Chapter Fourteen

“are you okay?” the woman at the motel said. “Do you want me to call someone?”

“I just need a room,” I said.

She squinted at my wet hair and red eyes and lumpy duffel bag. Then she stepped out from behind the front desk and peered through the window to the parking lot. “Are you sure he didn’t follow you, sweetheart?”

“What?” I said. Her knowing look made it clear she took my confusion for denial. The implication finally clicked. “Oh, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s just…I had a fight with my best friend. She lives down the road. She kicked me out.”

“Oh!” she said, visibly relieved. No shotgun vigil, no 9-1-1 on speed dial in case the abusive boyfriend showed up. “Well, you’ll make up with her. I’m sure of it.”

“I hope so.” I attempted a smile.

“Just one night?” she asked. “We’ll need a credit card for the deposit.”

She studied my card. “Violet Trapp,” she said. “What a lovely name. I had a cousin named Violet. You rarely hear that name these days.” She handed back the credit card, and placed the room key on the desk, but kept her hand atop it. She had the distinctive curiosity of a postmenopausal, small-town gossip. “Honey, I have to ask, what were you doing around here at this time of year, anyways?”

My initial plan was to keep the story as simple as possible, answers stripped of detail to prevent further questioning. But there was my credit card, logged in the computer. The careful way she had enunciated my name. The security camera aimed at the front desk. Sooner or later, someone would uncover this particular moment in time. I had to make it look real.

“Her grandparents have a place here,” I said. “We’re from New York. We were just up for the weekend. She had a stressful week. Actually, her boyfriend just dumped her.”

The woman frowned sympathetically. “And she took it out on you?”

“I guess so. She was in a terrible mood, and told me she didn’t want me hanging around anymore. She wanted to be alone. So I decided to leave.”

“Oh, honey, don’t take it personally. There’s nothing worse than a broken heart.”

A lump formed in my throat. “I’m sure you’re right,” I said.

“You’ll feel better after a good night’s sleep,” the woman said. “Your room is at the end, nice and quiet. Far from the road.”

“Thanks,” I said. My stomach grumbled. “Is there anywhere to get something to eat?”

“Best you can do is the gas station across the way.” She nodded toward the road. “They have a 7-Eleven that’s open all night.”

I filled my arms with soda and chips and cellophaned pastries at the 7-Eleven, where the man behind the counter gave me the same appraising, sympathetic-but-skeptical look as the woman at the motel. “Don’t get many strangers at this time of night,” he said. But when I told him my story, it had a pleasing weight, a satisfying constancy. In the next twenty-four hours, I repeated it several times. To the taxi driver, who took me to the bus depot. The cashier selling the tickets. The person sitting across from me on the southbound bus. It was easy to remember, because it was so very close to the truth.

I was staying with a friend.

We had a fight, a bad one.

She wanted me to leave.

So here I am.

That’s where the story always ended: with me, standing in front of whomever I happened to be speaking to. Unspoken was the coda, which—for the time being—only I knew to be true: and that was the last time I ever saw Stella Bradley.

 

I’d never subscribed to the idea of prophecy, of instructions delivered with a psychic thunderbolt: Joan of Arc seeing visions in the garden, presidential candidates claiming that God told them to run. The idea of a higher voice—God, or call it whatever you like—cutting through the daily mental noise to show the way seemed implausible at best, and a ruthless lie at worst. Why does anyone decide to lead a military uprising, or run for president? Because they want power. But it’s unbecoming to state that so baldly. Anyone who said that God had spoken to them, I figured, was just looking for cover.

But on the boat that night, I understood how it might happen. After the thrashing stopped, my mind went perfectly quiet. Blank and still. And in that quiet, it was easy to listen to the one small voice that persisted. It was like driving through a desert with only static on the radio, and suddenly coming over a rise where the static gave way to a signal.

When people claimed to hear God speaking, this was what they really meant. The infinite branching possibilities of life had—for that moment, at least—been pruned away, leaving only one option. The path forward was clear and definite. At a pivotal moment, you knew exactly what to do. As I stood on the boat, the ocean slapping and sloshing against the hull, I experienced that feeling of profound relief. One might even call it ecstasy.

I waited for a long time to be sure she was really gone. But the night, despite the wind and waves, was ordinary and peaceful. The world looked no different than it had before.

After I was certain, I began to move quickly. The keys, which Stella had dangled above my head not thirty minutes earlier, had fallen near my feet when she was thrown overboard. It took a few minutes to get used to the boat’s steering wheel and throttle. From the compass on the dashboard, I knew that I was pointed in the right direction—west, back toward the Bradley property—but I had to steer in a southwesterly direction to account for the strength of the current. Stella had taken us far offshore, and it was a long time before the lights of the house finally came into view.

When I approached the dock, there was a small pinging noise. There, on the bench seat behind me, was Stella’s phone glowing in the darkness. It had just resumed contact with the cell towers. There were several texts on Stella’s phone, from her parents and friends and Jamie. I unlocked the phone—her password was her birth year, backwards—and typed replies to each of the messages. Her texts were easy to mimic: lazy and short, affectless except for occasional strings of exclamation marks. The only thing I added was a hint of mystery at the end. Jamie had written to her: You should know that I still care about you and respect you. I don’t want things to be weird for us at work. Violet-as-Stella replied: fine, but I don’t, and you’re still an asshole. we won’t be seeing each other again, so save the crap for someone else.

Just as I was about to get rid of her phone, I paused. Even with my adrenaline surging and heart pounding, my mind was calm and rational. I opened her e-mail and spent a few minutes composing a message. Then I scrolled through her recent calls. There was a number, a local area code, that she had called several times in the last twenty-four hours. The man on the other end answered with a gruff “Yeah?”

“Hello?” I said. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Who is this?” the voice said.

“Hello?” I said. “You’re breaking up.”

I kept him on the line for almost a minute before he hung up. I did that a few more times, for good measure, until he eventually stopped answering.

The screen cracked easily under the heel of my boot. I stomped on the phone several more times. Then I picked it up and threw it into the water. My own phone had remained back at the house, which meant it wouldn’t betray my movements.

There was a small towel tucked under the bench seat, and before climbing out of the boat, I used it to wipe down the steering wheel, the throttle, the edges I’d clung to in the tossing waves, and the pool of Stella’s blood on the bow. After scanning the interior one last time and throwing the towel into the water, I stepped onto the dock and shoved the boat clear. The current was strong, and it quickly carried the boat away from the dock, the white speck diminishing until it vanished entirely.

The story was beginning to formulate in my head. What would Stella need, if she were running away? In the master bedroom, I cataloged her possessions. She had a few hundred dollars in her wallet. Surely she would go to the bank and withdraw as much as she could. But this didn’t fit into my plan. Every ATM was equipped with a camera these days. And if Stella wanted to run away, if she really wanted not to be found, she would ditch her credit cards. But the cash in her wallet wouldn’t get her very far.

I felt something like tenderness. As if I were truly gaming this out for her benefit. Poor Stella. Beneath her confidence, she was a girl who became easily overwhelmed. How many times had the world told her she was gorgeous and charming and dazzling? Enough times to hollow her out entirely. This was the ending she should have had—an escape from the manufactured pressures of her life. A chance to start over. If people were going to believe that she’d really made a break for it, she needed as much runway as possible.

The gun, glinting on the nightstand, reminded me. In the closet, the safe was still open. The real Bradley treasures were kept closer to home, in their Beacon Hill mansion or in the vault at their bank. But Grandma Bradley’s one indulgence was fine jewelry, even up here in Maine. There, in a black velvet bag in the back of the safe: there was Stella’s ticket out.

They glittered in my palm. A pair of diamond earrings, a few carats each. A tennis bracelet with a neat row of cushion-cut gems. And a ring, which I recognized from when the Bradleys entertained on a grand scale, hiring caterers and a string quartet while the guests dined at long tables on the lawn, overlooking the ocean. This was the ring that Grandma Bradley would wear on those occasions. A sapphire, hefty like a walnut and blue like the summer sky, ringed by a band of diamonds.

The jewelry was cool and solid in my hand as I closed the safe, pressed the lock button, and wiped it clean. When would anyone bother to check the safe—would it be days from now, weeks from now? I would have to remember to act surprised. The diamonds were gone, the Bradleys would say, worrying and speculating. And so was the gun.

My hair was tangled and my skin salty from the ocean air, so I took a scalding hot shower. I started to turn off the lights and thermostats, but then I thought, what would Stella do? That had to be my guiding mantra. Stella wouldn’t bother to check every little thing. She would just leave. So the heat remained on. The occasional lamp stayed burning.

The walk to the motel took almost an hour. From a distance, warm squares of light shone through the lobby windows, and the neon sign blinked vacancy. It turned out it wasn’t so hard to cry on command. The water table was high, ready to reveal itself with just a little bit of digging. I cried so much that my eyes puffed and swelled. But it wasn’t guilt or distress that I felt, so much as an overwhelming recognition.

You’re a heartless snob, my mother once said. You can’t wait to get rid of us, can you?

That dark impulse, which I’d suppressed for so long. Stella Bradley was dead, and I saw who I really was. Who I had always been. It was the first time in my life that I recognized what I was capable of. Death forces you toward honesty. There is always a perfect understanding between the killer and the killed.

 

Port Authority after midnight: the stores are closed, awaiting the morning rush. The alcoves and nooks near the heating vents are occupied by the sleeping bodies of homeless men. The fluorescent lights are set to a low hum, and the air smells cloyingly of fast food, with a tinge of sweat and garbage. The only motion came from those like me, passengers emerging from the end of long bus rides, moving like ghostly fish toward the exits of this strange aquarium.

But I didn’t mind it. I didn’t mind any of it. I had slept most of the way, and I was glad to be back in New York. When the cab drove south down Seventh Avenue in the earliest hours of Monday morning, all I could think was I made it. I meant this in a very simple sense. Two of us had left the city for Maine on Friday morning. One of us had come back. One of us had what it took to persist, and the other one didn’t.

Pete, the doorman, was on duty that night.

“You have a good weekend, Miss Trapp?” he said, as he opened the door of my cab.

“I was in Maine with Stella. She’s still up there.”

“Nice to get away from the city,” Pete said. “Have a good night, Miss Trapp.”

  

I debated how to tell the Bradley family. It had to look real. If Stella had kicked me out and hinted at disappearing for a while, would I be surprised? Alarmed? Or would I think, this is just Stella being Stella? Nonetheless, I called Anne on my walk to work that Monday morning. It was mid-November, and the weather was persistently perfect. The trees held the last of their crimson leaves, crisp temperatures just right for sweaters and football. While waiting for Anne to pick up, I decided that I couldn’t remember a more beautiful autumn.

“Violet?” Anne said, sounding out of breath. “I just got out of spin class.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you. I just wanted to tell you about the weekend.”

“Are you back from Maine? Stella made it sound like you were staying for a while.”

“That’s the thing. I’m back, but she’s—well, we got into an argument on Saturday night. A pretty bad one. I got a motel room and came back on the bus yesterday. She’s still up there. I mean, as far as I know.”

“Oh, dear. Oh, Violet, I’m sorry.”

“To be honest, Mrs. Bradley, she was seriously upset. Jamie breaking up with her…I think it came as a shock. She wasn’t taking it well.”

“I wish she had let me come up. The poor girl. She really can’t handle this kind of thing by herself.”

“I think she just wanted some space from it all, you know?”

“So she didn’t say when she’d be coming home?”

“Not to me.”

Anne sighed. “And she won’t be in trouble at work?”

“Given the ratings on the Danner story”—this, this was the one moment I felt an unsettling flare of heat in my cheeks—“I’m guessing they’ll be in the mood to forgive her.”

“You’ll let me know when you hear from her?”

“Of course. And I’m sorry, Mrs. Bradley, I don’t mean to worry you. I just wanted—”

“No, no, I’m glad you called. Thank you, Violet.”

Jamie’s desk was empty when I arrived around 8:30 a.m. He, like most people in the newsroom, tended to arrive closer to 10. But the habits of my ambitious intern days had stuck. I drank my coffee and caught up on what I’d missed over the weekend. The major newspapers had all covered the Danner story. Danner’s spin machine was in high gear, spokespeople reinforcing the message that the CEO had delivered in his interview. They were conducting an internal investigation; they would implement rigorous sexual harassment training; they would make sure this never happened again.

An e-mail pinged in my in-box. My chest tightened when I saw the sender—Willow, the woman in Florida. She had watched the story. It wasn’t what she’d been led to believe. What had happened to her was just a footnote. Why, she wanted to know, why had I spent so long chasing her down and convincing her that she was the hinge to the whole thing?

I don’t expect you to respond to this, she wrote in her e-mail. I could see her, leaning against the doorjamb in her white living room, digging her fingernail into the orange peel, looking at us with skepticism that was, in the end, completely justified. I assume you’ve moved on and you’re already preying on some other helpless victim.

I jumped at the hand on my shoulder.

“Whoa,” Jamie said, taking a step back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, breathing hard. “You scared me.”

“You’re really pale.”

“Well, you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Let me guess. She said you’re not allowed to talk to me anymore, is that it?”

“What?”

Jamie gave me a quizzical look as he dropped into his chair. “Stella.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, yeah. No. I mean, it’s fine, we can talk, it’s just—”

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “Sorry, you’re in an awkward position. I don’t mean to put you in the middle of it.”

I sighed. “I think it’s too late for that.”

We went to the cafeteria on the third floor to get coffee, and a modicum of privacy. Everyone in the newsroom knew about Stella and Jamie’s relationship; it was ideal office gossip, self-contained and slightly illicit. We sat by the windows overlooking Sixth Avenue, people occasionally waving at us as they carried bagels and oatmeal back to their desks. As I told Jamie about the weekend, from Stella’s return to the apartment in the early hours of Friday morning to her ultimate accusation on Saturday night, it struck me: had it really happened so fast? Less than forty-eight hours from when Jamie broke up with her to when she climbed atop the bow of the boat. The triangular dynamic of the past year had proved shatteringly fragile.

“And that’s when she kicked you out?” Jamie said.

“She said I had sabotaged your relationship. That I was…jealous of you two.”

Jamie’s expression softened, briefly.

“I told her that was ridiculous, but she wouldn’t believe me. She wanted me gone.” It didn’t feel like a lie. The night in Maine had gone one way, but it so easily could have gone another. “She couldn’t stand being around me. That’s what she said.”

“Jesus.” His face had closed off again. “She is a horrible person.”

“Don’t say that.”

Jamie wrapped his hands around his coffee cup. He had removed the lid so the coffee would cool down faster. As he squeezed the sides of the cup, the liquid crept toward the brim. A taut meniscus stretched across the top. He was on the verge of spilling.

“Careful,” I said.

He let go of the cup and put his hands flat on the table. “She is, Violet. You’re allowed to get mad at her. I’m mad at her. She kicked you out? Who does that to their best friend?”

  

Before that afternoon’s rundown meeting, Eliza caught my eye and beckoned me over.

“So you got a little R&R this weekend?” she said.

“I’m really sorry it was so last minute. I should have told you.”

“You were up in Maine with Stella? Ginny forwarded me the strangest e-mail from her. It sounds like she’s staying up there for a while.”

“I think so. I’m not sure.”

Eliza shook her head. “You know, Violet, you’re really the one who deserves the week off. You’ve been killing yourself on the Danner story.”

“Well, thank you, but I’d rather get back to work.”

Eliza smiled. “I never know what to do with myself when I’m on vacation, either.”

“I heard you once called into the control room from Maui,” I said.

“It was Oahu,” Eliza said. “It was our honeymoon. It’s a good thing I did. This guy from the Council on Foreign Relations had hijacked the interview. Rebecca was like a deer in the headlights. They should have pulled her out of there. She seems so in control, they can’t always tell when she needs help.” She arched an eyebrow. “But I can.”

By now, the conference room had filled with the other producers. “Okay,” Eliza said, clapping her hands for order, taking a seat at the head of the table. “Let’s make this a quick one. Jamie, where are we on the quote from Sec Def’s people?”

“No comment at this time,” Jamie said. A former DoD employee was suing for discrimination—a man who claimed his female colleague had undeservedly taken the promotion he was in line for. He was, he said, a victim of affirmative action.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t offer comment on that clown, either,” Eliza said. “What else?”

The meeting only lasted ten minutes. It was one of those days when Frontline ran like a well-oiled machine, no last-minute catastrophes to derail our lineup. Our ratings had remained high through last week, after the Danner story aired on Tuesday night, and it buoyed the collective mood. On the whole, Rebecca tried to instill an attitude of indifference—“because what good is it,” she always said, “being obsessed with ratings when you’re constantly in third place?”—but even she seemed jittery as we waited for the final numbers from the previous week.

“Eliza,” Rebecca shouted from inside her office. “Am I reading this right?”

Eliza squinted at her phone. The executives had the ratings e-mailed to them as soon as they came out. The rest of us were left to guess the numbers based on their mood, or wait for the Deadline Hollywood story to go up.

“We won the demo last week,” Eliza announced. There were gasps in the newsroom—actual, audible gasps. That meant we had drawn more viewers aged twenty-five to fifty-four than any other cable news program in our time slot. That meant we had beaten not only MSNBC but Fox and CNN, too.

“When was the last time this happened?” I asked Jamie.

He grinned. “I don’t think this has ever happened.”

“Fuck me!” Rebecca shouted. She was pacing excitedly in her office, hollering at the speakerphone. “Ginny! Jesus Christ, did you see this?”

That night, after the broadcast, Jamie and I went for drinks at the bar around the corner. It had been a long time since we’d done this, just the two of us. Stella had seen to that.

“Do you think you eventually get used to this feeling?” I asked. “Like, if you work at the Today show, does this become boring?”

“I have no idea,” Jamie said. “I’ve only ever worked here.”

“Kiddie Cable News,” I said. An old nickname. Ten years ago, when KCN was started, the quality had been so uneven that it seemed like children were running the place.

“It does feel good, doesn’t it?” Jamie said. “Stella must have been happy. You told her?”

I shook my head. “We haven’t been in touch since I left.”

“Really?” Jamie raised his eyebrows. “Well, I’m sure she saw the news. She has a Google alert on herself. I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t called.”

“Why?”

“To gloat,” he said. “It’s strange. She was calling all weekend—I had to put my phone on silent—but then she just stopped. The last thing I got was this cryptic text on Saturday night.”

“She was probably just embarrassed.” Jamie was pulling out his phone, and my heartbeat accelerated. “She knew you were ignoring her.”

“Okay, here it is. We won’t be seeing each other again, so save the crap for someone else. What the hell does that mean?”

“She’s dramatic,” I said. “You know that.”

Jamie looked pensive as he swiped a tortilla chip through a dish of salsa. “I should call her. I should congratulate her. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Wait,” I said, as he stood from the table. “Jamie. Wait a second. Be careful.”

He laughed at the look on my face. “I think I can handle it. This’ll only take a minute. I’ll just say—”

But then he pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned at the screen. “That’s strange,” he said. “Straight to voice mail. It didn’t even ring.”

“Huh.” I reached for my beer and took a large gulp.

“Stella never turns her phone off,” he said, perplexed.

“The service can be spotty up in Maine.”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, sitting back down. “That’s probably it.”

  

Tuesday, around lunchtime, my phone rang.

I drew a deep breath and answered. “Hi, Mrs. Bradley.”

“Have you heard from her, Violet? She won’t respond to my texts. I’ve been calling and calling but her phone just goes to voice mail.”

“That’s so strange,” I said.

Here it was. The next stage was beginning, and I felt oddly calm.

“I’m starting to worry,” Anne said. There was a push-pull in her voice. Creeping panic, and the parallel self-insistence that it would be fine. It would be fine. We had been through this before; Anne didn’t want to overreact. “I called Ginny. Stella e-mailed her on Saturday night. Something about wanting to take some time to herself. Which is fine, I suppose, but why wouldn’t she have her phone on?”

“Jamie tried calling her yesterday,” I said. “It didn’t ring then, either.”

“That’s not like her, is it? She always calls me back.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But you remember that Christmas, when she left. None of us could get hold of her for, what, a whole week?”

“Do you think that’s what happened here?”

“It could be,” I said.

“Well, as long as she doesn’t miss Thanksgiving next week. But she wouldn’t do that.” Anne’s brittle laugh was meant to reassure herself. “That’s a bridge too far, even for Stella.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be back by then.”

  

Winning the demo called for something bigger than celebratory pizza in the newsroom. Eliza considered waiting for Stella’s return, but these victories went stale quickly, and besides, no one could get hold of her. On Friday night, after the broadcast, Eliza rented out the back room of an upscale Japanese restaurant. There was an open bar, waiters circulating with glasses of sake and delicate squares of sashimi, a chef making hand rolls to order. It was like the Christmas party—the same cast of characters, the same level of indulgence—but this was infinitely sweeter. Christmas you celebrated because the world kept turning and inevitably it was December again. But this feeling could be arrived at only by victory. There was no one else in the world celebrating exactly what we were in this moment.

I was standing with a few other producers, listening to Rebecca talk about the time the House Speaker tried to hit on her mid-interview, when she cut herself off and said, “Excuse me for a moment.” She wove efficiently through the crowded room and greeted the two people who had just arrived: Ginny, and a distinguished-looking older man. He was tall and elegant in his blue blazer, but there was a cane by his side, and the hands that grasped it looked spotted and arthritic.

Jamie leaned over and said to me, “That’s Mr. King.”

“The Mr. King? Of King Media?”

“The lion in winter,” Jamie said. “This is the first time I’ve seen him in person.”

Mr. King was an Oz-like figure, powerful but never visible, a name only invoked by those at the highest levels. He was the one boss that nobody made fun of. I couldn’t quite believe that he was here, in the flesh, in the room with us. It was almost hypnotizing.

He had a raked forehead and a serious gaze fixed on Rebecca, who seemed to shimmer from his attention. Working at KCN the last three and a half years had required me to constantly reassess my understanding of power—the scale of it, and where it really lay. When I was a lowly intern, someone like Jamie seemed to possess everything I could ever want: a desk, a title, a salary. But there were trapdoors in the ceiling that led to another level. There was Eliza, who commanded an entire newsroom. There was Ginny, who had the final say on what made it to air. And then there was Mr. King. Our entire world was, for him, merely one piece of the pie. He had probably just come from dinner at the Four Seasons or the 21 Club, stopping on his way back to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. Even if he stayed at the party for five minutes, standing by the door while his town car idled outside, that was enough. It signaled that this was, in fact, a big deal.

The interns and assistants in the room didn’t notice him. It was only the senior staff—Eliza, Rebecca, Jamie—who tuned their antennae to his presence. What a strange feeling it must be, I thought, to move through the world like that. To possess a power that remains invisible to any ordinary person passing on the sidewalk. How many people in America could identify King Media with a real person? A fraction of a percent. His low profile was probably strategic. What had he done to get to this place, to this hard ceiling of power? What had he left in his wake? Mr. King said something to Rebecca, and she laughed. I wondered what they were talking about—the ratings? Or their mutual friends, or their plans for the holidays? It was only when I stopped staring at him that I realized that Ginny, next to him, was staring at me in turn.

A shiver passed up my spine. I smiled as she approached, but her expression remained cold.

“I’m extremely concerned about Stella,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “I mean, I am, too. I haven’t heard from her all week.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ginny said. “We were right in the middle of negotiating her new contract. And then I get this e-mail from her on Saturday night. She needs time to think, she needs time to herself. Where does that come from?”

I thought the question might be rhetorical, but Ginny frowned at my silence. “Well?” she said. “You were the only person with her. What exactly happened, Violet? What changed between Saturday morning and Saturday night?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She was gone for a lot of the day. I don’t know where she went.”

“You’ve spoken with her parents, I assume?”

“Of course. Actually, Mrs. Bradley and I were remembering the time she ran away for a while, at Christmas a few years ago? This could be—”

“I don’t see how this is remotely similar. Stella is the next star of this network. She wouldn’t walk away from that. Or from three million dollars a year.”

I swallowed, trying not to flinch. Three million? “With respect, Ginny, Stella has done irrational things before. And the thought of staying at KCN might be too painful for her.”

“Why is that?” Ginny sounded irritated.

“She was upset about the breakup with Jamie.” I kept my voice low, conscious of Jamie standing a few feet away. “Maybe she doesn’t want to work at the same network as him.”

Ginny narrowed her gaze. “Your argument on Saturday night. Was it about Jamie?”

“Yes,” I said. “She thought I had something to do with the breakup.”

“Did you?” Ginny said. “I know that you and Jamie are close.”

A waiter approached, holding a plate with red slices of tuna, dotted with bright green wasabi. I shook my head, feeling nauseous. “Of course not. Stella was my best friend.”

“Could you bring me a Scotch on the rocks?” Ginny said to the waiter. “A double, please.” As he walked away, Ginny turned back to me. “You said was.”

“Pardon me?”

“Stella was your best friend?”

My pulse started hammering, and my cheeks grew hot. I reminded myself: this is real, this story you’re telling. You feel nervous and uneasy because you don’t know where Stella is. And isn’t that true, strictly speaking? The Atlantic Ocean is a big place.

“The way we left things,” I said. “I’m not sure how she feels about me anymore.”

“I see,” Ginny said. She kept staring at me, unblinking. Jamie came over, grinningly oblivious of what he was walking into.

“Ginny, just wanted to say hello,” Jamie said. “This is a great party, isn’t it?”

“Sushi has never been to my liking,” she said. “But yes, this is nice.”

Jamie began talking about a story he was working on, seizing his opportunity to impress the boss’s boss. While he spoke, Ginny’s gaze flickered back and forth between us. Her distaste was barely concealed. These two scrabbling opportunists, she must have thought. These grasping nobodies. Jamie and I weren’t her kind of people. We just didn’t play the game in the way she saw fit. She made that as clear as possible without being outright rude.

I felt a distinctive surge of anger. Willow’s e-mail had been sitting in my in-box, unanswered since Monday. I didn’t know what to say. It was my fault, my guilt to bear. Willow had trusted us with her story. Had trusted me. But in those long minutes we devoted to his interview, the Danner CEO had easily washed his hands of the crisis. Today, just like last week, or last month, or last year, he could walk into the finest restaurants in New York City and receive a warm welcome. His name stayed firmly lodged in the register of society.

See, the term money laundering had it backwards. People don’t launder money. Money launders people. Change a few variables and what would you call a man like the Danner CEO? But he would never be known as a pimp, or a criminal. He was too rich. That category doesn’t exist on the Fortune 500 list.

Market pressures. That’s how the bosses at Danner had justified it, in their coded e-mails and memos. The company had to keep growing. The shareholders demanded greater and greater returns. They weren’t trying to be evil. They were just looking out for the bottom line. Having a moral compass was a nice idea, in theory. But you got a whole lot further by playing dirty.