The Perfect Stranger

by Megan Miranda

  There was nothing on the surface that made me think of Emmy. But there was something similar about the decor or lack thereof. It was the things that were missing. There were no pictures on the walls or propped up on the countertops. As I moved to her bedroom, the feeling only grew. There was a simple wardrobe in her closet. A small brown jewelry box on the center of an otherwise bare dresser. The surfaces all wiped clean.

  The bathroom had a white shower curtain, a single toothbrush, the surfaces uncluttered. I pictured this woman in a prison cell, suddenly set loose into the world. I could understand the lack of possessions and mementos. She had been starting fresh from nothing.

  The kitchen was just as clean except for the dishes in the sink. While I was standing on the laminate floor, I detected the faint scent of cleanser, as if Bethany was used to keeping things in order, in the habit of wiping down the counters after each meal.

  I opened her fridge and thought I should probably throw out the milk. It was pretty barren in there otherwise, and the same went for her pantry. I figured I should take out the garbage, at the very least. I opened the cabinets under the sink, found a stash of cleaning supplies and, behind those, a brown paper bag. The bag was not full of trash, as I’d assumed it would be, but opened envelopes bound with a thick rubber band.

  The letters were each addressed to Bethany Jarvitz, care of the state correctional facility. The return addresses varied by state and name, ebbing and flowing over time. I sank to the linoleum floor, sifting through the envelopes. The closest I had come so far to Bethany Jarvitz.

  The letters moved backward over time, from a few months before her release to the beginning of her incarceration.

  Her only contact with the outside world. One-sided conversations that marked the passage of eight years. The one thing that truly belonged to her.

  Mixed in with the opened letters were ones she had sent that went undelivered, Return to Sender. They were all unopened, ink on the front bleeding or smudged, the envelopes weathered and mishandled. They were addressed to various places but all nameless, like she was on a wild-goose chase, searching for someone. They had all been sent within the first year of her incarceration.

  I slit one open and read the note inside. I could sense the rage simmering off of it, the handwriting slanted and angry.

  You left me here. You’re going to pay. It was your idea. IT WAS YOUR IDEA. You don’t get to just walk away from me.

  I opened the next, and the next—all more of the same. Accusations sent to a nameless person. I could tell at any moment. I could. Keep that in mind, wherever you are.

  I wondered if any of these had reached the intended recipient. If they knew.

  At the end of the stack, the beginning of her time served, there was a letter with no return address. The postmark was dated from July, eight years ago, from Boston. Inside, the letter was short and unsigned. I’ll be there when you get out. I’ll help. I promise.

  I wondered if that was Emmy. It had to be. The date and location matched. Her promise held. My fingertips tightened on the letter. She’d come to this place not on the whim of fate but for Bethany. I wondered if she realized that, meanwhile, these letters had been making their way in the ether, bounced back, returned again. Nothing had reached her, as Ammi at least, in that basement apartment. Was she aware of the rage, of what was owed? Had she not seen the danger at all? God, Emmy, what have you gotten yourself into?

  I stood and retrieved the plastic bag Zoe had given me from the front hall. Then I tipped it over on the kitchen counter, letting Bethany’s mail fall out. Zoe was right, there were more than a few bills. A rent notice, an electrical bill. As with Emmy, there didn’t seem to be a phone bill, and there wasn’t a phone hooked to any phone jack in the apartment that I could see. As I was rifling through the stack, I felt a few new credit cards. I flipped past them, mindlessly processing the sender info—and froze.

  I went back, looked at the front again, at the name and the address in the plastic envelope window. It was sent to this address, and I could feel a credit card inside. But the name on the front said: Leah Stevens.

  I dropped the envelope to the counter.

  I heard my heartbeat inside my head, the pace ramping up. I stared at the closed apartment door, felt a hot wave of nausea, felt the ghost of Bethany in this apartment, becoming other than who I thought she had been.

  Then I started tearing through her things, desperate and angry. Not just at Bethany but at Emmy, for bringing me here to begin with. For doing this to me. To me. Opening and closing dresser drawers, kitchen cabinets, searching for something I couldn’t identify. Under the bed, between the mattress and box spring, in the bathroom cabinets—I caught sight of myself in the mirror, wild, and I had to look away.

  I stood in the middle of her bedroom, breathing heavily. The jewelry box on top of the dresser, the only thing in sight. I slid my finger into the handle, opening the door. A few pieces of costume jewelry, two rows of foam material to hold rings at the bottom. But all her rings were gathered on the row to the right.

  I picked at the edge of the foam on the empty left row, and it peeled away easily.

  Underneath: two slivers of paper, pressed down into the wood. My Social Security card. And a photocopy of my license. Ink bleeding through from the other side, a list of facts: my mother’s maiden name; a practiced signature—so, so close to my own and yet subtly not.

  No, I thought. No no no.

  I crumpled up the copies, slipping them into the back pocket of my pants, my hands trembling. I took the envelopes with my name on them, stuffed them in my purse, and searched every corner of her place once more.

  When I was satisfied there was nothing left, I knocked on Zoe’s door, waited for her to answer. “Did you know her friends?” I asked when she opened the door. “Anyone I could talk to around here?”

  “Well, there’s Liam in 1C, though I wouldn’t call them friends anymore. But they were seeing each other for a while earlier this year. I think her friends were mainly from work. She kept to herself most of the time, other than the thing with Liam. I’ve been here longer than any of them. The rest, they come and go. Oh, there was a girl who would stop by sometimes. It’s not that I was keeping tabs on her or anything, it’s just hard not to notice things when you live next door.” She smiled, again somewhat apologetically. I knew her type, making it her mission to know everything about everyone, the ins and outs of a place. She was the person to hit up for information. She would make a great source. “Liam might know more,” she added.

  “Thanks. I’m done in there for now,” I said. I noticed her looking me over and realizing I hadn’t taken a bag of clothes or anything with me. I didn’t care.

  I took the steps quickly to the first floor, followed the letters on the doors until I hit C, and knocked. There was music inside, and I had to knock twice before someone answered.

  A man with unkempt—and, it seemed, unwashed—hair opened the door, his eyes bloodshot. I could see another man sitting on the couch and noticed that the music was part of a video game. The man in front of me said, “Yeah?”

  “Are you Liam?”

  He looked me over again, narrowed his eyes—I wondered if he, too, saw the resemblance. Or if it was only there when you went looking for it. “Yeah.”

  “Zoe said I should talk to you, that you might be able to tell me some more about Bethany.”

  He shook his head, closing the door, but I stuck my foot in the gap.

  “I already told the police,” he said. “I hadn’t seen her in months. It was, like, four months ago. I can’t be the last person who saw her. The last one to know her.”

  “Did you know her friend? A girl who sometimes stayed with her?”

  He laughed. “No, I didn’t know her friends. I didn’t know anything about her. She never even let me in her apartment. Always said it needed to be cleaned or something. I barely knew where she worked, only that she did, that she never stayed over and didn’t like to go out.” He looked i
nto his apartment, then back to me. “I can’t be all you have to go on,” he said, as if the responsibility were just too great, too outside his frame of reference.

  “I told you,” the other guy called, not looking up from the screen. Then he faced me, paused the game, fixed his eyes on mine. “I told him, but he didn’t listen. There was something off. Something wrong with that girl.”

  * * *

  I DROVE HOME, REMEMBERING the last time someone had spoken those words to me, about me.

  Paige saying, There’s something not right with you. Because it was the easiest explanation. The one that absolved her from seeing the truth, from admitting she’d been played.

  The article had been about to go to press. I had given Paige warning. For weeks I had warned her. First calling her up, telling her the truth. Years after I had moved out of their apartment.

  “I’m investigating a suspicious death,” I’d said. “His name came up. I’m just giving you the heads-up.”

  “I haven’t heard from you in years,” she’d said, “and now you want to talk to me? You left, and went totally off the radar, and now you’re investigating my husband?”

  “I should’ve told you,” I said. “I should’ve told you years ago, the night before I left—”

  “He told me,” she said. “He told me you were drunk, and when he went back for his medicine, you made a move on him. I already knew that.”

  “No,” I said. “He . . .” He what? He moved my things, opened the doors, messed with my head . . . Even after all this time, I wasn’t sure. I thought, but I had no proof. He tried to kill me. That was the thing I believed, deep inside. Waking up with the feeling of water in my lungs. The damp mildew smell of my pillow. After seeing the details of the girl who died at the college, Bridget LaCosta, overdose and drowning—I believed it even more. That maybe I had been his first attempt and it had not gone his way. That he’d had the perfect setup and had tried to stage it to fit, the story already in motion: We were out, she was drinking, she didn’t get the job she was expecting, she had to crash on our sofa. She wasn’t used to failure. We missed the warning signs. Me, finding his pills, taking so many, settling into the bath, slipping under.

  He had failed. He hadn’t given me enough. Or I had fought back, ruined the scene. It went bad, one way or the other. Either way, I woke up in my bed, safe and secure—but another girl had not. And how many were there between then and now? It was too naive to think he wouldn’t have been active in the meantime. That he wouldn’t have been trying.

  “He drugged me, Paige,” I said, begging her to see the rest.

  “Stop calling me,” she said.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  “It’s going to print,” I said. “It’s going to come out. I’m not using his name, but someone’s going to track it down.”

  When I got the notice of the restraining order, I almost laughed.

  And then the article came out. The next night I found myself behind their house, so curious—the scent of blood, my inevitable undoing. Wondering if he knew yet. If he knew it had been me.

  I’d stood on my toes, could see only between the gap of the curtain, the amber light. I heard faint classical music humming in the background, from some room just out of sight. Stopping. Restarting. Like a record stuck on a loop.

  I saw a glass on the table. Red wine. Just a trace left behind.

  And I saw someone moving in the background, gently swaying. Spinning. I pressed my face closer to the window, my breath fogging up the glass. I saw his shoes first. Black. Polished. A few feet above the ground. Moving faintly back and forth, swinging from above.

  I let out a gasp. A noise louder than that. But I was already backing away, running, flat-footed and desperate through the evening commuters. I didn’t stop until I made it into the T station, where I sat on the bench and let three trains go by before I’d gathered myself to go home.

  It was Paige who found him, according to the police. Cut him down in a panic with a kitchen knife, the baby still strapped in the stroller in the parlor. She had just returned home with the baby from errands. It was the time she was always out, I knew from watching her. After work, she’d pick up their five-month-old son from day care, and they’d go to the store, or the mall, or they’d walk down through the Commons around the pond, or along Storrow Drive by the edge of the Charles.

  It was why I’d picked right then to look. It was probably why he’d picked right then to do it.

  I thought that was so cruel of him, even then. To leave it to Paige to discover.

  CHAPTER 30

  I am the tie that binds. Not Emmy. Not Bethany. Me.

  Me to Davis Cobb. Me to Emmy. My name in Bethany’s apartment, where it looked like she’d been attempting to slowly assume my identity.

  Me to Theo. Me to the newspaper delivered to my door. Me to Aaron and Paige.

  It’s no wonder the police pulled back to get a better view. It’s no wonder Kyle was skeptical. Look at what I’d left him with. Untraceable email accounts sending me proof that they were watching; a man calling me up at night; a woman with my face; a girl whom I could not prove existed. A dead body that I had identified beforehand. A history of inventing people—as if I were setting up a defense in advance.

  I am the perfect mark.

  I was back then, and I still am now. Loyal to a fault. Looking for the stories. An ear trained to pick up intrigue. Look at how you’ve channeled your weaknesses into strengths, my mother had said. The way I’m drawn to the morbid, the cop cars gathered on the side of the road, a streak of blood in the grass. How I throw myself into something, one hundred percent, until I achieve the desired outcome. Needing the construct of the story—a beginning, a middle, an end—to make sense of things.

  I should’ve known, should’ve understood—that these strengths could be weaknesses instead. Looking for stories. Stepping too close, never putting up walls. An ear trained to pick up intrigue that you could feed me. A play on my emotions, an appeal to something baser inside. I welcomed Emmy into my life, into my head, with no boundaries. I thought we were protecting each other. I assumed we were on the same side from the start.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, AS I walked into school, I saw him in the front office through the glass windows. Davis Cobb, his head down, smiling at the secretary. He had some paperwork in his hand, probably allowing him to officially start working again. I pictured him on the other side of the wall, in another room; on the other side of a screen, his face glowing as his thick fingers typed out a poem about me and a man I’d brought home.

  What more did he know?

  I waited outside the back entrance of the front office near the classroom wings, waited for him to come out the locked door, so I might catch him off guard, unplanned. The door flew open, and there he was, towering over me, looking somewhere beyond.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said, stepping directly into his path.

  Davis’s eyes went wide. I had forgotten that they were blue. I had forgotten all the pieces that made him real—a real person, a real threat. He backed away, hands out in defense, as if our roles were reversed. His eyes shifted from side to side down the empty halls. “No,” he said.

  I stepped closer. “You’ve seen her. My roommate. You’ve seen her. I just need to know.” I heard myself, felt the urgency, the desperation, could do nothing to stop it. “You’ve been watching.” If nobody could prove she existed, it all circled back to me.

  “I don’t watch you,” he said, taking another step back until he was practically pressed up against the front office door. He had his hand on the knob, but it had locked behind him, and he was stuck with me now. “I don’t. I never did. I told them that.”

  In my head, I heard his voice dropped low to a whisper, his breath in the phone from somewhere outside. The things he said and knew. “But in the emails . . .”

  He shook his head. “I can’t talk to you. My lawyer said.”

  The handle turned from the othe
r side, and the door flew open. He spun away, back into the office, just as Kate walked out.

  She looked between him and me and gave me a quizzical look as she passed. I shook off the moment, joined her walking down the hall.

  “I see you’re in as big a rush as I am today,” she said, pretending she hadn’t noticed what she’d just seen.

  “Ugh,” I said.

  “Well. To Friday,” she said. “Any chance you’re up for going out again?”

  “I want to,” I said, “but I can’t tonight.” There was too much up in the air, too much I couldn’t get a grasp on.

  She slowed her steps. “I feel like you’re avoiding me. Is this a friend breakup? Because if it is, I can take it. I’m a big girl. I just don’t want to keep asking you if you don’t want to hang out.”

  “I do.” I grabbed her arm, pausing in the hall. “The week has been a disaster,” I said, and then, to appeal to something deeper, “I let the police search my house a few days ago.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh. How did it go?”

  “They haven’t found her yet,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Leah,” she said, a hand on my arm. We parted in the middle of the hall as the warning bell rang and the students started filing down the hall behind us.

  * * *

  IZZY WAS ALREADY AT her seat, and I felt a sinking sensation, thinking that maybe she had been here waiting for me. Waiting to tell me something, and I had missed it. Molly and Theo came in right after me, and I couldn’t get a moment alone with her.

  I tried not to look directly at Izzy, so she wouldn’t feel the weight of being watched. I wished for an empty classroom, a fire drill, a reason to pull her aside and tell her: I’m listening.

  But moments did not create themselves; fate did not line itself up at one’s whim. There was no vodka, or dart, or map pinned to the wall. There was only a girl I didn’t know whom I followed to a place I didn’t belong, for reasons I didn’t understand.