by Minka Kent
When I contacted the landlord last month to see if there were any cheaper units available I could move to, he told me he had a tenant looking to sublet one of her rooms. He stressed to me that they normally didn’t allow this, but it was his niece and he was making an exception as a favor to her parents.
“If you’re not hungry, that’s cool,” Bethany says, taking the spot beside me on her sofa. She’s got this mid-century modern kind of vibe going on in here. Clean lines, zero clutter, and mixed metal accents. She’s completely obsessed with Mad Men and anything vintage. Her bedroom looks like a page out of a 1958 issue of Good Housekeeping and her closet is stocked with enviable, hard to find pieces from eras past. I’m convinced her entire life could be filmed with a Super 8 camera and no one would question its authenticity.
“No, I’ll go.” I pause the episode of Mad Men playing on the TV. She convinced me to start watching it last week. Now I’m three seasons in and hooked like a fish. “Is Monteverde in the West Loop okay? I’ve been craving their gnocchetti.”
“You had me at Monteverde.” Bethany twists her fingers around the string of pearls hanging around her neck and then grins. She’s quirky and fun. Nothing like Lauren. What you see is what you get with her—at least from what I can tell. She works as an art teacher in a local public school and her personality is simply infectious. Everybody loves her and with good reason. She’s always happy, smiling.
I’m lucky to call her my friend.
Rising, I head to my room to freshen up, first slicking on two coats of the matte “Betty Draper Red” lipstick Bethany recommended for me the other week. When I’m done, I check my reflection in the mirror, smoothing the creases of the floral, tea-length dress we found at a vintage thrift shop yesterday. Slipping the matching Jackie O-style coat over my shoulders, I fasten the button at the top and give myself a final once-over before running my hands along the shiny blonde curls that stop just above my jawline.
I’m missing something …
Fishing around in my jewelry box, I retrieve a pearl necklace just like my roommate’s and fasten it around my neck.
There. Now I’m perfect.
Sample - The Memory Watcher
Prologue
Autumn
I found her.
It took three years, but I found her.
They call her Grace, and while she may not look like them, she is theirs.
And she is also mine.
Her hair is light brown with a little natural wave, the way mine was at that age, and her dark eyes, round and inquisitive, light up her cherubic face when she smiles.
Her mother, Daphne, dresses her in pink lace and oversized hair bows and poses her for pictures every chance she gets, plastering them all over social media.
The first night I stumbled across Daphne McMullen’s Instaface, I stayed up until four in the morning going through all the photographs and status updates, soaking in and screenshotting every last moment and immortalized memory from the day they brought her home from the hospital to the day she blew out the third candle on her double chocolate birthday cake.
One thousand and ninety-five days I missed morphed into one thousand and ninety-five days I recovered over the course of one sleepless night.
I hook a leg over the edge of my bathtub, mindlessly scrolling through Daphne’s newsfeed for the millionth time in the past week. A million times I’ve seen these photos, and yet it’s like the first time, every time.
Steam rises from the water and sweat collects across my brow. I’m in a trance, and I don’t come out until I’m prompted by the sound of my roommate pounding on the door.
“You almost done in there?” she asks. “I put that show on that you wanted to watch. I ordered us a pizza too. Should be here soon.”
She’s so needy, always clinging to me, always telling me her secrets and whining to me about how hard it is to be her. I read her diary at her bizarre insistence, and believe me when I say she has nothing to cry about.
Her car? Paid for.
Her college tuition? Paid for.
This apartment? Paid for.
Her parents? Overachievers with rigorous expectations. Boo-freaking-hoo.
“Yeah,” I call out. “I’ll be out in a few.”
I don’t move. Instead, I keep scrolling, dragging my thumb across the fogged screen of my phone, smiling to myself. I examine another photo, then another and another. I’m not sure how much time passes, but my roommate bangs on the door once more.
“You still in there? Pizza just got here.” Her voice is timid and meek on the other side of the door. Over the past few years, I’ve become her life force. She can’t go anywhere or do anything or make any decisions without me. But lately she’s been withering away, drawing into her shell. She whispers more than she talks these days, and at night I hear her cry through the shared wall that separates our bedrooms, but she won’t get help because the last time she needed it, her parents had her committed.
“Getting out now.” I try not to groan as I place my phone aside and reach for a towel.
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
Good God, this girl.
I love everything about her life. I love her overinvolved helicopter parents. I love her dorky little brother. I love her adoring nana. I love her little white BMW and the collection of unused designer purses that fill her closet. I love her drawer full of department store makeup and the way her luxe shampoo smells every morning after she showers.
But I do not love her.
She has everything a girl could possibly want, and all she does is fixate on the past, on things she can’t change. One unfortunate situation happened three years ago, and she refuses to let it go. This girl dwells something fierce. If only she lived a day in my life, then she’d actually have something to dwell on.
Sometimes I’m convinced I was born in the wrong body, to the wrong family.
I should have been born as her.
“Drying off now,” I yell, wrapping a plush towel around my wet body. “Be out in ten.”
I finish up, scrolling through photos as I slather her overpriced, fragrance-free lotion on my damp skin, and I do a tiny jump for joy when I see Daphne has posted a fresh picture of Grace.
God, this is addictive.
It’s like someone dropped an all-access backstage pass to Grace’s life right into my lap.
It’s bedtime and my Grace is wearing a princess nightgown that stops just above her chubby little ankles. Wisps of hair hang in her eyes and she’s dragging a white teddy bear along side of her.
How I long to kiss her forehead, tuck her in to bed, and tell her how loved she is.
Someday, perhaps.
Until then, this will have to do.
Forty-Eight
Autumn
7 years later…
Press, tap, refresh.
Over the years, Instaface’s algorithms have learned that Daphne McMullen’s posts are my favorite. Her posts are almost always at the top of my newsfeed. But today they’re MIA.
Something’s not right.
Scrolling down, I pass @TheLittleGreenCottage and @FitnessJunkie887. I pass @JustJustine and @CaliMakeupGuru.
Scrolling…
Scrolling…
Scrolling…
There’s no sign of Daphne anywhere.
This is odd.
There’s a tingle in the back of my throat, and every nerve ending is standing on edge. Something’s amiss. I feel it all over. Inside. Outside. The core of my bones.
Tapping on the search bar, I type in @TheMcMullenFamily and take a deep breath.
No results found.
This can’t be right.
Did she block me?
She doesn’t even know me. Of course she didn’t block me, and I “ghost” follow her. I’m not an “official” follower. Official followers require proof of identification due to Instaface’s strict no-dummy-accounts policy.
Just to be sure, I log out of my account and perform the s
earch again.
No results found.
Maybe she changed her account name?
I type in @McMullenFamily, @DaphneMcMullen, and @GrahamandDaphneMcMullen. I type in fifty thousand other variations, all of which lead me to the same dead end.
No results found.
Heat creeps up my neck, billowing to my ears. My throat constricts, and I can’t breathe.
Rushing to the bedroom window, I throw back the curtains and slide it open, gasping for air, met with a blast of tepid morning rain on my face that does nothing to calm me down.
This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.
I refuse to believe it.
It makes no sense.
Daphne McMullen has thousands of followers.
She lives for this stuff.
She has so many followers, companies send her free stuff.
She does paid ads for crying out loud.
Why would she just shut it down?
She posted a picture of the kids getting ready for school this morning . . . how could it all just . . . go away like that? With no warning?
My eyes burn, brimming until everything around me is a hazy blur. There’s a cry in the back of my throat, readying itself, threatening to burst to the surface if I don’t do something immediately.
My knees give out, and I grip the edge of my dresser to steady myself because I can hardly summon the strength to stand. If my boyfriend weren’t hogging the bathroom we share, I’d be on my knees in front of the toilet, expelling the shocked contents of my stomach in an attempt to quell the maelstrom inside me.
My gateway to Grace’s life has come to a screeching halt. Just like that.
Everything I live for just . . . gone.
“Autumn, you all right out there?” Ben asks from the other side of the door. “I heard a loud noise. Everything okay?”
No. Everything is not okay.
I don’t answer. I can’t. And the bathroom door swings open just as I push myself to standing and clench the lapels of my robe so he can’t see what I’m wearing underneath it.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Had a dizzy spell. Think I’m coming down with something.”
Ben’s blue eyes narrow and then relax. He buys it. He buys everything, all the time.
I check my reflection in the dresser mirror, dragging my fingertips through my sandy hair and piling it all into a messy bun on the top of my crown, precisely the way this pretty girl from a gas station yesterday morning wore hers. Gathered. Twisted. Elastic’d. Pulled and yanked into messy submission. I’ve also managed to scrounge up a sheer white blouse from the back of my closet, and I’ve slid two chicken cutlet-shaped inserts into my push-up bra. I’m one hundred percent sure Pretty Girl had a boob job.
Everything’s hidden under my fluffy gray bathrobe, and the second Ben leaves, I’ll stain my lips in bold, electric red. There’s a bluish undertone to this particular shade, which I’ve learned from several fashion and beauty magazines tends to make teeth appear to be the whitest of white. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my twenty-five years on this God-forsaken planet, it’s that rich people almost always have teeth the color of driven snow.
A cloud of steam floats from the bathroom doorway, wrapping its damp warmth around me and carrying with it a hint of Ben’s cologne, which isn’t actually Ben’s at all. Another man, Dylan Abernathy, wore it first.
I follow his wife, @DeliaAbernathy, on Instaface, reveling in their every documented, picturesque moment like it’s my own. And it is mine. All I have to do is close my eyes and I’m transported to their serene cottage on the Portland coast of Maine. I breathe in, and I can feel the salty air in my lungs, pulling in the scent of the ocean again and again.
I spotted the cologne in the background of one of her photos once, and I had to order a bottle for Ben. It smells like wet moss and rubbing alcohol, but he insists he loves it anyway.
Sometimes I imagine Delia inhaling Dylan’s cologne, her nose buried in the curve of his neck, and when I kiss Ben, sometimes I pretend we’re them, my hands slinking up his shoulders the way Delia might do. Our lips grazing. His scent enveloping us in a sweet moment of simplistic bliss. And in those fleeting seconds, I’m Delia Abernathy.
Inside and out. All over. Everywhere.
“You sure you’re okay?” Ben’s hands slink around my waist and his body presses against my back. The warmth of his lips grazing against the side of my neck follows, and I can almost feel the slight arc of his grin. “You need me to run to the store and get you some meds?”
“No, no. I’ll be fine.” I glance at my phone, which may as well be useless at this point, and I just want him to leave so I can wrap my head around all of this.
“Just take some time for yourself today, okay?” He lifts his dark brows, searching my eyes for confirmation.
All I do is take time for myself anymore. Losing my job as a medical assistant at Children’s Medical Group two months ago has given me more than enough time to take care of myself.
“I will,” I say.
“Good.” He kisses my neck again. “Because I’m getting off early tonight.”
My mind spins, trying to recall what we had planned for tonight.
“My sister’s birthday?” His dark brows lift as he attempts to jog my memory. “We’re taking Marnie out for dinner? You said you wrapped her gift last night.”
“Oh. Right.” I force a smile, lying through my teeth. I haven’t wrapped his sister’s gift yet. I haven’t even purchased it. Mentally adding that to my to-do list for the day, I rise on my toes, press my lips against his, and send him off to work with a, “Have a nice day, Benny.”
He both loves and hates when I call him that, but it always elicits a smile, and I need him to believe nothing’s wrong. At this point, I need Ben now more than ever and for reasons he’ll never understand.
Sometimes it feels wrong staring into his unassuming blue gaze and basking in his adoring smile while knowing I chose him the way a woman might choose the perfect pair of shoes from a mail-order catalog.
I saw. I researched. I chose.
But he made it so easy; his social media was a click-of-the-mouse smorgasbord.
Before I’d officially met Ben Gotlieb, I knew everything there was to know about him. Where he grew up (Rochester, New York). Where he attended college (University of Vermont). His favorite band (Coldplay). His favorite food (Mexican). What he did for a living (accountant). I knew he was single. I knew he was the oldest child, which meant he was responsible and dependable. I knew he was kindhearted as evidenced by the abundance of inspirational and motivational articles he’d post on his newsfeed. I knew he was a runner who traveled the country for marathons, collecting medals and stickers to showcase on the rear window of his hunter green Subaru. It took me all of an hour in front of a computer screen to ascertain that Ben Gotlieb was a good man.
As Ben would check in to various pubs and restaurants, I would follow.
Keeping back.
Always watching.
Observing who he was with and which kind of women drew his eye.
And Ben definitely had a type.
The blondes never did it for him. Neither did the brunettes or the redheads. But the ones with the Jennifer Aniston sandy-blonde hair caught his attention every time. He seemed to be drawn to the girl-next-door types. Low-slung boyfriend jeans and a V-neck t-shirt. Minimal makeup. Cute ponytail. Bookish glasses.
And so I had to become her.
With a phone full of Instaface screenshots of some beauty blogger named @EmmaLeeFacesTheDay, I marched into the salon on Vine and Copeland and had my stylist transform my muddy brown strands into sandy ash blonde 532. On my way home, I stopped at the optometrist, grabbing a pair of cute glasses with thick, tortoiseshell frames and a non-prescription lens. I ended my day with an extensive shopping excursion at the Valley Park Mall, balancing my overpriced iced mocha latte, which I was determined to start liking, with an armful of shopping bag
s and a maxed-out credit card.
It took several days and a lot of practicing in front of the mirror, but by the time the following weekend rolled around, I was ready to officially meet Ben.
Stepping into someone else’s skin made meeting him that much easier. The way I walked . . . the way I casually traced my collarbone as I laughed . . . the way I let my stare linger on his just a second too long as my mouth curled into a teasing smirk . . . none of that was me.
And yet it was me.
“See you tonight,” Ben calls out before he leaves our bedroom, and I watch him grab his leather billfold off the dresser and slip it into his back right pocket. Pulling his navy suit jacket over his broad shoulders, he lingers in the doorway, taking me in the way he has since the moment we first–officially–met. I can almost hear him asking himself how he got so lucky. Ben exhales, his gaze fixed on mine. “I love you, Autumn.”
“Love you too,” I say. And I mean it. Mostly.
I think I love Ben. A girl spends two years with someone and she ought to by now. It’s just that he said it so fast. We’d only been dating eight weeks when he blurted it out over Chinese takeout–his choice–and a rented DVD–also his choice. And then he proceeded to ramble on about how he’d never met anyone like me, how he couldn’t believe how perfect we were together, how it was as if his dream girl had just . . . manifested from nothing and waltzed right into his life.
Two months after that, he asked me to move in with him, and of course I said yes.
That was the whole reason I scoped Ben out in the first place.
He lived in the charming blue bungalow behind the McMullen family.
And I wanted to watch my daughter grow up.
Forty-Nine
Daphne
My blouse is soaked clear through, sticking to my skin and sending a quick shiver down my spine. Graham keeps the house at a frigid sixty-eight degrees year round. It’s the way he likes it. Never mind the fact that he’s rarely home. When he’s not putting in fifty-hour weeks, he’s sauntering around the country club greens pretending he’s in the company of a quiet crowd who silently applaud his perfected chip shot.