She turns to go, then looks back at me. Honey, if you’re that scared of him, you really should go to the police.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-NINE
Sunday, December 23
In a psychological assessment known as the Invisible Gorilla experiment, subjects believed they were supposed to count passes between players on a basketball team. In actuality, they were being evaluated on something else entirely. What most subjects did not notice while tallying the tosses of the ball was that a man in a gorilla suit had walked onto the court. Focusing so strongly on one component blinded the subjects to the big picture.
My hyperfocus on Thomas’s fidelity, or lack thereof, may have obscured an unexpectedly shocking aspect of my case study: that you have an agenda of your own.
You have been solely responsible for reporting what occurred during all of your encounters with my husband—from the museum, to Ted’s Diner, to the most recent rendezvous at Deco Bar. Your interactions with Thomas could not be witnessed because of the danger that he would notice my presence.
But you have proven to be an accomplished liar.
In fact, you snuck into my survey in a move that appeared entrepreneurial but was actually duplicitous.
All of your revelations are reviewed again, this time through a new lens: You lied to your parents about the circumstances of Becky’s accident. You sleep with men you barely know. You claim that a respected theater director crossed unwanted sexual lines with you.
You hold so many disturbing secrets, Jessica.
Your life could be destroyed if they were released.
Despite your promises of honesty, you continued to lie to me after you became Subject 52. You confessed that Thomas did quickly respond to your initial text suggesting a date right after you encountered him at Ted’s Diner, but that you withheld this information from me. And the twenty-two-minute meeting between you and my husband at Deco Bar, for what should have been a five-minute conversation, remains a loose thread, Jessica.
What did you leave out? And why?
Your desire to go home for the holidays and remain there seemed quite abrupt. After that attempt was thwarted, you suggested that you might join Lizzie’s family for Christmas. But you lied about that, too, when you falsely claimed that Lizzie had invited you to the family farm in Iowa for the holidays.
Something is deeply amiss, Jessica.
Your motives for wanting to flee must be scrutinized.
You wrote something quite telling during your very first session. The words form in the mind, one by one, just as they appeared on the screen as you typed, unaware that you were being watched via the laptop’s camera: When it comes down to it, I’ve only got myself to rely on.
Self-preservation is a powerful motivator, more reliably so than money or empathy or love.
A hypothesis forms.
It is possible that the tenor of your meetings with my husband was markedly different from what you described.
Perhaps Thomas covets you.
You know the truth about your role in this experiment.
Why would you contaminate the results?
You understood that significantly more would be asked of you if you continued in my morality study. Maybe you feel as if it is too much.
You clearly want to be released from our entanglement. Did you reason that the best way to escape would be by creating a false narrative, one that would provide the resolution you think I want? One that would free you from any future involvement?
You could be congratulating yourself right now on having scored so much—gifts, money, even a luxurious Florida vacation for your family—before cunningly devising a way to move on with your life.
You might be so focused on your own self-interest that you are ignoring the wreckage you are leaving in your wake.
How dare you, Jessica?
Twenty years ago, my younger sister, Danielle, was faced with moral temptation. More recently, so was Katherine April Voss. These two young women chose poorly.
Both of their deaths can be attributed to direct results of those ethical breakdowns.
You were brought in to serve as a morality test for my husband, Jessica.
But perhaps it is you who failed it.
CHAPTER
SIXTY
Sunday, December 23
I keep coming back to this one question. My gut tells me I have to unravel it until I expose the secret buried at its core: Why did Thomas fabricate an affair with Lauren, the boutique owner, when he’s so desperate to hide the real one he had with April?
I can’t walk away from this, even though I have my file. Dr. Shields isn’t going to let me go until she’s through with me. All I can do to protect myself is try to figure out what happened to April, so I can keep it from happening to me.
Lauren told me to call the police if I was frightened of Thomas. But what could I say?
I pursued a married man. I even slept with him. Oh, and his wife hired me; she kind of knew about it. And by the way, I think one or both of them might be involved with this other girl’s suicide.
It sounds preposterous; they’d think I was nuts.
So instead of phoning the police, I make a few other calls.
First I dial Thomas’s cell. I barrel in without preamble: “Why are you pretending you slept with Lauren when all you did was buy clothes at her boutique?”
I hear his sharp intake of breath.
“You know what, Jess? I’ve got Lydia’s notes on April, and you have Lydia’s notes on you. So we’re even. I don’t need to answer your questions. Good luck.”
Then he hangs up.
I immediately hit Redial.
“Actually, you only have the first thirteen pages from April’s file. I never sent you the last five. So you do need to answer me. But in person.” I need to be able to read his face, too.
The line is so quiet that I worry he’s hung up on me again.
Then he says, “I’m in my office. Meet me here in an hour.”
After he gives me the address, I press End Call and pace, thinking hard. His tone was impossible to decipher. He didn’t sound angry; there wasn’t even any strong emotion in his voice. But maybe he’s one of those guys who is most dangerous when he seems calm, the way it’s always quiet just before a thunderclap erupts.
An office seems like a safe enough place. If Thomas wants to hurt me, wouldn’t he pick another location, one that isn’t linked to him? But it’s Sunday, and I don’t know if the building will be empty.
Lauren said she thought Thomas seemed like a nice guy. That was my impression of him, too, both at the museum and on the night we hooked up. But I can’t ever shake the memory of what happened the last time I was alone in an office with a man who seemed nice.
So I make a second call, this one to Noah, and ask him to meet me outside Thomas’s building in ninety minutes.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say honestly. “I have an appointment with someone I don’t know that well and I’d just feel better if you were there to pick me up after.”
“Who is it?”
“His name is Dr. Cooper. It’s kind of a work thing. I’ll explain it all when I see you, okay?”
Noah sounds a little dubious, but he agrees. I think of all the things I’ve done—given him a fake name, told him several times I’ve had weird or stressful days, expressed concerns about trusting others—and I promise myself I really will tell him as much as I can. It’s not just because he deserves it. I’d feel safer having someone else know what’s going on.
As I feared, the hallway is empty as I approach Thomas’s office at 1:30 P.M.
At the end of the corridor, I find Suite 114. There’s a plaque on the side of the entrance listing his full name, Thomas Cooper, and those of a few other therapists.
I lift my hand. Before I can knock, the door swings open.
I instinctively take a step back.
I’d forgotten how big he is. His frame fil
ls most of the entryway, blotting out the weak winter sunlight streaming in from the window behind him.
“This way,” Thomas says, stepping aside and jerking his head toward what must be his private office.
I wait for him to go first; I don’t want him behind me. But he isn’t moving.
After a few seconds, he seems to comprehend my concern and he abruptly turns and strides through the waiting area.
As soon as I’m inside his office, he closes the door.
The space seems to shrink, hemming me in. My body clenches up as panic tears through me. No one can help me if Thomas is truly dangerous. There are three doors between me and the outside world.
I’m trapped, just like I was with Gene.
So many times I’ve fantasized about what I would do if I could relive that night in the quiet theater, after everyone else had left: I’ve beaten myself up for just standing there, frozen, while Gene got off on my vulnerability and fear.
Now I’m in a situation that feels eerily similar.
And I’m paralyzed again.
But Thomas merely walks around his desk and sits in the leather rolling chair.
He looks surprised when I remain standing.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to a chair facing him. I sink into it, trying to steady my breathing.
“My boyfriend is waiting outside,” I choke out.
Thomas raises an eyebrow. “Okay,” he says, sounding so nonplussed that I know he isn’t planning to do anything harmful to me.
My terror continues to ebb away as I take in Thomas’s appearance: He looks exhausted. He’s wearing an untucked flannel shirt, and he’s unshaven. When he takes off his glasses to rub his eyes, I notice they’re red-rimmed, the way mine always get when I haven’t slept enough.
He puts his glasses back on and steeples his hands. His next words come as a surprise.
“Look, I can’t make you trust me,” he says. “But I swear, I’m trying to protect you from Lydia. You’re already in so deep.”
I break eye contact with him and glance around the room, trying to get clues about who Thomas is. I’ve been in Dr. Shields’s office and the town house, and both of those places reflect her cool, remote elegance.
Thomas’s office is so different. Beneath my feet is a soft-looking rug, and the wooden shelves are overflowing with books of all shapes and sizes. On his desk is a clear jar filled with butterscotch candy in yellow wrappers. Beside it is one of those coffee mugs with an inspirational quote wrapped around its perimeter. I stare at the two words in the middle of the quote: love you.
It sparks a question. “Do you even love your wife?” I ask.
He dips his head. “I thought I did. I wanted to. I tried to . . .” His voice sounds a little ragged. “But I couldn’t.”
I believe him; I was entranced by Dr. Shields, too, when I first met her.
In my pocket, I feel my phone vibrate. I ignore it, but I imagine Dr. Shields holding her sleek, silver phone to her ear, waiting for me to answer. The tiny lines in her exquisite face, the face that appears carved from flawless white marble, are deepening.
“People get divorced all the time. Why didn’t you simply end it?” I ask.
Then I remember what he told me: You can’t just leave someone like her.
“I tried that. But to her, our marriage was perfect, and she refused to see that we had any problems,” Thomas says. “So you’re right, I did make up the affair with that woman from the boutique—Lauren. I picked her almost on a whim. She seemed believable, like someone I’d want to sleep with. I deliberately texted Lydia and pretended it was meant for Lauren.”
“You sent your wife a fake text?” How desperate he must have been, I think.
Thomas looks down at his hands. “I thought for sure Lydia would leave me if I cheated on her. It seemed like an easy way out. She wrote a whole book titled The Morality of Marriage. I never believed she’d insist on trying to repair our relationship.”
He still hasn’t answered a basic question: Why didn’t he just admit he had the affair with April?
So I ask him.
He picks up his mug and takes a sip, his fingers covering up most of the words in the quote. Maybe he’s trying to buy time.
Then he puts it down. But the words facing me are different because he twisted the position of the mug when he moved it: take is equal.
Like a jigsaw puzzle coming together, the entire line blooms in my mind: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
I was right: Thomas must have sung that line by the Beatles to April on the night when they were together. That’s how she discovered the song she listened to with her mother.
“April was so young,” Thomas finally says. “I thought it might be hard for Lydia to know I’d chosen a twenty-three-year-old.” He appears even sadder now than he did when I first came in; I swear I can see him fighting back tears. “I didn’t know at first how damaged April was. I figured we both wanted a one-night thing . . .”
He looks at me meaningfully, and I know what he isn’t saying: Like you and I did.
I feel my cheeks grow warm. Inside my pocket, my phone vibrates again. Somehow it feels more insistent now.
“How did April become subject 5?” I ask, trying to ignore the buzzing against my leg. My skin feels prickly, like the vibration is spreading out across my entire body. Like it’s trying to consume me.
I glance to my left, at the closed door to Thomas’s office. I didn’t see him lock it. I don’t recall him bolting the main door to the suite after he let me in, either.
Thomas no longer feels like a threat to me. But I can sense danger lurking nearby, like the curl of smoke from an approaching fire.
“April got really attached to me, for some reason,” Thomas continues. “She called and texted a bunch of times. I tried to let her down gently . . . She knew from the beginning I was married. A couple weeks later, it stopped as abruptly as it all started. I figured she’d moved on, met somebody new.”
He pinches his forehead between his thumb and index finger, like he has a headache.
Hurry, I think to myself urgently. I can’t identify why, but my instincts are telling me to get out of this office quickly.
Thomas takes another sip from his mug before he continues. “Then Lydia came home and told me about this new subject in her study, a young woman who’d had a traumatic reaction to the experience. We talked about how the survey must have triggered something, perhaps a repressed memory. I was the one who encouraged Lydia to talk to her in person, to help her. I didn’t know it was April. Lydia only ever called her Subject 5.” Thomas lets out a harsh laugh that seems to encapsulate all the snarled, complicated feelings he must hold. “I didn’t realize April and Subject 5 were the same person until a private investigator contacted Lydia about her file.”
I’m barely breathing. I don’t want to interrupt him; I’m desperate to hear what else he knows. But I’m also acutely aware of the phone against my leg. I’m waiting for the buzzing to start up again.
“I’ve had some time to piece it together,” Thomas finally says. “And my best guess is that April figured out who my wife was. Then she signed up for the study because it was a link to me. Or maybe she felt like Lydia was her competition and she wanted to learn more about her.”
My head jerks to the right, toward the window. What was it that commanded my attention? Maybe a muffled noise, or a movement on the sidewalk or street outside. The blinds are angled, so I can only catch shards of the view. I can’t tell if Noah is there.
Whatever danger I’m sensing does not appear to be emanating from Thomas. I believe his story: He wasn’t in contact with April in the weeks before her death.
It isn’t just blind faith or my instincts that tells me this, however. I’ve read April’s file a half dozen times by now. And I’ve learned a key piece of information about the relationship between Dr. Shields and April: I know some of what happened between them on the night that April died.
Dr. Shields wrote about it in script that looks more jagged than her usual graceful handwriting. Their final encounter is documented on a page in the file right before April’s obituary, the one I looked up online. And I captured it all in photographs on the phone in my pocket, the one that feels unusually warm right now. The one I keep expecting to erupt again at any moment.
You disappointed me deeply, Katherine April Voss, Dr. Shields wrote. I thought I knew you. You were treated with such warmth and care, and you were given so much—intense attention to your well-being, carefully selected gifts, even encounters like the one tonight when you came to my home and perched on a kitchen stool, sipping a glass of wine while the slim gold bangle I’d taken off my arm and given to you slid down your wrist.
You were invited in.
Then you made the revelation that shattered everything, that put you in a completely different light: I made a mistake. I slept with a married man, just some guy I met at a bar. It only happened once.
Your big eyes filled with tears. Your lower lip quivered. As though you deserved sympathy for this transgression.
You were seeking absolution, but it was not granted. How could it be? There is a barricade that separates moral individuals from immoral ones. These rules are very clear. You were told you crossed that barrier, and that you would never be welcomed into the town house again.
You had revealed your true, flawed self. You weren’t the guileless young woman you initially presented yourself to be.
The conversation continued. At the conclusion of it, you were given a farewell hug.
Twenty minutes later, all traces of you were gone. Your wineglass was washed and dried and replaced in a cabinet. The remnants of the Brie and grapes were tipped into the trash can. Your stool was realigned into its proper position.
It was as if you’d never been here at all. As if you no longer existed.
I hadn’t even skimmed Dr. Shields’s written words the first time I’d seen them. I was too worried about getting out of her town house before she arrived home. But later, in the safety of my apartment, I’d read them again and again.
An Anonymous Girl Page 27