelphia, Vaughn had told me the bad news—he’d found another meteorologist to take that position. But then he told me the better news—he had other plans. He said he wanted to create a compelling news series that would air just after the local news. Focusing on true crime. And he wanted me to host it.
At first, I’d laughed. Me? A television host? I had no experience, for one. Not in that way. And did I really want to put myself back out there again? After everything that had happened?
But Vaughn—and Annie—had been persistent. They’d had answers to all my doubts. Of course you have experience, Vaughn had said. A meteorologist’s job is to tell stories, to make things compelling for the viewer. And Annie was her usual cheerful glass-half-full nurse, which didn’t convince me until she’d pointed out the revenge angle. Stick your chin out, show them you’re not afraid. Duke will cream his pants when he finds out you’re back on TV.
So here I was. We’d been working on it for almost a year. The idea was that I would discuss cold cases in and around Philadelphia. With a focus on women. The title had been my idea: One Night Gone. Vaughn had wanted to premiere with my own story about Maureen, and after Lorelei had been convicted, I was free to talk about it.
Not that that made it easy.
“It was really brave of you,” Annie said, reading my mind as usual.
“Thanks. That means a lot.” But something was snagging on my happiness. I focused on it, trying to pull it loose—there it was. The betrayal. The fact that I’d been gaslighted. Again. Played like a fool by Duke, then Lorelei. Even Tammy. It still bothered me even now, even here in the humming, buzzing news station, where everyone treated me well, where I was respected. It still bothered me that, even in moments of great success and triumph, I found myself backing up, analyzing, wondering whom I could trust, if I wasn’t truly seeing people. Maybe I’d be that way from here on. Maybe that’s what made me good at this new job.
Annie broke into my thoughts. “Well, hey, I won’t get in the way of celebrating.”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, shaking off my gloom. “You think I forgot? You’re not going anywhere without telling me about the tasting.” I settled back into the armchair.
Annie’s voice quickened in excitement. “Oh, it was excellent. Everything was good. We had a hard time choosing. Mike liked the raspberry filling the best, and I have to say, it was probably up there for me, too, but we were like, raspberry. Not everyone likes fruit filling, you know? So we went with vanilla cake, chocolate icing and filling, and a raspberry drizzle. That way, you know, best of all worlds.”
“Sounds divine,” I said.
“And you’ll be able to make it for the fitting? Even though you’re a big fat TV star now?”
“Annie!”
“Okay, because Sharon has to work that night, so that’s really the best time for everyone.” Annie sighed in delight. I could picture her smiling. “It’s so hard to believe...everything’s coming together.”
“Yes. It is,” I said, meaning more than Annie’s wedding. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could really breathe. “How’s my kitty?” I asked. “Were you able to stop over and feed her today?”
Annie made an annoyed sound. “Of course. She’s a little wench. Coming around to me, though. Rubs against the back of my hand. Curls up in a little ball. She meows like a beast, though. Always complaining. Like you.”
I hadn’t been looking for a pet, but one morning I’d heard scratching at the back door of my new apartment in downtown Philly. When I opened it, a small black-and-white kitten had stalked in, confident, like she’d been there millions of times before. Walked right into my living room and jumped up on the end table where I’d framed the photo of Tammy and Maureen on the beach.
“Maureen?” I’d asked, and the kitten’s ears had perked up a bit. I swear she smiled.
I printed up Cat-Found posters and hung them around my neighborhood, but no one claimed Maureen, and so Maureen was mine. She seemed pleased by the name and had no desire to leave my apartment. She also seemed to love the jangle of the two best friend necklace charms I hooked to her collar.
“Thanks for doing that. I owe you one.”
“I’ve got to run, though,” Annie said. “I’m due at work in an hour, and I haven’t even gotten in the shower yet. Don’t have too much fun.”
We hung up. I still felt “on,” but I wanted to sit for a moment by myself before joining the others. I went into my office and Googled my name. For the first time in a long, long time, I wasn’t fearful of the results.
There were articles about Maureen’s case:
Former Weatherperson Solves Cold Case in Opal Beach
Bishop Seafood Restaurant Maven Arrested for Thirty-Year-Old Murder
And about the sale of the Bishop’s restaurant chain:
Something Smells Fishy: The Fall of the Bishop Seafood Empire
Captain Crackers Franshise Acquires Seafood Restaurants in Wake of Murder Scandal
Clay Bishop seemed to be trying to stay out of the media frenzy as much as possible—and I could relate to that, of course. From what Dolores had told me, his university had been supportive of him, but he had apparently cut all ties with Opal Beach. I wondered if it was because of the media circus or because it reminded him too much of painful things. Tammy and Maureen had been his friends, after all. Did it keep him up at night, knowing what his own parents had been capable of?
But my favorite search results, the ones that proved things were truly turning around for me, were all about my new career:
From Storm Tracker to Crime Stalker: An Interview with Allison Simpson
“Weather Girl” Follows New Storms with One Night Gone True Crime Show
No more terrible memes. No more awful emails. But best of all? I’d embraced it—my past, the on-air rant. I’d even addressed it, frankly, at the beginning of the show. What had been done to me—though unfair and heart crushing—was nothing compared to what was done to women every single day in Philadelphia and beyond. It was time to stop treating women as if they were disposable. It was time to tell their stories.
I closed my laptop and sat back in my chair, examining the strewn piles of folders and research across my desk. Photos of women from police files—Kim Amari, reported missing on Christmas Eve 2014. Elizabeth Hatton, who filed a restraining order on her ex-husband for stalking and then disappeared a week later. Shantee Wilson, found dead in an alley in West Kensington. There’s no lack of material, Vaughn had said to me, trying to convince me of the show’s potential for success. What echoed in the silence between us was how terrible that fact was.
I didn’t think I was going to solve the world’s problems. I wasn’t even sure any of us would ever crack another case again, though Vaughn certainly hoped so. What I wanted to do was keep telling the stories. Keep them from falling through the cracks that Maureen’s had fallen through. That Tammy’s had fallen through. My friend—for I still considered her that, even after everything she’d done—had made mistakes. But she hadn’t deserved to pay for those mistakes with her life. None of these women had.
There was a quick rap at my office door, and Lucy, one of our writers, poked her head in. “Did you fall asleep in here?” she asked playfully. “Vaughn’s dying to open the champagne, but he won’t do it without you.”
I smiled. “I’ll be right there.”
I flipped to the last page of my Opal Beach folder, a photo of Maureen on the beach. She sat in the sand, clutching her knees, staring out into the deep gray ocean, that paisley scarf tied in her hair, its ends dangling over her tanned shoulders. She looked not sad exactly, but contemplative. As if she wanted to dive into that ocean and discover all its secrets, bring them to the surface and sift them through her fingers.
“I’m sorry, Maureen,” I whispered to the picture. “I wish you could’ve done that.”
I pulled the photo from the page, where it had been taped, and pressed it up at the center of the bulletin board above my desk. Then I went to join the others.
As I walked into the crowd of production assistants and writers, their voices rose in a chorus. I could swear it sounded just like the roar of the ocean.