Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  As we drove back to East Hampton, I kept my eyes fixed on the road. Oliver was talking but I wasn’t listening. That night with Kyle—it would be four years ago in November—that night when I used Stella’s name, it had imparted a kind of magical confidence boost. It made me bigger and brighter. More memorable than I’d ever been. It turned out it was easy to become a completely different kind of person. How much had I told him, those years ago? Had I given him a last name? This was a risk I hadn’t foreseen. A chink in the armor.

  “Stella used to come out here a lot,” Oliver said. I snapped back to attention. “A friend of hers had a house on Georgica Pond. Did you ever go there?”

  He glanced over at me. “I don’t mean to dredge up old memories,” he said. “But this drive always reminds me of her.”

  There was a sign on the side of the road, reflective white letters on green paint. We zipped past it. “What did that say?” I asked, certain I hadn’t read it correctly.

  “Oh.” Oliver smiled. “The name of the road. Around here it’s called Lost at Sea Memorial Pike. Isn’t that poetic?”

  My stomach gave a painful lurch. “Can you pull over?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oliver,” I said. “Please.”

  The car hadn’t even come to a stop when I opened the door and hurled the contents of my stomach onto the gravel shoulder. The waves kept coming, even when there was nothing left to expel. I spat and coughed the bitter bile from my mouth.

  Lost at Sea. I closed my eyes and saw Stella: her eyes vacant and her mouth agape, her hair floating loose in the dark ocean water as her dead weight tugged her deeper.

  Guilt wasn’t as simple as you might believe. It wasn’t remorse or regret. It wasn’t a desire to go back in time and do things differently. It was walking around with knowledge that you alone possessed. Knowledge that takes up more space because there’s no one to share it with. In its specificity, in its intricacy, in its persistent details—the sloshing of the waves, the dark smear of blood, the coin-like moon—the truth weighed more than a hundred theories combined.

  “Did you hear about the shake-up?”

  It was rare that Jamie beat me into the office, but Oliver and I had driven back that Monday morning, to extend the weekend. Jamie watched me drop the duffel bag to the floor and kick it under my desk. “How was the Hamptons?” he said.

  “Fine. Too cold to swim. What’s the shake-up?”

  “They want fresh faces. Out with the old, in with the new!” Jamie spread his arms wide in punctuation. Then he grimaced. “Guess how many times I’ve heard that line.”

  “What does this actually mean?”

  “It means they fired a bunch of people because they were getting bad ratings. They’re revamping the nine o’clock and ten o’clock hours, and the Sunday morning show, too.”

  “Bill of Rights? I kind of like it the way it is.”

  “At least we’ll be rid of that terrible name.” Jamie shook his head. “Fire the anchor named Bill and you can’t really call it that, can you? That’s the biggest change. New studio, new anchor, whole new staff. Bill’s EP was fired, too.”

  My computer booted up, and I opened my e-mail. I was happy to be back to work. Even being out for one day on Friday felt funny. I could keep track of the action, the e-mails and texts flying back and forth, but I couldn’t be a part of it. Not really. The important stuff happened face-to-face.

  Case in point: Eliza and Rebecca, standing in a corner of the newsroom. The expression on Eliza’s face was slightly grim. In theory, Frontline had nothing to worry about during this shake-up. Our ratings had been rock-solid since the Danner special. Rebecca was the critical darling of KCN, and the cash cow to boot. But change was always dicey. What if the new 9 o’clock anchor was a star, and they decided to groom him or her to take Rebecca’s place? The shoddy state of 9 o’clock and 10 o’clock wasn’t of concern to Rebecca or Eliza. In fact, the worse everyone else was, the better we looked. Frontline generated the lead-in that pushed a healthy audience into subsequent hours. As long as we were the best, the executives couldn’t touch us.

  Rebecca and Eliza and Ginny: an outsider might think they were on the same team, but their goals were often at odds. If Rebecca and Eliza wanted a moat of mediocrity around the shining example of Frontline, Ginny wanted the opposite. It was her job to make sure that KCN was the best—or at least competently good—in every hour. I always thought of Ginny as the referee between the high-strung personalities in the newsroom. But who would be the referee if it came down to Rebecca versus Ginny?

  Later that day, as we emerged from our afternoon rundown meeting, I saw Ginny waiting for Eliza. The printer was conveniently located near Eliza’s office. I lingered over it, pretending to examine some papers while the two of them talked.

  “We’re down to a few finalists, and I’d like your opinion,” Ginny said.

  “Does it really matter?” Eliza said. “I won’t be working with them.”

  “Of course it matters.” Ginny sounded irritated. “And you may very well be. They could wind up filling in when Rebecca’s on vacation.”

  “Well, don’t tell her that. She’ll have a fit.”

  “Don’t coddle her, Eliza. She knows the reality. I’d like her to meet the candidates, too.”

  The next morning, Ginny brought the first person to the newsroom. This woman was in her late thirties, had ditched law school for journalism school, was currently a reporter for a network affiliate in Washington. She was pretty, although she wasn’t doing herself any favors with her chunky heels and polyester skirt-suit. I watched Rebecca give her a quick up-and-down glance and mouth “No way” at Eliza. What made that woman so appealing to Ginny was also what made her problematic to Rebecca. The raw potential: she was intelligent and authentic, just waiting for a professional to cut and polish her skills. But there was only room for one smart and attractive brunette in prime time.

  Ginny returned an hour later. The next candidate was a man. I glimpsed him from behind before he went into Rebecca’s office. He was tall, with a deep voice and an evident comfort; he had taken off his suit jacket, draped it over one arm. From Rebecca’s office came his booming laugh.

  That laugh. That’s what did it for me.

  When he and Ginny left Rebecca’s office, I stood up from my desk. He caught my eye, and his smile dropped away. Confusion replaced it, and then delight. “Just a second,” he said, touching Ginny on the arm and walking toward me.

  “Corey Molina,” I said.

  He smiled. “Violet Trapp.”

  When I was in high school, Corey had seemed like such a grown-up. But he had been just a kid back then, an overcaffeinated stick figure in a baggy suit. Now, when he hugged me, I felt his broad back muscles straining beneath his shirt. His face was tanned, his hair salted with strands of silver. He’d gotten better with age.

  “This is so weird,” he said.

  I laughed. “Tell me about it.”

  “Not often you see someone from our neck of the woods in Manhattan, huh?”

  “I’m sorry to break up this little reunion,” Ginny interjected with a brittle smile. “But I have to get Mr. Molina to our next meeting.”

  Corey’s gaze flicked between Ginny and me, sizing up the dynamic. “Of course. Just had to say hello to an old friend.” Before he followed Ginny to the elevator, he murmured, “I’ll send you an e-mail, okay?”

  “You know him?” Rebecca said, after they walked away.

  “His wife was my history teacher in high school. He worked for the CBS affiliate in Tallahassee. Small world.”

  “Ex-wife,” Rebecca said.

  “What?”

  “No wedding ring.”

  “I didn’t even notice.”

  She shrugged. “I meet a guy who looks like that, that’s where my eye goes.”

  I laughed. “And how does Mr. Rebecca Carter feel about this tendency?”

  “You’re funny, kid. Number one, you don’t get to talk
until you’ve been married a hundred years like me. Number two, it’s an old habit. Waitressing, I learned to check.”

  “The single guys tipped better?”

  “Nope. The married guys who wanted to pretend to be single for the night. Eliza!” Rebecca shouted across the newsroom. “So what did you think?”

  “He looks the part,” Eliza said. “I don’t know. Six out of ten.”

  “Tough crowd,” Rebecca said. “Violet here can vouch for him.”

  “Really?” Eliza cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

  “Let’s do this over lunch,” Rebecca said. “My date canceled and there’s a table at Michael’s with my name on it. You’re coming with us, Violet. We want the gossip.”

  When I got back from lunch, there was an e-mail from Corey waiting in my in-box.

  Dinner on Friday? the subject line said. In the body of the e-mail: I’m new here, so you name the time and place, city slicker.

  As the week crept by, my initial reaction to seeing Kyle—tremors, vomiting—seemed overblown. Each passing day was a step toward freedom. By Tuesday he would have said something, surely. By Wednesday I was almost starting to relax. And then, on Thursday morning, Anne called.

  “Someone saw her,” she said, before I could even say hello. “Some bartender on Long Island. Walter is driving out right now, to talk to him.”

  “Wow,” I managed to say.

  “I’m running to catch a flight home.” She sounded breathless. Behind her was the babble of an airport announcement in another language. Italian, or maybe Spanish. “You and Oliver should plan to come up tomorrow morning. We need a family meeting right away.”

  “Of course.” I squeezed my eyes closed, took a deep breath.

  “Oh, God, Violet. I knew she was alive. I knew it.”

  Oliver was spending the night at the apartment. Around midnight, he switched off the TV and stood up from the couch. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” he asked.

  “I won’t be able to sleep,” I said. My mind was spinning through the same frantic loop. What would Kyle say? If they put it together, my borrowing Stella’s name so many years ago, how bad would that look? I reached for the remote and flicked the TV back on. I found it soothing, the blare and repetition of news and commercials, news and commercials.

  Oliver looked at me like I was a simpleton. “The police get these bogus tips all the time. Walter probably only brought this up because he’s trying to justify his salary.”

  “That’s pretty cynical.”

  “My sister is gone, Violet. Whatever happened happened.” He yawned, stretching his arms above his head. Oliver was truly a sociopath. “Don’t let this get to you.”

  Fazio was stuck in traffic and running late. The wait was excruciating: Thomas and Oliver talking stiffly about work and Thomas’s preparations for Everest, and Anne chattering about her travels, the times she was certain she had spotted Stella, only to realize it was someone else, which made sense now, given that Stella was on Long Island. Ginny nodded and held Anne’s hand, glancing over at me several times, skeptically. My pale exhaustion must have been obvious, even with concealer and blush.

  Anne liked having Ginny there. She filled the role Anne was no longer capable of filling: the levelheaded woman, the person who kept track of the details. When Fazio arrived, Ginny answered the door, took his coat, offered him coffee. Anne herself was nothing but nerves, crossed legs jiggling as the detective took his seat.

  “I talked to this young man last night,” Fazio said. “The bartender who claims he saw Stella. He says he first met her over three years ago, and recognized her as she was leaving the bar last Friday night. It took him a few days to put together that this was the same person he’d been hearing about in the news.”

  He paused. “I hesitated to bring this up. I’m afraid this might not get us anywhere. But it’s been a while since we had a fresh lead, and I know you like to be kept in the loop.”

  “Of course, of course,” Anne said, nodding vigorously. She had been calling Fazio every day for updates. Oliver looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, here’s the catch,” Fazio said. “The bartender says she didn’t look like the picture on the news. Similar, but not the same. She didn’t answer to the name Stella when he approached her, and then she left the bar abruptly. I asked him if he was certain this was the same person. He said it could be, accounting for the makeup that TV people wear.”

  “And where precisely was this, Mr. Fazio?” Ginny said.

  “In Sag Harbor. At a bar called the East End Tavern.”

  “That’s where we were on Friday,” Oliver said.

  “What?” Anne said.

  “Violet and I,” Oliver said calmly. Across the room, Ginny’s eyebrows shot up. “We had a drink before dinner. The American is under renovation right now, which is too bad. But if Stella was there, she was doing a good job hiding. We must have been there for, what, Violet, an hour? Right around the time this man claims to have seen her.”

  “Was there a security camera?” Ginny asked.

  “No,” Fazio said. I felt a ping of relief.

  “This cannot be a coincidence,” Anne said. “Stella appearing at the same bar as Oliver and Violet? She’s getting ready to come home, isn’t she? Maybe she’s been watching us! Doesn’t that make sense?”

  Anne’s eyes were wild with hope and pain, looking for someone to agree with her theory. “Well?” she said, when the five of us remained silent. “She wants to see how we’re doing, doesn’t she? She misses us. She wants to be with her family.”

  “Anne,” Ginny said quietly, taking her hand again.

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Bradley, I think this guy may be another crank,” Fazio said. “I was hopeful at first, too. He seemed certain. But maybe he recognized Oliver from the news. Or maybe he overheard them talking about Stella. He figured this was his chance for attention. And Oliver and Violet being at the same bar that night would give his story some credibility.”

  “No,” Anne said. “No. I don’t get it. Why would he do that?”

  “In a case like this, you get a lot of bad tips. We’ve had them from the beginning.”

  “Should we talk to him?” Thomas said. “See if anything he says rings a bell?”

  “With all due respect, Mr. Bradley, I spent several hours questioning him. I can show you the footage of the interview, if you’d like. And he’s been in for larceny, breaking and entering, a DUI. He’s behind on his alimony. I suspect this is a scheme to make money.”

  The tattoos on Kyle’s forearms. The soft eyes, concealing some long-ago mistake. He was a kind man, an honest man, but certain things are held against you forever.

  “So, what? We just ignore this?” Anne said. “We haven’t made any progress?”

  “Mom,” Oliver said. “Calm down. You’re making yourself hysterical.”

  “Don’t you condescend to me,” she snapped. “What the hell is wrong with all of you? Why don’t you care?”

  I felt nauseous. I had thought Anne might react to Stella’s disappearance like before, with a cool and correct bearing. But in these months without closure, the raw pain had transformed her. Her color was high. Her hair was long and her skin tanned. She looked younger, inflamed with purpose. Her old armor of cashmere and pearls and La Mer had concealed the resemblance. But with that discarded, it was staggering.

  She looked just like her daughter.

  Thomas’s eyes brimmed with tears as he watched his wife snatch up her purse and car keys. Oliver was staring at the floor. Ginny hovered behind Anne, murmuring softly. But Anne refused to be consoled. The pain hadn’t lessened as the months went by. Now it was springtime. The air softening, the trees shimmering with green. The world was renewing itself, but Stella was still gone. Anne shook her head and said, “This is useless. If you won’t look for her”—she pointed at Fazio, then Thomas, then Oliver—“then I’ll just keep doing it myself.”

  In the silence after Anne slammed the front door, Thoma
s retreated to his study. Ginny hugged Oliver goodbye. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said quietly. “We’re going to make this right.” She stepped back, then she gave me a cold stare.

  After Ginny left, Oliver shook his head. “I knew it was nothing.” He sighed. “What a waste of time. Should we head back to the city?”

  But as we were gathering our coats, Fazio appeared in the foyer. He cleared his throat. “Miss Trapp, could I speak to you for a minute?”

  Oliver frowned. “We really should get going.”

  “This won’t take long,” Fazio said. “I just need a few minutes with you.” He held out an arm, ushering me back into the house.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “i’m going to get more coffee,” Fazio said, waggling his empty cup. “Can I get you anything?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  He smiled. “Back in a minute.”

  Fazio disappeared into the kitchen. The living room was eerily lifeless with the leftover remnants of the conversation, half-drunk cups of coffee on the side tables, a crumb-covered plate—Oliver was the only one to partake of the biscotti. His blasé calm was so weird. I could see him on the bench in the foyer, typing on his phone, occasionally glancing at his watch.

  But why was it weird? What did he have to worry about? Sometimes I forgot that Oliver was actually innocent. His resentment, his bitterness, his long-held grudges against Stella. He had every motive to want his sister dead. But motive didn’t make you guilty. Actions made you guilty.

  This might be the moment when everything came crashing down. My mind scrambled for a justification, a way to spin it. I hadn’t technically killed Stella. But the night itself had long ago become secondary. What was worse, what would cause the most trouble, was the lie. I was a bad person; I had become remarkably comfortable with this. The thing that really scared me, that sent me panicking, was the judgment of others—how fucked up was that?