Monifan. In that week of intense classes, they’d taught her the Monifan script, drilled the new sales staff word for carefully crafted word.
Back in class, teacher Allessandra Lewes had shown them a video, some wannabe boy band singing about P-X’s newest products, as if the sales force needed a fight song. Yes, you can: Sell Monifan! kept churning through her consciousness, relentlessly infectious. Talk about indoctrination. Monifan might be a miracle, Nora knew, but only reliably for the Pharminex coffers. Not always for the women it was supposed to help.
And now, everyone was buzzing about the glitzy Vanderwald gala. And the big Trevor Vanderwald scholarship. She contemplated the seething irony of it all as she punched the elevator button. She’d googled the Vanderwalds, daily, if she had to admit it, studying pictures of the officious know-it-all Winton, and his vacant-eyed wife and his children—the elusive Brooke and the drowned Trevor. Humanitarian award. How could Winton Vanderwald accept such a thing? This bullshit award would force her to work even faster. But she could do it.
The elevator doors opened and then slid shut behind her, as if propelling her toward a goal.
She scouted this newest waiting room, struck yet again by the depth of emotion in the faces of the patients, women whose hair had not yet gone gray, whose bodies were lithe and graceful, whose clothing was moneyed and meticulous, whose makeup was precise. Dressing up for the doctor’s office, so needy, as if they were clinging to something about themselves they could control.
Nine thirty-three. Nora, deliberately early for her 10 A.M. to give her time to scout for patients who might talk to her, was surprised at the crowded waiting room. Women occupied almost every beige leather or tweedy upholstered seat. Women reading, leafing through magazines or focused on their phones, some in sunglasses, many with earbuds in place, the white cords dangling in front of nubby sweaters and looped mufflers like wiry plastic necklaces. A coatrack, also crowded, showed one black coat after another. Nora took the last hanger and crammed hers into place, breathing in the soft floral scent as the fabrics brushed together. She scanned the room then took the only remaining seat, half of an ivory settee, smiling apologetically at the woman on the other half.
“Sorry.” Nora slid her detail bag out of the way, hiding it beside the arm of the little couch.
“No problem,” the woman said. She held an e-reader and swiped a page as Nora settled into place.
Two beats of silence. A new age underscore, music coming from hidden speakers, filled the spaces in the atmosphere. Nora figured it was designed to be relaxing, but to her it seemed blatantly manipulative, bleating its everything-will-be-okay message when these women knew it might not be. They were so vulnerable, Nora thought again. In more ways than they knew. They all wanted to have children, all might have been told Monifan could help them. For some of them, that would be correct. For others, Nora knew, it would be wrong. Devastatingly wrong.
“I haven’t seen you here before,” the woman said. Her red hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and her black turtleneck came up to her chin. Coral lipstick and pale nails, a person who took care of herself. Red-rimmed eyes, though, Nora cataloged, gave away her exhaustion.
Nora had regretted not striking up a conversation sooner that first time in Hawkins’s waiting room, and though she’d given several women in other offices her card, none had called her. In the next clinic, she’d pushed harder, and gotten as far as a few random pleasantries before the patients shut her down. Maybe she’d have better luck this time.
“I’m new,” Nora said.
“They’re always late.” The woman gestured at the receptionist’s desk, a semicircle of tan Formica with a phone console and a printed sign encased in a plastic frame: PLEASE TAKE A SEAT. WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK. “How can they already be running late? It’s only nine thirty. This office opens at nine thirty. Are we all scheduled for the same time? It’s so frustrating. Disrespectful.”
A woman across the room looked up from her magazine. “Completely agree,” she said. She flipped a page, then another.
“Your first appointment?” The woman next to Nora hit the conversational ball back.
Nora kept her voice low. “Yeah.” She needed to be careful. “You?”
“Hardly.” Her seatmate unzipped her tote bag, pulled out What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “You’ll learn to bring a book.”
Another woman, a delicate twentysomething in jeans and a puffy vest, extracted one earbud and looked up. “But if we’re late, it’s, like, we get the look. Like we’re the problem.” She rolled her eyes, then put her earbud back in, apparently tuning out again.
But her unbidden two cents worth meant these women would not be put off by conversation. Or even personal questions.
Nora turned to her new friend. “Thanks for the warning. But … why don’t you go somewhere else? To a different doctor?”
“Kidding me?” The woman made a dismissive face, pushed up the sleeves of her black turtleneck. “This is Randall McGinty. I mean, how long did you have to wait to get in? Like, months, I bet. Because of … you know. Monifan.”
“Yeah.” Nora tried to look noncommittal. “You taking it? I mean—oh, how awful of me. I am so sor—”
“No biggie.” The woman looked at the ceiling, then back at Nora. “But, yes. Maybe it’ll work this time. I’m here for new results.” She blew out a breath. “But I don’t want to get my hopes up. Or my husband’s. James is worried, because it’s expensive. But I can’t imagine not having…” She touched her fingertips to her mouth, as if she’d said too much. Then gave a faraway smile. “It’s all I care about, you know? All. Since I was a little girl. You?”
“Sure,” Nora agreed. Anything to keep her talking. This potential connection was more important than her sales appointment.
“And, oh, geez, all my dolls.” The woman spread her hands in front of her, as if revealing an array. “Not Barbies. But baby dolls, the kind with that soft plastic skin? And the eyes that open and close with the weird click. I loved them. I’d talk to them and dress them and cuddle them when they cried. When my little sister was born, it was like a gift. My dolls had come to life.”
“So cute.” Nora knew when to keep quiet. She crossed her fingers the doctor was stuck in traffic or something, to give her more time with this talkative patient.
“James wants children as much as I do. He looks at other people’s babies, in the park or wherever, it feels like he’s judging me. Judging us. Wondering if he made the wrong decision, marrying me. If I fail again, I wonder if he’ll pick up and—he’s being so awful, sometimes, critical, like I’m … damaged goods.” She winced, then widened her eyes, as if replaying what she’d confided. “Whoa. True confessions. Sorry. Oversharing. Hormones, right? Back to the dolls, okay?”
“It’s fine. And I’m so sorry,” Nora said. “It must be so difficult. But dolls? I was more of a Pink Power Ranger kid. And then…” She shrugged. “I guess I grew out of it. Wanted to be a movie star.”
The woman shook her head. “Yeah. That’s what’s supposed to happen. You grow out of dolls. I did too, but right into real children. I wanted to be a nurse, or a teacher, but mostly, a mom. I read Baby-Sitters Club books, did you? I really wanted to be Mallory. Because she had red hair and freckles she hated too. I decided she was me.” She tucked a stray lock behind one ear. “Mine’s the same color as yours, almost.”
“I was always Mary Anne,” Nora remembered, being herself for one moment. “Very organized.”
“So funny.” For an instant, her face looked genuinely happy. It made Nora grasp the depth of this woman’s need. “We have that in common too, it seems. Besides being here. Wanting kids.”
“Yeah.” Nora briefly hated herself. But she had to risk one more question. “How many times have you…?”
“Four. But it doesn’t always work, they told me that. But it might. This time it might. That’s why I’m here.”
“Can’t hurt,” Nora lied.
With a
click and a swish, a door behind the reception desk opened, and a woman in a flowered tunic and a webbed necklace of dangling name badges came through. The atmosphere in the office changed, recharged. The women closed their magazines and sat up straight as the receptionist flapped down the WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK sign. Every woman in the room, Nora saw, tried to make eye contact with the sentinel behind the desk, but she defiantly pretended there was no one else present.
“Kaitlyn?” the receptionist called out.
Two women stood—Nora’s new friend and a woman with a blond bob and round red glasses.
“Kaitlyn, last name A,” the receptionist clarified. “Kaitlyn, first name with a K.”
The blond bob sat down and Kaitlyn looked at Nora, hope in her eyes. Nora took out a business card from the stack she kept in her jacket pocket, the ones that simply had her name and phone number.
“Let me know,” she whispered, handing Kaitlyn the card. “Okay? Or if you want to chat? I know you said—about your husband. I mean, I know it’s tough. But we’re kind of in this together.”
“Adore to,” Kaitlyn whispered back. Her expression softened, and she put a hand on Nora’s arm. “Incredibly kind of you. You’re the first person who seems to understand. I—”
The receptionist came out from behind her desk and approached them, disapproving, as if to collect a misbehaving child.
“Let me know how it goes, Kaitlyn,” Nora said. “Good luck.”
CHAPTER 10
ELLIE
“You just missed him.” The voice of the afternoon-shift guard buzzed through the louvered speaker set into the front wall of Channel 11’s plexiglass-enclosed reception desk. He held up his wristwatch, judgmental. At least he was awake.
“Missed who?” Ellie tapped her entry card against the black metal reader, then clicked open the glass security door into the inner lobby.
“Some guy? Left this for you.”
Ellie took the manila envelope, wondering, as his eyes focused again on the television monitor, how the guard could guard against anything. Ellie’s feet were clammy from walking on the dank slushy sidewalk, and she’d treated herself to a hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. She was trying to look at the pleasant side of life instead of the grim. Now the cream oozed out between the plastic top and the paper cup and made damp blotches on her leather gloves.
She plopped onto one of the blue pseudo-leather chairs in the Channel 11 lobby, curious about the envelope. A seagull, then two, squawked outside in the afternoon gray, then the pair swirled down to the sidewalk in front of the station’s plate glass window, staring at their reflections, their webbed feet awkward in the thin carpet of snow. “Dumb birds,” Ellie muttered, “staying here in the cold.” She hated seagulls. Stupid and noisy. Scavengers.
She flapped up the metal prongs on the envelope and drew out a sheet of white paper, folded in thirds, with a yellow stickie attached. She peered into the envelope again. Empty. A piece of paper and a yellow stickie. All there was.
The stickie had careful block letters in black felt tip: More like this, if you are interested, the note said. And then a phone number. It was signed Gabe.
Ellie frowned. Gabe?
One of the seagulls complained, jabbed the other with its yellow bill. Elle shifted in her chair and opened the folded paper. She’d seen it before. The Pharminex email about Winton Vanderwald, and the Winton Trevor Vanderwald III scholarship fund.
Trevor Vanderwald, she’d read on Google, had died in a boating accident. Years ago. Google said he was being groomed to take over the company, but rough seas and an unlucky gust of wind—that had been in quotes, Ellie remembered—had ended the line of male succession in the Vanderwald family. His sister Brooke had been on the boat, too, Ellie read. The Caduceus. When she was nine, after Ellie had devoured every volume of the Cherry Ames, Student Nurse mysteries, she’d thought the caduceus was the symbol for medicine. But when she got older she’d learned it was also the magic wand of Hermes, messenger of the gods and patron of trade. Perfect for the Vanderwalds, she thought.
She stared at the email, trying to place “Gabe.” She didn’t know a Gabe, not in Boston and not anywhere. Since she was new in town, the universe of people knowing who she was and that she was here must be minuscule. Or was it? She’d called more than a few lawyers’ offices, inquiring specifically about Pharminex—had someone suggested her to an insider? She’d done searches on library computers—had someone examined her history? Warren knew she was working on Pharminex. So did Meg.
But who was Gabe? She pulled out her phone, tapped through to the Pharminex website, clicked on the employee directory. Clicked on call us.
“May I speak to Gabe?” Ellie pictured the Pharminex receptionist, and the lobby, all marble and glass, masses of fresh white roses. She assumed the flowers were supposed to soften the hard edges of the place, but she saw them as proof that someone was making too much money. Why not spend the rose money on research? On truly helping people? And the fragrance was suffocating.
“Last name, please?”
Which of course she didn’t know. “Oh, gosh.” She made her voice sound embarrassed. “I wrote it down funny, and I can’t read my own writing. It’s Gabe—something? Do you have many Gabriels?”
“I only have a listing by last name, ma’am.” The receptionist sounded impatient. “Do you know where this person is located?”
Which of course she didn’t. Well, maybe she did. “Boston?”
“No Gabes, ma’am.”
Ellie couldn’t resist. “Maybe last name Vanderwald?”
“Ma’am? May I ask who this is?”
“Thanks,” Ellie said, hanging up. Gabe could be anyone, from anywhere, and it might not even be his real name. Total dead end.
“Stupid Ellie,” she said out loud, shaking her head for missing the obvious. She googled the phone number he’d left. But only gobbledygook came up, nothing helpful. So much for research.
She had two choices: Call him. Or don’t.
She dialed.
As she heard the phone ring, somewhere, she stood and stared through the reception area’s plate glass window. Channel 11 was in the city’s new Seaport District, of all places. Ellie could sometimes smell the briny scent off the harbor when she went outside, a pungent whoosh of salt and mist that some people loved. She’d been a swimmer as a kid, dashing into the ocean without a second thought, coming home salt-covered and sunburned, nose peeling and sand in her scalp. Long ago. Another life.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice. She’d blocked her own caller ID, so he—whoever he was—couldn’t know it was her.
“You left me a note?” Ellie began.
“Ms. Berensen,” the voice said. “Listen, I know this is awkward. But I’ve been hearing you’re interested in looking into the realities of—” He stopped. “We shouldn’t do this over the phone.”
“You sent me this Pharminex email about Winton Vanderwald.” Ellie had to be infinitely careful, walk an impossible tightrope. This could be the call of her dreams, a Pharminex insider who had sneaked her this email to prove he had access, and was willing to offer her more. Or it could be a trap—a Pharminex fixer who was out to see where she was going, and stop her. This would prove she’d rattled their cage, though. And for better or for worse, they knew she was investigating them. “Could I ask who you are? And why you sent it? Do you work there?”
“We shouldn’t do this on the phone,” the voice said again.
“You dropped this note off at Channel Eleven?” Ellie peered out the wide front window again. Was Gabe out there right now, watching her watch for him? “Do you want to meet here?”
Silence on the other end. A block away, past a gravel parking lot and a loop-chained fence, she could see the edges of Boston Harbor, and past that, across the water, beyond a crisscross of sailboats and ferries and the occasional oil tanker, the low buildings of Logan airport. Flying into Boston terrified her every time, the final approach so low over th
e water that she grasped the armrests, feeling, to her bones, the chill of the inevitable plunge into the icy waters, her head going under, her body tangled in the—
“No,” the voice said. “Perhaps it’s better if we don’t actually—”
“I’m so pleased you sent me the email,” Ellie interrupted, needing to keep him talking. He’d already made a decision to seek her out, and signal he had knowledge and intent. Question was, intent to what? “What do you think about that award?”
“It’s bull.” The man’s voice spat the word. “Those people need to be stopped.”
“From what?” Convinced he was right outside, she stood so close to the window that her nose touched the cold glass. Seagulls swirled above, taunting her.
“We could meet somewhere neutral,” the voice said. “I know what you look like, so—”
“You do?”
“I saw you walk in today,” the voice said. “Black coat, blond hair, red glasses? I’d recognize you.”
Ellie felt a shiver up the back of her neck, a warning. Or maybe a promise. Another call beeped in to her cell phone. She checked the caller. Clicked it away.
“I don’t have long.” She’d risk it. Meeting in public wouldn’t be dangerous. She could gauge his intentions, and nope out if she needed to.
“There’s a coffee shop by the water, the Spinnaker?” he said. “A five-minute walk for you. It has an outside upper deck, with heaters. We can sit by the water, watch the waves. And if anyone tries to eavesdrop on us, the jets into Logan and the sound of the gulls will drown them out.”
“The Spinnaker,” Ellie said.
“I can help you with your story, Ellie,” the voice said. “You’re looking for information. I have it. Up to you.”
The First to Lie Page 5
