Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  Jeremy appeared in the doorway then. He was pale. Stop it, Kate wanted to shout at him. You look guilty.

  “I’ve got a late Bikram class with my name on it,” Vera said. “You’ll be okay here, just the two of you?”

  Kate tensed for a second, but Jeremy moved quickly to fill the awkward gap.

  “Yes, go, go,” he said, kissing Vera. “Kate just needs my signature on something.”

  Vera seemed to accept this, even though Kate had turned up at their apartment empty-handed. Vera patted Kate on the hand as she headed toward the door.

  “You take care of yourself,” she said. “And try to take your time. Work will always be there.”

  When Vera was gone, Jeremy headed back out to the living room. He poured himself a short drink at the bar along the wall near the open kitchen. Whiskey or scotch, something amber. He offered a glass to Kate, but she waved it off. He flopped down hard on the couch, resting his head against a hand. He took a few loud breaths.

  “She doesn’t know yet?” Kate asked.

  “I wasn’t entirely sure until now.” Jeremy shook his head. “She’d been acting a little strange, at least I thought she was. I must have been imagining it. Unless she’s planning on coming back with a gun.”

  Kate stared at him, wide-eyed.

  “I’m joking,” Jeremy said.

  “That’s hilarious,” Kate said flatly.

  He shrugged. “Can you please sit down? You’re making me nervous.”

  Kate set herself down on the edge of a huge round ottoman-cum-coffee-table that she wasn’t sure was even for sitting.

  “I didn’t even know this was your house,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Jeremy finished what was left in his glass and set it down on the end table. “You just happened to knock on our apartment door?”

  “I came here, to this apartment, on purpose,” Kate said. “I just didn’t know who lived here.”

  She was still trying to make sense of it all. If one of Jeremy’s sons had been pretending to be Ben, that meant that he also might—at least theoretically—have had something to do with what had happened to Amelia on that roof. How was Kate going to tell Jeremy about one of his sons being Ben without it sounding as if she was accusing his child of hurting, maybe even killing, hers? That wasn’t really what she thought anyway. She believed that the Maggies were responsible. Still, as Lew had said, Ben—whoever he really was—had lied. Kate needed to know why.

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Kate,” Jeremy said. He sounded and looked exhausted. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “There was a boy Amelia was friends with,” she began carefully. “Supposedly, another applicant to that Princeton summer program. Their friendship was mostly texts and e-mails, that kind of thing. It seems as if they were close. We’ve been trying to track him down.” She moved quickly to clarify. “Not because he might have done something wrong, but because he might know something. He told Amelia that he lived in Albany and that his name was Ben, but the police traced the text messages.” Kate paused, took a breath. “He lives here, Jeremy, in this apartment. One of your sons must have sent the messages to Amelia.”

  Jeremy closed his eyes and dropped his head again, this time into both hands. He sat there like that for a moment, not moving. Finally, he started shaking his head back and forth. Was he really going to argue? Claim that it couldn’t be one of his sons. Maybe he had misunderstood. Kate’s disclaimers aside, maybe he thought she was accusing one of his sons of doing something terrible.

  “Jeremy, I’m not saying that they did anything wrong. Ben was a good friend to Amelia. A really good—”

  “It wasn’t one of the boys,” Jeremy said quietly. When he looked up from the floor, his eyes were glassy. “It was me.”

  “What?” Kate snapped, jumping to her feet. “What are you talking about?”

  “I wrote to Amelia. I was Ben, Kate.”

  “No.” Kate shook her head. This couldn’t be happening. Because there were a lot of explanations for a lot of things, but there was only one reason a grown man corresponded with a young girl online, then lied about who he was. “No.”

  Kate thought then about how she and Amelia had run into Jeremy at the office one Saturday not long ago. How he’d seemed so peculiarly interested in Amelia, staring at her so intently, marveling at how grown up she was. Kate had written it off at the time as Jeremy just trying to seem interested, in general. Now the thought made her sick.

  “I shouldn’t have lied to her.” Jeremy went on, more quietly now. He looked down, shaking his head. “That was wrong. But I just— When I was writing that recommendation for Princeton, I spent all this time thinking about Amelia and this amazing person she had become. I wanted the chance to get to know her, at least a little bit, and I thought maybe I could do it without costing anyone anything. I already had her e-mail address from writing the recommendation. All I had to do was set up an e-mail account in a kid’s name, get a voice account with an Albany area code, and invent a little backstory, and that was that. Maybe it was selfish, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Couldn’t help yourself?!” Kate’s voice shook. Her face was on fire. She was trying to keep herself from jumping to that most awful, inevitable conclusion. But it was no use. Her mind had already raced there. “She was my daughter, Jeremy. She was a child.”

  “Wait a second, Kate.” Jeremy was ashen, his eyes panicky. “You don’t think that—there’s an explana—”

  “No. You can’t charm your way out of this. I won’t let you. Is this how you stay such a good husband these days?” Kate shouted, pointing a finger at Jeremy. “You text teenage girls instead of sleeping with grown women? Or are the texts just the beginning? Were you really planning on meeting Amelia?”

  “Kate, come on, that’s ridicu—”

  “What did you do to her, you bastard?!” Kate screamed, charging at Jeremy.

  “Do to her? Are you crazy?! I was trying to help her!” Jeremy raised his hands to protect his face. “Anyway, I never even saw her. I mean— I, I thought about seeing her, telling her the truth. But I knew it wasn’t my place to make that decision, so I became her friend instead. Why do you think I told her I was gay? I wanted to make sure there couldn’t be anything weird. Not that it ended up mattering anyway, after Dylan and everything. I was just glad I could be there for her with all that Magpie nonsense going on.”

  “Oh my God. You knew.” Kate felt like she was going to be sick. “You fucking— She told you what those girls were doing to her, and you didn’t stop it? You could have told someone. You could have done something.”

  “You’re acting like that would have been so simple. Everything would have come out, Kate. You obviously didn’t want that either. You wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to hide the truth.” Jeremy seemed angry now, too. The truth, it was the second time he’d said that. What it meant, Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Anyway, I did think about telling you when things with those girls started getting out of hand. But before I did, it seemed like Amelia had worked everything out on her own. She told me she was fine. And then, all of a sudden on that last day—” He looked down. “Now, with what happened—Kate, you don’t know how much I wish I’d done something.”

  “Did you go see Amelia that day?” Kate asked, bracing herself. Jeremy had lied about so much. There could be more. There could be something more awful than she could possibly imagine. “You said you were going to in your texts.”

  “No, Kate, for the second time,” Jeremy said. There was no anger in his voice anymore, only resignation. He knew exactly what she was accusing him of, and he seemed utterly defeated. “I was with three associates in the office all day. You can check if you want. Anyway, I thought you read her texts. In the end, I said I wasn’t coming.”

  “I haven’t gotten through them all yet!” Kate shouted.

  “Dad?” came a voice from the doorway then. One of Jeremy’s sons was standi
ng there, looking boyish and handsome and scared. “Are you okay?”

  Jeremy shot upright and smiled, so quickly and convincingly that it lifted the hairs on Kate’s arms.

  “Yeah, yeah, Andrew,” he said. “I’m fine. Just a problem with a case, nothing to worry about. Go back to your homework. We’ll keep it down out here.”

  “Okay,” Andrew said skeptically, letting his eyes drift over to Kate for a second before shuffling for the door. “See you later.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Drew,” Jeremy said. “I’ll see you later.”

  They were both motionless and silent for a long time after Jeremy’s son disappeared. Kate hadn’t realized Jeremy’s children were home. As much as she wanted to scream at him some more, she couldn’t do that to his sons. Jeremy’s boys already had so much heartbreak headed their way. Once Vera finally did hear about the posts on insidethelaw.com, which she would, sooner or later, there was no way she’d stay with Jeremy. She was not the kind of woman to suffer betrayal lightly. There were other ways to find out if Jeremy was telling the truth anyway. Call those associates, check with his secretary. Better yet, Kate could send Lew. But there was one thing she did need to know.

  “Hide the truth about what?” Kate asked. It was still bothering her, what Jeremy had meant.

  “What?” he asked, looking battered and confused.

  “You said I’d gone to so much trouble to ‘hide the truth.’ The truth about what?”

  “Come on, Kate. I knew,” Jeremy said finally. “I’ve known for years.”

  “Knew what?” Kate snapped, even though she was trying to keep her temper reigned in. “That she was a trusting girl, that she’d—”

  “That she was mine.” Jeremy said, staring straight at Kate. “I knew that Amelia was my daughter.”

  “Yours?” Kate choked out. “Amelia was not your daughter, Jeremy.”

  “The timing fits exactly,” he said, as if she was just holding out.

  How dare he try to claim Amelia, like yet another thing he deserved.

  “You are joking, right?” She didn’t want to have this conversation with him. She knew what she knew, Jeremy’s delusions notwithstanding. “We slept together once, Jeremy. One time. And you weren’t the only one who was sleeping with more than one person. Trust me, Amelia was not your daughter. I know who her father was, and it wasn’t you.”

  But Jeremy was shaking his head. He didn’t look like he was listening to a word Kate was saying. “As soon as I heard you were pregnant, I wondered, obviously,” he said. “But after Amelia’s eyes changed colors as a baby, then I knew for sure.”

  “Stop it, Jeremy,” Kate’s voice was thready and high. She knew what she knew, and so why was she starting to panic? “I mean it.”

  “Come on, Kate.” Jeremy’s eyes were clear, guiltless. His voice so utterly calm. He might have been wrong, but he fully believed that Amelia was his daughter. He ran a hand back and forth over his silver hair, tipping his head in Kate’s direction like he was making a point. “Look at me. You can’t tell me you didn’t put two and two together. My hair, her eyes.”

  His hair? Jeremy had always had gray hair, ever since she’d known him. He’d been almost forty when they’d met, young for a full head of gray hair, but not absurdly so.

  “I don’t know what you think you know, Jeremy,” Kate breathed. She should leave, now, before he said anything more. “But you’re wrong.”

  “I didn’t know I had Waardenburg until my hair turned gray freshman year in college. But with Amelia, her eyes, you must have known as soon as they changed.”

  He was right about that. Amelia had been diagnosed with Waardenburg syndrome when she was ten months old, as soon as her eyes changed from a matching blue-gray to one blue and one hazel. It was a genetic disease and Kate wasn’t a carrier. She’d been tested. She’d always assumed that Daniel must have been, and that his disease had just manifested in one of the myriad of less visible ways the syndrome could present itself. It wasn’t as though they’d ever spoken about it. That would have required discussing Amelia.

  Kate’s palms were damp, her hands trembling. But so what if Jeremy had the same disorder? It could be coincidence. It had to be. She’d had sex with Daniel a dozen times, with Jeremy only once.

  No. Jeremy couldn’t try to rewrite history. It had not been easy, but Kate had made peace with Daniel’s being Amelia’s father. It was one of the things that defined her life. Amelia had been conceived with a man Kate had never thought much of as a person, and so she’d protected Amelia from knowing him. The sex had been angry and rough, too. It had been the opposite of love that Amelia had been conceived out of. And it had been a noble thing she had done, protecting her daughter from knowing that, from knowing a father who wasn’t a fraction of the person she’d grow up to be.

  Kate had slept with Daniel in the first place only in a misguided attempt to smother the guilt she’d felt for the one-night stand she’d had with Jeremy, whom she’d slept with . . . why? All these years later, she still didn’t even really know. To get over losing Seth? Because she was lonely? Because she’d been swept up by Jeremy’s charm? Because he’d made her feel special for a couple of hours? Certainly she hadn’t been thinking clearly, as evidenced by the fact that—on top of all her other careless decisions—she’d been less than religious about using her diaphragm during that whole period. She’d taken other precautions, sure, ones any seventh grader half paying attention in health class would have known were far from foolproof.

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Kate,” Jeremy said. “But I swear I was trying to help Amelia. You have to believe that. I thought that I could be her friend, even if she couldn’t ever know that I was her dad. Now I wish I’d just told her.”

  “No,” Kate said, backing away from Jeremy. She kept backing up until she’d banged against the wall behind her. “Stop it. I won’t. You need to—” She shook her head. “I have to go.”

  Kate looked right, then left. Where had the front door of the apartment gone? It was as if she’d been sunk into some inescapable labyrinth. All these years, Kate had been so sure about who Amelia’s father was and why she’d lied about him. She’d been protecting Amelia. But now it felt like the only person her lies had sheltered was Jeremy. And, of course, herself.

  “Kate, we have to talk about this.”

  “No, we don’t. We never do.” Kate said. “I have to— I can’t be here.”

  “Daniel knows about us, Kate,” Jeremy said. “He called earlier from the airport to tell me he was on his way to Scotland and to brag about tipping off insidethelaw. He was so drunk that I could barely make out what he was saying, but I did get that someone had sent him an e-mail about us. It was a couple of months ago, I think he said. Your guess is as good as mine who that was. Apparently, my giving you Associated Mutual Bank—which was already your case, of course—finally sent Daniel over the edge and made him go public. Personally, I think the fact that he just accepted a Meyer, Jenkins senior partnership didn’t hurt either.” Jeremy shook his head in disgust. “Daniel also told me about you and him, Kate. I had no idea. And I have to say, I kind of felt like an ass.”

  Jeremy actually had the nerve to look wounded.

  “I’m glad,” Kate said quietly. Then she threw herself forward, praying she was moving in the direction of the front door. “It’s about time you felt like an ass about something.”

  “Wait, Kate,” Jeremy called after her. “We have to figure out what we’re going to do. And there’s something else you need to know. It’s about Amelia.”

  “I don’t want to know anything else,” Kate said, picking up speed down the hall, her heart thumping in her chest, tears in her eyes. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Kate!” Jeremy called one last time as she dove out the door. “We still need to talk! There’s something else I have to tell you. It’s important. It’s about another girl at Grace Hall!”

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 24, 1:47 PM

  AMELIA
/>
  where r u? pls. don’t tell me u bailed.

  BEN

  sorry. I suck. but I’m not going to be able to make it.

  AMELIA

  seriously?

  BEN

  my dad is all bent out of shape. if I go he’ll kill me. but don’t hate me, okay. cause I love you.

  AMELIA

  it’s okay. I understand. this isn’t your problem. love u too.

  BEN

  I feel like a douche. promise me you’ll be okay.

  AMELIA

  I promise. I’ll be fine

  BEN

  don’t let those crazies beat you down. you’re too awesome. besides, you always have me.

  AMELIA

  xoxo

  OCTOBER 24, 1:49 PM

  SYLVIA

  where are you?

  AMELIA

  Woodhouse’s office

  SYLVIA

  why?

  AMELIA

  cheating

  SYLVIA

  who cheated?

  AMELIA

  me supposedly

  SYLVIA

  WTF?! OK I’ve had enough of this crap. sit tight. I’m coming to get you.

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 24

  I jumped and shoved my phone back into my bag when Woodhouse opened his office door.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that,” he said as he came around his desk. He was carrying a folder, tapping the edge of it against his open palm like it was a ruler he planned on slapping my knuckles with. Instead, he tossed the folder onto the center of his clean, empty desk. He sat down then and crossed his arms. He looked seriously mad. I’d never seen him like that before. “So, Amelia.”

  “So,” I said back.

  “Liv and I both think there must be some logical, perhaps even excusable, explanation for the plagiarism in your paper,” he said, using a just-between-us-friends kind of tone that was beyond annoying. Because if we were actually friends, I wouldn’t have been down there in the first place. “And I think that explanation has something to do with the Magpies. All I need you to do is tell me the truth, Amelia. Then we can sort this out, together.”