by Dylan Allen
“Why are you at his house? What in the world do you need his laptop for?” I fly down the stairs two at a time.
“He was supposed to come straight from the airport. We were going to take his laptop and get him to sign a confession and take it to the police,” Matty explains.
“A confession about what?” I ask, in a guarded voice. I grab the railing of the stairs and sink down on one of the steps. This is so much worse than I thought.
There are a few seconds of silence, and I know that she’s counting to five, the way she does whenever she’s trying not to lose it.
Dan has been my grandfather’s right-hand for the last twenty years. He’s the most upstanding, straight-laced person I know. Whatever they think he’s done, they’re wrong.
“This isn’t the time to explain. He’s okay. It’s not even bleeding anymore. But we need that laptop. Please just go and get it.”
“If you want me to do anything other than hang up and call 9-1-1, you better start explaining why you were at Dan Harrison’s house in the middle of the night waiting for him to come home.” I’m not bluffing. I never do. And she knows it.
A tense silence yawns between us and I wait for her to decide what happens next.
“We think he’s the John Rebecca mentioned at Wilde.”
“Please tell me you are not fucking serious. What in the hell?”
“I know you think it’s bullshit, but it’s not.” Matty’s voice is just as insistent as mine.
“Oh my God. What have you done?” I groan, despair lodged in my throat like a tumor.
“You said you didn’t want anything to do with it. So, we didn’t tell you. But we kept digging Regan and we know it’s him. But we need that laptop. Please, help us. I promise this isn’t a whim. We have proof.”
“Then why’d you break into his house and hold a gun on him?” I ask acidly.
. “Because we need his laptop. There’s evidence on there.”
“Then, call the police. I don’t want to be in your little circle of trust now that your harebrained scheme is blowing up in your faces.” I growl.
She’s quiet for so long that I start to relax, maybe I’ve finally gotten through to her. Her next words shatter that hope.
“There are pictures of Jack on that laptop. She saw them.” Her voice is full of meaning I wish I could pretend to misunderstand. Jack hasn’t let anyone take her picture in 6 years. Not since that night. A shiver runs over my body and my mouth goes dry. I close my eyes against the wave of nausea that comes out of nowhere. I double over and take a deep breath to try and stem it. I know I won’t throw up. I never do. But it still feels like I need to.
“Are you there? Regan?” Matty calls.
“What kind of pictures?” I ask, dread making my voice hoarse.
“From when Silk had us,” she says it with deliberate brevity.
At the mention of Weston Silk, my insides turn to water and my legs threaten to give out underneath me. I slide down the wall and land with a thud on my rump.
“How? How? Pops got rid of all of them,” I say as I stare at the floor unseeing, my fingers pinch the bridge of my nose.
“He must not have been able to. Or, maybe other people got them before he did. He was looking at them during a meeting and she was sitting right behind him. She’s worked with him for five years and that fucker has never looked at her longer than it’s taken him to complain about his coffee not being sweet enough.” Her voice breaks with angry tears and leaden weight forms in my gut. “We followed him. He went to this place all the way out by the Ship Channel. It looked like a club, but there was nothing but a neon light in the shape of a thunderbolt over the door.”
I close my eyes and take a few shuddering breaths to try and calm my racing pulse and fight back the nausea that threatens.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence?” I’m desperate for this not to be true.
“Regan. Stop. It’s not. And you know it. Go get that laptop. His office is locked but I know you have the master. I’m texting you his address. Bring it.” Then, she hangs up in my face.
I can’t even find the will to be angry with her.
This is all my fault.
When we got back to campus to start our sophomore year, our friendship was just a shell of its former self.
Jack moved off campus with her boyfriend.
Matty and I signed up to be roommates at the end of our freshman year, but I could tell when we moved in that she was having the same regrets about that as I was.
They never said it aloud, but I knew they must blame me for what happened, and I was plagued with guilt for taking them there.
We barely saw each other.
We never spoke about what happened.
One night, less than a month after we’d been back at school, we’d been working in our room with the news in the background when Matty screamed. I followed her slack jawed, wide eyed expression and turned to the television. And nearly fainted when I saw the face on the screen.
Her hair was a different color and she had two black eyes and a swollen nose but those dark brown, haunted eyes – so much like mine - were forever burned in my memory.
She was the only other person we saw while we were held at Weston’s house. When we were rescued, I begged her to come with us.
She just stared up at me with terrified eyes, tears running down her face, her lips were pressed together like she was holding back a scream. And then, one of my grandfather’s security men came and whisked me out of there. I couldn’t stop wondering what on the outside could make the hell of that house seem like a safer option than leaving.
When my grandfather told us that Weston had been killed by one of his men and that there had been no one left in the house when his team left, I told myself that she’d found a way out.
But now, she was under arrest, and was being charged with all of his crimes. Just the way my grandfather said we would be if we talked to the police.
Weston’s mother was interviewed on the broadcast. Her hair the same red as her son’s, her eyes full of malice as she talked about their son like he was the victim. “He was going places until she got her hooks into him. Now, she’ll always be a footnote on the pages of his history. Like the Jezebel she is.”
“That’s bullshit, right?” I demanded of Matty. But she didn’t even want to talk about it. She and Jack were both international students with families who sacrificed everything to send them to school. They were terrified of doing anything to jeopardize their futures.
So, I sat alone and watched the story unfold on television. And as I did, I started to fear for my future, too. But for very different reasons than my friends.
In all of the news reports about the girl in the house, they never said her name. She was always just “Weston Silk’s female accomplice.”
Soon the story ceased to be worthy of even an inch of copy space in the local papers and she dropped out of mention all together.
In the weeks following the broadcast, it wasn’t visions of the men who violated me or the terror-stricken expressions on my friends’ faces that haunted me.
It was her face, those terrified eyes of the nameless woman.
She consumed my thoughts.
I wanted to know who she was and how she ended up in that house.
I found her name fairly quickly - it was in the police report. Rebecca Harvey. I found clues about her life - from her Myspace mainly, but she’d seemed like a happy, normal young woman. Not someone you’d expect to find in a place like that. But as I dug deeper, I found more. Her father was an eight-time felon serving a life sentence. Her mother was listed a missing person and had been since the early 90’s.
On paper, Rebecca and I couldn’t have been more different.
Except in one frightening and fundamental way.
I too, could only be distinguished by my relationship to other people. If I had died in that house, my footnote on history would be full of other people’s accomplishments and misdeeds.
I was Remi’s twin, Tina’s daughter, Liam’s granddaughter.
It was like living on the dark side of the moon - invisible, predictable, not worthy of distinction.
In a stroke of genius, I figured out how to save us both from obscurity. With my conviction in place, I went to my two best friends and asked them to take a leap of faith in me.
We were all desperate to find a way to get back some of what was stolen from us that night. And, they both said yes.
We scrapped our individual submissions for the editor position and created a feature called “Herstory” that we would collaborate on under the byline “The Jezebels.”
We would focus on misunderstood, forgotten women in popular culture and traditional history.
We spent weeks preparing our pitch. We were buzzing with excitement the whole time. Working together didn’t just save our friendship, it gave us all a sense of control and purpose.
We felt like revolutionaries - righting past wrongs, giving credit for stolen achievements, adding nuance, and giving a voice to women who had silenced or erased from moments in history that they helped usher forward.
We were going to change the world and knock the editorial staff off their feet.
They rejected our submission.
But we weren’t daunted. They just weren’t ready for us.
We started a blog with the same mission. When we launched The Jezebels, our first story was about women who’d been made accomplices simply because they shared a bed with a criminal.
It gained enough traction to build a following and healed our fractured friendship. We even got matching tattoos that read Jezebel on our lower backs. It didn’t become the cultural zeitgeist we hoped it would.
Practical things like careers, and relationships intruded and by the time we graduated it had become our collective labor of love.
When Rebecca contacted us a few months ago and said it was the blog that helped her find us, it became my most bitter regret.
Under the cloak of darkness, the deserted lobby of the building my grandfather built almost 50 years ago looks like a house of horrors. The plants and light fixtures cast grotesque shadows that crisscross the large ceramic tiled floor. But I’ve got real shadows and fears to fight. My heart seems to beat harder with every step I take toward the door marked “Strictly Forbidden.”
My grandfather, my mother, my brothers and I are the only people who have a copy of the master that unlocks it. That same key gives us access to every floor and office in the Wilde World’s headquarters. If my grandfather finds out that I used it to get my hands on evidence that could incriminate his long time and most trusted employee, he’ll be furious.
But Matty and Jack aren’t just my friends. We walked through fire together. We survived it together. And we wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t led them there. I owe them this.
With that final thought spurring me forward, I hold my breath and say a silent prayer of thanks when the light on the access panel turns green.
I step onto the elevator that is reserved for the exclusive use of my grandfather.
My heart is in my throat by the time the doors open on the 40th floor.
The quiet is eerie. Normally, it’s buzzing with people who are either waiting to see my grandfather or working on something on his behalf.
Dan’s office is to the left of his. As I approach it, I feel like a traitor. I’ve known him my whole life. I know why they think they’re right. But they have to be wrong. Dan couldn’t be involved. He helped my grandfather rescue us.
His laptop is on his desk and I hurry to pick it up.
I’m back at the elevators in less than a minute. Just when the call button signals its arrival, all the lights come on.
The elevator doors open, and I find myself face to face with my grandfather.
One Week Later
HOUSTON, TX
Anything
Regan
“Come in,” my grandfather’s voice carries out into the hallway outside of his bedroom. He sounds irritated and weary.
I glance at my watch and note that it’s five minutes after we were supposed to meet.
That the most anal-retentive timekeeper on the planet kept me waiting does not bode well.
I plaster a confident smile on my face and straighten my spine as I walk into his room. My heart is beating a mile a minute and the speech I’d spent all morning preparing is now just a jumble of words that sounds idiotic as I start to recall them.
He glances up and there is a storm in his eyes that calls to mind the way lightning crackles before thunder shakes the world. I remember how he’d comfort me during the hurricanes and tropical storms that are ubiquitous with life on the Gulf of Mexico. “Don’t worry about the thunder, baby. It’s just noise. It’s the lightning that’ll kill you.”
All of the questions I’ve had during the week of silence between us are answered by that look.
There will be no forgiveness.
“Pops, I am so sorry.”
“I don’t want you to say another word, just sit down.” I do as he says but can’t meet his gaze.
“Your friends won’t be getting the courtesy of a meeting. The least you can do is look at me.”
His voice is a machete that slices through the last strands of my control and a tear rolls down my cheek. I wipe it away hastily and lift my head. I flinch at the complete lack of emotion in his eyes. He’s never looked at me with anything but tenderness, even when he was angry with me. I can’t bear to see the warmth extinguished in those wild blue eyes that used to be my refuge.
“I tried to help you all out of the mess you found yourselves in all of those years ago. I gave you jobs, I protected you from scrutiny and I helped you all move on. This betrayal cuts too deep. The consequences will, too.”
My stomach lurches and I have to swallow the dread clogging my throat before I can speak. “What—what’s going to happen?”
“As we speak, your office is being emptied. Your keycards have been deactivated and if I have any say over it, you will never work for Wilde World again.”
My eyes bulge at his words. “Pops, you can’t mean that.”
“I do. You chose your side, and now you will stay there.”
Panic assails me and I stand, my hands pressed together, I bow my head in supplication. “I had to help them. They’re my friends.”
“And we’re your family. First it was that Rivers boy. Now, this. It’s too much,” he responds.
I gape at him “You know about Stone? How?” I’m reeling and the dread that was in the pit of my stomach flows, concentrated and unchecked until my entire body is weighed down by it.
“I know everything Regan. Those people are our enemies. And you welcomed him into our place of business for months.”
“He’s only a boy,” I exclaim, that crazy instinct to protect Stone flares before my sense of self-preservation can stop me.
He snorts in disgust. “A boy who’s smarter than most men twice his age and a Rivers. That negates anything else he might be.” he grates, his cheeks flush with anger.
Tears stream down my cheeks. I brush them away furiously. If there is one thing he hates more than disloyalty, it’s crying.
My entire body is quaking with fear and my legs are unsteady. I walk over to his side of the bed.
I drop onto my knees, barely noticing the bite of the hardwood against them, and grasp his hand and press it to my face. It’s soft, covered in a sea of age spots, and gnarled. But it’s still strong and big as it had been when I was a little girl. This is the hands that checked my brow for fevers, held handlebars, bandaged my knees, and wiped away my tears. Now, it sits limply in my grasp and the man it’s attached to is looking at me with a dispassion that reaches the center of my greatest fear - losing his love.
“Pops, please. I’m sorry. I love you. Forgive me.” I beg numb with shock. He can’t mean it.
Who am I, if not his? Who will love me, if he doesn’t? Despair, the likes of whi
ch I’ve never known casts a shadow over my heart. I tighten my grip on his hand. “I’ll do anything.”
There’s no affection, or indulgence in his pale blue eyes when he looks pointedly at my left hand. “Marcel Landel is coming to dinner on Saturday. Look pretty.”
Two Years Later
Two Year Later
An Echo In Time
Regan
When I met him, Marcel was a larger than life public persona. From his wife’s sudden death, to his brother’s arrest for solicitation to his ascendancy to head of his family’s business empire - his name was constantly in the news. And he was ready to get married again.
He’s brilliant, rich, successful and was considered a most eligible bachelor - by women closer to my mother’s age than mine. But I was who he wanted.
The night we met, he made his intentions clear. “When I look across the table and see an old face, it reminds me that I’m old, too. I want to gaze at youth and be reminded that I’m as young as I feel.”
My husband may have inherited his good fortune, but he was no brainless, wasteful heir. He’d been working as his father’s right hand for years and had already helped transform Landel into one of the largest multimedia companies in the world. They own film studios, television networks, Cable and satellite channels, radio stations, restaurant chains and luxury resorts all over the world.
Marcel was a shrewd and pragmatic businessman. He treated the negotiation of our prenuptial agreement no differently and had a checklist that he wouldn’t stray from.
He wanted a woman who was well educated, but not too well. No younger than twenty-one, but no older than twenty-five. She must have wealth of her own and no criminal ties, and most importantly, she must be fertile. And he wanted proof of all of those things before he’d sign anything.
For a woman who had decided that marriage and children were not in my future, it was a very bitter pill to swallow.