The Perfect Stranger

by Megan Miranda

  I would become someone else. They wouldn’t believe me.

  I was only trying to warn her. Paige, who was always too good-hearted to see the darkness in people, who was too self-assured, who always smiled. I presented her with the evidence; I begged her to get out. What I should have done before I moved in with Emmy those years earlier, if I’d been a better friend.

  But Paige didn’t want to see it. She filed the order against me the month before I left the city. I was banned from going near her house or her place of work. I could not call her number. I could not initiate contact. And now I could not go on the record.

  “What about Emmy?” I asked, bringing the line of questioning back around.

  “We don’t have anything to go on, Leah. There’s no sign of her anywhere.” He looked around the house again. I remembered the questions he’d asked earlier: This place, it’s only in your name, is that right?

  I felt a tremor in my fingers. Nerves or anger, I couldn’t tell the difference. “You don’t believe me,” I said.

  There was no evidence she was here—that’s what he was here to tell me. There’s no evidence of a girl named Emmy Grey anywhere. As if I had plucked her from my imagination and set her loose.

  “You don’t believe something happened here,” I said. My hands tightened into fists.

  Kyle held out his hands. “I do, Leah. I do. I know something’s going on. I just can’t figure out what it is yet.”

  “I’m sorry, was there something confusing about a person going missing?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought this information about your roommate was your way of reaching out and talking to me about something else. She was a dead end, and if I’m being totally honest, it was starting to feel like a wild-goose chase. I thought—Well. I was beginning to think maybe this was your way of getting me here to talk about Cobb.”

  I let out a bark of laughter. “Kind of like asking for a friend?”

  As if I had been scared and needed an excuse. And maybe my roommate would suddenly just turn up a few days later from a vacation I’d conveniently forgotten about.

  “This is real, then,” he said, tapping the papers. “Emmy Grey is her name, and she was here until Monday, and you have not seen her since. You don’t know where she is.”

  “Yes, this is real. I can’t believe you thought I was lying.”

  “Not lying, no.”

  “Yes, lying. I found her necklace broken on the back porch. I showed you her necklace.”

  “I know, I know. But I couldn’t find anything on her, here or elsewhere. And I thought there was something you were trying to keep from me. I just thought . . . I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

  Except he wasn’t; he was so close. Kyle was right that I’d been hiding something, he’d just thought it was about the wrong thing.

  “And now,” I said, “you’re telling me the man my missing roommate was seeing is a criminal, and he’s been in my house.” If Jim had hurt her, and he knew I’d seen his face, would he be thinking about loose ends? A witness? Someone who would give his name, his description. “What if he has Emmy’s key?”

  I thought of the light on in the house. Wondered if he’d tried to take anything else, anything that would place him here. Covering his tracks. And whether I’d be added to that list.

  Kyle turned around, placed a call, giving my address to whoever was on the other end and asking for immediate service. He sat on my couch after he hung up. “Listen, there’s a good chance he and Emmy took off somewhere together, and she’s fine.” I opened my mouth to cut in, but he held up his hand and continued. “But it’s best to play it safe. We’ve got a call out on him. We’ll pick him up. In the meantime, I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you’d change the locks.”

  I didn’t argue. Knew I’d have to clear this with the owners, but I’d do it later. Ask for permission first or ask for forgiveness after—I was always drawn to the latter.

  “I’m sorry, Leah. I couldn’t figure you out, and I was wrong.” Such a smooth, practiced apology. One given too freely, in my opinion.

  I was right that he had been assessing me from the start. That he could see something underneath, worthy of figuring out, which at first had been so appealing. But now it made me shut down, close off. A switch flipping.

  “I promise you I am taking this very seriously. I promise you.” His hand was over mine, as if I might need to be reassured. But I didn’t respond.

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “Show her to me.”

  Like this was a dare or a challenge and I had to win him over. Prove that Emmy Grey existed, that she had lived and loved and deserved to be found.

  I had done this before: fighting my way in the editor meetings about why my stories were important and relevant. Laying out my case about why they should care and why readers would care. You find the angle, and you strike.

  I didn’t know whether Kyle was genuine in his concern. But I did know how to make her real. I knew how to make him believe. I stood, gestured for him to do the same, showed him her bedroom, her clothes, wondered if he could conjure her into life, imagine her standing in this very spot. I saw his eyes drift to the watch on her dresser, but he didn’t touch it.

  And I brought her to life. I brought her to him.

  * * *

  THE EMMY I MET the second time was much thinner than the girl I’d met eight years earlier. Back when we were younger, she used to wear her jeans low and her shirts high, and the strip of skin right before the flare of her hips begged men to touch it. And they did. I’d watch as their hands brushed up against her back, her side, as they said Excuse me with a hand on each hip, gently passing. She didn’t seem to notice. There’s an eight-year gap of missing time that I can’t give Kyle, but this is what I know, what I really know:

  She sleeps with her mouth open, on her right side. The tip of her nose is always cold. She’s not afraid to use a knife.

  I know she laughs when she’s nervous, falls silent when she’s angry. I know there’s a scar on the side of her rib cage, white and raised, and a constellation of freckles across her shoulders and her upper back.

  The wooden walls have little insulation, is how I know her this well. The old creaky floors. The vents that cut to both our rooms across the hall. The shared bathroom. The fact that one of us will sometimes have to use the bathroom while the other is in the shower, or vice versa. Because I had to pull a stinger from her back this summer. And because, eight years ago, she’d caught a fever that went straight to her head, made her mad, and too hot, and deliriously thirsty, and she wouldn’t let me bring her to the hospital—the only compromise a tepid bath that I sat beside, terrified she’d pass out and drown if I left her.

  I know her this well because, eight years ago, she would sometimes knock on my locked door in the middle of the night and say, He snores, or Restless leg syndrome, or His arm is a vise, I had to claw my way out to escape. She’d climb into bed beside me, and later I’d wake with the tip of her nose pressed against the back of my neck—always cold, even in the heat of summer. I’d feel her breath in a steady rhythm as I drifted back to sleep.

  And after I said this all, I felt suddenly parched, the air too dry, my throat exposed, as if I had wrenched something from deep inside. I licked my lips, then felt my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  Kyle was standing in the middle of her bedroom, transfixed. I had woven him a story, cast him under a spell, hooked him, and he was mine.

  “It’s not the way you think,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed slightly, and his breathing stilled. This was another thing I had learned. You had to break a piece of yourself open to get them. You had to give something up. Something real.

  “What’s the way I think?”

  I swallowed. “I can tell from the way you’re looking at me what you’re thinking.”

  I knew her the ways one might know a lover, not a roommate.

  I knew her the way, I realized, only someone fixated would kn
ow another. And maybe I was. Maybe I was looking for something. Maybe I clung to her because I needed to cling to something. Maybe I kept that box because I couldn’t let go enough, and because I didn’t want to.

  Emmy and I connected because there was something in her past that was hidden, as there was in mine. A wordless understanding. The turning of the door lock; this belief that we were protecting each other from something both ever present and infinitely far away.

  Kyle shook his head, as if clearing out cobwebs or a spell. “I’m thinking this is a girl who has zero paper trail. Who did not want you to bring her to a hospital. Whose name is not on any lease. I’m thinking she was scared of something.”

  It wasn’t until he spoke the words that I realized they were true. Emmy in the dim barroom, looking over her shoulder. Emmy pacing the halls at night, her steps lulling me to sleep. Emmy at the edge of the woods, standing perfectly still and watching for something.

  CHAPTER 15

  By the time full darkness rolled in, both Kyle and the locksmith had left. I’d decided to keep our original locks, for the landlord and (I still hoped) for Emmy, but I’d added a secondary deadbolt on top to both doors. Only then did Kyle leave, back in cop mode. He’d gotten on the phone as soon as he left the house, his voice taken by the wind. My mind was going too fast, thinking of who was on the other end and what he might be saying.

  After they were gone, I logged on to my computer and searched for any information I could get on James Finley. I wanted to know what he had done. Picture it and imagine the type of man he was.

  There wasn’t much, after I weeded through all the people with the same name. I kept it to the crime section in the news, finally found a side article about a B&E in Ohio. Another here in Pennsylvania. The charge didn’t stick in Ohio, but it did in Pennsylvania, and he was still technically on probation.

  Why hadn’t Emmy seen it? Why hadn’t he ended like all the other men, with her locking them in or out while staking out her safety with me? I’d assumed that after her fiancé, who had turned out not to be the man she thought he was, she had known better. That she could recognize the difference and would keep it at arm’s length.

  “Jim again,” I’d said one morning when he’d dropped her off.

  She must’ve read the disapproval on my face, because she gave me a slight smile, said, “He’s harmless, Leah. All bluster on the surface. You can see everything about him, plain as day.”

  I knew not to argue after that, after her fiancé and the things she never said. Just the insistence that she didn’t want a phone or her name on the lease or any bill. She must’ve felt safer with a man like Jim, everything out there to see, rather than the way her ex had unexpectedly changed on her—the insidious way danger can sneak up from the inside of a person you thought you knew.

  But that was Emmy, always flirting with disaster. It was why I saw her as the start of a story, something that could turn tragic.

  I didn’t go to sleep until long after midnight. Couldn’t get the visions of Emmy out of my head—all the stories I’d told Kyle, like she was filling up the space around me. Her breath on the back of my neck, the bed now cold and empty without her. That time someone had stolen my wallet from my bag in an overpacked bar and she’d said, to ease my panic, “It’s just stuff, Leah. You’re still okay.” Words I repeated to myself even now. And when I’d calmed down, her hands on my shoulders, she’d smiled, counted down from three, and we’d skipped out on our tab.

  I had just about drifted to sleep when I jerked awake from the sound of her voice, unable to tell whether it was from nearby or a dream. I was straddling that line, and I searched the house just to check. Called her name in a voice just above a whisper. Because in my semiconscious state, the word I’d heard was Leah.

  After I’d finished checking the house, I saw a cruiser out front. I watched out the window with a glass of water in my hand, standing in the dark kitchen with nothing but the light from the open refrigerator, but I couldn’t tell who it was. I pretended not to notice him and climbed back into my bed. Had those half-sleeping dreams where everything felt too close to real and then too far away.

  * * *

  KATE TURNER KNOCKED ON my open classroom door Friday morning. Of all the teachers, she was probably closest to me in age. She was also new this year, having moved from out of town, and by all accounts we should’ve been friends from the start.

  But she had done a better job assimilating, and our slide toward friendship had been slower, more halted. The one time we went out for lunch, back during orientation, we’d had very little to talk about. “Divorce,” she’d said as an explanation of what had brought her here.

  Meanwhile, I was too busy sticking to my line, as a defensive maneuver. “Looking to make a difference,” I’d said, which shut down the conversation pretty quickly. I realized now what a transparent lie that had been. She had nodded agreeably, but that was the last honest piece of information she’d bothered sharing.

  Now she was a sympathetic smile in the doorway. Maybe she had only wanted company to begin with, in her heartbreak. Now she could probably see the misery written clearly across my face. We had both picked up and moved to start over. She must’ve seen it on me that first lunch, perfectly obvious. Who the hell had I been trying to fool?

  “Pretty rough week, huh,” she said. Pretending, for my benefit, that we had all come under the same scrutiny, were all shaken and fighting our way through.

  I nodded, gathering everything up.

  She leaned against the doorjamb, her dark curls brushing her shoulders. “I thought I’d only miss my ex—who was a real piece of shit, by the way—when I needed someone to reach the smoke detector batteries. But I can’t say I’m looking forward to going home by myself for another weekend, either.”

  I wondered whether she was nervous. If she missed the protection of living with another person. “They’ve got cops watching the Cobb house,” I said. “He wouldn’t do anything.”

  She shook her head. “Apparently, it might not have even been him to begin with.” She saw the look I gave her, changed her approach. “Well, either way, one woman who lived alone, fighting for her life in the hospital, is enough. I can’t keep my mind from going to the dark place.”

  I didn’t know what she wanted me to say or if she was gearing up to tell me something.

  “Anyway, I was hoping you’d be up for joining me for a drink.” And before I could object, she said, “I could really use a night out, with no pressure to flirt with random guys at the bar. Just to get out. What do you say?”

  I could really use a night like that, too. Sitting home was full of waiting and unanswered questions, a constant fear. A day had passed, and I hadn’t heard from Kyle. Hadn’t heard if they’d picked up James Finley yet, or tracked down Emmy’s last-known whereabouts. “Yes,” I said. “I’m in.”

  Her smile stretched wide, her shoulders dropping in relief. “How’s seven? Do you know the restaurant by the lake house?”

  I did. It was the place Davis Cobb had taken me the first time. There was a bar on one wall, windows facing the lake on the other, booths and tables scattered throughout. The noise level was high, and the beer was cheap, and it was crowded enough to feel anonymous. It was also not too far from where I lived, which was a bonus. I hadn’t been back to it since.

  “Okay,” I said. “Seven it is.”

  * * *

  BY SEVEN P.M., LAKESIDE Tavern was full, and it took me a while to spot Kate; then she stood from a booth on the other side of the bar and waved. I slid in across from her, recognizing but ignoring a few other people from school as I passed. The history teachers all out together, joined by what I assumed were a few of their significant others. An English teacher maybe out on a date. A few students I vaguely recognized, working as waiters and waitresses.

  Rounds of laughter at the bar, music playing underneath, so I had to tip my head forward just to hear Kate. “Come here often?” I asked as she leaned across the table as well.<
br />
  “Once or twice.” She smirked. “Only place in town where eligible bachelors seem to gather on a Friday night.”

  I smiled. “And how’s that been going for you?”

  She scrunched up her face, which made her seem about ten years younger than what I had guessed, mid-thirties or so. “It’s getting old. Really, it’s the same crowd each time. Kind of impossible around here to meet someone you haven’t met before.” She spoke as if this were something she’d lost—a feeling I recognized well.

  “You from the city?” I asked.

  Her face lit up. “Pittsburgh. You?”

  “Boston,” I said.

  She smiled, spread her hands on the tabletop. “Allow me to lay it all out for you, then.” She tipped her head toward the bar. “Here’s the breakdown tonight: Far end, too young. In the middle, already have dates. Over there, guys’ night. If you make a move on one, you gotta deal with the whole thing of it, know what I mean?”

  Suddenly, I tried to picture Emmy here. Or Jim. I scanned the room, looking for him. For the worn jeans, the bowlegged stance. The too-long hair. Thought he might prefer a place a notch or two below this one, now that I knew more about him. Wondered if Emmy was the same.

  One of the men from Kate’s designated guys’ night slid off a barstool, leaving his beer behind. He turned around, and his eye caught mine. Kyle. With a slow smile, he raised his hand. I half-waved my fingers in response, and he continued on his way toward the sign for the restrooms.

  Kate’s eyes twinkled, and she raised an eyebrow in question.

  “Long story,” I said.

  “Those are the best kind,” she said.

  “Not this one. He interviewed me about Davis Cobb. Didn’t you speak with him, too?”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” She looked again, taking him in as he walked away. “Right, I guess so. I didn’t recognize him dressed down like that, and it was just for a few minutes. Sorry, Leah. I didn’t mean to pry about that. I just thought he was a cute guy on a barstool. Shit.”