A Simple Favor

by Darcey Bell

  Instead I said the next worst thing.

  “Mr. Prager, this is Stephanie. A friend of my late wife’s.”

  “I see.” Prager looked her up and down. “Pleased to meet you.” They shook hands.

  “Mr. Prager works for the insurance company.”

  “What insurance company?” said Stephanie. Brilliantly, I thought. Maybe Stephanie was a few IQ points smarter than I’d given her credit for.

  “Emily and I had a policy,” I said.

  “Really?” said Stephanie. “I had no idea.”

  “A two-million-dollar policy, to be exact,” said Mr. Prager.

  “Oh, wait, that’s right,” said Stephanie. “I blogged about it.” She was covering for herself, just in case Mr. Prager read her blog. As I should have, all along.

  Stephanie plopped herself down on the couch, and I sat next to her, not too close. The couch was enormous. There was plenty of room. Prager sat on the edge of the club chair.

  Stephanie offered him coffee, water, tea. Mr. Prager politely declined.

  He said, “As I’m sure you folks realize, everyone is different. People have different ways of doing things, different reasons for doing them. Only rarely do we understand what anyone does or why they do it. Though you could say that’s my job. To understand people. So there we have it.”

  “Mr. Prager . . .” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Your late wife, Emily. I have been trying to think how I could phrase this in the least upsetting way. But there’s really nothing to be done but say this as simply as I can.”

  “Say what?” I couldn’t mute my impatience.

  “Right,” said Mr. Prager. “We have begun to think that your wife may still be alive.”

  It took all my strength of will not to flinch. “Why in the world would you think that?”

  From the corner of my eye, I caught Stephanie giving me an “I told you so” look. Stephanie was an idiot. She had no idea how catastrophic this was.

  Prager shook his head. It was hard to tell if he was mournful or amused.

  I said, “But I saw the autopsy report.”

  Prager said, “Of course you did . . . Well, then . . . I’m afraid there are some very unpleasant parts to this that you might not wish to hear. Some people prefer not to have certain images lodged forever in their minds. That would be your choice. As I said, everyone is different.”

  “I don’t know,” Stephanie said. “I might be one of those people who doesn’t want certain images stuck in her head.”

  “Then you can leave the room,” I said.

  Prager shrank back, almost involuntarily, as some well-behaved people do in the presence of domestic tension.

  “I’ll go check on the boys. Then I’ll be back,” she said. Warningly, it seemed to me.

  When she left the room, Mr. Prager said, “Let me say what I mean. I’m talking about the autopsy report.”

  “I read it,” I said.

  “Once again . . . everyone will read something like that a different way. When I read it, for example, I was struck by certain things that might not have occurred to someone else. Someone not in my line of work. For example, there was the fact that the dead woman had been missing a front tooth for quite a long time. Long enough for there to have been bone growth over the gap. Mr. Townsend, I assume you would have known if your wife was missing a front tooth.”

  “I think I would have known something like that,” I said.

  I was frightened now, really frightened. If the dead woman wasn’t Emily, who was it? Obviously, this was a question I should have asked myself as soon as I saw Emily at the restaurant in Manhattan. But somehow I’d managed to put it out of my mind. It was as if I’d persuaded myself that the dead woman—the body with my wife’s DNA—wasn’t merely dead but had never existed.

  “I agree,” said Prager. “You would likely have known that. And being that your wife worked in the fashion industry, we assume that, if she were missing a tooth, a dental implant would have been part, one might say, of her culture.”

  “I would assume so.” My head felt suddenly heavy.

  “Well, the woman in the lake had never had an implant. Just the missing tooth.”

  “Then it wasn’t my wife,” I said. “Except that it was. The DNA was a match.”

  “We think it might have been her sister,” said Mr. Prager.

  “Sister? Emily was an only child. What sister?”

  Mr. Prager massaged his balding head and looked at me with what was clearly amazement.

  “Mr. Townsend,” he said, “Did you really not know that your wife was a twin?”

  “Are you making this up? Are you sure you have the right woman?”

  “Mr. Townsend, how is this even possible? Do you mind my asking how a person can live with someone, be married to someone, and not know that she has a sibling? Not just a sibling, but a twin.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain. She always said that she was an only child. I didn’t think she—I didn’t think anyone—would lie about something like that.” Prager could tell I was telling the truth, at least about this. Knowing when someone was lying was what he did for a living.

  Prager said, “May I say that your wife sounds like a very unusual woman.”

  Stephanie said, “What’s going on?”

  I hadn’t heard her come in.

  I said, “Stephanie, did you know that Emily was a twin?”

  “Are you joking? You’re joking.” Stephanie was a terrible liar. She’d known. How could she not have told me? How could this not have come up? I suppose there was a lot that Stephanie and I didn’t say to each other. I’d seen no reason to mention the fact that Miles was her brother’s son. Maybe Stephanie and I got along better that way. Maybe the only way to get along with another person is to tell huge lies of omission. Emily had certainly told some gigantic lies. When did Stephanie find out that Emily was a twin? Had she always known? Was that information on her blog too?

  I wondered, as Mr. Prager had said, how could I not have known? It made me question everything, and my entire past suddenly seemed foggy and unclear. In what way had my marriage been a marriage?

  Stephanie and Mr. Prager and I stared at the Diane Arbus photo above the mantel. It was as if we all noticed it at the same time. No one spoke for a while.

  “Well, there you are,” said Mr. Prager. “There are some outstanding questions, and of course the larger question about when and what we plan to tell the legal authorities, who will doubtless turn it into another sort of investigation. Or maybe they won’t. Maybe they will do less than I am doing now, which is what’s happened so far. But the matter will have to be cleared up, of course, before there’s any question of payment.”

  “Of course. When do you think that will happen? By when?” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the pleading note from strangling my voice.

  “Soon enough,” said Mr. Prager. “Meanwhile, though it’s not in my legal authority, I would like to ask you both, as a courtesy, not to travel very far from here for any length of time.”

  “Absolutely not!” I said because I thought it sounded as if I was innocent.

  “Our kids are in school,” said Captain Mom, a bit self-righteously, I thought. But I couldn’t blame Stephanie for playing the mother card.

  “Naturally,” said Mr. Prager. “I’m a great fan of your blog.”

  He got up and dusted himself off. He shook our hands and thanked us. He gave us each one of his cards. He told us to please feel free to call him at any hour of the day or night if we had any thoughts about this or any other subject, or needless to say, if we heard from my wife . . . He told us to stay in touch.

  He said he could let himself out, and we let him. We had no choice. We watched him go. Stephanie and I couldn’t get up off the couch.

  “Did you know?” I said. “How did you know about Emily’s twin? How could you not tell me?”

  “There are things you don’t tell me,” she said. “Everyone has secrets.”
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  Stephanie's Blog

  For Real: When a Friend Asks for Help

  Hi, moms!

  How do we moms know when something is real? How can we tell when our child is sick or when he is only pretending in order to stay home from school? The first few times, we get it wrong, but we learn. How do we know when our friend so desperately needs our help that we must forget the mixed feelings and awkward times we may have experienced in the past and we do what she needs, because it’s real, and we have to help?

  It’s a gift that mothers develop, a built-in you-know-what detector, an instinct for the truth that can help us in our non-mom lives, in the many kinds of careers and artistic pursuits that we engage in at the same time as being moms. It is why women are so expert in the so-called caring professions and in ordinary family caring. It’s why we make such good friends.

  We know when our friend is asking us, really asking, for a simple favor. It’s the way a friend says please. And we do what she needs, no matter what.

  I’ll have more to say about this, for sure. For now, I’ve got to run. I’m meeting a friend, and I think I may have important things to take care of that may keep me from blogging for a while.

  More soon, or as soon as I can.

  Love, in haste,

  Stephanie

  36

  Stephanie

  Mr. Prager’s visit was extremely upsetting. Sean and I stopped communicating. We didn’t trust each other, that much was clear. Maybe we never had.

  I was intrigued to learn that Mr. Prager read my blog—another sign of how far my message in a bottle has traveled, how distant a shore it’s washed up on. I was tempted to read back as far as I could to see if I’d posted anything incriminating. But whom would I have incriminated?

  After Mr. Prager left, I asked Sean what was going on. Could he please—finally—tell me the truth? Had he and Emily pretended she was dead in order to collect an insurance payout? Had they played me? Was I the sucker in their scheme? Was I still?

  He insisted that nothing like that had happened. He claimed that he was as confused as I was. He’d really believed that Emily had died. Otherwise . . . He didn’t have to explain. I knew what he meant. Otherwise he wouldn’t have invited me to share his life.

  He was understandably fixated on the fact that Emily was a twin. And I had to admit: That was a very strange thing to learn about your wife of six years. I’d been shocked to find that out—and she’d only been my friend for a relatively short time.

  Had Emily ever told me the truth? Was Sean being truthful now? Not knowing should have made me hate them both. It was weird that it didn’t.

  I was going to have to make some changes. Though perhaps they’d be made for me. What if Sean and Emily both went to jail? Had I been chosen and groomed to take care of Nicky in case the worst happened? Emily hadn’t been thinking of the worst that could happen. She wasn’t even thinking of Nicky. Or the two million dollars. The lying and the game were what had gotten her high. The lying to everyone. Especially me.

  I had a momentary fantasy: What if Emily and Sean were sent to jail and I got custody of Nicky? I’d always wanted to have a second child. Allowing myself to let that thought cross my mind, even for a split second, made me feel so guilty that I pinched myself to make the fantasy go away.

  There were so many questions that Sean hadn’t asked Mr. Prager. If the dead woman was Emily’s twin sister, how did Emily’s sister die? They already knew that. She’d drowned, her system overloaded with alcohol and pills.

  * * *

  A week or so after Mr. Prager’s visit, out of area came up on caller ID.

  I knew I should despise Emily. She’d lied to me. She’d mistreated me. She’d betrayed our friendship. She’d terrorized me. She’d stalked me from the woods behind her house and entered my house when I wasn’t there. So I cannot explain how happy it made me just to hear my friend’s voice. I can’t pretend, even to myself, that my emotions make sense.

  Emily said, “Stephanie. It’s me. I desperately need you to help me. Please.”

  The way she said please made me want to blog about it—about helping a friend in need. About how we know when a friend really and truly needs us. I could never write the whole truth. But I wanted to write about why I couldn’t say no. Maybe if I blogged about it, I would understand myself and why I did what I did, why I was willing to forget, or at least overlook, all the awful things that Emily had done to me.

  All I knew now was that Emily needed my help. She’d gotten herself into a dangerous situation.

  She said, “A man is following me. He’s been following me for a couple of weeks. He’s not making a big effort to stay hidden. I don’t know what he wants.”

  “What does he look like?” I said.

  “Middle-aged. Light-skinned black guy. Always in a suit and a bow tie. He looks a little like that hit man on The Wire.”

  “I never saw The Wire.” I was stalling for time.

  “Jesus, Stephanie, no one cares if you saw The Wire.” In all the time we’d been friends, she’d never spoken to me in that tone. Why not tell her the truth? Especially when everyone else was lying.

  “There was a man here who sounds like the guy you’re describing,” I said. “He’s an investigator from the insurance company. He’s looking into the claim that you and Sean took out. Your accidental death.”

  “I knew it,” Emily said. “I don’t know why. But I knew it. That’s the vibe I got off the guy. This is bad. Did Sean tell him where I was?”

  “Emily,” I said, “Calm down. Sean doesn’t know where you are. I don’t know where you are. Remember? The last I knew, you were in the woods, watching me.” It was the most critical (and the nerviest) thing I’d ever said to her, and I was holding my breath. But Emily wasn’t thinking about my tone—or about our friendship.

  “I don’t know how he found me, then. Maybe Mother’s license plate turned up on some CCTV footage.”

  “Be careful,” I said. “He’s not a stupid guy. He gives the impression of being a little bumbling, but I think he notices and registers every little thing.”

  “Stephanie, I need to see you.” Emily’s voice had tears in it. I’d never heard her sound like that, either. “I need to talk to you. I need your advice. I need a friend.”

  I knew that I was speaking to someone who had lied about some very important things. She’d lied to her husband, to me. She probably lied to herself. But I was also a liar. And she was my friend. I believed her.

  This might be my only chance to get an explanation, to find out what she really thinks. Who she really is. There was so much she’d kept to herself. Emily’s secrets were as dark as mine. Maybe darker.

  You could say we were meant to be friends. We could still help each other.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll come see you. But you have to promise that you’ll tell me the truth this time. No more lies, no more secrets.”

  “I promise,” Emily said.

  * * *

  Emily asked me to meet her in the bar of a Sheraton Hotel beside the interstate, about thirty miles from our town, on a weekday in the middle of the day. Neither of us had to say that the boys would be in school and that Sean would be in the city. We didn’t need to mention their names.

  She said that she needed to meet me in a public place. Public, but private. Anonymous. “No one who knows me can see us. We should probably meet in an underground parking garage.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I laughed. I could tell that I was supposed to laugh.

  “Do you understand, Stephanie?”

  Once more I said I understood, though I didn’t. But maybe I would soon.

  She said, “Could I ask you one more favor? Well . . . maybe two.”

  “What is it?” I said guardedly. Hadn’t I done Emily enough favors?

  “Could you bring my ring?” she said. “My engagement ring from Sean.”

  “I know where he keeps it,” I said, then wished I
hadn’t. What a ridiculous thing to say. It would only remind her of my intimate knowledge of Sean and his habits.

  “I know you do,” she said.

  “How do you know that?”

  She didn’t answer. Could she have seen me through the window when I looked through Sean’s desk? Or was she bluffing, trying to unsettle me more than she already had?

  “And another thing . . . this sounds a little weird. Could you bring me Sean’s hairbrush? And don’t, you know, feel that you have to clean it.”

  I sensed trouble. Real trouble. Had I learned nothing during this terrible time? Hadn’t my trust in my fellow humans been damaged beyond repair? Did I still believe in friendship? In the natural bonds between moms?

  My brain was no longer in control, if it had ever been. My heart was calling the shots. My heart was speaking to my friend. My heart said, Yes. What day? What time? What place? I’ll be there.

  I arrived first, on purpose. Emily had picked a strange place. A bar from another decade. A throwback. It was decorated like a fake library with fake books, which were actually part of the wallpaper, and a fake fire burning in a fake fireplace. Like an English gentleman’s club, except that it was in a hotel on a small rise just above the interstate. In the middle of nowhere.

  All that fake decor—was Emily saying something about the fake nature of our friendship?

  The bar was comfortable, and I didn’t mind nibbling on microwaved baked potato skins while I waited for her to arrive. There were only two other customers, an elderly tourist couple already on their dessert and coffee. The husband went to the men’s room and took forever. Then it was the wife’s turn. She took so long that her husband went to the bathroom again after she got back to the table. They weren’t much fun to watch. I missed Davis. We would never grow old together like that couple.