I Don't Forgive You

by Aggie Blum Thompson

  I walk around the island and put my arms around her. I’ve never seen this side of Leah. Her Insta and Facebook posts are filled with sun-drenched, spotless rooms. Neat piles of laundry on her gleaming wood dining room table, shoes lined up by the door, or cute kid artwork. A Pinterest-perfect suburban life. Nothing that would hint at mental illness, loss, troubled teens.

  But that’s the thing about social media—it’s a curated version of reality.

  Or a completely warped one, in the case of my fake accounts.

  Behind us, a voice calls hello, and I turn to see Daisy. She’s in full Realtor mode, in a smart charcoal-gray pantsuit, her wild blond hair barely contained in a chignon.

  “You guys okay?” She puts her briefcase on the island. “What’d I miss?”

  Leah steps back and wipes her eyes. “I told Allie about Dustin’s dad. And how I feel like a shitty mom that I haven’t told him the truth.”

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re not a shitty mom.” Daisy frowns. “If it makes you feel any better, Gabriella walked out of Earth Science yesterday and took an Uber to Montgomery Mall.”

  Leah puts her hand to her mouth. “No, she didn’t.”

  “She did. And she used her dad’s credit card to rack up four hundred dollars in charges at Nordstrom, thank you very much. Guess who had to leave work to pick her up when mall security called? Not her mom. Not her dad. No, moi, her evil stepmother.”

  Leah holds up her glass. “Here’s to the shitty things that happen to good people.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” I say, raising my glass.

  “Allie,” Daisy says, turning her full attention to me. “What the heck is going on? I cannot believe that Patch story.”

  “What Patch story?” I ask. All I know about Patch is that it is the local news website.

  Daisy frowns and turns to Leah. “You didn’t tell her? I thought you told her.”

  Leah shakes her head.

  “Tell me what?” I ask.

  Daisy pops open her computer and begins typing. “It’s been posted on the Eastbrook Facebook page. Steel yourself,” she says to me. “It’s not pretty.” She turns the screen toward me, and I see the familiar Facebook logo and the Eastbrook Neighborhood banner.

  The most recent post is an article: “Police Question Local Woman in Neighbor’s Violent Death.”

  I scan it quickly to see if my name shows up, but it doesn’t. The story is vague, with phrases such as police are questioning and person of interest.

  But where the story left things nebulous, the comments are viciously specific. I find one written by Vicki, the PTA capo.

  This is that woman who lives on Wentworth, Alexis Ross. I know for a fact she was having an affair with Rob Avery.

  I look up at Daisy and Leah, who are watching me with concern. “What is wrong with this woman Vicki? It’s like she has some kind of agenda against me. She’s spreading lies. That can’t be legal.”

  I scroll down through the comments, losing count at thirty-five, before turning the computer back to Daisy. “I can’t read any more.”

  “They fall into roughly two camps,” Daisy says. “People scared that a murderer is on the loose in our neighborhood, and others who, you know, want to take a wait-and-see approach.” She taps on the keyboards and clucks her tongue. “While I get you were trying to clear your name, I don’t think posting the account of what Rob did to you Saturday night was the best idea. Just added fuel to the fire.”

  “I didn’t post anything, Daisy.” I turn to Leah. “Didn’t you tell her? Someone made a fake Facebook account and posted that.”

  Daisy’s eyes widen. “Oh. My. God. What a nightmare. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What can I do?”

  “For starters, we can contact Jeff Crosetti, who moderates this page,” Leah says over her shoulder as she stirs something sweet-smelling on the stove. She carries the pot over to the counter and drizzles the steaming liquid into a bowl of chopped nuts, dripping on the counter as she goes. “He’s the only one who can take down posts.”

  “So this is not your Facebook page?” Daisy flips the laptop toward me so I can see the screen—a Facebook page with my name on it and that shot of me in a bikini. The same person who created the fake Tinder account must have made this as well.

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Because I friended you. I mean, I friended this page, like a month ago.”

  I scroll quickly, making myself dizzy trying to read everything that I supposedly posted on “my” Facebook page. Most feature memes about drinking wine and the annoyances of motherhood, which are cringeworthy enough. But then there are the personal ones. My throat tightens at one that reads: Tell me why I decided to have children again?

  Tears spring to my eyes.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Daisy hands me a tissue.

  I shake my head, refusing it. “No, I’m fine.”

  Daisy pushes it into my hand. “It’s okay to cry. This is totally fucked up.”

  Something about her permission undams a torrent of emotion that I’ve had bottled up for days. Before I know it, hot tears are falling from my eyes, and my shoulders are shaking uncontrollably. “I never wrote any of this,” I say, wiping my runny nose. “Did you really think this was me?”

  “I don’t know.” Daisy looks pained. “I guess I did. I didn’t really know you that well.”

  My whole chest constricts, making each breath laborious. The effort that went into making this page reflects such a deep hatred of me. It’s as if I can feel that venom radiating off the screen and infecting me.

  But who hates me this much? And why? All these posters have to know they’re crossing a line from petty gossip to implicating me in a murder.

  Is that the goal?

  “I figured you were going through a tough time,” Daisy says.

  Leah nods. “We’ve all been there. Overwhelmed.”

  I scroll down to a post where, printed in block letters, are the words: Men, coffee, and chocolate—all better rich. Below that another one reads: Marriage is a workshop—the man works and the wife shops.

  The overall portrait of me is revolting. What must people in the neighborhood think of me? I click on the Friends link. I have more than three hundred, name after name that I do not recognize. As I scroll down, a few familiar names jump out at me. Photography clients, Mike Chau, neighbors.

  Vicki.

  Heather.

  My face burns. My boss has seen this. No, just because he’s friended me on Facebook doesn’t mean he’s read all these posts, but he might have.

  I navigate back to the main page and let out a little cry. A new post has just popped up. Had I missed it before? No. It’s shown up in the last minute.

  My tormentor is posting in real time.

  Two pictures, side by side. The first is the photo from the party, the one where Rob’s head and mine are so close they almost touch, that damn skirt riding up my thighs.

  But it’s the second photo that takes my breath away. I haven’t seen it in sixteen years. I took it myself.

  In it, I am lying naked, curled against the sleeping body of a man. The photo is cropped precisely—only the bottom half of his face is visible, and just the tops of my breasts can be seen. But I don’t need to see the whole photo to remember his dark eyelashes, the way his lips parted slightly as he slept. The way I thrust my naked breasts at the camera, a caricature of a young seductress.

  I look at my younger self—sucking on one finger and staring intently into the camera, trying so hard to be sexy.

  Below the two photos, the caption reads: Have I still got it? Please vote!

  Eighteen people have voted so far.

  Then Nineteen.

  Then Twenty.

  I watch the number grow before my eyes, and each addition feels like a hot fist clenching my gut tighter.

  This is the second time this naked photo of me has been posted online. The last time, I was seventeen, and it led to a man’s a
rrest.

  22

  In Leah’s powder room, I lean over the sink. During a first-aid class I took years ago, I learned to apply ice or cold water to wrists and temples to bring an overheated body back to normal temperature. But it’s not helping.

  I’m burning up from the inside.

  A deep, familiar shame grips me.

  Those memories, the ones I’ve boxed up and tucked into a corner of my brain, come shooting through my thoughts like shards of glass.

  The motel’s clock radio was playing “Hanging by a Moment” so softly I could barely make out the words.

  I hummed along, not daring to turn it up. I didn’t want to wake Paul.

  My old Nikkormat had no timer, so I decided to try out the cable he had bought for me earlier that day at B&H Photo in midtown Manhattan. Among the walls of lenses, special papers, and obscure photography esoterica, I had withered under the somber looks of the Hasidic man helping us, sure he could see the dirtiness within me.

  I connected the long, black cable to the camera and placed it on the nightstand. Then I pulled off my bra and nestled my body against Paul’s sleeping one, folding myself into a pose that was sexually wise beyond my actual experience. I wanted to matter, not simply to exist. I ached to feel special, and Paul’s intense desire had breathed life into me.

  So I mimicked what I saw—in the movies, in magazines, in my home.

  In the first pictures, I covered my bare breasts. Click.

  The photos would cement us, would tether Paul to me. Sex was simply the seed from which our love would grow. In time, he would come to love me.

  I remember thinking of my favorite TV show, Mad About You, and how everyone said I looked a little like the actress who played the wife on the show. I didn’t have blond hair, but I had the same squinty eyes that disappeared when I smiled. On the show, the couple met at a newsstand on West 81st Street, when they both wanted the last copy of the Sunday Times. While paying for it, the woman dropped a dry-cleaning ticket, which the guy used to hunt her down.

  I longed for someone to desire me so much they would track me down like that.

  For the next batch of photos, I positioned my arm above my head, knowing, the way all girls know, that this would make my breasts look more attractive.

  In the last one, I lowered my eyelids just a little, and put one finger in my mouth.

  Click.

  And then, weeks later, it was posted on MySpace, and life as I knew it was ripped apart.

  Daisy’s loud laugh jolts me back to the present.

  I join them back in the kitchen, where Daisy and Leah are spooning heaps of chopped nuts on the long rectangles of dough.

  They stop what they’re doing when I enter.

  “Are you all right?” Daisy asks.

  “Not really.” I hover near the counter, not sure whether I want to stay or go. But the warmth from the oven and the sweet smells from the oven are so comforting that I don’t dare move.

  “Is that you?” Daisy asks.

  I nod. “When I was a teenager.”

  “Well, Facebook has to take it down. That’s against the rules. Putting up naked photos of teenagers, right, Leah?”

  Leah shakes her head in disgust. “Totally. They have to take it down.”

  I am heartened by their indignation. Leah starts typing. “I’m going to fill out the complaint form right now.”

  “Who’s the guy in the picture?” Daisy asks. “Do you think he’s doing this?”

  Leah stops typing, and they both turn to me expectantly. Somewhere, in the darkest corners of my imagination, I’ve always felt haunted by what happened all those years ago. I’ve carried a vague sense of doom, that I would someday pay a price. But I never expected this.

  “He’s an ex-boyfriend,” I say, not ready to tell the whole truth.

  A loud “Goddamn it” issues from upstairs. Leah looks up at the ceiling. “He’s got to be playing Fortnite. That’s the only thing that gets a rise out of him these days.”

  Daisy reaches a hand out and touches my arm. “You were saying. An ex-boyfriend?”

  “From high school. But we haven’t spoken since my senior year.”

  “Do you think he could be the one doing all of this?” Leah asks.

  “Maybe.” Lexi. I knew in my gut when I heard Rob use that nickname that it had something to do with Overton. But how could it all be connected?

  “Did you have an ugly breakup?” I turn away from them and stare at the blackened window that looks out onto Leah’s backyard. All I can see is a muddy reflection of myself. I remember the police detective asking me if I really wanted to ruin this young man’s life. “You could say that.”

  “What’s his name? Let’s track him down.”

  I turn back and put on a brave smile. I do not want everyone in Eastbrook to know I slept with my teacher in high school, triggering a police investigation. I need to take care of this myself.

  “Thank you, both of you, for being so supportive,” I say.

  “Look,” Daisy says. “Jeff is a good guy. I’m sure he will take these posts down. I’ll reach out to him tonight.” She scribbles on the legal pad.

  “As for the neighborhood gossips, screw ’em,” Leah says. “Who cares what they think!”

  “And you should think about going to the police,” Daisy says, “if for no other reason than if this escalates, you’ve started a paper trail.”

  I nod, but there is no way in hell I want to go back to the police station. The last time I was there, the detectives all but accused me of murder. My plan in regard to the police is to lie low until they catch who really killed Rob Avery.

  They both walk me to the front.

  “You’re being really sweet. Thank you.”

  “I’ve been there,” Leah says. “After my first husband died, I dated this total creep. He kind of cyber-stalked me. No fake profiles or anything, but he managed to hack into my emails and would just show up at places, like concerts or restaurants. I had to go to the police.”

  “Did they help?”

  She laughs. “Actually, not really, now that I think about it.”

  “So how did it end?”

  Leah shrugged. “I moved to D.C. Not because of him,” she adds. “And I changed all my passwords to everything. But he’s out there somewhere. I still think about that sometimes.”

  “Let us know if there’s anything,” Daisy says.

  “Actually, there is one random thing. I have to sell my mother’s house in Westport, Connecticut. You wouldn’t happen to know how I can find out who’s the best Realtor up there, do you, Daisy?”

  She blinks hard, just once, but then a large smile spreads across her face. “Of course! I know just the woman. Barb DeSoto. I’ll text you her info.”

  I hug them both good night and thank them again. As I cross the street to my house, I can see a figure walking a small dog in the distance. I wonder if it’s Susan. I can’t tell from this far. I take a deep gulp of the cool night air. My neighbor Heather has put up a giant inflatable jack-o’-lantern on her front lawn. Halloween is around the corner, and this is the first year Cole is excited to go trick-or-treating.

  I take a few steps onto the walkway that leads to our back door when I hear a crunch of footsteps in the leaves behind me. I spin around, heart pounding. I see no one.

  I pick up the pace to the back of my house. As I’m approaching the back door, someone grabs my arm. I spin around, a shriek caught in my throat.

  It’s Dustin. He lets go of my arm and backs up a few feet, hands up. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice quivers, wavering between child and man.

  “Well, you did.” I put my hand to my chest, where my heart is pounding like it’s going to explode. “You can’t sneak up on people like that, Dustin.”

  “Sorry.” He digs his hands into the pockets of his skinny jeans and stares at the ground.

  “It’s fine, really. Just be more careful, huh?”

  “I heard what you were saying in
the kitchen.”

  “You were listening in on our conversation?” Annoyance floods me.

  Dustin raises his head. The round, low moon illuminates his long face, his hawklike nose. He looks nothing like Leah. I think of what I learned this evening, that his father committed suicide and how he’s not getting along with his stepfather. I let out a deep sigh. “Dustin, you shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

  “Don’t be mad,” he says. “I can help you. I want to help you.”

  “That’s all right, Dustin. Thank you, anyway.” I turn to go.

  “The police are not going to figure this out,” he calls, and I stop. “Even if they had the time, they don’t have the skills to find out who is trolling you, messing with you. I do. I can find out who made that Facebook page.”

  I turn back to face him. “Is that right?”

  “Sure. But you know, I charge for this kind of thing. It’s a lot of work.”

  I have to smile at that one. And to think Leah imagined him babysitting children. “How much?”

  “Two grand.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. Good night, Dustin.” The doorknob is in my hand when he calls from the shadows once more.

  “Just remember, the police won’t help you, but I can.”

  23

  I’m in bed, anxiously waiting for Mark to finish with work and come upstairs. I need to tell him about the pictures of me online, but I don’t know how I am going to do that. A part of me thinks I can contact Facebook and get them taken down before he even knows. But I know that’s crazy. He needs to know the truth.

  But if I tell him about the photos, how can I not tell him about Paul?

  Mark comes in.

  “How did the call go?” I ask, gauging his mood. If he’s still mad, there’s no way I’ll tell him. At least not tonight.

  “Fine. Better than expected.” His tone is terse, but is that because of me or work he’s stressed about? “I’m going to be busy the next month or so preparing for some depositions. Looks like we may end up going to trial after all.”

  “Mark, I’m sorry about before.”

  He sits on the edge of our bed in just his pajama bottoms. “It’s okay. I’m sorry about the whole Caitlin therapy thing. I shouldn’t have talked to her about it.”