CHAPTER 26

It was after midnight, and I was finally sure I was alone. The crowd outside had dispersed at dusk, slipping away in their cars or fading into the woods—going back to wherever it was they came from. The house was a mess, in disarray, and my hands shook as I put everything back in its place.

The utensils had all been handled, jumbled, replaced. I dumped them into the sink to clean again, imagining dirt and germs everywhere. They’d reached their hands underneath our mattresses, and our sheets were disheveled and twisted. Underneath the bathroom sink, they’d seen my box of tampons, the bottles of lotions, bars of soap. The tweezers and the toothpaste tube, which was mostly empty and crusted around the opening. They knew the brand of deodorant I used, had seen the razor hanging on the shower wall, had found the opened box of condoms in my bedside table.

They may have taken only the knives and slips of paper, but they’d come away with far more. An insight into the intimate workings of our lives.

I wondered if Kyle had gone through here himself. If he’d opened that box in my bedside table. If he’d counted.

I sat on my heels in the corner of the bathroom, feeling exposed and dirty and angry, and I heard my own breath, like that of an animal in a cage. I stood, splashed water on my face, leaned against the counter, and stared at myself in the mirror. Pull it together, Leah. My eyes looked wild, red-rimmed, and my face gaunt—and in the dim light, I could almost see her here. Hunched over, tracing her fingers over her own cheekbones, surprised by the person she discovered.

My God, Emmy, what did you do?

I tore down the hallway and turned all the lights off so no one could see in. Then I slid open the door and listened to the night. I closed my eyes, made my breathing slow and even, counting off all the things I knew: the crickets; things moving in the woods, far away; the whisper of the night wind.

I kept my eyes closed, moved with my hand on the railing, so I would not imagine things in the darkness that I couldn’t see.

I reached the dirt at the base of the steps and walked by heart to the dark shape in the driveway. I felt the unknown calling me—pulling me closer. Until I was at the car, and the beep of the key, the flash of the brake lights, cut through the night. I eased the trunk open as silently as I could before lifting out the box, which was mostly empty and nearly weightless.

I didn’t turn the lights back on until I was firmly inside my house, in Emmy’s room, with the door closed behind me and the curtains pulled shut. It wasn’t safe to bring the box out to the surface. It was too dangerous to keep it up here when they’d just gone through my house. To leave a photo around that could only tie Emmy to the Davis Cobb case. I opened the top and pulled out each item, careful to hold them with my sleeve, leaving my prints off them, taking pictures with my phone.

She had left this box in Boston, and I imagined everything had come from there, from eight years earlier. She was living in an apartment. Other people saw her, saw us, and I could prove it.

I stared at that photo again, the girl who was almost me, twisting it back and forth until the glare from the bedside table light reflecting off the glossy surface burned my eyes, and all I could see in the dark, as I walked the box back to the trunk of my car, were the spots where the light once was.


I GOT READY FOR school early, waiting to make the call until I knew he’d be up. And then, in the time I usually took my shower, I turned off the lights and watched out the window—looking toward the woods. Waiting to see who might emerge. If there was someone who watched, as I had believed. Someone who came during the time they knew I wouldn’t be focused or paying attention.

But by the time I was usually cleaning up after breakfast, nobody had made an appearance. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was imagining things. I searched my mind once more for the footsteps, tried to hear them again. Tried to be sure.

I checked the clock one last time, knew he’d be up, probably on his way out the door—and placed the call.

“Whitman,” he answered.

“Hi, Noah,” I said. “I need a favor.”

There was a pause, and his voice dropped lower, felt closer. “Gee, Leah, nice to hear from you. A favor, huh? I think that ship has sailed.”

I cringed. We used to throw idioms around like this as a joke. Somehow ironic, or so I’d thought. But maybe I’d only imagined that, thinking him more clever than he actually was.

“You owe me one, Noah. You know you do.”

“You’ve lost it,” he said.

“I know what you did. I know the deal you took, because you sure as hell didn’t earn that promotion. You think I won’t bring the whole thing tumbling down? Think your name won’t come into play? What do you think will happen to your career when people find out that you knew what happened and helped cover it up?”

“Jesus Christ, Leah,” he said, and I knew I had him. “I don’t know what’s in that Pennsylvania air, what type of shit they put out into the atmosphere, but it has seriously twisted your perspective.”

I felt a little flip of my stomach, the discovery that he knew where I was. I wondered if he’d looked me up, whether he wondered, whether he thought of me. And what that meant.

It had been my biggest mistake, confiding in Noah. Six months together, and a friendship before, and in the end, he traded it all in without remorse—I was a scoop he gave our boss, a step he used for leverage. His motivations weren’t pure, despite what he claimed.

Maybe he’d been that person at one time, maybe he thought he still was. Maybe he told himself it was the right thing to do—that the ends justified the means. But the fact remained that he had benefited where others had fallen.

The paper had to watch its back. That, too, was a business first. Even after Noah told our boss, Logan couldn’t turn on me completely. He just had to buy them some distance and hope it stayed buried.

Quit, he said, and I did.

They kept no loose ends. Even Noah, they sucked into the mess. His silence for a promotion. And by accepting, he had become complicit.

But maybe we were all complicit, with the company we chose to keep.

And maybe that was reflected in living with two other people in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment eight years ago. I slid into their lives, too comfortable, never putting up walls. I had followed Emmy here, this woman I truly knew so little about.

“They won’t believe you, Leah.” Noah had gotten a grip, and I heard his voice more pronounced now, his lines prepared and delivered with more clarity. “You’re a known liar.”

But I had his attention. We lived and died on reputation. Whether it was true or not, he had to wonder what it would do to him. “Everyone goes down, Noah. Everyone.”

“Listen,” he said. And there was something different about his voice, something knowing. “Are you listening? Do you ever listen? Because right now would be a great time to start, Leah. So turn off those gears and pay attention. There’s not even an inkling of a civil suit, okay? Not a peep. Let sleeping dogs lie.”

How had I fallen for someone who used the basest and most primitive of idioms? Everything about him grated on me.

“One thing, Noah. It’s just a name. You owe me. You know you owe me.”

There was silence, and I seized it.

“Bethany Jarvitz. I need everything on Bethany Jarvitz. J-A-R-V-I-T-Z. History, next of kin, known associates, everything. Date of birth, places of employment, current and past residence—”

“I got a call yesterday evening. Thought it was a job reference for you, which I thought was pretty ballsy, even for you. But it was just Kassidy putting someone in contact. Seems a colleague down in western Pennsylvania called about a Leah Stevens, last known residence of Boston, had your license and everything. A teacher, Leah? Really?”

So that was how Noah knew where I was. Someone had called him. It was beginning, the house of cards, ready to fall.

“Who was it?” I asked.

He laughed, like he knew he had me.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell him anything.”

“Really.”

“Really. So what I’m thinking, what I’m really thinking, is that I don’t owe you shit.”

“I don’t believe you. You must have said something.”

“Like hell I did. All I said was Leah Stevens? Real nice girl. Real. Nice.” He dragged out the words, laced them with something else. “The job got to her, is what I told him. Was all I told him.”

The job got to me. I imagined who must’ve been on the other end of the line, felt my worlds colliding, felt everything in Boston too close now, as if I had summoned it here.

“Hey, Leah, were you listening? Kassidy put him in contact. Get what I’m saying?”

Kassidy, our favorite source in the police department, who knew that Noah and I were together.

“Kassidy,” I repeated.

“Yeah. So. You’re welcome. Let’s call it a draw, huh? I can only imagine the shit you’ve gotten yourself into this time if they’re calling ’round here.”

I gripped the phone tighter, spoke through my teeth. “I’ll do it, Noah. Swear to God, I’ll do it,” I said. But he must’ve been able to hear the lack of authority in my voice. I was a terrible liar.

“You know you wouldn’t win, right? If you make a stir, someone’s finally going to start asking the right questions. Paige Hampton has a case, and we all know it. You’ll lose, Leah. You and I both know there’s no source. Nobody will stand up in your defense.” And then he hung up.

Fuck you, Noah. I felt the words, felt them tightening my stomach, my grip on the phone. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I wondered if the paper had a plan in place for if it happened. A standard operating procedure for what to do when Leah Stevens went down.

Whatever mess I was stuck in, I’d have to dig myself out now. From Emmy. I’d have to get to her past first, before they got to mine.

I thought of her old friends, tried to think of who they were. Names in bars, faces flickering past, nothing that lasted. I thought briefly of John Hickelman, but there were probably hundreds of them. I imagined searching the White Pages for Hickelman, John, calling each one up, asking, Hey, did you have mirrors on your ceiling? And do you remember sleeping with a girl named Emmy? Did you have a watch that went missing?

I remembered the name Kyle had shown me before things turned. The woman who lived in the apartment before us. Whose name was on the lease. She lived in New Hampshire now. This, I could do.


IT TOOK ONLY THREE calls, all placed from my classroom in the twenty minutes before first period, to get the right Amelia Kent. But I could reach her only at her place of work—I didn’t have access to her cell, and she didn’t seem to have a landline. Amelia Kent, according to a simple Internet search that led to her job profile on social media, was an accountant at Berger & Co., a mom-and-pop CPA firm in the White Mountains.

Amelia was overly cheerful for the early-morning hour, answering on the first ring when I asked to be transferred to her direct line. I introduced myself in relation to the police investigation, explaining that I was looking for a woman who’d briefly used her address—that we could trace her as far back as that, but then we lost her.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” she said. “I left a few months before my lease was up, figured my ex took over the rent, though I’m not sure. Never got my security deposit back. And I’d paid first and last months when I moved in. Figured the owners just pocketed the rest and called it even.”

“So you didn’t move back to California? You weren’t rooming with a girl at any point?”

“No, not any girl. I told that to the detective who called earlier—Kyle?”

“Donovan,” I added, so she would see the connection, believe I was telling the truth. “That’s right. I think he mentioned a Vince?”

She paused for the first time. “Yes. Vince had been my boyfriend for two years. He’d moved in with me back in January. And I caught him with someone else in May.” She laughed bitterly. “Made me wonder what he’d really been up to all that time.”

“Who?” I asked. Her name, I needed her name.

“I don’t know. I didn’t really stick around for introductions. You can’t really explain something like that away, though he sure as hell tried.”

“How did he try?”

“Denial, of course. But she was in our bed, God.” The memory still riled her up, still thrummed through her blood.

“Can I get his last name, Amelia? Please, it’s important. He’s the only lead I have.”

A pause, and then, “Mendelson. Please don’t mention my name. Please don’t mention I’m the one who sent you.”

Amazing how something that happened so long ago can feel so fresh. How it could come back to haunt you from nowhere—the innocuous ring of a telephone, the past come to call from the other end.