Forget You Know Me

by Jessica Strawser

  “Right up until this morning, when he came over and confessed. Out of nowhere, like it was suddenly urgent to fill me in. He said he misread my signals, then got embarrassed and tried to cover it up.”

  Liza blinked at her. “So that’s it? The whole thing thanks to a nonstarter affair?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She’d said allegedly, Liza realized. “Do you not believe him?”

  Molly massaged her temples, whether from a stress headache or out of habit Liza couldn’t tell. “I don’t know,” she said again. “I think back to confronting Rick about this, straight off—and him confronting me, too. He tracked me down to have it out, and kind of put me in my place. Plus, he seemed just as freaked as I was—I mean, beyond backpedaling. Why would he have done any of that if it was him, and if he truly wanted to brush it under the rug?”

  Liza poured some cream into her coffee and gave the cup a swirl. She hadn’t been around for any of that and had only just met Rick. She felt ill equipped to offer advice.

  “But then I think,” Molly went on, “that he was also asking a lot of questions that day. About the police, whether they had a record of the video, whether I’d mentioned to anyone in public that Daniel was going to be out of town. So maybe it was a front for him to fish around and make sure he could just deny it. And to try to get me thinking of other theories.”

  “Sounds like,” Liza said, taking a sip.

  “Plus, Rick and I used to talk about everything. And he never asked me about it again. I took it as him not wanting to dredge it up because I’d accused him. Awkward. But maybe it was because once he’d talked me out of suspecting him, he didn’t want to press his luck.”

  “He didn’t ask me about it, either,” Liza agreed. “Even though he knew I was the one on the webcam, right?”

  “Right. It’s just that…” Molly squinted at her. “You know when a kid is lying to you and you can just tell? They’re not very good at it. That’s how it felt.”

  Liza shook her head. “Why the hell would anyone falsely confess to something so twisted?”

  Molly shrugged. “I’m not saying he did. I just don’t get it.” She sighed. “If he really did this, it’s not like I wasn’t on to him. It would’ve been so much easier for him to just fess up and ask forgiveness straight off, to save both of us all this grief. Then again, given the mess I’m in with Daniel, who am I to talk?”

  Liza rolled it over in her mind. “It’s easier for me to understand why he wouldn’t have admitted it before than it is for me to conjure a reason for him to own up to something he didn’t do,” Liza said carefully. “Especially this far after the fact.”

  “That’s just it. I asked him, Why now?”

  “And?”

  “He said Daniel mentioned I was afraid. Said he’d never meant to traumatize me that way. The weird thing is, for starters, I didn’t realize Daniel was aware of how I’d been feeling.”

  Liza felt the guilty rush of color to her cheeks. “Maybe he’s more perceptive than you think,” she offered quickly. “He did come to the race.”

  “That’s true. Maybe. But also, Daniel and Rick don’t usually talk. I tried to ask him how it came up, but he was vague.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t like the idea of the two of them talking about me. Especially since it turns out Rick and I…”

  She let the sentence trail off, and a crawling sensation pricked at the back of Liza’s neck. What if she could conjure a reason for Rick to have suddenly spilled his alleged guts? One that began with her own well-intended phone call to Daniel?

  “Forget trying to think of a reason,” she said slowly. “You really got the sense that Rick was lying today? For sure?”

  “I did. Takes one to know one, maybe.” Tears came into Molly’s eyes. “I guess I should just let it go. You said yourself Rick and I should cool it, and I know you were right. But our friendship meant a lot to me, and for it to end like this…” She took a shaky breath and looked away.

  The contrast from their jubilant conversation last night was heartbreaking, confusion and hurt eclipsing the rare relief Molly had exuded just hours before, and Liza wanted to find the man responsible and grind his face in it. Her anger only intensified the prickling, which was working its way up her hairline, clawing at her to pay attention.

  “Anyway.” Molly straightened her shoulders, though her jaw was still trembling. “I should focus on my own, very true, confession that I have to make to Daniel tonight.”

  “You chickened out last night?” Liza asked gently.

  “I didn’t get the chance to chicken out. Daniel went out, when you and I were on the phone. Wasn’t home until late.”

  On a weeknight? After their big reconnection at the race? “Where’d he go?” Liza asked, trying to keep her voice even.

  “No idea. An errand, probably. We’ve gotten out of the habit of keeping track of each other.” The prickling sensation had climbed up to Liza’s scalp now, and her whole head was tingling with dread. She was afraid she knew exactly where he’d gone. And she could think of only one reason why.

  “But there’s no way around telling him tonight,” Molly went on, seemingly talking to herself as much as to Liza. “Even if these awful lenders weren’t behind the intruder, who knows what they’ll do next. I can’t brush them off anymore. I need help. Plus, if Daniel and I are going to rebuild, he needs to know everything.” She swiped at her wet eyes, sniffing hard. “It was so bittersweet yesterday, him showing up that way, knowing that once he knows the whole truth, he might never look at me like that again.”

  To know everything. The whole truth. Molly deserved that, too.

  Liza stood. “Listen, Mol, I have to run. Are you going to be here? I could maybe come by again before work. I hate to think of you stewing alone.”

  Molly nodded and stood to clench her in a tight hug.

  She let Liza show herself out. After all, it’s not like she was company.

  She was practically family.

  34

  Daniel’s collected facade had finally failed him, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. No one would dare disturb him behind his closed office door just now; they were merely imagining the way his heart was racing as he bided his time until ten o’clock, when he was to report to the CEO’s office, presumably to be terminated. The admin who’d sent the meeting request had the biggest mouth in the place, though in this case the rumor mill would have gotten on fine without her. Bowing out of the budget meetings the way he had—leaving a table full of board members and investors sipping lukewarm coffees and glancing impatiently at the clock, until Jules ventured in to make his apologies—hadn’t left much room for guessing at possible outcomes.

  But he also knew something no one else did: that while the stunt he’d pulled would have a casualty, it wouldn’t be him.

  They had the racing-heart part right, though. His cold hands had trembled as he’d placed the call to Molly using the recording app that would tap her smartphone’s microphone—a connection that, once covertly made, only he could disconnect. He’d timed the call just so and kept her on the line long enough to be sure she carried the phone with her to the bus stop. He’d known that once it was in her pocket, it would likely stay there long enough to suit his purposes, as long as Rick didn’t get cold feet. And good ole Rick did prove reliable. Daniel had the whole, heartfelt confession on tape, down to the if I’d known, I’d have come clean earlier. A nice touch.

  Toby had nothing on him now. Granted, Daniel didn’t know exactly how Toby had retroactively booked him that alibi hotel room for the night the intruder broke in—he’d merely left a printed confirmation in Daniel’s in-box to show that he was holding up his end of the bargain—but even if he’d had help, Daniel was betting no one in the travel-booking arm would admit to assisting with a fraudulent reservation. Toby could try to cry to Molly or even to the police that Daniel had not in fact left town that night, but after today it would just sound like sour grapes. The ultimate safeguard was
that now, even if they did look into it, no one would suspect Daniel of anything Rick had already fessed up to—and should Rick try to retract his admission, Daniel had it right here in the audio file he was at this moment backing up to his storage cloud, his heart still racing, but with purpose, racing toward something, not away. Toby, meanwhile, was about to have plenty to be sour about. And his purpose thwarted.

  Once you took the court of public opinion into consideration, an all-employee email seemed the best way to blow the whistle. It put Daniel in control of who knew what when. And when everyone knew who had come to their rescue, none of them would stand for the hero being fired. Especially as it related to his reasons for skipping out yesterday. If anyone found out about the 5K, he’d simply say he’d joined his family on a whim.

  The adrenaline pressed the keyboard keys for him.

  It has come to my attention that our individual 401(k) deposits are, paycheck by paycheck, a fraction of a percentage less than they should be—an amount that may sound small until you look at the totals over time.…

  He swallowed the irony of making such a big deal out of honesty in accounting when his own wife had yet to come clean about the depths of her debt at home.

  A corrupt deal cut in Human Resources in exchange for going with this particular provider, after no small amount of wining and dining of our esteemed HR head himself, whose pockets are being lined by skimming our savings, while the provider piles on nonsense fees, which no doubt he gets a cut of, too …

  It wasn’t the same thing, though. When it came to love, money was secondary. When it came to business, money was the only damn reason any of them were here.

  I sat with this discovery, worrying I could be held responsible for not catching it sooner. Worrying about my job, my family … I wanted to be absolutely sure, so I gathered all the evidence I could, all the while hoping I would prove my suspicions wrong, find some other explanation.… I didn’t want to believe anyone would stoop so low.…

  A file of the aforementioned evidence would be emailed to the board simultaneously.

  It came down to the wire, but when the moment arrived just as my fears were confirmed, I could not in good conscience face the board.…

  Daniel had let Toby too deep inside his head. Plenty of people were overextended in their jobs. Daniel might have had a hand in making his own shoes too big to fill, but in some ways it had been an honest mistake. He certainly hadn’t thought real harm would come of it. He would help make the necessary adjustments to their oversight systems so this sort of thing wouldn’t happen again; he would use what he’d learned about their blind spots to illuminate them. Every day in corporate America, people embezzled and defrauded and lied, while exponentially more people looked the other way. After more than a month of rolling in all that mud, it felt good to get clean.

  Molly would be proud of him for it. It was what she’d been pulling for from the start, even without knowing the extent of the corruption. Molly 2.0 was a good person. She had more in common with Molly 1.0 than he’d realized.

  It had been such dumb luck, the way he’d first met Molly, when her being in the wrong place at the wrong time equated to his own stars aligning in a way that couldn’t have been more right. She’d been stranded outside her running car in that dark parking lot, waiting for Roadside Assistance to come pop open the locked door, and he’d been pumping gas when he’d seen the man encroach. The stranger was drunk, he was tall and broad enough to easily overpower Molly, and he was not taking no for an answer. So adamant was he on getting that yes that he seemed to have forgotten he was in a public space. A dark corner, sure, but not a private one.

  Daniel acted before he could think it through, and it was doubly lucky that the man had been too drunk to really fight, that he’d been unarmed, and that Roadside Assistance pulled up just in time to help restrain the asshole as he got to his feet from Daniel’s falsely confident first blows.

  Molly had looked at him like he was her knight in shining armor—her person, her backup, her heart—for a long time after that. Not for moments or hours or weeks. For years.

  And then, she’d stopped looking at him with any kind of light in her eyes at all. Darkness moved in, and he grew afraid. It seemed so impenetrable. Now he knew that wasn’t true. He’d finally acknowledged the reasons the lights had gone out, at least some of them, and in doing so had seen at last how to turn them back on, one by one.

  It would take some time, but he could do it.

  He read over every letter of the email, nipping and tucking until he was satisfied it took precisely the right shape. He concluded with an apology for good measure, though his coworkers would be thanking him by the time this was over. His superiors would have no choice but to show their appreciation, too. He made sure the attachments in the separate message they’d receive were in perfect order. As was the budget presentation he’d be hand-delivering in lieu of getting fired.

  With a deep breath, he hit Send, and waited for the racing of his heart to begin to slow.

  The door to his office flung open, and he startled in his chair—surely no one read that fast? But the ball of anger coming at him through the doorway wasn’t Toby, or Jules, or anyone from the board.

  The door swung shut heavily behind her, and he winced, already on his feet, crossing the room to open it again.

  “Liza, this is really not a good time. The worst possible time, actually.”

  She laughed. “I’m always showing up at the worst possible times, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t—”

  “It was you, wasn’t it? In the mask that night?”

  He froze. “Excuse me?”

  “Answer the question.”

  Jesus. “Okay. No. That’s absurd.”

  “If you really don’t have time to talk now, you’d better skip over the part where you insult my intelligence. Cut to the part where you explain. Because I’m not leaving until you do.”

  They squared off, both of them breathing hard, for a terrible moment. He’d been so close to extracting himself from this mistake. He didn’t want to let it go, the improbable hope that he still could.

  “Whatever you think, you’re wrong,” he said. But he could hear the panic in his voice. And so could she. She appraised him through her fury, as if he were a cataclysmic problem she’d only just become aware of, and it was the next worst thing to Molly herself looking at him this way. He’d always liked Liza, genuinely. Only once before had he ever minded having her in the picture—and even that he’d tried to repent for, to extend an olive branch where Molly would not. And this was where it had gotten him.

  “No one other than Molly was supposed to see me,” he said finally, his eyes not leaving hers, his voice barely above a whisper. It had been a stupid plan, relying too heavily on desperate emotion and not enough on rational thought. Molly was only meant to catch a glimpse of him that night, at which point he’d blunder his little invasion enough to let her save herself, call the cops, watch him scurry off into the woods before they arrived. In that moment, she’d prove to herself what she could no longer see: That she was still that woman from the gas station parking lot, perfectly capable of fixing things under the hood. But also that he was still that man from the parking lot—that when things got ugly, she didn’t have to be alone in the dark. She could still run back to his arms—which would feel warm and safe again.

  “What on earth were you trying to do? What were you after?”

  His eyes flitted to the door. How long did he have before the full whistle blow had been heard loud and clear? Surely not more than a couple minutes, tops. He had to talk fast.

  “Nothing! I don’t know. I know it sounds crazy to say that faking that business trip and putting on that mask made sense at the time, but all I knew was that I had to do something to jolt us both out of this place we were in. It was—too drastic, I know. That was immediately clear.” He’d had the decency to be ashamed from the start. But shame never got anyone anywhere good. He’d only been dig
ging further into his hole, trying to find a way out the other side.

  “Don’t tell me this has to do with your hero complex.”

  “You know I’d never hurt her.”

  “Terrifying her doesn’t count as hurting her? Do you know what you’ve put her through? How could you?”

  The worst part was that she wasn’t wrong. “I didn’t think it through.”

  “I know you’re big on ‘grand gestures’ as shortcuts, but this—”

  He shook his head. “You weren’t there. You don’t know!”

  “What do you mean? I saw the whole thing!”

  “Before, I mean! We were losing her, Liza. People talk about waking up one day and realizing what they’ve let go, and that’s exactly what happened. It’s like I was sleepwalking through my life, and one day there was this moment—a little moment that turns big, you know? Grant, our sweet, sensitive kid, said this un-sweet, insensitive thing, and it killed her to hear it. And it was because he sounded like me. I wanted to reach her, to make it all up to her, and I couldn’t even get her to look at me. Not that day, or the next … She wouldn’t let me reach her anymore. She’d already been dying, little by little, this person who mattered most to me in the world, and I had let that happen. I had helped it happen. And I wanted to fix it, but I could see it might be too late. My replacement was already on deck.”

  Liza was still glaring at him. He was failing at this. At conveying what it was like to watch a panorama of your most precious memories fade before your eyes. The refracted sunlight in Molly’s hair each sleepy-perfect morning of their honeymoon. The giddy triumph in first turning the key in the door of their very own house. The shared wonder at meeting their newborn children, each tiny being miraculously just as much him as her.

  He’d done it as a last attempt to hang on, to hold tight. The ball had been in his hand, the count full, and he’d panicked and thrown a wild pitch.