by Sarina Bowen
“Wow.” I take the phone and zoom in on the photo. My grandmother liked to sew, and she kept her machine on a beat-up old desk that had been painted an odd shade of gray-blue. But that’s gone now. “Nice work. It’s so pretty.”
“I thought so too. Do you want it?”
“Want what?”
May looks to the heavens. “Want the desk. You’re moving to Burlington, and you might need one. Griffin and Audrey were moving some old furniture out of the Bungalow. And I thought you could use it.”
Oh geez. “I can’t take that. Not after you’re spending so much time on it.” Like I want to owe May anything else. “Besides, I’ll only be in Burlington for a single academic year. Then I’ll leave again for graduate school.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” May says.
“Go to graduate school?” I yelp. “Yes, I do.” I can’t change my plans. If I do that, Reardon Halsey wins.
“You don’t have to leave,” she says. “There’s a graduate program in public health at Burlington U, right?”
“Sure, but…” I bite my lip. May went to graduate school right here in Vermont, and then set up shop locally. But I’m more ambitious than that. I want a degree from a top-ten university. I thought it would be Harkness. But now I’ll have to look elsewhere. Like Berkeley, or maybe Johns Hopkins. “I’m probably not staying,” I say. “And you should keep this.” I hand the phone back to her. “It’s going to look great, but I’d have to move it twice in nine months. I really can’t use it.”
“But…” May seems ready to argue the point. But then she closes her mouth and shoves her phone into her pocket. “Okay. Good to know.” Now she looks pissed. “Happy birthday anyway. We’ll cut the cake as soon as the band stops playing.”
She turns and walks away.
And I’m pretty sure I failed some kind of test with her. They’re the only kind of test that I usually fail. I watch her thread her way through the party, without another glance in my direction.
Shit.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out as a reflex. But my heart rate spikes when I see who the caller is. Reardon Halsey. The evil ex. Just his name makes me experience a fight-or-flight reaction.
Swiftly, I hit the button to decline the call. And then I take a deep, shaky breath. There’s no reason for him to call me. And I really don’t want to know why he did.
A little later, Audrey reveals our birthday cake. It’s really two cakes joined together in the middle. Audrey made it the way people divide toppings on a pizza—chocolate on one side and lemon on the other. A rich buttercream frosting covers the whole thing.
There are blueberries lining the edge, and Audrey has drizzled a message across the top in chocolate sauce: LOOK OUT WORLD. DYLAN AND DAPHNE ARE 21!
I choose a piece from the lemon side, and my brother chooses chocolate. We have never liked the same things, or read each other’s minds, or had a secret twin language.
Often, when I tell people that I have a twin brother, they say, “That’s so cool!” And Dylan is pretty cool. That’s why he has so many friends, most of whom are here tonight. His aim in life is to collect friends wherever he goes.
My aim has been collecting achievements. Not that I lack friends. But I poured all my energy into my life in Connecticut, and then walked away from it all. And I let my old high school friendships fall by the wayside. Now I’m lonely with nobody to blame but myself.
Nevertheless, I paste a smile on my face and thank Audrey for the cake.
And the wish I made when I blew out a candle beside Dylan was a simple one. Please let my twenty-second year be a little less terrifying than the last one.
When the band starts up again, two different men ask me to dance. But one of them is Roddy, my cousin’s boyfriend. And the other is my grandfather.
I say yes to both. But honestly, do I look that lonely?
After they reel me around for a song apiece, I treat myself to a single glass of champagne. I have never enjoyed getting drunk, because I don’t like to feel out of control. Especially in a room full of my extended family.
Eventually the band stops playing, and our friends begin to say goodnight one by one.
By the time we all climb onto the bus to head back to the farm, it’s one in the morning. I sit beside my grandpa.
“These dancing feet are tired. Happy birthday, Daphne. If you’re twenty-one, I’m probably legally dead.”
“You look fine to me. Did you have fun tonight?”
“Yes, until my date went home early.”
“Bummer,” I sympathize.
“Pick a wild one, Daphne.”
“What’s that?”
“Whomever you choose, make sure he knows how to party. Life is short, but the nights are long when you’re bored.”
A head swivels around to look back at us. It belongs to Rickie. He winks at me.
When we get home, I get ready for bed, but I’m strangely wired. That’s why I end up standing in front of the bathroom mirror, checking my phone. There’s a text from my ex. It says: Happy birthday, Daphne. Hope it’s a good one.
I eye this little missive the way you might look at a venomous spider. It makes no sense, for starters. The last time we spoke, he threatened me.
The result was that I didn’t tell Reardon I wasn’t returning to Harkness. After our ugly argument, if you can even call it that, I just quietly made my escape plans. I quit my job and finished my semester, head down, behaving as if nothing had changed.
Only then—after the last final exam—I went to the dean of my program and announced my departure. I never told Reardon. I don’t even know if he’s heard the news.
He’s probably on a golf course somewhere, summering. How does he even know it’s my birthday? Did I tell him that sometime? Some night after sex, when I still believed all the lies that came out of his mouth?
Just thinking about kissing him makes me squirm now. How could I have ever been so dumb?
And yet I’m afraid to ignore his weird little message. I’d like to leave him with the impression that our breakup had no lasting consequences. He should think that as long as he can.
So maybe a quick reply makes sense. I want to appear completely nonthreatening, at least until I figure out how to deliver him the justice he so richly deserves.
Thanks! I add a really banal smiley emoji and I hit send.
Five seconds later the phone rings in my hand.
“Shit!” I almost drop it on the tile floor.
My phone seems to ring for a year before finally going to voicemail, and I pause in the hallway to see if he leaves a message.
Nope.
“Shit. Shit shit shit.” I do not want to talk to him. And now he knows I'm awake and evading his call.
My heart beats wildly, and all for a ringing phone. But I feel as though I’ve summoned a monster. On my birthday, no less.
Before I make it into my room, the door to Rickie’s room swings open, and there's Rickie in nothing but a pair of boxers and—bizarrely—a silk bathrobe, his tats on full display between its open halves. “Hey. Is everything okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” No. But I’ve been cursing it up out here. “I was just, um…”
In my hand, the phone rings again. And I give a full-body jerk that probably makes me look like a nervous freak.
“You sure?” he asks.
“No,” I finally admit. “Can I ask you a weird favor?”
“Of course. The weirder the better." He gives me an easy grin. Then he beckons me into his room.
Hastily, I close the door behind myself. “I do not want to talk to this man. Would you answer my phone? Maybe, um, pretend like we're hanging out together and he's interrupting?" It’s a good thing the light is so dim in here, because my face is probably crimson right now.
Rickie’s smile widens. “Oh, that’s no hardship.” He grabs the phone out of my hand and swipes to answer the call. “Hello? Awful late for a phone call, pal.”
I le
an in, my head close to Rickie’s. And he tilts the phone a little to make it easy to hear the reply.
“She won’t pick up, huh?” The sound of Reardon’s voice actually makes me shiver. “Can you give her a message for me?”
“Sure, man,” Rickie says. “This better be important. Just saying.”
“Oh, it is. You tell Daphne that if she so much as breathes my name to anyone in our program I will bury her. Vermont isn’t that far away, you know?”
My heart might actually detonate, it’s pounding so hard. And I feel my legs start to shake.
“Interesting,” Rickie says in a strangely light tone. “Got some anger issues there, pal. I’ll let her know you called, so she can get that restraining order prepared.”
“Who is this?” Reardon demands. “Have we met?”
“Nah,” Rickie says. “But if you want to keep your face in one piece you’ll keep it that way.” Then he ends the call and drops the phone onto his bed like it’s made of hot coals and it’s burning his hand.
Eight
Rickie
That voice. Like Lucifer himself. The moment I heard it, I felt cold inside.
But forget me. Daphne is actually swaying on her feet. That’s the only reason she lets me ease her toward my bed, like you’d do for a frightened child. I deposit her against the pillows, where she hugs her knees to her chest and grips them, white knuckled.
“Hey, you’re trembling,” I whisper, climbing onto the bed beside her. She doesn’t even protest when I wrap an arm around her. She actually leans in. That’s how I know things are bad.
“Okay, who’s your violent friend?” I manage to ask the question casually. But I’m not fooling anyone. That kind of brazen threat can only come from some kind of psycho.
The world is full of terrible people. I know this. It’s just that I can usually make it through a Friday night without talking to any of them.
“He’s my…” She shudders, and I pull her a little closer. “I guess you’d call him my ex. Reardon Halsey. And if the name sounds familiar, he’s the son of Senator Mitchell Halsey.”
Does that name sound familiar? Each time I hear a name these days I hold it up to the white mist of my memory and ask myself why it’s not more familiar. Did I once know it and then lose it? Or did I never know it at all?
Fun times with my brain.
“He was part of my graduate program,” she says dully. “A transfer from your school, actually.”
Goose bumps rise up all over my flesh. “From the Academy?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that weird?” I ask. Because I think it is. Any mention of my former school puts me on high alert.
“Not really?” She shrugs. “There are several joint science programs between Harkness and other schools. There’s one in bioengineering, and one in biochem. But the Harkness joint BS/MS program is fairly novel, so we get a lot of transfer students.”
Nonetheless, my pulse has notched up to a higher setting. “And you dated this guy?”
“Yes. I guess. Dating makes it sound so civilized. It was more like a secret fling. Nobody knew. It was a huge mistake.”
“Why is that?”
She props her head in her hands and takes a deep, shaky breath. “We were working on a project together. I was really flattered that he wanted to hang out with me. He was a year older than I was. Rich, powerful family.”
“And he was super attractive,” I add drily.
She lifts her face out of her hands. “You know who he is?”
“Nope. But girl, that guy sounds like the worst sort of human, and you are as smart as they come. So he must have a face like Adonis and a nine-inch cock for you to see past his attitude.”
Daphne pushes a fist against her mouth and laughs, even as her eyes get damp. “He was really pretty, I guess.”
“His face? Or his cock?”
“We are not talking about his—" She laughs and cries at the same time. I didn’t know that was humanly possible.
“About his dipstick? Fine. I’m a fan of cocks, though.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Pansexual but heteroromantic. It’s not a secret.”
“Oh.” She hiccups. “We’re still not talking about it. I’d like to forget I ever saw it.”
“So it ended badly, huh?” Of course it did. Because exes don’t usually call you on your birthday to threaten physical harm. He sounded like evil in a human form, and I’m not likely to forget the ice-cold tone of his voice anytime soon.
“It never should have started,” she says, leaning back against the headboard and closing her eyes. “He flattered me. Just little things at first. You have the prettiest eyes.” She groans. “I ate it up. I’m not used to men showering me with compliments. And then one night he invited me up to his apartment for a drink…” She shakes her head. “I went for it. We started, um, seeing each other even though it was against the rules.”
“Wait, why? Two students hooking up isn’t very newsworthy.”
“Technically, I was his boss,” she whispers. “He was assigned to my unit of the research project. And even though he’s a year older than I am, and we’re both students, it was still against the rules.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“My writeup on his work would become part of his file.” Her voice is so soft that I can barely hear her. “So after a month or so of…”
“Hanky spanky?” I offer.
“He broke it off. I was almost relieved, because I’m not the kind of girl who’s comfortable breaking rules.”
“You? A good girl complex? You don’t say.”
She gives me a weary glance. “If only my good girl instinct had been stronger, I wouldn’t be in this position.”
“Why? What happened? Didn’t he like what you wrote up in the file?”
“Oh, it was glowing.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s highly intelligent, so the writeup was easy, even with my guilty conscience. I used very specific examples of good work that he’d contributed. I thought I’d learned a lesson, and paid the price only in excessive guilt and crushing shame.”
I’m not convinced that crushing shame makes sense in this scenario, but I’m smart enough to keep that opinion to myself. “I take it that something went wrong? Otherwise he wouldn’t feel the need to lash out like a cornered pit bull.”
“He cheated. At work,” she adds quickly.
“Like, on a test?”
Daphne shakes her head, and silky strands of her hair brush the bare skin of my shoulder. “We were working on a big study that follows healthcare workers’ health all over the country. Our office processed surveys from all over Connecticut. Thousands of them. So every day we got these responses either online or in the mail. And I eventually realized that Reardon was throwing responses away.”
“What? Why? To lighten the workload?”
“No.” Her head thunks against the headboard. “He was throwing out responses from Hartford County. It’s sort of a miracle that I ever noticed. But I had been given a research assistant position that was pretty far above my pay grade, so I was kind of psycho about counting and double counting everything that we got.”
“And then the piles shrank?” I guess.
“Yes, but only certain piles. Reardon was digitizing the data that came in on paper. We all were. It’s boring work. But quite a few responses went missing in four zip codes.”
“What’s special about Hartford County?” I have to ask.
“Cancer,” she whispers. “There’s some preliminary evidence of a cancer cluster. It would make his father look bad. That’s my theory, anyway. But I can’t prove he was throwing away surveys from cancer patients. I didn’t even form that theory until recently. But the numbers kept coming up wrong, so I confronted him. That was my second mistake. I should have told someone else first. Or I should have tried catching him in the act. But I just thought there must be some explanation or misunderstanding. And then when I brought it up he was terrifying. Just psycho.
”
Oh shit. “What did he threaten you with?”
“He said I was crazy. That I had no proof. And that I’d invented this whole thing because I was so upset that he dumped me. He said he’d file a sexual harassment claim.” Her voice shakes. “He said he could make me look like a crazy stalker. He had the text messages to prove that he’s the one who broke it off.”
“Oh my fucking God.”
“He said if I tried to take him down, he and his father would make sure I never got a diploma from any university anywhere. And I believe him.”
My heart hurts now. I wrap an arm around Daphne and pull her close to me. “And you never told anyone this story, did you?”
“Not a single person,” she says. “I never wanted anyone to know. And I don’t even know why I just told you.”
I do, though. Because this Reardon guy is a terrifying motherfucker. And sometimes fear just spills over whatever container you’re trying to keep it in.
“Okay, okay,” I whisper. “I won’t tell a soul.”
“I’m a coward,” she murmurs. “I pretend to care about science and public health. But all that data is fucked because I’m too afraid to report him. God, my head.” She rubs her temples.
I reach over to the bedside table and flip off the lamp. “This won’t fix itself tonight.”
“It won’t fix itself period,” she says. “Now that he knows I’ve left Harkness, he’s nervous.”
“Yeah, but…” I think it over for a moment. “He’s nervous, but he can’t do anything. It makes no sense for him to make accusations against you now, because that invites countermeasures from you. You’d be forced to defend yourself by telling your side of the story. That’s why threats are his only option. He needs you to be terrified and stay silent.”
“It’s working,” she says. “I’m terrified every day.”
“Jesus,” I whisper.
We sit quietly for a while. I feel Daphne relaxing by degrees. Her breathing slows down, while I think through everything she’s told me. What a mess.
Daphne makes more sense to me than she did an hour ago. No wonder she’s so angry. No wonder she hasn’t been very receptive to all my fun suggestions. I’ve been trying to get her naked, while she’s been trying to keep her life from running off the rails. “The best thing you can do for yourself is to try to relax,” I whisper.