Eva
I didn’t set out to interfere. I really didn’t. I was simply minding my own business, picking up groceries, when the Action News van passed me, heading in the direction of Tamsen Creek.
So I threw the grocery bag in my car and followed them. Why wouldn’t I? I was hopeful of adventure involving someone who wasn’t in my family. I wanted to revel in someone else’s drama. And if that something happened to break the case open, that this Barrett person was barricaded in his house, a police standoff, something, some action to live up to their name, well, so much the better. I could tell the whole story to my daughters and the kids, and they’d hang on every word.
When the van turned on Brindle Lane, I had a brief surge of joy. Until I saw two other vans, all camped outside Hillary’s house. Eyewitness News was there. News Night was there. I felt deflated as I parked in front of the line of vans. Had something happened with my girls or the kids and they hadn’t told me yet?
No, it was actually worse. That woman Susan, who was in the girls’ book club, was giving an interview. She had on a blazer and a scarf with her black jeans, and her hair fell in waves to her shoulders in a way I knew took hours to prepare, because I’d seen Morgan try to replicate the same style. Holding on to the microphone with her manicured nails, she claimed to be a “close friend” of Hillary’s. Emphasizing how she and her husband had been so shocked about Ben’s arrest, and it had reverberated through the neighborhood.
“Unfortunately, they’re no longer welcome at our book club or our poker night,” she said. “We have to put the safety of our children first.”
I waited patiently until this idiot was done and thought perhaps someone should step up and take her down a notch. I went up to the reporter, a young woman wearing so much makeup it looked like it hurt to smile, and asked her if she wanted an exclusive. A scoop.
“A scoop?” she said, as if she didn’t know the term.
“New information no one else has?”
“Are you a neighbor?”
“No, I’m their mother.”
“Wait, what? You’re Mrs. Sawyer?” She looked at her notes. “Eva Sawyer?”
“Indeed I am.”
“Are you willing to go on the record?”
“Of course,” I said, straightening my own handknit scarf and smoothing my cotton tunic dress. This woman was dressed up in that silly way news people are, stretchy dresses and high heels that look fine on camera but ridiculous on the street, where they just had to run after people who didn’t want to talk. Oh, I’m being too cynical now. They were occasionally doing important work, not just waiting to prey on people like they were now. I could see the inside of their van was littered with coffee cups and bakery wrappers and socks. As if they were living in it, and I suppose, for part of their day, they were. Nothing glamorous about this work except for the false eyelashes and lipstick.
The girl who pointed a microphone in my face was exactly that, a girl. I could see now, in the daylight, that it was only the clothes and makeup spackled on, a spit coat, making her look older. She was so slender and small and smooth skinned she could have been in high school.
“I’m Becca Campion, and Eyewitness News is in Radnor Township, covering the Liza Harris murder investigation. With us is Eva Sawyer, mother-in-law to Ben Mattock, who is out on bail for the crime.”
I confess, I was surprised by the rapidity and force of her sentences. I hadn’t expected her to be good at her job.
She turned the microphone over to me.
“Mrs. Sawyer, do you have new information to share about the case?”
“Yes,” I said. “Some initial investigations have turned up some interesting things about the neighborhood.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“The police seem to have overlooked the neighborhood poker night where drunk, married men are serviced by younger women unbeknownst to their wives and girlfriends.”
“Are you suggesting—”
“Oh, I’m not suggesting. I’m flat out telling you. Susan’s husband is one of the poker night regulars. He could maybe tell us all about Inge. She’s supposedly a personal trainer. Such an interesting label, that. But I think you’d have a more interesting story talking to her. Because if the Tamsen Creek poker night boys are hiding Inge, who knows what else they are hiding.”
I tried to stifle a smile as I walked back to my car and they called behind me with follow-up questions and requests for my phone number. As I pulled away, they followed after me, microphone pointed toward my windows, Becca in her high heels, followed by her cameraman. Chasing me as if to justify they did their job. They didn’t follow me, though. They didn’t do anything but pretend to. But they don’t show that on TV.
Still, it’s always good to leave people wanting more, I thought. And maybe spur them to do a little digging for us instead of against us.
And if the phrase Tamsen Creek poker night boys became a GIF or a meme or whatever the heck those things are, well, wouldn’t that make Miles proud of his grandma? I smiled, thinking of my own graphic design, what I would do if I knew how. Animated wolves sitting around a poker table, being served by Little Red Riding Hood.
That was a far more interesting story, surely, than my two girls trying to do the most natural thing in the world: save their own.