Reputation

by Sara Shepard

  “Excellent.” Manning’s eyes crinkled. “You know what? The job is yours. Do you mind if I see your student ID? You earn course credit for your assistance. It helps offset the shockingly low pay. Don’t blame me—that’s up to the school’s budgetary committee.”

  “Oh.” I patted my pockets. “My ID is lost—I keep meaning to get a new one. But don’t worry about the course credit. I’d rather take classes. And I don’t care about the low pay.”

  Manning looked puzzled. “How did you get into the building without your student ID?”

  I gave a sheepish shrug. “The guard and I are kinda like this.” I held up two fingers tightly pasted together. And Manning believed me. Sweet guys like him always do.

  “You okay?”

  I jolt up, and I’m back in the coffee shop. A girl stands over me, her face bathed in shadows. She’s holding a coffee cup and has a substantial leather tote slung over her shoulder.

  “I said, are you okay?” she repeats. “You’re crying.”

  I touch my cheeks and find them wet. Shit. I thought I was all cried out.

  I sniff and turn away. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  “Is it because of the hack?” Her voice is low. “Did something bad come out about you?”

  Nosy much? “I’m not stupid enough to put anything personal on my Aldrich e-mail.”

  She nods. “I know, right? What were people thinking? And did you hear that doctor was murdered? It was, like, blocks away.” She shivers and looks around. “The killer could be in here right now.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I say, and sip my coffee.

  She sits down in the chair opposite me. “Here.” She passes a plate across the battered coffee table. “It’s the lemon blueberry, right out of the oven.”

  The scent of lemon and sugar wafts in my nostrils. When I look at the girl, I see sparkling blue eyes, pale skin, dark hair held back with a headband, and rosebud lips. She’s a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn, whom I’ve always had a crush on. But I don’t need a distraction. I need a plan.

  Still, I tell her thanks. “Lemon blueberry really is the best.” I break off a piece and offer her some. “I’m Raina.”

  “Alexis Barnes.” She takes a bite of the scone, chews. She’s one of those people who look pretty even when eating.

  “How’d you know I go to Aldrich?” I ask between bites, recalling how she asked about my e-mails in the hack.

  “I go there, too. I’ve seen you around campus.” Her lips curl into an embarrassed smile. “You’re sort of hard to miss.”

  A grain of sugar melts on my tongue. There is something about the way she’s looking at me that reminds me of how Alfred Manning looked at me in his office months ago. Or, for that matter, the way Greg Strasser looked at me that very same day. My eye darts to the blueberry-size diamond studs in Alexis’s ears. Her camel trench, slung over the back of the chair, looks like Tory Burch. Her black leather purse lacks a label, but I think I saw it on the Celine website. I have a trained eye for these things; I can size up someone’s net worth with only a few clues.

  Alexis tells me that she’s an art major. She lives in Hudson dorm—a different hall than where I’m living—and is considering rushing a sorority—“though they all seem kind of lame.”

  “Really?” I ask. “I think they seem fun.”

  Alexis shrugs. “If you’re into the whole school spirit thing. I find it kind of meh.”

  I tell her my usual lies: that I’m from outside Philly, dad’s a professor at Penn, mom’s an artist, we grew up in an old farmhouse, and I went to a private alternative school. I tell the old chestnut about studying at the Columbia Writing Program last summer. Wanting to be a novelist isn’t a lie—I see myself writing someday. I’m already such a fabulist, it shouldn’t be that hard.

  After a while, I do feel better. Not because of the scone, but because of Alexis’s adorable pink cheeks and her enormous eyes. She has hitched forward on the couch so that our knees almost touch. Another thing I’m highly attuned to: when someone is into me. But I’ve never been with a girl before. The possibility is intriguing. Maybe a distraction is exactly what I need. And as she recrosses her legs, I get a look at the bloodred underside of her high-heeled bootie: Louboutins.

  Perhaps the answer to my problems has dropped right into my lap, blueberry lemon scone and all.

  Alexis checks her watch and declares she needs to get to a class. As she’s sliding on her coat, she glances at me like she wants to say something. “Listen, if you’re crying about a guy, he doesn’t deserve you.”

  I almost laugh out loud. Like I’d ever cry over a breakup. But her concern is touching. “Thanks. But it wasn’t a guy.” I almost want to tell her I’m not into guys. I want to know what she’d say to that.

  “There’s a party tomorrow off-campus,” Alexis adds. “It’s like a burn-the-candle-at-both-ends, let’s-go-down-with-the-ship because-we’ve-all-been-hacked sort of thing. Wanna come?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  We exchange information. Alexis touches my hand in goodbye, her fingers lingering on my skin. I watch her saunter out of the coffee shop. As soon as she’s gone, I look her up on Facebook. Her account isn’t private—it’s almost like she wants me to find it. There are pictures of a summer spent in southern France. Glamour shots of her standing on a yacht. And—Jesus Christ—one from Christmas where she’s hugging a freaking Mercedes with a giant bow around it. Caption: Santa was good to me!

  I’m back in the game. I wonder what Greg would think if he saw me now.

  That day at Manning’s office, Alfred Manning and I parted on a lingering handshake and a plan for my first day to be next Monday morning. As he walked me out—Marilyn What’s-Her-Face, blessedly, was nowhere to be seen—a devastatingly handsome man with dark wavy hair and wearing a blue blazer that matched his eyes burst into the lobby. And there he was. Greg Strasser, Alfred’s son-in-law. I’d done my research. I knew everything about him. I knew everything about the whole Manning clan.

  “Alfred.” Dr. Strasser waved a cell phone. The irritation was plain in his voice. “Kit and I have been waiting for you downstairs for a half hour.”

  Manning blinked in surprise. “You have? Why?”

  An annoyed sigh. “Lunch at the Duquesne Club? Remember? We’re late.”

  “Oh.” Manning held up his hands in frustration. “Well, no need to be impatient. I’ve been a member there for forty years. I’m sure they’ll hold our table.”

  “It’s not about them holding the table,” Strasser growled under his breath. “It’s that some of us have other things to do today.”

  Either Manning didn’t hear or he was feigning obliviousness. He gave me a bright, enthusiastic smile. “Anyway! See you Monday!”

  “Right,” I said, scurrying out of there.

  I reached for the door to the hall, glancing back one more time. Manning’s back was turned in his office, but that doctor? He was still looking at me. As our eyes met, he gave me a half-exasperated, half-conspiratorial smile.

  It was like he knew what I was up to without me having to say a word. Like he knew my kind. Greg knew my endgame with that old guy. And in that look, I could tell he thought it was delightfully naughty indeed.

  11

  LAURA

  SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017

  The morning of Greg Strasser’s funeral, I stand in my bedroom in my underwear. I feel like someone has glue-trapped me to the floor. My baby is screaming on the bed, but I can’t go to him. I am fastened here, staring into the black depths of my closet, my body on pause.

  There’s a knock. “Everything okay in there, babe?”

  Ollie pushes the door open and sees the flailing baby and me. His brow knits. He storms over to Freddie and scoops him up. “What the hell, Laura?”

  His flash of moodiness snaps me out of my state. “I’m fine.” I’m
suddenly contrite. “Sorry. Freddie’s just fussy. But it’s not a big deal.”

  “He’s been carrying on for five minutes at least.” Ollie gives me a strange look while rubbing figure eights on our baby’s back. “You’re not even dressed?”

  I turn back to my closet. My whole body feels like it’s stuffed with tiny pins. Just pick something, I tell myself, but my mind is moving so slow. Is this really happening? Am I really going to Greg Strasser’s funeral? It’s inconceivable to think that Greg didn’t wake this morning to go on his predawn bike ride. That he hadn’t gotten his regular hard-boiled eggs at the hospital cafeteria, thanking Gladys, who ran the cash registers, on his way out. That he was no longer breathing. No longer thinking. No longer hating me.

  Ollie stands at the full-length mirror, Freddie still in his arms. “I’ll take him,” I offer, reaching out. It’s paranoid, probably, but I don’t like him standing with Freddie in front of a mirror.

  Ollie angles the baby away. “It’s fine.”

  Cowed, I turn to the closet again. But then I feel eyes on my back. “Babe.” Ollie sounds worried. “What’s that on your leg?”

  “What’s what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

  “There’s a big scratch.”

  I don’t have to look down to know where he’s pointing. The jagged scratch on my calf is redder today, scabbed over. I touch it gently. “Tree branch, I guess. Freddie and I went walking in the woods yesterday afternoon.” I make a quick mental calculation: Yesterday afternoon, the weather had been gray but warm. A walk could have occurred.

  Ollie nods. The tension has loosened from his face when he sees that I’m choosing a dress and shoes. “So everything went okay with Reardon yesterday?”

  I’m glad I’m facing the closet, for I wouldn’t want Ollie to see my stricken expression. He means Detective Reardon, the lead detective working Greg’s case. Reardon called me in for questioning because Greg and I worked together.

  “It was fine.” I hate the hitch in my voice. “It’s not like I had anything to tell him.” I yank a cardigan from a hanger. “Do they have any leads on the killer?”

  I can sense Ollie stiffening. “You know I can’t discuss that with you, babe.”

  My stomach contracts. I try to nod, to understand, but I wish he’d tell me something, anything. Whom do the cops suspect? How much do they know? And how much, by association, does Ollie know?

  “I will say that it’s been more complicated because they can’t find the weapon,” Ollie suddenly pipes up. “Once they do, they’ll have their guy. Or girl.”

  I feel the muscles in my cheeks twitch. “What if the weapon isn’t found?”

  “Oh, they’ll find it.” Ollie swings around for the door, Freddie in tow. “Reardon’s search team is the best. They’re really digging into Strasser’s life. I have a feeling those e-mails that broke in the hack are just the tip of the iceberg of what he was hiding.” He shakes his head ruefully. “Goes to show you really don’t know anyone.”

  I open my jewelry box. I’m not really an accessories girl, but I need to do something with my hands. Ollie is right, though. Greg was hiding things. Things far bigger than those silly e-mails. A heat comes over me, prickling behind my eyes. I feel I might faint. Keep it together, Laura, I tell myself. Get through this.

  I need a moment alone to collect myself, so I give Ollie a warm smile. “Can you take Freddie downstairs and make him a bottle? I’ve already thawed some breast milk. It’s on the counter.”

  When I went to the police station, I’d had all my answers worked out. Reardon had a kind, gentle demeanor, but I could tell he wouldn’t go easy on anyone. “You hear about those e-mails of Strasser’s that were leaked?” he asked me.

  “We all did. A lot of nurses thought they would ruin his reputation as a surgeon.”

  “Any idea who the woman is?”

  I shook my head. Did he believe me? It was hard to gauge by his unwavering expression.

  Then he asked about the benefit. I told him about Kit Manning-Strasser hurriedly downing a martini, and how Greg was absent, and how the reporters were questioning everyone about the hack. I said how dreadfully stuffy and pretentious the whole night was, especially because I was alone. Then Reardon wanted to know where I went after the benefit.

  I halted. “Why does that matter?”

  “We’re trying to put together an accurate picture of where everyone was.” He sipped his coffee. “Dotting our i’s, crossing our t’s.”

  I could feel my palms going clammy. “Am I a suspect?”

  “No, no, of course not.” He raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “Unless you have something to tell me . . .”

  On the tip of my tongue was the simplest alibi—that I left the party at around ten and had driven straight home to my son. Except it isn’t true. All Reardon would have to do was call up sweet Lucy, the babysitter, with her college textbooks and her nanny bag of special games and toys to entertain Freddie, and she’d tell him that I didn’t come home until almost 2:00 A.M. Lucy was asleep on the couch, Freddie snuggled in next to her.

  And how would that look?

  Now, I swallow hard, thinking about what I’d told Reardon instead. Ollie couldn’t have read my alibi statement, could he? He’s too much of a Boy Scout to break police protocol. He knows nothing. Not about the benefit—and not about what happened a year ago, either. About Greg, that night. The night that started it all. These are things I didn’t tell Reardon, either. Things I haven’t told anyone. And now, Greg has taken them to his grave.

  It was a bitter cold, early January evening a year and three months before. A snowstorm was imminent—the air tasted of it—but we’d had a hard day, and we were both eager for a drink. I pushed inside to the lush darkness of the Modern, the sexy hotel bar in the new boutique hotel across from the hospital. Icy crystals were stuck to my hat. Greg’s, too.

  Greg and I settled into a private banquette next to an aquarium full of exotic fish. I ordered a glass of wine. When we received our drinks, Greg held his up for a toast. “After a day like today, I needed this.” He rolled his head on his neck. “I don’t know how we stand some of those people in that hospital day after day, you know?”

  It was always flattering when Greg said he saw me as “one of the good ones.” I wondered why he saw me this way. I liked the idea that he detected something deep and special in me, something that set me apart from others, something I couldn’t even see myself.

  In the next hour, we covered our usual topics—benign patient gossip, the latest show on Netflix we enjoyed, funny trends from the nineties. I’d desperately needed this night. Things had been so tense and sad at home; it always felt like I was on the knife-edge of either throwing something at a wall or bursting into tears. It was as though every time Ollie and I looked at each other, all we saw was failure to become a family. I didn’t know what was going wrong. Things seemed so healthy on my end. I ovulated normally. My periods were regular. I scheduled preliminary infertility blood work, without Ollie knowing, and the results were fine. A terrible thought had begun to creep over me—that maybe the problem was with my husband. But I had no idea how to broach the topic with Ollie and didn’t want him to feel like I was accusing him. And so I just languished in wanting. I needed to be somewhere else, talking about something else. Not how badly we wanted and how cruelly we’d been denied.

  By the time I finished my wine, I felt unleashed. I deserved to have fun, damn it.

  Somehow, Greg and I got on the subject of porn. This was probably because one of his patients that day was a woman with porn-size breasts and a face for adult television—she had congenital heart disease and possibly needed surgery. “Do all men watch that kind of stuff?” I asked, dangerously close to crossing a line.

  Greg reached for the bowl of almonds we’d ordered to share. “I suppose all men do. Unless their wives get pissy and forbid it.”
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br />   I couldn’t imagine telling Ollie what he could or couldn’t watch, though the thought of him indulging in porn gave me pause. Our lovemaking had become prescriptive and uninspired—the moment I brandished a positive result on the ovulation predictor stick, he seemed to acquire sudden onset performance anxiety. I struggled just to get him to come, which led to him barking at me to back off, and that led to me bursting into tears, inevitably with my legs in the air because it was supposed to help sperm motility. If his sperm was even motile. Perhaps, though, porn would help take our minds off our troubles.

  As a puffer fish darted past in the aquarium, Greg lifted his arms over his head. Stretched. Then gave me a saucy smile. “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  Greg looked at me expectantly. “Women need to get off, too.”

  Get off. It was funny to hear Greg use that term; I wouldn’t have imagined it. Here was yet another tidbit for my collection on what made Greg Strasser tick. I’d been a witness to so many intimate moments of Greg’s life, but it was in a fly-on-the-wall sort of way—he probably didn’t even realize. Did Greg remember I’d been there the day he and his wife met? I sure did. The way Greg looked at Kit in that patient exam room when she and her first husband came in. The way his magnetism pulled her in, paralyzed her. Afterward, I’d locked myself in a supply room, feeling like I’d just climbed out of a cold, choppy sea. It was the first time I’d ever seen Greg set his sights on a woman, and he was so determined—so confident. In contrast, Ollie was always so tentative, always asking if this was okay, that was okay. But didn’t every woman want to be swept off her feet? Didn’t every woman want to be just a little overwhelmed?

  That was my porn: Replaying the memory of Kit and Greg meeting. There was no way I could tell Greg that, though. And so I thought of the opposite of that, a story that would bury my desire for him deep: I told him about my quest to have a baby with my husband.

  It just spilled out of me. All those negative tests Ollie and I endured. All that heartbreak. The next step was to see a reproductive endocrinologist; one round of IVF was covered by my health insurance. But Ollie was digging in his heels. He said IVF felt like playing God.