Reputation

by Sara Shepard

  Since coming back to California, I’ve tried to make strides to heal—really heal. I found a new therapist. New medication. A support group. I took up surfing again. I’ve opened up to my family—slowly, because old habits take time. I’ve opened up to Paul, too, who is an excellent listener—patient, kind, intuitive. I guess it’s turning into something, considering that Paul is moving out this way in two weeks’ time. He’s been hinting at it for months, but I staved him off, saying I felt more comfortable with the long-distance thing—we’d meet at a central point in Chicago or Minnesota and spend long weekends together. But he applied for a job at a music website out here and got it . . . so here he comes. I’m nervous about it, though Kit, Aurora, and Sienna are all cheering me on.

  I guess the worst that can happen is that it doesn’t work out. But maybe I should think positively for once.

  There are other new things, too. After the news of the frat broke, Marilyn O’Leary was under formal criminal investigation, and the Feds came up with a number of just how many rape accusations she’d buried and deflected: sixteen. That’s more than I even knew of in my Facebook group. It probably isn’t everyone, either—considering I didn’t come forward, I’m guessing others didn’t as well. But still: sixteen. It’s shocking. Their names weren’t released, but I felt like I knew them all the same.

  They whispered to me, those girls. They felt like sisters. I couldn’t help but imagine where it might have happened for them: in that same dingy upstairs bedroom.

  I wanted to find these victims, though I had no idea how. They weren’t on the hack database. They aren’t nestled in my father’s files—and for that, I’m eternally grateful. Even the ones I spoke to on Facebook did so anonymously, through shell profiles.

  But then, #MeToo started. I’ve torn through the stories that have come out so far, even though many are triggering. The stories range dramatically from rapes to hideous comments to a grown man’s hand on a girl-child’s thigh on what was supposed to be a happy airplane trip to a tropical vacation. But the message to everyone is the very same thing that was ingrained in me: Do nothing. Say nothing. It doesn’t matter.

  It was affirming in the most terrible of ways. I don’t want to be part of this club, but here we all are. I admire the bravery of the women who’ve tweeted and Facebook-posted and personal-essayed the truth. And the outpouring of support and unity is staggering.

  “Actually, I already did write something,” I admit now, during a spell of flat water.

  Sienna blinks big, fat water droplets off her lashes. “Really? On Facebook?”

  “No, an essay. I’m going to send it to an editor friend. She’s going to publish it on their site. But the thing is . . .” I take a breath. “It tells everything. Including stuff about the actual frat and the school. I even talk about how I had a hand in hacking the school. I thought about doing it more anonymously, giving shaky details, but, well . . .” I shrug. “Go big or go home.”

  “Wow,” Aurora says softly. “Good for you.” Sienna nods, too. There’s pride in her expression. This will be a good thing. This is what I’m supposed to do.

  A wave rises up, and I’m grateful to hold up a finger, indicating Hang on, I’m taking this one.

  I paddle hard, feeling the board catch, and then I’m skidding quickly down the wave. I stand up, gain my balance, and shift my weight onto my back foot. Yes. This is always such a life-affirming rush. Here I am, balancing on a flimsy fiberglass board propelled by the full-throated power of the ocean. If I can do that, I can do anything.

  The wave peters out quickly, and I plop into the water. On the shore, Kit’s sitting up straighter, applauding. I wave back, and head out again.

  The world shimmers at its edges. The ocean swirls beneath me, dark and unknowable, but that’s okay, too. I dive in, my board trailing behind me—not heavily, but oddly light and free. And when I surface, cold water dripping from my face, the beautiful horizon rounds above me, promising and powerful, truthful and terrible, wide open for whatever comes next.

  51

  KIT

  OCTOBER 17, 2017

  I sit on the sand, watching the three people I love most in the world battle a force of nature that seems way too overpowering and impossible to vanquish. My toes curl every time a wave pulls them under, but they pop up each and every time, like answers to my prayers. After one particular ride, Aurora turns around and grins at me. I smile back and give her a thumbs-up. And it hits me for the millionth time: I still can’t fathom that my daughter did what she did. It’s also hard to believe she recovered from the trauma of it.

  When my father slipped away a week after taking the blame for Greg’s murder, I was bombarded with conflicting emotions. Grief. Guilt. Shock. Sadness. Even anger—I hated that the gossipy public, who’d glommed on to the story of his confession and wouldn’t shut up about it, would never know how selfless he really was. In the future, there would never be any statues of Alfred Manning on the Aldrich campus. He’d be excised from the Aldrich history books, known as that president, the scandalous one. I wished I could tell everyone the truth of the sacrifice he made for Aurora. I wish I could describe the peaceful look that came over his face after he’d said he’d take the blame for Greg’s murder. It had filled him with grace, almost like a renewed reason for living—or, rather, for dying. But I couldn’t do any of that. I had to just sit by and let the barrage of negative press roll in.

  The only consolation was that Marilyn O’Leary could no longer swoop in and take his place—after a few carefully placed anonymous tips to the press that Marilyn was perhaps trying to make behind-the-scenes deals with rape victims without the president of the university knowing, reporters dug into her hacked e-mails and started asking questions. It didn’t take her long to crack; she resigned shortly thereafter.

  After Dad took his last breath, Willa and I sat with his body in the hospital room in silence. I still felt so distanced from her. So much had been cleared up about why Willa was the way she was—why she abruptly left Pittsburgh, why she’d stayed away for years, even why she held us at arm’s length. But I also felt cheated. If Willa had told me about the rape, we might have been able to solve it together. We might have been close instead of the kind of sisters who occasionally traded texts. It was because of that history I turned to her in the hospital, saying, “We’re coming to California with you.”

  Willa waved her hand. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

  “No, we need to take care of each other. And, well, I think we need the escape.”

  My house didn’t sell for what it should have—but then, I wouldn’t want to live in a place where a man had been stabbed, either. When I packed up to go, I tossed everything into a rented dumpster, easily parting with my past. I did the same with my father’s house, too. To my surprise, Dad had saved boxes and boxes of our mother’s things in the attic—old pictures, marked-up calendars, sketchbooks, even moldering art supplies. Every card she made for him, every little drawing—it was all there, squirreled away, tucked into desk drawers or bureaus and sometimes even the pockets of his jackets. I had no idea how close he kept her at all times.

  Fat tears fell on the drawings. I missed my family. I even missed Greg—though I let that emotion pass quickly. I still couldn’t reconcile what had happened between him and Sienna. Whenever I tried to fully confront what Greg had done—the fury and frustration, the disappointment and betrayal, the shame in myself for choosing a man who’d do such a thing—it felt like I could only go so far until a wall came up, and I had to turn away. My chest physically clenched at how badly he’d hurt me. It ached, too, with how happy we’d once been . . . and how strange it was that it was both a sham and the absolute truth, all at once.

  But I’d been about to do it all over again . . . with Patrick. I had absolutely no idea who he was—and yet I would have tumbled wholeheartedly into a new relationship. I should have realized Patrick’s MO th
e very first moment we met, when we had that long conversation about our alter egos. But I guess I’m a romantic at heart. I thought that even in our lies, we were admitting important things about ourselves. Now I know that only I was doing that. For Patrick, it was all just a game to pass the time—a new identity to try on for the evening. Just like all those other women he saw. Just like all those other role-plays he was part of. Just a void to fill.

  I grieve the idea of Patrick, but not the actual man—because that guy? I never met him.

  I want California to feel like a new start . . . but to be honest, I still feel adrift. I could apply to another giving department—there are certainly enough universities around here—but my heart isn’t in it. I don’t care about snaring wealthy people and squeezing money out of them. All I can think of is the secrets that new university might have. Lies, betrayals, bad behavior, cover-ups. It was human nature to conceal.

  So mostly, I just go to yoga. I cook elaborate meals for my kids on weekends—Sienna has transferred to UCLA, but she lives at home. I try to talk with her about what went on between her and Greg, but it’s more useful in front of a therapist. From what I’ve gotten out of her, Greg’s flirtation started out innocently enough not long after we married. She didn’t really see him as her family member—more like my boyfriend, and often not even that. They started e-mailing, but Sienna felt weird about using her regular account, so she opened another one, using two characters from books she’d recently read as her handle. She hadn’t meant it as anything, she said, though in the words of Freud, there are no accidents.

  Greg’s flirtation was flattering, but then, as it began to get more sexual, Sienna started to feel trapped. She didn’t want to do the things Greg was asking her to do—the MRI machine and all that—but at the same time who could she talk to about it? Greg’s e-mails implied that if Sienna did tell, he’d twist things around and make her out to be the instigator. Why he thought I’d choose to believe him over my daughter, I don’t know. Then again, I was in the throes of love—of Greg, and of my new life. What would I have done?

  But then, about a month and a half before Greg died, Sienna had enough. She was interested in Anton; she wanted to go into the relationship with a clean conscience. I remember her talking about him—and Greg asking her a lot of questions about Anton. At the time, I’d appreciated his interest. Now I see it another way.

  She’d told Greg her decision to stop what they were doing, in person, in the kitchen one night when I was at a dinner. Greg replied by telling her how special she was, how beautiful. He’d come toward her, touching her leg—that was what Aurora had seen. But what Aurora didn’t see: Moments later, Sienna pulled away. Said Greg couldn’t touch her like that anymore.

  Greg retaliated by icing her out—especially on that Barbados vacation. So that explained his mood, anyway. How annoyed he’d been at Sienna’s peppy attitude. It also could explain why he’d rebuffed me when I’d suggested—once again—that we try therapy. Greg was rejecting me because Sienna rejected him. Maybe he was done with all of us.

  But it got worse. After that trip, Greg threatened to take away Sienna’s college tuition, to take away her car, her nice clothes, to drive a wedge between her and me. He said once again that he’d spin things so that she was the one who looked guilty—after all, he had lots of e-mails to prove it. Sienna’s last e-mails to Greg pleaded with him to put things back the way they used to be, not because she wanted the relationship to continue, but because she needed to be back in his good graces.

  This had occurred only a few weeks before the hack. Right around that time, Aurora had noticed how on edge Sienna seemed, and she brought up how she caught Greg touching her, expressing that she was pissed that Sienna had just stood there, unresponsive. “Are you into him?” she’d asked, disgusted. Something in Sienna’s behavior must have given her away, and Aurora drew some damning conclusions. When the e-mails were leaked in the hack and Aurora read them, she was horrified—but she had an inside track to exactly what was going on. This man, her stepfather, was a predator. She needed to stop him from doing this to her older sister.

  And that was that.

  How do I feel about this, now that I know? Like I’ve failed as a mother for not giving my daughter better guidance about flirtation, appropriate touch, crossed boundaries—even with a family member you’re supposed to trust. I hate that Sienna was afraid of what Greg might take away, even for a moment—because I understand wanting things. But would it have been that big a deal? She always would have gone to college—my father would have made sure of it. But kids learn from their parents, don’t they? Maybe Sienna coveted those things because I did. And maybe, if I hadn’t been so caught up in what I had or how I looked to others, perhaps Sienna would have been brave enough to come to me about what Greg was doing, no matter the consequences.

  And there’s a part of me that deeply admires Aurora. I want to think I would have sought vengeance for Willa, back in the day, had I known of what happened at that frat house. This alone restores my faith that maybe I have done something right as a parent. The thing that matters most is standing up for the people we love. And for that, I’m glad Aurora was there when my father volunteered to take the blame for her. Alfred Manning’s public reputation was tarnished for the ages, but in my family’s heart, he’s golden. A martyr. A hero.

  Far out at sea, my sister and daughters bob like sleek, black seals. The sun hides behind the cloud, giving the air a welcome bite. I get a burst of optimism so pure and unexpected that I almost laugh. Not long ago, I used to be consumed with how people saw me . . . and I did everything possible to remain that person. But these days, after the hack, the murder, the rumors, my arrest, my father’s choice—I have no idea what people think of me anymore. Terrible things, probably. I imagine the country club all atwitter—and the people at my job, and all my old clients. And Lynn Godfrey? She’s probably pleased as punch. All those people who gossiped when Greg and I got together. All those people who criticized my father’s reign over Aldrich. People who didn’t like me, and people who did—I’m forever changed in their minds.

  But you know what? I don’t care.

  Maybe the best reputation is no reputation. Maybe it’s best not to care whatsoever how people see you. Maybe the only thing that really matters is how you see yourself.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Like all books I write, this one took a while and had a lot of moving parts. It actually began as development for a TV series, though figuring out what the story should—or shouldn’t—be helped tremendously in mapping out how to make things as dramatic and juicy and satisfying as possible in book form. So for that, I’d like to thank Sara Shandler, Josh Bank, Gina Girolamo, Les Morgenstein, and Melissa Carter for working with me to crack these characters, their secrets, how the hack worked, and the world the hack shattered. It took a while, but we finally got there!

  Thanks, next, to Andy McNicol for believing in the project. And to Maya Ziv—my favorite editor ever—for loving Reputation in its raw form and working to make it even better. It is truly a delight to be partnered with you again. Thanks also to Laura Barbiea at Alloy, Hanna Feeney at Dutton, and Althea Schenck at WME for your keen eyes and tireless efforts. Thanks also to Christine Ball at Dutton for being an early fan—I’m so excited you saw the potential.

  I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Rick White, for donating to the Childhood Leukemia Foundation—and for Rick’s partner, Lynn Nordstrom, for allowing me to use her name in this novel. Thanks also to Amanda and Jeff Manning for being okay with me using their last name. Many thanks to Michael for being his Michael self. And much love to Kristian and Henry. Stay good, my boys! And please, if you learn one thing from this book: Never e-mail what you’re actually thinking! People will always find out.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SARA SHEPARD is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Pretty Little Liars series. She has also written other se
ries and novels, including The Lying Game series, The Heiresses, and The Perfectionists series.

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