after the breakthrough, Eliza assigned two more producers and a handful of assistants to the story. But even with added resources, so much of our reporting hinged on serendipity. An assistant had a friend at Bayer who had heard about unfair tactics at their rival. Another producer knew a guy who had once dated a girl who worked at Danner, a very pretty girl who carried Gucci handbags and leased a BMW and didn’t know a thing about pharmaceuticals.
For my part, I was working on the woman from the hotel. George had finally gotten hold of her new number. She called herself Willow, and now lived in Florida. She was skittish and unpredictable, responding to texts but not phone calls, Facebook messages but not e-mails, vanishing for long stretches of time. Jamie offered to try speaking with her, but I felt protective. If she wanted to live far away, with a new name and a new identity, starting over—who could blame her?
A story like this, Eliza explained, was delicate. It took a long time to convince sources to go on the record. If our competitors heard what KCN was working on, they might try to scoop us. For that reason, Eliza insisted we keep the circle small. “I don’t want some intern spilling the beans at happy hour,” she said. “Only tell the necessary people.”
Stella still didn’t know what the story was, but she no longer seemed to care. In August, she anchored the Saturday morning news program while the regular host was on vacation. A year into her work as a reporter, it was becoming obvious that the KCN executives had bigger plans for her. Her assignments got better, and she was no longer on the morning shift. She appeared on shows across the network, often in prime time. Our lobby was lined with larger-than-life posters of Rebecca Carter and her ilk: the chief White House correspondent, the morning show anchors, the Peabody-winning investigative reporter. The bona fide stars of the network. A few weeks after Stella’s first turn in the anchor chair, her poster went up in the lobby. Stella, with a royal purple sheath dress and shiny blond hair, arms crossed and gaze serious, with the KCN tagline, The News You Need.
In the past, at least Stella had the grace to behave with self-awareness. When she vacationed in Gstaad and St. Barts, she downplayed the glamour. When men competed to buy her drinks, she dismissed them as shallow and dumb. Even just last year, when she and Jamie started dating, she broke the news conscientiously. Stella always made an effort to bridge the socioeconomic and aesthetic gulf that separated us.
And why did she do this? Because she needed me. Because I was loyal. Because I was the only person who gave her the steadfast attention she craved. Because she was most alive when she had an audience, and I made her feel alive. Who else could see past her vanity, her temper tantrums, her mood swings, and give her what she needed in order to feel like herself? She had to make those efforts, because if she were to alienate me completely, who would she have left?
Well, I’ll tell you who. The most loyal audience there is: viewers of cable news.
“A toast,” Thomas said, lifting his glass. The six of us—the Bradley family plus Jamie and me—were seated around their dining table on a Sunday evening in October. Thomas glowed with the pride of a parent whose once-problematic child has, by succeeding unexpectedly, erased every painful memory of the past. “To our Stella.”
“We’re so proud of you, sweetheart,” Anne said.
Stella smiled. “Don’t forget the best part, Daddy. We won the demo last week.”
“Like winning a beauty pageant judged by a blind man,” Jamie said quietly.
“Oh?” I whispered. “You mean eighteen- to forty-nine-year-olds aren’t flocking to cable news in droves at 9 a.m. on Saturdays?”
“What are you two talking about?” Stella said. “You know it’s rude to whisper, Violet.”
“Nothing.” I lifted my glass. “Just toasting to you.”
It was chilly for October, and there was a blazing fire in the dining room fireplace. So many meals like this had peppered my years of friendship with Stella: the finely embroidered napkins, the heirloom silver, the distinctive taste of oregano in the roasted Cornish game hen. The world could change, years could pass, but there would always be these constants. Thomas often boasted of how his Bradley ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. And, really, how different was this life from that of his ancestors? Strip away the changing technologies and fashions, and what remained was the comfort and the power of wealth. And especially the endurance of wealth: the system we lived in produced certain victors, and pointed to those victors as proof of its own efficacy. Just look at Stella.
“You must hear all sorts of buzz about Stella,” Anne said, looking at me as she cut her food into small pieces. “Ginny tells me she’s really putting her mark on the place.”
“Of course,” I said. “Although I’ve been a bit distracted lately. It’s been busy.”
“Violet’s being modest,” Jamie said. “She’s working on a big story.”
My cheeks grew hot. A year into their relationship and he still hadn’t learned how to avoid pissing Stella off. “We’ll see if it turns into anything,” I said.
“Oh, it will,” Jamie said. “It’s the kind of story that makes careers.”
Stella leaned over. “But you can’t say anything about it,” she said. “Right?”
“Right,” I said.
“So I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Stella smirked.
“I think that’s work.” Jamie pulled his buzzing phone from his pocket and stood from the table. “Would you excuse me for a minute? I should take this.”
A few minutes later, I excused myself, too. In the hallway en route to the powder room was Thomas’s study. The door was ajar, and Jamie was inside.
I pushed the door open. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Come here,” Jamie said. “Look at this.”
I hesitated. “Thomas wouldn’t want us in his study.”
“I came inside to take my phone call but then I got distracted. Here, look.” He pointed at a framed photograph on the bookshelf. “Do you recognize that man? At the edge of the group. Gray hair, blue tie.”
I peered at the picture. “Gray hair, blue tie, that describes every guy in this group.”
“This one,” Jamie said, pressing his finger against the glass, leaving an oily smudge.
“He looks familiar,” I said. “But why?”
“Remember when we were looking up the executive team on Danner’s website the other day? That’s where you’ve seen him before. This is the CEO of Danner Pharmaceuticals.”
“Whoa.” I squinted. “You’re right.”
“I Googled it. Looks like this was a dinner given by the pharma lobby. There was some industry recognition award, excellence in leadership or whatever.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “Both Thomas Bradley and the Danner CEO were among the recipients.”
“So they don’t necessarily know each other,” I said. “Maybe they do, or maybe they just happened to be in this picture together.”
Jamie paused, turned to me. “Have you told Stella about the story?”
I laughed. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I’m sorry, Violet, I have to ask.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Have you told her about it?”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“You’re the one sleeping with her, James. You never slip up during pillow talk?”
Jamie shook his head. “I’m being paranoid, I know. I just—I don’t like how murky her loyalties are.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she’s not working on this story.”
“Imagine after it breaks. Do you think we’re really going to be welcome here, in the Bradley household?”
“You’re being dramatic,” I said.
“Am I?” Jamie said. “This is big, Violet. You can’t predict the ripple effects.”
A few weeks later, Willow finally agreed to meet me in person. She wasn’t saying yes to an on-camera interview yet, but this was the most important step before that.
Eliza looked pleased when I told her. “Good,” she said. “I knew you’d get there eventually. How soon can you meet her?”
“The day after tomorrow, it looks like.”
“And you and Jamie will both go? Where does she live?”
“Florida,” I said. “The Panhandle.”
“So if you can get her on the record, we’ll have”—Eliza started counting on her fingers—“George, Willow, the hotel employees, the voice mail from George’s boss, the guy from Bayer. What am I forgetting?”
“We’re working on the other girl, the BMW girl. And one of George’s old friends from Danner. He’s on the verge of quitting. I’m telling him that he should get out ahead of this.”
“The right side of history. No one can resist that line.”
“So what do you think?” I said. “Do you think we have it?”
“Just about,” she said. “Get Willow to commit to an interview, and we’ll start putting the package together when you’re back.”
Jamie and I were on a flight to Panama City the next afternoon, the sky already darkening as the plane took off from JFK. As I watched the fading ribbon of sunlight across the western horizon, I was aware of a vague panic gathering underneath my rib cage, my pulse and breath quickening. The airplane was climbing a steep trajectory into the sky. The engine revved and slowed, the cabin rattled in the thinning atmosphere. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my nose. A moment later, I felt Jamie’s hand squeezing mine.
“You okay?” he said.
“I don’t like flying.”
“Is that really what’s going on?”
I opened my eyes just long enough to see Jamie’s look of concern. Then the plane gave another violent rattle and I shut them again.
“When was the last time you went home?” he continued.
We can talk about it some other time, Jamie had said, years ago. That meant now, apparently. “It’s been a while,” I said.
“But you must think about it,” he said. “Isn’t this right around where you grew up?”
The plane was bouncing like a kite in the wind, my hands gripping the armrest. “You really know how to pick your moments,” I said.
“Maybe if we have some time tomorrow, we can take a drive and—”
“Jamie,” I said. “Jesus. Just leave it alone, okay?”
It had been cold in New York, sterile and chilly on the plane, so when we stepped outside in Panama City, the warm humidity came as a relief. It washed over me like a familiar greeting: the pudding-like night air, the glow of sodium lamps in dark parking lots, the constant buzz of mosquitoes. Jamie heard my sigh and turned to me.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I snapped at you.”
He spread his arms wide. “Who can stay mad when you’re in the South? I love this place. I’m sick of winter and it hasn’t even started.”
“Does Florida count as the South?” I said, dropping my bag in the trunk of the rental car.
“The Panhandle does,” he said.
When we checked into the Marriott, Jamie asked the woman at the front desk where we should eat. “Well,” she said, hesitating. She knew we were from New York; I was wearing black and had just asked if the hotel had a gym. “The only thing nearby is an Applebee’s.”
Jamie slapped his palm against the counter. “Applebee’s it is!”
“Really?” I said, after we turned from the desk.
“Oh, come on,” Jamie said. “Let’s live a little.”
It was across the highway from the hotel, glowing like a beacon, in a strip mall that included a Piggly Wiggly, a Hobby Lobby, a bank with a drive-through ATM, and several vacant storefronts. “Is it bad that I’m perversely excited for this?” Jamie said, as we walked across the mostly empty parking lot. “I haven’t had a blooming onion in years.”
“That’s Outback Steakhouse,” I said. Why did I know these things?
“Good God,” he said, grabbing my arm in mock horror. “You’re right.”
“You’re becoming one of those obnoxious New Yorkers we hate so much.”
He grinned. “I suppose it takes one to know one.”
Jamie goaded me into ordering half the menu with him: fried things, cheesy things, several sugary cocktails with names like Bahama Mama. After two hours, we were drunk and happy. Our waitress was an older woman with bleached hair who kept giving us freebies. “I like you kids,” she said, with a smile that lit up her whole face. Jamie called her “ma’am” and exclaimed “God almighty” whenever she delivered a new dish.
“Your accent has suddenly gotten a lot stronger,” I said. “Is it the booze or the zip code?”
“Both,” he said. “This feels like home.”
“Coronaries and alcoholism,” I said, picking up a French fry. “I’d say so.”
He grinned. “You’re having fun. I can tell.”
Of course I was. This feeling of nowhere else to be, so might as well have another drink—it was more fun than I’d had in months. But that was only the first layer. A deeper part of me was watchful and wary, unsettled by how close we were to my hometown. What if I ran into a high school classmate? It wasn’t inconceivable. What would I do? What the hell would I say?
We never talked about it, but I knew that Stella and Jamie assumed that what I did was easy. Making a clean break with your past was dramatic, but it simplified things. Just think of the complications I’d avoided: holiday visits home, weekly phone calls, the fraught negotiations of a child growing older. But they didn’t know how the past, even after such merciless severing, could follow you like a phantom limb.
Diane Molina, my high school history teacher, had sent me long and earnest e-mails during college, filled with questions. How was I? How was school? What was I reading? At first, I liked getting those e-mails because they made me feel less alone. Then I liked getting them because they made me feel smart, telling Diane about books and ideas that she’d never heard of. Eventually, though, I came to dread those e-mails. Even the sight of Diane’s name in my in-box gave me claustrophobia. When I graduated, my college e-mail expired. The bounceback did the work for me. I didn’t tell her where I was going next.
That’s why Jamie’s questions on the plane had bothered me. I wasn’t one of those corn-fed country girls who pined for home; didn’t he know that by now? But maybe he didn’t, because his experience was so different. Jamie was lucky. In New York, his smooth manners and mellow accent were charming. It set him apart from the cold Yankee workaholics, even as he kept pace with them. It didn’t work that way for women. Keep your Southern accent and sweet tea smile, and you are placed in a very specific category.
And so our business was filled with people like me, accentless and delocalized. Most reporters rose through the ranks with itinerant gigs at Middle America affiliates. Climbing the ladder gradually allows your oxygen levels to acclimate, Fargo to Denver, Denver to Chicago, and finally to the big leagues. It’s also a useful way to exfoliate the past. By the moment of arrival in New York or Los Angeles or D.C., the accent is gone. All that remains is a hard and untraceable delivery.
When they appear on-screen, reporters and anchors remind those back home of just how far they’ve come. For some people, that’s a motivation. For me, it was terrifying. I didn’t want my parents to see my success, or understand what it meant. I had an irrational fear of them tracking me down, coming to New York to demand money or attention. The best disguise was staying behind the scenes. If my name and reputation was only known within the industry, all the better. It was a language that wasn’t even open to them.
Jamie’s phone was ringing. He put down his drink mid-sip and started patting himself. When he finally located his phone, he frowned at the screen and silenced the call. The phone rang again, and this time he switched the ringer off.
“Who was it?” I said.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” He waved to our waitress. “Could I trouble you for another strawberry margarita?”
“Of course,” she said. “Another for you, sweetheart?”
“Ah,” I hesitated, because the hangover was already looming.
“She’ll take it!” Jamie said.
Then I heard my phone ring. I reached for it and answered it automatically. Jamie’s eyes went wide. Too late, I realized what was happening.
“Hey, Stell,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Why isn’t Jamie answering his phone?” she said. “He’s there, isn’t he?”
“Um, I don’t—”
“What the fuck,” she said, “is wrong with him? Is he bleeding? Has he been hit over the head? Because that’s the only reason he should be ignoring my calls.”
“He’s in the bathroom right now,” I said. “He’s, uh, been in there for a while. I think he ate some bad food on the plane.” I grimaced, and Jamie mouthed a thank-you.
“So what? He brings his phone into the bathroom with him. He’s attached to that thing like it’s an umbilical cord.”
“I don’t know, Stella. Honestly.”
“Well, whatever. I had a shitty day at work, thanks for asking. I had—”
Lately, her tirades had gotten worse: slights minor or imaginary, which she perceived as mortal wounds. This time, she had gone to New Jersey to record a stand-up, but her segment had gotten cut at the last minute. This happened all the time to young reporters at KCN, but Stella didn’t measure herself against them. She measured herself against stars like Rebecca Carter, who never had to put up with this shit. “I’m too good for this place,” she’d said, more than once. “I go down the street to another network and they’ll triple my salary.” Her confidence was so brazen that I’d started to wonder if she had some secret leverage over the executives. After a while, I said, “Oh, look, Jamie’s back.”
“God, finally. Put him on, will you?”
Jamie kept the phone a few inches from his ear. Even over the music in the restaurant, I could hear Stella’s loud haranguing. He unenthusiastically said, “Uh huh” and “Yeah, totally” and “Okay, yeah, love you” and finally hung up with a sigh.
After a long pause, he said, “I don’t get it.”
I kept quiet. My policy was to remain neutral during their fights.
“It’s like she’s a different person,” Jamie continued. “I mean, you must see it, too. Right? You see how ridiculous she’s being? I’m not allowed to miss a single phone call from her, even when I’m on assignment?”
“She wants what she wants,” I said. “And she’s used to getting it.”
“Well, when is someone going to finally say no?”
I looked at him, pointedly.
“Good Lord.” He sat back and gripped the edge of the table, as if bracing himself for the sudden plunge of a roller coaster. “I thought that dating Stella Bradley would be fun. I didn’t sign up for—I don’t know—personality rehab.”
“I hear you,” I said. “But I’ve never found the solution.”
Jamie leaned forward and sucked at the last inch of his drink, the straw making a harsh guttering sound. A grown man inhaling a pink margarita like his life depended on it was an objectively funny sight, but this wasn’t an appropriate time to laugh.
“She’s going to drive me insane, Violet,” he said. “She makes me so angry. Sometimes I feel like I’m about to lose my mind. Like I’m going to snap.”
“Jamie,” I said. “If it’s really that bad, why don’t you just end it?”
Silence. From the way Jamie looked at me, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. Why didn’t he end it? Well, why didn’t I end it? Being Stella Bradley’s best friend had always rested on a delicate formula. There were the bad parts, and there were the good parts. Lately the balance had shifted. The good was almost gone, and it was almost enough to break me.
But there were things it was safe to talk about when you were several drinks deep at an Applebee’s in Panama City, and this wasn’t one of them. Jamie knew that, and I knew that, and despite the Bahama Mamas and strawberry margaritas, we were still smart enough to turn back from the edge of this cliff.
We picked at the remnants of dessert, then went home. We said good night in the hallway of the Marriott—my room on the left, Jamie’s on the right—and as I lay in bed, hearing the distant mechanical churn of the ice-making machine, all I could think was if Stella finds out that I planted this idea in his head, she is going to kill me.
About twenty minutes outside of Panama City, the highway led to a paved road, which led to a dirt road, which snaked through the forest. At the yellow mailbox we’d been told to look for, I turned down the driveway. It was rutted with potholes, and pebbles and rocks pinged against the undercarriage of the car. The light was filtered and dappled by the cypress trees. At the end of the driveway was a small bungalow, the clearing illuminated by a shaft of sunlight.
It was a few minutes before noon. Ours was the only car in the driveway. “I’m going to look around,” I said to Jamie, who stayed in the car and nodded behind his sunglasses.
Willow lived inside the confines of a water management area. The trees were tall and vibrant green, and the lakes and creeks we’d passed were filled with crystal-clear water. Signs along the road pointed to hiking trails and canoe launches. This had always confused me about Florida: that a place of such overwhelming natural beauty could contain so much man-made ugliness. It felt like a perfect metaphor for something.
The ticking chorus of birds and insects was interrupted by the sound of an approaching car. I rapped on the window and Jamie startled awake. The car, a modest gray compact, came to a stop. Willow stepped out, but she stood behind the open door like it was a shield.
“You’re the newspeople?” she said.
I waved. “We talked on the phone. I’m Violet Trapp, and this is Jamie Richter.”
She slung a bag over her shoulder. “I’m guessing you want to come inside.”
As we followed her through the front door and my eyes adjusted to the indoor dimness, I was struck by how clean and spare her living room was. The walls and floorboards were painted white. There was a brightly colored Mexican rug, three minimalist armchairs, a few pictures tacked above the desk in the corner. I’d been expecting simplicity, but the kind that reflected panicked transit: a suitcase, a mattress on the floor. This was not that. This was a life that had been arrived at carefully, after rigorous purification.
“Thank you for talking with us,” Jamie said, as Willow emerged from the kitchen holding a glass of water. She was beautiful, and her clothing aligned with her simple home décor. Like a Calvin Klein model in the nineties: jeans, a white shirt, sleek dark hair.
“Willow,” I said, “at this point, we’ve turned up a lot of information about—”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not my real name.”
“What would you prefer?” Jamie said.
“Nothing. You should just know that I hate the name.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “That’s fine. What I was saying is, we’ve got plenty of evidence against Danner. If you choose to go on the record, you won’t be taking them on alone. Several other people have spoken out. And you’ll have reporters and producers and KCN executives—every resource we have will be behind you.”
She stood up and left the room. From the kitchen came the sound of running water. The living room was oppressively hot and still. My forehead was dotted with sweat, I was thirsty and craving air-conditioning, and the heat made me feel slow and exhausted. Willow took her time in the kitchen. Jamie caught my eye and shrugged.
When she returned, she was holding an orange. She stood between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the doorjamb. The scent of citrus spiked the air as she dug a fingernail into the skin and began slowly peeling it away from the fruit.
“You realize how much I don’t want to do this,” she said.
“I understand,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow, like, do you?
“Violet probably explained this,” Jamie said, “but there are things we can do. We can keep your face in shadow during the interview. We don’t have to use your name, or your location. The world doesn’t have to know where you are, who you are, today.”
Willow peeled the orange in one long spiral. She hefted the naked fruit in the palm of her hand, like she was testing its weight. She broke the orb into two symmetrical halves, then handed one to Jamie and one to me.
“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”
Jamie looked at her quizzically. “Do you have any questions for us?”
“I sleep with a gun in my nightstand,” she said to me. “Did George tell you that?”
“He did,” I said.
She crossed her arms. “Let me guess. You were thinking you’d come down to Florida and find some ruined woman. Drunk off her ass in a trailer.”
“I didn’t think anything,” I said, although she was exactly right. This picture—white floors, scent of oranges—it was not what I’d imagined.
“I’m in school now. I’m getting my business degree. That’s where I was this morning. I happen to be at the top of my class. Did he tell you that?”
“George spoke highly of you,” I said.
“I bet he did. What a knight in shining armor.”
“Willow, we won’t force you. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
She held my gaze. “I don’t want to do anything. I have to.”
After a long pause, Jamie cleared his throat. “We can do the interview tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll film you here. Violet and I will be with you the whole time.”
Jamie drove us back to the hotel, where we would call Eliza and tell her that the interview was set for the next day. But in those final moments of quiet in the car, I felt an anticipatory let-down. Wrung out by the heat, plagued by a thumping headache. Willow, in her little white house. There it was: the answer to the question we’d been chasing for months. It was both sadder and more ordinary than anything I’d been expecting. The world leaves people broken, but they find a way to put themselves back together again.
Jamie interrupted the silence. “That poor woman,” he said.
“I was surprised,” I said. “Weren’t you? Her house. The business degree.”
“That’s what worries me. The tough guy act. It’s not real.”
“It seemed real to me.”
He shook his head. “It’s going to crack at some point. You don’t go through what she went through without a reckoning.”
“So, what, you think she’s doomed? She can never have a normal life?”
“I’m just saying, she needs to take the measure of what happened to her. Didn’t that freak you out? She should be angry. She should be pissed. But it’s like she’s been lobotomized.”
“Maybe she already dealt with it and now she’s fine.” For some reason, Jamie’s reasoning irritated me. I wanted to believe in Willow’s life. I wanted to believe in the possibility of her reinvention. “Maybe she managed to put everything behind her.”
“Maybe,” Jamie said. “But I doubt it.”