“Really?” Maggie felt a sliver of pride. There had been a couple of boys in high school Emma had “dated” for a few months, and Maggie had always wondered. Wondered how it progressed, wondered why it ended exactly.
“Oh man, she blushed, like neon pink when she told me. I felt so bad for her. Like she’d never told anybody, and here she’d told someone she hardly knew.”
“I think that’s the whole point, though,” Maggie said. “If you happen to be a virgin, you use that information to kind of hold back men you hardly know. You tell lots of people.”
He blinked. “Well, I don’t think that she—I wasn’t coming on to her or anything. I don’t think that’s why she told me. She just needed to talk, I think.”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, she said she had a tiny bit of PTSD about sex, because once, she’d walked in on her fa—”
“Wow.” Maggie cut him off. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn’t know. Oh my goodness. She never told me. I never saw her! She didn’t make a peep!”
“Well, you were kinda busy,” he said with a small laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Sex can be traumatizing when you’re young. Looks kind of angry.”
“Yes,” she said, and she thought of Frank then, his swagger extending to the bedroom sometimes. Convincing her. Cajoling. Some would say manipulating, but he would never think so. He’d just think he was being charming. That was the problem with charm, when it spilled over the edge of sweet and became just another tool to have exactly what you wanted all the time.
“Wow. Well, Michael, you’ve been very helpful. I really appreciate it.” As they stood to leave, she touched his arm. “You used the phrase ‘go undercover.’ Do you think maybe she’s doing that now? We’re all worried that someone took her or that someone found out, but maybe, could she be disguised or pretending or—”
“It’s hard to say. I wish I knew her better,” he said wistfully.
She saw it in his eyes. The missed connections, the if-onlys. The things that kept you up at night about the one who got away. The strange position of liking a girl, knowing her only a little, yet sensing multitudes.
She wanted to know, suddenly, of how they met, what she looked like, what she was wearing. She knew if she asked Michael, asked him right now, he would remember every detail, down to the color of Emma’s shoes. She also knew, if she asked, how desperately sad it would feel. Like she was asking for a last glimpse. Like he was painting the last portrait of a ghost. She swallowed it down, this morbid impulse to know. She had to stop thinking these thoughts. They weren’t helping. She’d seen them on TV, these crazy mothers who insisted they’d know if their daughter was dead. Saying they felt her life force. That they knew she was out there, breathing somewhere, and that if they could just reach the person who’d taken her, they could talk him into giving her back. And here Maggie was, one of them. One of them thinking the exact same thing. I know she’s alive. I know it. Was she the exception to the rule or the rule?
“But if I had to guess, based on my hunch? I think she’s hiding.”
“Hiding?”
“Hiding and watching.”
“Without her phone?”
“I know your generation thinks we’re addicted to them and all, but the real question is, did she leave her computer behind?”
“No.”
“Well, then,” he said. “She’s writing.”
“She’s writing,” she repeated dumbly.
Of course she was. She was working on a story; that much everyone agreed on. She was somewhere, hiding and writing and waiting for all of it to come together. And writing could take a while, couldn’t it? There could be more to the story. People she needed to interview who didn’t know she was missing. Places she needed to investigate. A new thought struck Maggie with almost a physical blow—did she need to travel somewhere to talk to someone? Was something happening in another city? And couldn’t they check Emma’s debit card to help them figure that out?
A text buzzed on her phone. Kaplan, asking to meet in an hour.
She excused herself from Michael, saying she needed to go, but agreed to keep in touch. She held out her hand to shake his goodbye, and he opened his arms instead.
Those young arms, spread out with the warmth and compassion of an older man, were like a benediction to her. How long had it been, she thought, as she leaned in to him, since someone had hugged her without her offering, without her opening her arms first?
Thirty
Emma
Emma couldn’t help thinking, weirdly, of history books and Bibles. The photos and drawings and diary accounts she’d seen of tarring and feathering. Of stoning women. Of throwing witches into the sea to see if they’d drown. The rituals of history, of the church, the sins of the past, and now, here she was, in a circle. Judge and jury of mean girls staring back at her. Guilty and not guilty at the same time. But who could see that, other than her? By keeping this all to herself, close to the vest, she had no allies.
She sat in her own living room in a butterfly chair that was only comfortable if you were drunk or five years old, surrounded not by rocks to be thrown or matches to burn her at the stake but by empty, red Solo cups, a few spent Juul pods, and a stack of brown, recycled napkins they’d stolen from Starbucks instead of buying some. The knives stayed in the drawers. The scissors remained in their desks. No weapons, and yet she felt the threat. The threat was beyond the physical. These girls wanted to ruin her life, not her body.
“So, in Saudi Arabia,” Fiona said to the group, “they cut off people’s hands for stealing.”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Emma said hotly. “Check my pockets. Check my desk.”
She knew only one thing for certain: none of these girls were stupid enough to cut off her hand. In fact, all her assumptions about their intelligence levels were starting to shift. It was possible that every one of them was smarter than she’d assumed, grades aside. That was the thing—grades were a terrible measure of intelligence. Emma’s father used to say that whenever she got a B. But then she’d always think, does that mean my A means nothing? Does that mean all my hard work doesn’t matter to you?
“You didn’t steal because I walked in on you before you had found something you wanted.”
“No.”
“If you weren’t stealing her stuff,” Annie said, “then what were you doing?”
“Maybe she has a panty fetish,” Taylor said. “It’s a thing.”
Was that supposed to be a lifeline? If Emma presented herself at that moment as a lesbian panty eater, was she in the clear?
“Ew,” Morgan said.
“Well, whatever you were doing, it ends tonight.”
“Okay.”
“We can’t trust you anymore.”
“Look,” Emma said nervously, “I was just snooping. I don’t have sisters. I never had a roommate.” She looked at Taylor imploringly, eyes widening. She was the smartest, the most reasonable. Would she please just stand up to Fiona?
“You never went to camp?” Annie said, and Emma thought, of course that’s her reference. Didn’t everyone go to camp? Didn’t everyone sleep in a tent and sing around the campfire?
“No, Annie. Camp costs quite a bit of money.”
“It does?” Annie looked at Morgan, who shrugged. And there was the least intelligent of the group.
The glance Taylor gave Annie, with just a whiff of derision, spoke volumes. They weren’t that united, this group. Taylor wasn’t really like any of them. She just liked drama, Emma thought. And if that was the case, maybe Emma could make her come around. Wasn’t an explosive story the ultimate drama? Wouldn’t Taylor love to be Deep Throat if she got the chance?
“Well, I don’t want you in my room anymore,” Fiona said.
“Well, we’re not switching,” Morgan added. “We don’t want her either.”
Emma thought abo
ut offering to transfer to another dorm, but that wouldn’t help her with her story. But if they told the RA she was stealing, she’d be expelled.
“Give me your room key,” Fiona said.
“Where am I supposed to sleep?”
“You can keep the key to the main door, and you are welcome to stay on the couch. Where we can see you.”
“What about my stuff?”
“Well, turnabout’s fair play, right?”
“What?”
“We’ll go through it and decide what you can keep. Starting with your phone.”
“My phone?” Emma thought of the two phones in her backpack, which glowed in her mind as if being x-rayed, as if they were bombs.
Fiona put out her hand, wiggling her fingers impatiently, like there was an electric current in them, jangling. She was always in a hurry, on her own schedule. Tapping her foot outside the bathroom, gritting her teeth waiting for their turquoise Keurig to brew. Emma decided to take her time.
Emma unzipped the backpack carefully, listening to the sound, enjoying it just a little. She loved knowing the burner phone was in a separate pocket, hidden by a book and her laptop. The value of an old backpack—no one knew its tricks. No one wanted to touch it. And no one expected little Emma O’Farrell to have anything to hide.
She dug around for her iPhone as if she didn’t know precisely where it was. She brandished it slowly, a bit dramatically, as if she couldn’t bear to part with it.
The look on Fiona’s face transformed her. She didn’t look pretty anymore. Her features were pointed. Without bronzer and contour, she had no cheekbones. Her eyes were set too close together, and when she squinted, as she did at Emma’s phone, they almost looked cross-eyed. Were these thoughts true revelation or retaliation? Was it Emma’s brain’s way of getting back at her, seeing her clearly, judging her? Maybe.
Her mother used to say it derisively about people on the covers of magazines or on TV: She’s all hair. She’s nothing without that hair. For who would know that better than her mother, who saw women at their most vulnerable, hair darker and wet and flat against their heads like animals? Their features either fell away or stood out. The hair protected them, shiny and glinting, catching the eye first. You had to look more closely to see what a person was actually made of. Now Emma actually looked. And now she saw how right her mother was. Fiona was nothing without that hair and those high heels. She was just a scrawny, pinched girl with long legs, doing the best she could, using what she had. Legs and hair, legs and hair. Emma almost felt sorry for her. How far could one person travel with only two assets?
They left her on the couch, and she could hear them behind the door in her room, opening drawers, laughing. Shoes hit the ground. Hangers swung. Were they trying on her clothes? Taking pictures? She didn’t know whether they were laughing at her clothes or the few contacts and photos left on her phone, and she didn’t particularly want to know. It almost seemed like performance art, the way Taylor followed and Annie and Morgan trailed behind. A show. A production. Borrowed clothes, posing, like something they’d do at summer camp. Emma thought of the first girl at school who’d worn a bra in third grade. A chubby girl named Amber, a dark, greasy girl who didn’t match the magic of that name. The boys had found out, had bribed a girl to ferret the bra out during gym class when they were swimming. They’d looped it over Amber’s locker, and she had to go the whole day without it until she found it, breasts swinging, her small nipples poking from beneath her white polo shirt. Was that all her roommates were doing now? Some version of that? She didn’t know. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
She tried to settle in on the small, stiff, cotton-covered sofa. She listened to the flat notes of her roommates’ laughter down the hall, the only music now. She thought of Cara Stevens, working at the Inquirer, in an office filled with books and files and silence. Her bosses hadn’t supported what she was doing. But at least they weren’t trying on her clothes and making her sleep on a sofa. And if Cara’s peers were laughing at her and thinking she was an idiot, at least they weren’t doing it in front of her, within earshot. There was something to be said for people doing things behind your back. Sometimes, you just didn’t want to know.
Thirty-One
Maggie
It was a long walk from Eighteenth and Chestnut to the precinct, but the weather was cool, and the trees to the north, lining the parkway, were starting to turn colors, and Maggie decided she needed the air. She would cut over to Broad Street eventually, when the neighborhood turned more transitional, but for now, she just looked at the stores, the window boxes outside the restaurants, the trees dotting the sidewalk in heavy planters. There were other people walking in a city, always, moving through their lives like nothing was the matter. Frank used to take long walks, trying to puzzle out his cases, walking through their suburban neighborhood, the only person without a dog or a stroller or a cigarette. Everyone walks now, for their health, but for many years in Ardmore, no one did unless they had a reason. And Frank’s reasons were all internal and more numerous than Maggie had bargained for. Did he call Salt during those walks or just think of her? Maggie had suspected a girlfriend existed before she knew; Frank had started going to the gym, had bought new underwear. Weren’t those the classic signs? Once she’d caught him using her eye cream, dotting it on the creases that appeared at the corners of his eyes, and she’d laughed at him, told him that he should have started twenty years ago, wearing sunscreen. That nothing could help him now, it was too late. She felt sick, thinking of those words. How right she’d been.
But now, angry as she was, she missed her husband deeply. Not because he knew better what to do—she’d learned plenty over the years after all—but because he’d go off the playbook. A mother going crazy with grief is a harridan, easy to dismiss. But a father? A cop? He was a vigilante, not to be crossed. Frank would know the exact moment to take that editor kid and twist a rep tie around his neck until he gave up his so-called sources. Frank would handcuff those roommates in a squad car for jaywalking and refuse to allow them a phone call until they confessed. Frank would make it happen. Only a slightly dirty cop, an old-school cop, could make it happen. Not Kaplan. Going by the book took time. And who had time?
Maggie cut over to Broad Street, passing a church, a school. The bell in the tower chimed as she walked by, and she wondered if Emma had thought to go to church for solace, for moral protection, for guidance. It was hard to imagine her doing so. That was what Maggie and her sister had often done as young girls, turned to quiet prayer, to reflection to guide them. Now, girls did yoga and used meditation apps. They paid money to go somewhere and float in water or nap on clean sheets. And why? When the filtered light from stained glass was there for free on nearly every corner?
Above Broad Street, Maggie passed the downsized offices of the Inquirer, an upscale barbecue place across from an old-school diner, a mix of new and old in this area of the city. She smiled, thinking of Frank’s hatred of craft beer and artisanal burgers, his Philly accent tripping over the word artisanal.
By the time she reached the front door of the precinct, she was almost calm. Her blood pressure, which had seemed to do nothing but rise since she’d gotten that first visit at the salon, had settled down a bit. Walking had calmed her, just like Frank. So she should have been ready for whatever Kaplan had to say, but the look on his face as he came up to greet her was grim.
“There have been a few developments,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said, her hand going up to her chest. Had her long walk been the last moment of peace she would ever find? She knew “development” could be a euphemism. Was it code for “finding a body”?
“It’s okay. It’s nothing definitive. But let’s go to the video room.”
“Video,” she said dumbly.
“Are you okay? Do you need water?” He said it clinically, like a nurse, but she tried not
to hold that against him.
Behind him, Salt came up and took her arm. “It’s okay. Take a deep breath.”
“Did you find—”
“No, no, no. We got the security camera footage back, among other things. It’s going to help. We’re getting closer.”
“It doesn’t show—”
“No.”
Kaplan shot Salt a look Maggie didn’t understand. Was she contradicting him? Was she just saying whatever needed to be said to calm her down and keep her from fainting?
Salt guided her to a room, set her down in a chair, then sat down next to her.
“You’re wondering if there’s violence or worried that there’s blood or something you can’t handle seeing,” she said calmly, and Maggie swallowed hard and gave a small nod. “And there isn’t. It’s helpful, though, so let’s go through it together and talk about it, okay?”
“Okay,” she said. She drank the water they gave her.
“Unless you don’t want to look? We can just describe it, but we thought you’d—”
“Yes, yes, I want to see it.”
A technician came in, sat at the computer. A box of tissues nestled next to him, and that scared her, too. It all scared her. She knew some crimes were solved solely on the basis of security footage. People forgot the cameras were there. People thought they were in disguise. People were stupid, and cameras were smart.
Maggie thought of her mother, telling her and her sister to be strong at her grandmother’s funeral. She always said the best way to stop crying was to pretend you were drinking something through a straw and holding it in. It had worked, but it also meant she and her sister had walked around the funeral home with pursed lips all day. It was one thing for a girl to cry over a death and another for a mother to cry over evidence. She didn’t want to be that woman, but she was that woman. She was that girl, and now she was that woman, scared and sad with a reservoir full of unshed tears.
They said the first view they had was outside Lenape Library. There was footage that was clearly Emma, arriving late morning, leaving before dinner, almost every day. The times were slightly different, but nothing else. She looked pretty, clean, neatly dressed. Completely normal except she wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look unhappy exactly, but the word businesslike occurred to Maggie. That, and though she passed lots of clusters of kids, she was always alone, with her backpack. The inside camera showed she walked past the tables of study groups and went to the computer area.
Where She Went Page 18
