by Sara Shepard
I hit the key fob to unlock the SUV doors. The back seat is littered with juice boxes and empty snack containers, but when I open the trunk, I find Patrick’s leather jacket lying under a few empty plastic grocery bags. I whip it out and put it on, running my hands up and down my arms to get warm. I’m about to head back to the fields, hoping I haven’t missed another goal, but then I notice a small silver shopping bag tucked into the very corner of the trunk. I frown and pull it out. Inside is a small, lacquered box with a familiar, expensive jewelry store’s name printed across the top.
I open it up and there is an exquisite, whisper-thin gold tennis bracelet with a line of channel-set diamonds. It looks like a glamorous handcuff. I draw in a breath. Our anniversary is in a week. Is this my gift?
I feel the corners of my mouth tugging into a grin. And just like that, I feel much, much better.
15
LAURA
SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017
After Greg’s funeral, Ollie, Freddie, and I flop onto the couch. Freddie has finally, finally fallen asleep after fussing through the service. I carefully set him down in the pack-and-play. Then I back away, my chest clenching when I see his curled little form, his butterfly-wing eyelids. He looks so peaceful.
What would he think if he knew his father is dead?
The thought stabs me, but then I feel Ollie’s arms circling my waist, his lower half pressing against my butt. “Mmm.”
“Ollie,” I say, stepping away. Ollie pulls me closer, cupping the sides of my face, kissing my mouth aggressively.
“Ollie,” I say again. “What are you doing?”
He bunches up my dress and fumbles at the waistband of my underwear. “Let’s make another baby.”
“Now?”
“Come on.” He grips my wrist, pulling me back to him. “Right now. Let’s do it.”
“No,” I almost growl. And this time I shove him. Hard.
Ollie’s eyes widen. At first he looks rejected, even annoyed, but then he’s contrite. “I’m sorry, babe. You just look so hot, and . . .”
Now it’s my turn to feel guilty. “No, I’m sorry.” I can feel the tears gathering in my throat. “I just . . . I’m a mess today, you know? My head is all over the place.”
“I know.” He runs his hands over the back of his neck. “But at that funeral, knowing that someone our age is dead—it made me think about how fleeting life is. How we have to seize it by the horns, and I love you so much. You know that, right? I love you so much.”
I can only eke a nod. I am the worst person on earth.
We sink into the love seat. I let Ollie stroke my forearm. I keep my head down, feeling as though a heavy bag is pressed against my shoulders. Maybe I’ve made a mistake, pushing him away. Things feel so precarious, on the verge of being exposed. Ollie can’t know anything, can he?
But the way he said, Let’s make another baby. If only it were that simple.
After the mistake of a night with Greg, I vowed to change. I was careful around him. Polite, but distant. Two weeks after it happened, he asked me into his office. He closed the door. We went over the details of a patient, and he put his hand on my knee. I drew back. “No?” Greg cocked his head playfully.
“No,” I said firmly. My attraction for Greg had evaporated; he’d fucked it out of me, maybe. Since then, I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. My whole life, I’d held myself to certain standards, but now I felt my reputation was soiled, even if I was the only person who’d ever know.
Greg’s eyes were pleading. “But you get me, Laura. And I get you, too.”
Not long ago, I would have been flattered. Thrilled. But I shook my head. “We’re better than this,” I said quietly. “We’re both good people.”
Greg drew back as though I’d slapped him. “Well,” he said, crossing his arms. “I guess I have my marching orders.” And then he dismissed me.
My period was due right around then. It was the only thing I could rely on being regular in my life, and yet the days kept passing, and it didn’t come. I stared at the calendar, first puzzled, and then apprehensive. Two weeks went by. At that point, I was starting to feel nauseous, and my breasts were tender, and I felt strange, pulling sensations in my lower abdomen. I wasn’t surprised when two lines came up on the test I took in the pharmacy bathroom three minutes after purchasing it. I stared at the little plastic stick, feeling nothing—not hope, not doom. It was fucking ironic.
Here was the thing, though: Yes, I’d cheated with Greg, and yes, the sex hadn’t been protected, but Ollie and I had also tried plenty that month. It wasn’t out of the question that this was Ollie’s baby. Maybe we’d finally conceived. Maybe the Greg dalliance had nothing to do with anything.
I pocketed the pregnancy test. Steered my attitude toward something light and bright and joyful. It wasn’t hard to get excited—really excited. I was pregnant, something I’d wished for forever. Ollie and I would finally get what we deserved. I told him that very night, casually dropping the test next to his plate at dinner. He stared at it long and hard, and then looked at me questioningly, almost worriedly, like he was afraid he was dreaming and would soon wake up. But I grinned. “It’s happening! Really happening!”
A strange sort of whoop emerged from the back of his throat as he rose and hugged me hard. His shoulders shook with sobs. I cried, too, though my tears weren’t any one pure emotion. It wouldn’t be easy to erase the possibility of Greg from my mind. Years before, I’d heard a heart transplant patient use the term brutiful—a mash-up of brutal and beautiful, indicating an experience that was difficult but memorable and came with a certain amount of grace. That’s how I felt: both brutal and beautiful. Thrilled and devastated at the same time.
The pregnancy stuck. I got through my first trimester with no complications. Eventually, I had to tell Greg the news. Nerves rippled through me like water through a sieve. Since I’d turned Greg down in his office, we’d avoided one another. If we were working the same surgeries, we were cordial, but there was no casual banter like before. I’d also noticed him in the hallway sometimes, typing on his phone, a wisp of a smile on his face. A new woman? Perhaps his wife? In hindsight, I wonder if it was that Lolita person.
In his office, I stared at the crystal paperweights on his bookshelf so I wouldn’t have to look at him directly. “So I’m pregnant,” I blurted. “Due October third.”
“October third,” Greg repeated, but there was a kink in his voice, like he was counting backward. A memory of Greg at the bar popped in my mind, all sharp edges: I wish I’d had a biological child. Sadness had wafted off him. Yearning.
“Ollie and I are really excited,” I said. Because I had to. I needed to draw lines around this baby. Ascribe whom it belonged to.
“I’m sure you are,” Greg said. And just like that, his eyes crinkled mirthfully. He opened his arms. I walked into a strange, tentative hug. A happy ending, then.
Until it wasn’t.
By the time I went into labor, I barely remembered my worries about Greg. But when Freddie was born and the nurses placed him on my belly, his little eyes screwed tight, his big mouth stretched wide, I took one look at him and knew. Thank God Ollie’s back was turned—he was washing his hands at the sink—there was no way I could hide my dismay. I’d heard that babies look like their fathers when they’re born for biologically imperative reasons: It’s so dads will see themselves in those new, tiny faces and feel compelled to protect them. The only face I saw in Freddie’s squished little features was the face of the doctor I worked alongside in the operating room, not the husband who slept next to me every night. Not the man who yearned for this child as deeply as I did.
When Ollie turned and saw me crying, he assumed it was out of joy—our baby was finally here, healthy and strong. I did feel that. But I was also bitterly angry—and afraid of what Ollie might suspect. But Ollie held Freddie outstretched,
marveling at his existence. When his mother arrived and declared that the baby was the spitting image of Ollie’s deceased father, Joe, I began to breathe easier.
Still. I knew. I kept Greg from seeing Freddie for as long as I could. But just a few weeks ago, on one of my days off, I needed to pick up my paycheck, so I popped into the hospital with Freddie. Greg wouldn’t be there—I was so paranoid about running into him that I knew his schedule better than my own. The nurses flocked around us, commenting on the baby’s chubby cheeks, his bright blue eyes, his sweet disposition, the milestones he’d already achieved.
And then I sensed a presence in the doorway. My blood ran cold. When Greg clapped eyes on Freddie, it was as though he was hit with an electric current. “So,” he said, “I finally get to meet the big man.”
I tried to act like things were normal. But I felt a horrible twist in my gut at how recognizable my son’s features were. Freddie had the same little bump on his nose that Greg did. The same long eyelashes. That same cleft in his chin. Greg could see himself in Freddie, and it was like a switch had flipped inside him. A rope had snapped.
I got out of the hospital quickly, unable to stand Greg’s charged stare. But during my next shift, I found a folded piece of paper in my locker. It was a printout reminding new mothers to give their baby vitamin D drops. I stared at it for a few long beats, confused. Maybe Tina had slipped it in there? She was crazy about vitamins. But when I asked her, she looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m not going to tell you how to raise your kid.”
Later that same day, I found another printout: studies on circumcision. I’d already circumcised Freddie, and how was it anyone’s business? Two days later came a list of appropriate Montessori schools in the greater Pittsburgh area. A day after that, a sheaf of horror stories about SIDS cases at day care facilities.
A crack formed in my brain. During one of our nights out, Greg had talked about how he’d had a Montessori education. And last year, when a local day care had an infant suspiciously stop breathing while napping, he’d muttered to me, “Personally, I think day cares are evil.”
The messages kept coming, sometimes two or three stuffed into my locker over the course of a single shift. They were about the Ferber method, how long a mother should breastfeed, the benefits of organic food. Each unwelcome piece of paper I unfolded felt like a ransom note, a letter of execution. Greg Strasser was not a man to reject. I learned the hard way.
“My poor, poor baby,” Ollie says, dragging me back to the present. I look around. Dust sparkles through our living room. Our baby turns on the monitor screen, suspended in dreams. “But you don’t have to be scared. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I frown into my lap, momentarily confused. This is why Ollie thinks I’m upset? But then, of course he does. He thinks I’m in a state because someone murdered my boss in cold blood. But it’s not the murderer I’m afraid of. It’s how relieved I am that Greg is gone.
And that I hold myself a little bit responsible.
16
RAINA
SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017
Thanks to the free cocktails at Greg Strasser’s post-funeral reception, I’m still buzzed when I show up to Alexis’s party. This makes me chatty with my Uber driver. I babble about movies I’ve just seen, my favorite neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, and wanting to be a writer when I grow up.
“What do you think about that crazy murder that happened near Aldrich?” the driver asks me as we turn onto a Lawrenceville side street. “Pretty scary the killer still hasn’t been found.”
“I knew that guy,” I say, almost proudly. The driver looks at me like I’m a celebrity. Asks who I think did it. But that’s a question I don’t want to answer.
When I get out of the car, I realize I’m a hot mess. I need to sober up. I need to be on tonight for Alexis so I can see what she’s all about.
I stare at my outfit. I’ve got on my highest heels. I’m still wearing my sexiest, shortest black dress—which, okay, probably wasn’t funeral appropriate, but I thought Greg, wherever he is now, might appreciate it. Tonight bears so much promise. Every text I’ve received from Alexis in the past twenty-four hours has been increasingly suggestive and flirty. She’s one of those girls who punctuates her texts with hearts and gives people flirty nicknames—hottie, sexy girl, gorgeous. I knew a few high school girls who did that, always screaming out, “I love you!” to their friends and creating over-the-top tributes in one another’s yearbooks, but with Alexis, the nicknames take on a new charge. I feel she’s calling me sexy because she wants to have sex with me.
And I’d like to make that happen . . . and more. I just need to figure out her stakes. How to ensure it doesn’t go up in flames. Basically, I need to make sure it doesn’t go the way of what happened with Alfred Manning months before.
I thought I’d read Manning right when I’d planned out the scam. I’d paid my dues by being his faithful assistant for months, enduring meetings with Marilyn O’Leary, endless coffee runs, boring discussions about policies and staff changes and budgetary blah blah blah and admissions requirements and a meeting with Barack Obama, which unfortunately I hadn’t gotten to attend. I’d pretended, postured, become the perfect Aldrich girl he needed. Hell, I even audited classes in case Manning, for some reason, memorized my Aldrich schedule and quizzed me on the subjects. I knew what his stakes were—his milieu wouldn’t look kindly on the news that the president of the university got busy with his student assistant. And that night in December, I was ready to pounce. This was going to be an even better version of Dr. Rosen. I was so ready to take his cash.
He’d invited me over to his house in Blue Hill to screen the latest Aldrich promotional video and make notes. We’d meant to do it in the office, but he was mired in meetings—and the notes were due that Monday.
It was almost too good to be true. His house, where we’d be alone? No cameras, no nosy Marilyn? He was almost asking for what I had in store. I was ready, too: the hemline of my blush-colored silk dress stopped at the top of my thighs. My shoes were high, pointy-toed, and expensive. My hair was blown out and soft around my shoulders, and my makeup was subtle and sexy. Ringing his bell, I shivered—I’d left my heavy winter coat at home. But big coats weren’t sexy, and tonight, it was go sexy or go home.
The door swung open, and there was Manning, dressed in a fitted, long-sleeved tee and slim-cut jeans that seemed to belie his sixty-nine years. But he looked confused at my appearance. “Did you come here without a coat? Aren’t you freezing?”
“I’m not,” I said, trying to bite back my annoyance. I lowered my lashes and gave him a playful punch on the arm. “But I’d love to come in.”
“Well.” Manning tugged his collar. I couldn’t tell if he was feeling bashful or awkward. “Yes, do. Come in and get warm.”
I sashayed past him. I could tell he was looking at my ass. Good, good, good.
We walked through the house and into the basement, which was carpeted and smelled like lemon Pledge. Manning flicked on a light in a room to reveal a small theater with tiered rows of plush seats and a large screen at the front, framed by velvet curtains. “Wow,” I said. “Swanky.”
He found a seat. I slid right next to him, a notebook in one hand. The seats shared armrests, and I made sure to drape my arm over his armrest in hopes our hands would bump. My gaze drifted to the side of the room. A door was ajar, and inside I saw a long bathroom counter where several pill bottles were lined up. I wondered if anything fun was in those bottles. Something we could do together.
As Manning dimmed the lights, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket. Earlier that day, I’d downloaded a video app that could film in near darkness. Manning was busy fumbling with the remote and didn’t see me prop the phone on the far arm of the adjacent chair at such an angle that it would capture both of us in the frame. I felt a pang of regret. It was starting. There was no turning back now.
/> The opening credits to the promotional film filled the screen. Ever so slightly, I angled my legs toward Manning’s. He didn’t move. My heart was a jackhammer. I could sense the video counter ticking upward, logging every moment. I slid my left hand down our shared armrest toward his lap. On the screen, Alfred appeared, speaking about Aldrich’s long tradition of excellence.
“Oh!” I cried, grabbing his hand. “It’s you!”
He chuckled. “In the flesh.”
Then he turned to me, a curious sparkle in his eye. You can do it, I urged him telepathically. I won’t bite. I pushed out my breasts. Touch me. Nobody will see. Nobody will know. I glanced toward the open door to the little bathroom again. Let’s pop some of those pills. Get crazy.
Then Manning’s eyes darted to the seat past me. “What’s that?” He pointed.
“What’s what?” My voice was a strange, high-pitched warble. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I realized that my phone was more visible than I’d anticipated. The screen glowed faintly, reflecting the resplendent campus meadow in the film.
I palmed the phone and tucked it into my bag, then turned to the screen. “Oh my God, the quad looks gorgeous with all those cherry blossoms!”
Manning was still staring. A strange glaze came over his eyes, and his features seemed to distort. “Raina,” he said in a low voice. “Perhaps it was a mistake for you to come.”
“W-What?” I could feel the smile melting on my face.
