Reputation

by Sara Shepard

  Paul jiggles the ice in his glass. “I was living in New York City, but then I got divorced, and . . . it’s a long story. So yep. I’m back home.”

  A waiter passes with a steaming buffet tray of pasta; the smell of the vodka sauce makes my nostrils prickle. Et tu, Paul? I think. Of course my teenage crush would wind up only a few miles from where he went to high school. Everyone ends up back here, even hot punk-rock guys destined for greatness. It makes me sad. But more than that, it makes me really uneasy. No one has left. Around every corner, someone might know me and remember. All at once, I need to get away. Like really get away.

  I shoot Paul a watery smile. “I should probably find my sister. But it’s been really nice to see you.”

  Paul looks chagrined. “How long are you going to be here? Can I give you a call?”

  How long have I waited to hear those words? But it feels like too little, too late. “I’m heading back to the West Coast soon. But drop me a message on ‘The Source’ website, okay?”

  I snake through more people, elbowing a woman in a black maxi dress so sharply that she breathes in a gasp and shoots me daggers. It takes me an agonizing three minutes to find Kit, though when I do, she is blessedly alone. I scuttle up and slide in next to her. “Hey,” she says, brightening at the sight of me.

  “I need to get out of here,” I say bluntly.

  Kit places her empty glass on the bar. “I’ll find the girls.”

  She reaches for her handbag so happily that I almost don’t clarify. “Actually, I mean get out of Pittsburgh. There’s a flight leaving for LA tomorrow morning, and I need to be on it.”

  Hoots of laughter explode across the room. A sudden, sharp smell of a cigar wafts into my nostrils. Kit has frozen. “You’re leaving?”

  “Work needs me.”

  “B-But you just got here!”

  “I didn’t, actually. I’ve been here for three days.”

  The muscles around Kit’s mouth tighten. “Oh geez. Three days. Of course. I’m sorry I’ve taken up so much of your time.”

  “Kit, I’m sorry, but—”

  “I mean, whatever; my husband’s murdered, my kids are traumatized, I still could go to jail for it, but hey, three days of casual conversation and hiding out in your hotel room most of the time seems about the right level of support.”

  “I haven’t been hiding in my hotel room!”

  Kit swishes her hand. “Whatever, Willa. You do you. Like always.”

  “Kit . . .”

  Kit pretends to be interested in the baseball game on television. “Why do you hate me so much, anyway?”

  I step back, feeling slapped. “I-I don’t hate you!”

  “It sure feels that way. You always can’t wait to get away from here. From me.”

  “That’s not true.” I start to dismantle a bar mat into little chunks. “How about you come to LA instead?”

  Kit narrows her eyes. “I have a job, too. And two daughters.”

  “They can come.” I shift my weight. “We both know I wasn’t going to stay for very long.”

  I notice the lines around Kit’s eyes. The beginnings of aging at her mouth. It’s startling—for years I’ve held a high school version of her in my head, the fresh, perky, desirable girl everyone wanted to be friends with. I think she’s about to say something, but then she tosses a napkin on the bar and storms away.

  “Kit!” I cry, leaping up. I follow her into a bathroom, though she slams the swinging door in my face. Once I push my way inside, Kit has shut herself in a stall. I pound on the stall door. “Kit! Come on! Don’t be mad!”

  There’s sniffling from inside. “Leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I just . . . I need to go. It has nothing to do with you.”

  She opens the door a crack. Her eyes are red, and her cheeks are blotchy, and she looks pissed. “Do you even realize I don’t have anyone else right now? Did you not hear what people were saying? Then again, maybe you didn’t. Maybe you were just thinking about how soon you could get out of here.”

  “No, I did hear, I just . . .” I trail off. I’d just hoped Kit hadn’t heard all those whispers.

  “And Dad’s not helping. He’s wrapped up with this hack thing. And the girls—I’m supposed to be the strong one for them.”

  “Kit, I didn’t—”

  But she cuts me off, points at me. “Look, I know we’re not close anymore. I know you have a life in LA. I know that maybe you think my life is . . . oh, I don’t know. Petty, maybe. Superficial. I have a lame job. A husband you’ve never really liked.”

  “That’s not fair! I don’t think those things!” Not really, anyway.

  “And I get it—Pittsburgh is nothing compared to LA. There’s no good takeout. Everyone’s obsessed with sports. If I lived somewhere warm and amazing, I’d want to go back, too. But we’re still sisters. And I have no one else right now, Willa.”

  The bar coaster I’ve torn up is in shreds in my hands, falling onto the tiled bathroom floor. There’s an ache in my stomach that’s possibly been there since I landed in Pittsburgh on the red-eye. It never occurred to me that it bothered Kit that we weren’t close. I figured she was subsumed by her own issues—family, career, marriage, her brand-new, sparkly, rich-girl life—to give a shit about our relationship. I figured she had lots of support. I’d actually envied her, if I was being honest with myself. Gregarious Kit in the dependable same city she’s lived in since birth, while I forged it alone thousands of miles away.

  But now all I see is that I haven’t been a sister.

  I think about the text my boss sent. I’m not working on any stories right now, and I have almost three weeks of unused vacation time for the year, plus a bunch of carried-over days from years past. Would it kill me to stay here for a little longer and be the sister Kit needs?

  Well, yes, it possibly might. But it might not. And whatever doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.

  I take another minute to dwell on it, then take a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ll stay. I want to stay.” There’s a lump in my throat. “I didn’t realize. I should have, but I didn’t.” I lick my lips. Swallow hard. How do I say I want to be close to her again? How do I bridge all the years, all the secrets? I have a feeling I have way more things to hide than Kit does. And I certainly don’t want to divulge anything. Long ago, I’d made a promise to myself always to move forward, not look back. It’s why being here is so difficult. There are too many reminders.

  “Forget everything I just said,” I tell her. “I won’t book that flight. I won’t book any flight.”

  She glances at me begrudgingly. “Really?”

  I open the stall door wider. “Yes. Actually, maybe I can help with figuring out what happened to Greg.”

  Kit looks at me suspiciously. “For a story?”

  “No. Absolutely not. For you.”

  As if on cue, I catch sight of those same women from before—the ones who were whispering about the rumors of how Greg and Kit met. I glance at Kit, wondering if I should ask her about it. Is Greg being Martin’s surgeon a secret? What other secrets is she keeping? And what did those women mean about Greg acting like Sienna and Aurora didn’t exist toward the end? What was with Sienna and Aurora arguing on the bench an hour ago?

  There’s a lot I’m missing here. A lot that lurks beneath the surface, ready to be excavated. And maybe, just like Paul suggested, I’m the person to do it.

  Kit’s brow furrows. “Are you going to speak to everyone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Well, don’t question the girls. They’ve already been through it. I don’t want to retraumatize them.”

  I shrug. “Okay. Whatever.” There’s a lump in my throat. I’ve always been a person who relies more on action than words. Maybe if I can figure this out for Kit, then things will be okay between us. All of
our neglect from years past will be wiped clean. “Now, can we get out of here? I think I’m starting to regress into my seventh-grade self.”

  Kit laughs weakly. When she takes my arm, I feel that we might be all right. For a second, I almost feel good about my decision. But then I remember: I’ve lied to Kit, just now. Yes, I want to investigate what really happened to Greg. But that’s not all that made me decide to stay.

  Years ago, in this same neighborhood, something happened that went unresolved. For years I’ve dwelled on that iniquity. I’ve thought about the rot that hides behind this pretty community’s walls, the ugly secrets people keep. It’s why I went into my particular career: To draw the truth from people. To tell things others are afraid to. To expose people for who they are, no matter how prominent they might be. Greg’s murder occurred in the very same town where, all those years ago, something else happened that changed—damaged—someone forever.

  That someone is me.

  14

  LYNN

  SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 2017

  My husband and I don’t attend the reception for Greg Strasser. I’m curious about it—it seems like something interesting always happens at funeral receptions—but Patrick reminds me that our kids have a soccer game today, and it’s the first time since the season started that both of us can attend. I can’t argue with him: Our family comes first.

  The games take place on a large swath of ground in a sports complex that also houses an ice rink and a climbing wall. “Take her down, Amelia!” I scream to my nine-year-old daughter, who’s running toward a girl on the opposite team like a charging bull. I scan the field to my left: Connor, my six-year-old son, is a flash in yellow mesh. My kids are the best players out there. I used to be an excellent soccer player when I was young, and I taught them everything I know.

  Marion Cummings unpacks the juice boxes I’ve brought for team snack. We might be new in town, but I’ve made sure to volunteer for parent duties in sports and school. It’s a little trick I picked up when I was a new mom in Maryland: It’s always the same group of four or five mothers showing up and signing up for everything, but because of that, they’re perceived as better, more selfless parents. When you’re perceived as better, you start to feel like you’re better. It’s quite an empowering cycle, and I’ve found it’s worked for me like a charm in this new city. See, when my kids were really young, I felt I had no handle on anything. I envied the calm, graceful women who just breezed through motherhood. In high school, college, my twenties, I was always the one people looked up to. Patrick announcing the move was a boon, actually, because here, I get to start over. And here, I’m nailing motherhood . . . nailing life, really.

  “What was the service like?” Marion asks.

  I look up. Patrick and I stopped home to change into more comfortable clothes, but all the other parents seem to sense that we’ve just come from the funeral regardless.

  “Well, I don’t want to criticize, but . . .” I chew on my lip. “They showed these inappropriate photos from the guy’s family vacation during the pastor’s eulogy. His daughters were practically naked. I had to cover my kids’ eyes.” I hated bringing my kids at all, but our nanny wasn’t available on such short notice.

  “Aren’t you freaked-out?”

  Marion is looking at me with such intensity that my skin starts to crawl. “Freaked?” I finally say, my voice a note or two higher than normal.

  Marion rips open a Costco box of mini pretzel pouches with her stubby nails. “I’m considering moving us all into Gil’s parents’ house in the city until the murderer is caught.”

  Ah yes. The murderer. I raise my eyebrows, feeling a tug in my chest—because, after all, it is terrifying. “Well, we have a security system. And I’m not letting my kids out of the house for a second without Patrick or me watching.”

  “Or maybe the wife did it?” Marion moves closer, an excited expression on her face. She, like the rest of us, is taking advantage of the warm weather and has her mom-hoodie tied around her waist. She really should do something about those “bingo wings,” as my mother used to call flabby arms. “Someone told me she was acting very drunk at that party. Then again, if my husband did that to me, I’d get wasted, too.”

  Your husband should do that to you, considering you’re only having sex with him once a year, I think. That was a little gem I read about Marion in the hack e-mails. Lucky for me, her husband is an Aldrich employee, and it’s all there.

  I plop the last juice box into the cooler. “I haven’t really kept up with the news.”

  This is a lie. I’ve read every story about Greg’s murder that’s been reported in the local news. Even a few bigger affiliates have picked it up because of the hack ties. I’ve stared at the surveillance image showing Kit’s car leaving the benefit. I’ve speculated the math. Based on the severity of Greg’s wound and the time of his death, the coroner placed the time of his stabbing at between 11:00 and 11:15. Kit left the lot at 11:06. If she drove fast, she could have gotten home quickly enough to kill him . . .

  Marion drops the empty pretzel box beside the trash bin because it’s too large to place it in the bin itself. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking about putting together a community watch program until they catch the killer. Do you think Patrick would be willing to take a shift?”

  “Absolutely.” My husband is just coming back from the bathroom. I loop my arm around his waist.

  “Huh?” Patrick jolts up. “What’s that?”

  “I said you’d take a shift during community watch,” I repeat.

  Patrick squints. “Community watch?”

  “Of course he’ll do it,” I tell Marion cheerfully. And then I turn back to Patrick. “There’s a murderer on the loose. We need to keep our children safe.”

  Patrick looks like he wants to protest, but then says, resignedly, “Okay. Sign me up.”

  We turn back to the game. I glance to my left to make sure Marion isn’t paying attention, then whisper, “You were in the bathroom for twenty-five minutes.”

  He looks startled. “It was more like five.”

  I make a harrumph noise that says I know otherwise, but it’s as if Patrick has no idea what I mean. Does he really not see how bizarrely he’s behaving? At the funeral, he kept swiveling around, looking at people, though when I asked whom he was searching for, he didn’t give me an answer. And then there’s the night of the benefit. It was strange enough that he left abruptly only an hour into the thing. I stayed for a few more hours, fulfilling all my work responsibilities; when I got home, the house was dark, so I’d figured Patrick had gone to bed. But then I noticed his car wasn’t in the driveway. Or in the garage.

  I let myself in. Patrick’s suit jacket was slung over one of the counter stools in the kitchen, which means he’d at least stopped at home. I tried his cell phone, but it rang inside his jacket pocket. I found it and unlocked the screen—I’d figured out Patrick’s password long ago. There were no illicit texts. No indication of what he was up to.

  I wanted to confront him, but I was so exhausted that I fell into bed and drifted into a rage-fueled sleep. I woke up hours later, dim morning light peeking through the blinds. When I saw Patrick wasn’t next to me, I panicked. I went downstairs and found him dressed in a T-shirt and pajama pants, scooping coffee grounds into a filter. “Hey,” he said. “I’m going to pick up the kids from their sleepovers if you want to ride with me.”

  “Where were you last night?” I bleated. “You weren’t here when I got back.”

  He hit the button to start the coffee brewing. “Walgreens. We were out of Pepto.”

  Out of Pepto? It was so clearly a lie. But then I glanced at my phone sitting in its charging dock on the island . . . and everything came to a halt. I’d received eleven texts since the night before; quite a few of them were from people from my office and others in the community. Most included a link from a local news website: Prom
inent Surgeon Murdered in Home Late Friday Evening. I saw the face of the man I’d seen on Kit’s arm at dinners and benefits. And the e-mails I’d trolled for in the hack.

  Greg Strasser was . . . dead.

  I read the details, the timeline. Then I looked up at Patrick in horror. He’d been out last night, too. He could have been killed just as easily. Everything felt so fragile and unpredictable, and I wasn’t angry anymore—just grateful I wasn’t the one who’d lost a husband.

  “Mom!” Amelia sprints up to me now, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. “Did you see my goal!”

  “Of course I did!” I cry, pushing a few strands of her blond hair from her face.

  Connor runs up next, slapping Patrick a high five. “Do you have my granola bars?” he asks me, hopping madly from foot to foot as though he’s still on the field.

  “Right here,” I say, pulling one from my bag.

  I notice, as Patrick bends down to readjust Connor’s shin guards, that we are the only mom-and-dad unit who’s shown up today. Every other kid has one parent on the sidelines, not both. It’s got to count for something.

  “Go get ’em,” I tell the kids, patting their butts as they run back onto the field. Honestly, I wish I were running around, too, because although it was balmy ten minutes ago, it’s now downright freezing. Damn mercurial weather.

  I lean into Patrick. “Babe, I’m cold.”

  He looks up, surprised. “You didn’t bring a sweatshirt?”

  I set my mouth in a stern line, and he sighs. “I think I have a jacket in the car. Want me to grab it for you?”

  “Forget it.” I wrench away from him. “I’ll get it myself.”

  I can feel Patrick gazing at me the whole walk up the hill to the parking lot, but I don’t turn back. Let him feel like he needs to make it up to me.

  The complex is nestled in the middle of an office park, and bland, soulless buildings rise around me. It’s a gloomy scene, which only compounds my malaise. I’ve looked everywhere for evidence that Patrick’s up to something: his phone, his browser history, even what he’s watched on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and YouTube. Nothing. So why is my intuition pinging? Why do I feel a strange, sneaky uneasiness? Am I only suspicious because I have done something I’m not proud of? Am I turning my guilt outward, projecting it onto someone else?