The List

by Karin Tanabe

  That sounded like a gift from God.

  “That sounds great,” I said. “I’m pretty tall,” I added. “I have blond hair in a braid and I’m wearing a yellow dress.”

  “Okay,” she replied. “I’ll find you.”

  In Monday morning Washington traffic, it would have taken me an hour to cover the thirteen miles to the coffee shop. In Phoenix, it took me twenty minutes.

  When I got there, I sat down at a white plastic table right in the front. It had become routine for me to drink two shots of espresso first thing in the morning, but I didn’t want Victoria Zajac to think I was a neurotic speed demon. I ordered a cappuccino in a mug, a much friendlier-looking drink.

  I drank it slowly and waited. Ten minutes, then fifteen. And just when I was about to call her again, even though she was probably having my number traced by the FBI at this point, a woman stood by my table and smiled.

  “Are you Adrienne Brown?” she asked. She was a good five inches shorter than me and a little stout. She looked like she was in her mid-fifties. Her dress was what we would have generously called haute-hippie or bohochic at Town & Country, and she wore a pair of red plastic glasses. Architect glasses.

  I stood up to shake her hand and offered to buy her a cup of coffee. She said she would have what I was having. I walked to the bar and felt her eyes watching me as I ordered. My appearance had to put her at ease. I was a young woman in a yellow cotton dress. I looked like a Disney character. Surely that was better than an aggressive old man who shoved a tape recorder in her face.

  As I waited for her drink to be made, I thought about what I was going to say. At this point I just wanted to confirm that Olivia Reader and Olivia Campo were one and the same. I needed her to talk about the Olivia she knew. Describe her to me physically. Maybe present me with a stack of photographs. Then I could determine if I was chasing an invented lead or not.

  I sat down and handed her the coffee. I took out my notebook and a pen not made of enamel and gold and started asking her questions. I should have been nervous. I had been since I had spotted Olivia in Middleburg eight months ago. But surprisingly, I no longer was.

  “As I said on the phone, I’m writing an article about Olivia . . . Reader. I was told you might know her.”

  “Has something happened to her?” asked Victoria, holding her wide mug in her hands.

  “No, nothing quite like that,” I said. “Nothing bad. I mean, she’s fine.”

  She’s fine because I have no idea who she is. Olivia Reader could be dead. Or a junkie. Or part of a girl gang smuggling drugs across the border. What did I know?

  “When did you last see Olivia?” I asked.

  “It’s been a very long time. Years. I want to say something like twenty years. Maybe a little less.”

  “Was she about eight years old then?” I asked, suddenly filled with adrenaline.

  “No, a little older. I would say she was about eleven.”

  Eleven years old. Twenty years ago Olivia Campo was eight. But she had said maybe a little older. It was in the right ballpark.

  “Do you mind if I ask how you knew her? Were you friendly with her parents? The Readers?”

  “No.” She shook her head and put her mug on a folded paper napkin. “Hot coffee,” she said, looking down at it. “I never met her parents. I knew her after they had both died.” She looked across the table at me. “You do know how they died?”

  “I do. I do know how they died. Absolutely horrible.”

  “It was. Just one of the saddest stories I ever heard. To lose your father so young and then to see your mother die. That’s why when I was approached, I said yes. How could you turn down a girl like that.”

  “Could you elaborate a little?” I asked, trying to stay calm.

  “Olivia . . . ” she said, twisting her gold wedding ring around on her left index finger. Her manicure was chipped and her ring was cutting into her skin.

  “Well . . . Olivia . . . she lived with me, of course.”

  My face must have shown too much surprise, because Victoria stopped speaking for a few seconds.

  “Did you not know she lived with me?” she said finally. I stared at her blankly. “You didn’t, did you. Maybe I’ve said too much.” She looked down at the table, conflicted, her lined hands tense and intertwined.

  “I just don’t do that anymore, now that I’ve gotten remarried. But I don’t know what the laws today say about the information of kids who have aged out of the system. Please don’t use any of this if it’s not by the book,” she said, sliding her hands across the table toward me and grabbing my arm tightly.

  “Please don’t quote me on any of this,” she continued, scanning my face. Her voice was suddenly high and unsteady. “I don’t know how the system works—everything changed so fast!”

  She stood up to go and I reached out my hand and grabbed hers firmly.

  The system. And just like that, the front page of the Capitolist flashed into my head. Olivia’s series on Stanton’s Foster Care Empowerment Act, which the president was about to sign. Her name. If she had been in foster care, and then adopted, it would have been changed. That’s how Olivia Reader could have become Olivia Campo. That’s how she disappeared.

  Victoria sat back down and when she released my hand, it was sweaty and cramped.

  “You’re not doing anything wrong,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as her. “Olivia’s not . . . she’s not in danger or anything like that.”

  “I don’t know what’s what anymore. All this,” said Victoria, throwing up her hands. “I can’t be any help.” She put her head in her hands and I reached out and grabbed her right one again, this time to comfort her. Foster care. The legislation Olivia had treated as third-tier news, the cause she had dismissed. Was that it all along? I needed Victoria to say more.

  We talked off the record for a few minutes. I got us both more coffee and I promised I wouldn’t print a thing Victoria told me if it wasn’t by the book. Not that I had any idea where the lines were drawn, but I would figure it out.

  “And I don’t want my name in anything, anywhere,” she pleaded. “I only agreed to talk to you because I wanted to make sure nothing had happened to Olivia. After she left me, she didn’t keep in touch. Some do, some don’t, you know, it depends on a lot. How well they get on with their new family, their age, how long you had them.”

  “How long you have them in foster care . . . ” I said.

  “Yes. In foster care,” said Victoria, shifting her weight nervously. “I took about fifteen different girls in after I got divorced in ’87. Seemed like the right thing to do, you know. And Olivia, I never had a story as sad as hers, and these girls had some terrible stories.”

  “I imagine they did,” I said, writing as fast as I could.

  “Olivia, you know she was the one who found her mother after she shot herself in the head. Left temple. Olivia ran outside screaming. They lived in the middle of nowhere. She had to run half a mile to find someone to call the police.”

  Suicide. I wrote the word three times and circled it. My source at Syracuse was right.

  I imagined Olivia running down the dirt road Payton and I had driven on just two days before. Had the same American flag been there? The car rusting in the yard? Or had her mother made an attempt to mask the face of poverty? I thought about that porch with the plastic chairs, Olivia tumbling out the door, yelling for help, only to realize she was horribly alone.

  “And when she came to me,” Victoria continued, interrupting my thoughts, “she was such a scared, quiet girl. They had tried her out at a cousin’s house, but that hadn’t worked. They couldn’t feed another mouth, they said, but the social worker on her case told me that it wasn’t the money. They just couldn’t look at such a frightened kid. And then she was with another foster family. I think they were closer to her hometown, a younger couple living in southern Arizona. But she was taken out pretty quickly. The social worker who brought her to me confirmed there had been . . .
abuse.” She whispered the word and shook her head.

  “How long did she live with you?” I asked, trying to act professional, a nearly impossible task considering I was operating in a state of shock. All these months, I had been looking. I was always searching for the more complicated story, for blackmail, for manipulation. This one seemed much simpler. Much sadder.

  “Not very long. Less than a year,” said Victoria. “I would say about eight months. She had a few visitors, but well, very few actually. A couple and their daughter from her hometown, and one Mexican woman whose name I’m forgetting.” I thought of O’Brien and his daughter telling me the pie was on the house and pushing the receipt into my hand. “No family at all. Luckily, she was adopted pretty quickly. She was a cute kid. And a Caucasian girl. That, sad to say it, helps move things along.”

  “Cute, right,” I said writing it down. “She had red hair back then?” I asked, trying to sound confident. “A few freckles?”

  “A million freckles,” said Victoria, confirming. “But people grow out of those. I hope she grew out of a lot of other things, too. Like those horrible memories.”

  I flicked my braid behind my shoulder and put my pen down.

  “Do you remember anything else about her?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

  Victoria sat quietly for a second and then said, “I remember she didn’t like to take showers. She only took baths and she always asked me to stay with her until she was finished. I didn’t have a lot of time—there were other kids in the house when I had her—but I did it. It was something about the way she asked . . . she didn’t usually single herself out like that. And I remember she would never take off this necklace she wore. She never said, but I think it was her mother’s—a little silver chain.”

  A silver necklace? I thought of the one she always wore now. It looked pretty new, though silver aged well. But Victoria only furrowed her brow in confusion when I asked if it was a Celtic eternity knot.

  “The people who adopted her, do you remember their name?” I asked instead.

  Victoria held her mug again, searching her memory.

  “It was so many years ago. I remember them being nice people. Of course, the social workers were in charge of that end, not me, but I met them when they came to pick her up. They seemed like two kind, good people.”

  “Were they the Campos?” I asked. “He’s a dentist in Texas. They still live there. Dr. and Mrs. Campo.”

  “You know, I think that’s it,” said Victoria. “Now that you say the name, I’m pretty sure that’s it. I remember going over with Olivia what her new name would be. We agreed it wasn’t such a bad one.”

  “Are you pretty sure, or sure?” I asked, scratching my nails deep into my arm under the table.

  “I’m sure,” said Victoria. “Yes, I’m sure. Olivia Campo. That’s what her name is. I hate to admit this, but I haven’t thought about her for so long. I had the other girls for much longer. Some for years. Hers was just one of those sad stories that consumes you in the moment, but then just goes away. I guess that’s what helped me stay open to foster care for so long. I refused to let the sadness get to me. I just tried to make things good for a little while.”

  “Well, I think you succeeded at that,” I said. “She’s a very smart woman. Olivia Campo.”

  “Is she? Well, that’s nice to hear,” she said, calming down. I looked at my arm; the nail marks were starting to fade.

  We both sat there and finished our drinks. I turned the page on my notepad so she couldn’t see the words I had circled and rewritten.

  “What are you going to write about her?” asked Victoria after she said she should be on her way.

  “I’m not quite sure yet,” I replied.

  “It’s really nothing bad is it?”

  “It’s nothing that isn’t true,” I said.

  Victoria opened the front door of the coffee shop to let a few college students in. She looked at me before she left and said, “You tell her I said hello. Tell her I’ve thought about her every now and again and that I always hoped she was doing well.”

  I assured her I would and gave her my number in case she wanted to talk about anything else. But at this point, I didn’t need anything else. Over the span of a twenty-minute conversation, everything had fallen into place.

  I took my notebook back out and flipped it open. I now had a connection between Olivia and Stanton that was more than just physical. Olivia’s life had been turned upside down and bashed around because of the John F. Stanton & Company. Perhaps Drew Reader’s death was the kind of accident that was bound to happen even in a well-run industrial facility, but it sure sounded like the plant could have been more careful. And how often does a deceased janitor’s family triumph over a bunch of bigwigs and their legions of lawyers? If Olivia thought Stanton’s family was at fault for her father’s death, and in turn, her mother’s, it would be understandable that she wanted to bring him down. But in the midst of all that, she and Stanton must have found common ground on foster care. Maybe he knew about her past—not his family’s involvement in it, but the fact that she was in the system he was trying to reform. Maybe that’s what had softened her, and kick-started their affair.

  I still had a million questions to answer. But I also had far too many people who knew where I worked and knew I was writing a story about Olivia Campo, aka Reader. I needed it to go to print.

  On the plane ride back to Washington, I rewrote my draft and when I was finished writing, I wondered if Sandro knew about Olivia’s past. I mentioned that Olivia was married to Sandro Pena, her college sweetheart, originally from Mexico, and now working at the Organization of American States. But I stopped there. Sandro was the one point she could use against me, if she tried to deny or fight the story in any way.

  I wrote about Olivia’s childhood, her time in foster care, her obsession with coming to Washington and working at the List. I scribbled lines about how she had likely harbored anger against Stanton and his family because of what happened to her parents, and how she probably sought out the senator with the intention of bringing him down, but something—emotions, love, lust—got in the way, and was still getting in the way. Their affair was ongoing. I didn’t know if the company was actually at fault for her father’s death, despite the court ruling from years ago, but that couldn’t be solved before I went to print. I also didn’t know if Olivia was still trying to ruin Stanton’s career, or if their affair had derailed her original intentions. Those questions, as Payton said, would be answered later.

  As the plane’s overhead lights flicked on, signaling that we were about to land at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, I looked down at the page in front of me. I had more than five thousand words and a slide show of digital photos that I had to get out fast. I needed help.

  CHAPTER 20

  Though Hardy and I exchanged about fifty short, lifeless emails every day, I had spoken to him very little in person and never on the phone.

  The List’s chosen method of communication was quick impersonal emails. Even when you sat next to someone, you didn’t turn your head to speak to them. That was a waste of time and saliva. But now felt like the right time to change all that.

  Standing at an empty baggage carousel, away from the crowds waiting for their luggage, I looked up Hardy’s number and dialed. His impatient voice came on the line after one ring.

  “Hi, Hardy, it’s Adrienne Brown,” I said after he barked his name.

  The phone was silent and I imagined Hardy, emotionless Hardy, in shock that I had called him.

  “Hi, Adrienne. Why are you calling? Is something wrong?” he finally managed to spout out.

  Wrong? Yes. Many things were wrong. Like how awkward it felt to cry to Hardy for help.

  “I’m at Reagan Airport,” I admitted. “I lied to you about my sister being hurt. I was actually in Arizona finishing a story I’ve been working on.”

  Hardy didn’t say anything. I thought he was going to start screaming or bera
te me with his own brand of dorky North Dakota insults, but he waited for me to finish.

  “Between us, very between us, I stumbled on a little something a few months ago that I was able to confirm and turn into a pretty big something.” It felt empowering to say it. And to an editor who might actually help me.

  “Okay,” said Hardy, still calm.

  “It’s kind of about Senator Stanton,” I continued. “You know, from Arizona. Well, Senator Stanton, it turns out, is having an affair with Olivia Campo. Our Olivia Campo. And I have pictures of them in the act. Pretty damning photos. I can explain how I got them and how this all came about, but maybe just not from the airport.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Hardy simply said, “Wow.” He fell silent again and then finally managed to say, “Adrienne, that’s very big stuff. That’s huge.”

  “Yeah, I think it could do some damage,” I said.

  “I’m glad you called me about it. I would like to help, but honestly, I think it’s a little too big for me. For both of us maybe. You should call Upton.”

  Call Upton? I couldn’t think of anything more frightening. Couldn’t Hardy call Upton? Wasn’t that part of his job description? To protect me from the terrifying editors at the top?

  But I couldn’t ask Hardy to do that. It would be like asking your big sister to beat up the school bully—which I actually had done twenty-one years ago, but then, Payton wasn’t your average big sister. And I was no longer that lame. I had to take the reins on this. It’s what I had been doing for months.

  I thanked Hardy, who proved to be less of a bloodsucking beast than I thought he was, and promised I’d keep him posted.

  I had spoken to Mark Upton three times in my entire life: Once when I interviewed for my job, another time when he saluted me for my scoop on James Franco, and once when he stopped by my desk, observed my glass full of cucumber water, and asked me if it was vodka. When I said no, he held it up to his face and smelled it to see if I was lying. I had a closer relationship with my UPS guy than I did with him.

  But Hardy was right: I needed real, seasoned editorial help. I knew that Upton and everyone else at the List loved Olivia, but even more than they loved Olivia, they feared having their good name sullied. They would surely fire Olivia as soon as they read my draft, which might take the weight of the article down a few pounds, but it was still a huge story. And they were a newspaper that made money from huge stories.