by Wendy Walker
Jonathan is quiet suddenly, and it has me unnerved. Something about Mitch Adler gets under his skin. Maybe because he can’t believe he’s here with me—the woman who might have killed someone. Or because it reminds him of the man who drowned when he was in high school. Or, maybe, because of something else. Something I can’t even imagine. And I have a very colorful imagination.
“Are you wondering if I’m one of them?” Jonathan says after a little while. “One of your wrong men?”
Now it’s my turn to be honest. “I wouldn’t know if you were. That’s the problem now. It’s like knowing you’re color-blind and then someone asks you the color of the leaves on the trees.”
“So you gather evidence—is it spring or fall? Are they maples or oaks? Why is he driving that shitty little car?”
I answer with a nod and a smile as I stare at my naked toes.
“If it makes you feel any better, I do that more now. Now that I’ve been dating for a while on that godforsaken website. Everyone lies. You have to read between the lines, look for clues hidden in photos. Sometimes you don’t know until you meet face-to-face.”
“Or you Google them—and hope they’ve used their real names.”
“Haha,” he says. “But you did it too, Laura Heart.”
Yes, I did.
“So where does that leave us?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
He slips an arm behind my back and pulls me into him. Our bodies press together as we lean against the counter. His body is warm and strangely familiar now.
I wrap my arms around his neck and rest my cheek against his chest. I hear his heart beating and it soothes me.
But then everything changes.
“I think…” he says, moving one hand down my thigh until it finds the hem of Rosie’s dress. Then it moves beneath the fabric, up and up and inside.
He whispers in my ear.
“I think we should fuck again.”
His voice is deep and lurid and it sends my body into lockdown. Every muscle stiffens against the pull of his hands on my dress and my hair. His mouth is wet, kissing my neck, devouring me suddenly like he devoured that pizza.
What is happening? The question has nowhere to go for an answer. It searches for the place where instinct should be, where reason should sound out, and finds an empty hole.
This is my defect. This is my Achilles’ heel. All I can do is look at the evidence.
Where is the kindness? Where is the honesty? I’ve just stripped my soul bare. I’ve told him how vulnerable I am to this very thing—to uncertainty about men, to regret. And to the violence that resulted years ago.
He says it again. “I want to fuck you right now,” and I feel my hand squeeze tight. A ball of stiff, folded fingers. Nails digging into my palm. A fist.
I open my eyes when he moves his head away and I see my purse on the counter. I have one thought now—one thought about what I have to do.
RUN!
Maybe this is nothing. I know that. Some people like this—the physical passion, the verbal vulgarity. But it stands beside the soft touch of his hands less than an hour before. It stands beside the intimate conversation that has barely ended. I don’t have the tools to understand.
“I have to go,” I say. Though the words are not easy to get out. That sad child, that stupid child, does not want to disappoint him.
I hate her. She never listens.
He doesn’t stop, so I say it again, fueled by anger now.
“I have to go.”
I push him off me and grab my purse. I reach inside and look for my keys. Jonathan stands still. He seems embarrassed, but I don’t care. I don’t care if he was trying to be seductive or sexy or whatever. I have to leave.
“Laura,” he says. “I’m sorry—did I misread something? I thought we were really connecting.”
Fuck! Where are my keys?
My hand brushes a piece of paper, and I remember the same feeling from earlier. From before I lost control. Got in his bed. Found his ring.
I grab it this time and pull it out. It’s heavy and when it is freed from the purse, my keys fall out from between the folds. Jonathan reaches down to pick them up and I hate him for doing it. For being nice again. So much hatred runs wild.
Who are you, Jonathan Fielding?
I unfold the paper. It’s just like the others. One sentence typed in black ink. Only this one scares me even more. This one is not a threat. It’s a conclusion.
“What is that?” Jonathan says. “What does it say? You just turned as white as a ghost.”
I look up from the note. I don’t need to read it again—they’re words I will never forget. So I just say them as I stare at this stranger.
You should have left while you had the chance.
THIRTY-SIX
Rosie. Present Day. Saturday, 1 p.m. Branston, CT.
Rosie followed Conway and Pearson to the police station. Gabe offered to go with her, but she needed him to go home, where he could research Edward Rittle and the two companies he was involved with.
The first was the LLC that leased the apartment—362 Maple Street. The name of the company was the address of the building. Gabe said he had no doubt it was formed simply to hold the lease so it wouldn’t be in Rittle’s name.
The second was a financial firm—Klayburn Capital. Laura had made calls to a number registered to the hedge fund. It was the number Laura had used to contact the man she believed to be Jonathan Fields.
Rosie sat now in a small conference room staring at a printout of the numbers from Laura’s phone.
Pearson sat with her, flipping through notes from the morning.
The young officer looked up suddenly with a question. “I thought you said Edward Rittle worked in construction—window replacements, right? What does that have to do with a hedge fund?” But Rosie only heard the voice, not the words that were spoken. Her mind was on something else.
She’d been staring at her husband’s phone number. Counting the calls and the texts. Trying to remember what happened on the days when there were many, and the days when there were none. Trying to find a pattern that might explain this connection between her husband and her sister that began over the summer.
Pearson repeated the question, and this time Rosie forced herself to listen.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe the hedge fund owns the window company. Maybe he works for the window company. Or the hedge fund. This woman, Kimmie Taylor—I didn’t ask her details about the things she knew. But Gabe will find out. This is what he does.”
Pearson nodded, her lips closed tight and pulled up at the corners in a smile. It was meant to be sympathetic, but Rosie found it patronizing, just like before. She didn’t want sympathy. She wanted to find her sister.
A text lit up her phone. It was Joe, asking if she was still at the police station. She’d lied earlier about being there, only now she actually was. Rosie stared at her husband’s name on the screen. She wanted to throw the phone against the wall.
“May I use the restroom?” Rosie asked. She had to call him and check in. If she didn’t, he would just keep at it, texting with questions. Eventually he would find her, and she wasn’t ready to see him.
Pearson pushed back her chair and stood up. “I’ll take you,” she said.
They left the room and turned a corner. Rosie heard a voice—a man’s voice—yelling something about Thursday night.
She walked faster, following the voice, Pearson on her heels.
“Is that him?” she asked, now in a large room where a man was yelling at a desk sergeant.
She glanced quickly at Pearson, who tried to pull her away, back into the hall.
“That’s him! That’s Edward Rittle!”
Pearson’s hand grabbed her arm, but Rosie pushed her away quickly. A moment later, she was standing in front of the man whose picture she and Gabe had found on findlove.com. The man who’d last seen her sister.
“Jonathan Fields!” she yelled.
She took hold of his arms. Officer Pearson was right behind her. The man pulled away.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. He looked at Rosie with trepidation.
The desperation of the past two days came crashing down and Rosie lost herself. She started screaming.
“Are you Jonathan Fields? Tell me! Where is my sister!” She reached out to grab him again, and again he pushed her away.
“Someone do something!” he shouted.
“Mrs. Ferro!” Pearson tried to contain Rosie. She grabbed her arms and held them behind her back with both hands. But Rosie was strong. She pulled away again, this time pushing the man with two open palms against his chest. He stumbled backward.
“What the hell? Someone stop her! She assaulted me!”
“Mrs. Ferro!” Pearson yelled, then took a zip tie from her pocket. She found Rosie’s arms again and held them tight. “Don’t make me restrain you.…”
Officer Conway was there now, and he ushered the man away while Pearson held on to Rosie.
“It’s him!” Rosie cried out, pulling against Pearson’s grip. “It’s him! He has my sister!” She fell into Pearson, who opened her arms and held her.
“Shhh … Calm down, Mrs. Ferro.”
“It’s him.… It’s him.…” Rosie repeated the words, though her voice began to soften as the man disappeared down the hall.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Joe walked into the same conference room where Rosie had been counting his calls and texts to her sister. She sat still, staring at her folded hands. She couldn’t look at him.
“Jesus, Rosie…” Joe moved cautiously around the small table and knelt beside her. “What the hell happened? They said you attacked some man in the waiting room.”
“It was him, Joe. It was Jonathan Fields. Only that’s not his real name. He was at an apartment two blocks from here on Thursday night. With a woman—the neighbor heard them. He was with Laura.”
Joe sighed and hung his head. “Okay, but did you have to attack him? They’re questioning him now, about Laura. But he wants to press charges.”
Perfect, Rosie thought. “He’s done something to Laura—I know it. I can feel it. She was in that apartment! And now he wants to press charges against me for demanding to know what he did? Has everyone lost their mind?”
Joe touched Rosie’s back. “It’s okay. Just calm down.”
Rosie stood up abruptly, pushing him away. “I won’t calm down! This is crazy—they should have a team of forensic people in that apartment. They should be interrogating him, not asking polite questions. Do you know what he’s done to other women? He’s a monster!”
Joe stared at her as she paced the room. He wouldn’t speak now because he knew he wouldn’t convince her that she was wrong, or that she shouldn’t be this upset about what was happening two doors down where they’d taken that man. But that didn’t mean he believed her. Or that he thought she was being rational.
“Where’s Mason?” she asked. Her eyes opened wildly as she remembered Joe had been alone with their son. “What did you do with him?”
“Rosie!” Joe was angry now. “I called Zoe. I texted you that. What did you think I did with him? What’s wrong with you?”
Shit. He had told her that. Zoe had come to the house. She knew she should apologize. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Joe saw the papers on the table. He looked once, quickly, then back again when he realized what they were.
“The phone records?” he asked cautiously. “What did they find?”
Rosie watched as he picked up the pages. She’d marked his number with a pencil—a small gray dot in front of every one of the calls and texts between his phone and Laura’s.
His face didn’t change when he saw the markings, but she knew he was seeing it. The evidence.
“Rosie…” Now his voice was contrite. He set the papers down, then looked back up at her.
“It went on for weeks,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “And you visited her in New York—at her apartment. And all those nights when you stayed up together, getting drunk and laughing. I could hear you all the way upstairs. Lying in bed with our son, thinking how happy it made me that you were being so generous with her. Making her laugh again when she’d been so sad. I never thought … It never crossed my mind.…”
“What didn’t you think?” Joe looked confused. “What are thinking now? What do you think you’ve discovered?”
Rosie felt the clutch in her chest like she was about to cry, but no tears came. She was too exhausted.
She held her hands to the sky. “Is that what happened to her?” Rosie asked the question at the same time it entered her consciousness. Maybe it had been there since Laura’s roommate had said his name. Or maybe it had come only after she’d seen his phone number in Laura’s records. It didn’t matter—it was here now. The pieces falling into place. “Did you have something to do with her disappearance?”
Joe was frozen, though Rosie could see his world coming apart.
But was it coming apart because she’d stumbled on the truth? Or because she had just wielded a fatal blow to everything that was between them? A lifetime of friendship and trust. And love.
“What am I supposed to make of this, Joe? You’ve been seeing my sister behind my back. Calling and texting her. Staying up late with her. And the one night she decides to start over, to meet another man, she disappears.”
Oh God … Another thought. Another piece of evidence was suddenly before her.
“Where were you Thursday night—after you left our bed? I don’t even know what time you left because I was passed out cold from the Benadryl and the wine, which you saw me take.”
Still, nothing. Not a sound or a movement from her husband. There was no turning back now. She had crossed the line into this dark place where nothing was what it seemed. She stared at her husband, this man she’d known her entire life, and allowed herself to believe that she had never known him at all. It was terrifying, but in the same moment, a relief to know the truth.
“Were you jealous? Did you follow her? God, Joe … what? What happened?”
When he didn’t answer, Rosie sat down at the table and collapsed into her hands.
She heard Joe pull out a chair and sit down across from her. He shifted in his seat nervously.
“Whatever you think is between me and Laura, I promise you—you’re wrong. And I would never…” He stopped then, choking on his own words. “I would never hurt her. Never.”
Rosie looked up and saw tears flood his eyes. But his jaw was stern and filled with anger and regret.
“How do I know? How can I believe you? People do all kinds of things when they love someone. When they want someone…”
“No…” Joe said again. “I would never hurt Laura!”
Rosie repeated her words as well. “How do I know?”
Then he paused as though he was considering his answer. And it was nothing she could have ever imagined.
“Because Laura is my sister. My biological sister.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Laura. Session Number Fifteen. Six Weeks Ago. New York City.
Dr. Brody: I’m glad you’ve finally told me about Joe. How do you feel about it?
Laura: Confused at first. Disbelieving. I had so many questions—how long did my mother have an affair with his father? Who knew and for how long? How did they find out?
Dr. Brody: Your father knew before you were born, didn’t he?
Laura: How did you know?
Dr. Brody: Because it explains everything. Don’t you see it? It’s the missing piece to the puzzle.
Laura: Dick couldn’t love me because he knew I wasn’t his daughter?
Dr. Brody: And more than that, Laura—you were the living embodiment of his wife’s betrayal. An assault to his manhood—and with a neighbor. Then he had to pretend that you were his to protect the family, and he had to do it in front of everyone. You said the neighborhood
was close, parties and impromptu gatherings. Joe’s family didn’t move away until he was in high school, right?
Laura: Yes. Joe said his father didn’t tell his mother until then—which explains so much … why Mrs. Ferro was so friendly with our family, but Mr. Ferro kept his distance. We thought he was just antisocial.
Dr. Brody: I hope you realize that this doesn’t excuse your father’s behavior. You were a child. It wasn’t your fault. He should have found a way to give you what you needed—what any child needs.
Laura: You think this should help me—this information?
Dr. Brody: Doesn’t it? That child inside you asking why her father couldn’t love her—now she knows. It had nothing to do with her. Now she can stop choosing the wrong men so she can repeat the past. It can all stop!
Laura: You try telling her that, Kevin. She doesn’t listen to me.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Laura. The Night Before. Friday, 1:15 a.m. Branston, CT.
Jonathan reads the note. He looks at me with concern.
“What does this mean?” he asks.
I tell him it’s the fourth note I’ve received since returning home. I tell him what each one said and where I found it, and while I do, I search for clues on his face and in the way his body moves. I do this even though I know I have no ability to decipher them. My brain is hobbled by this defect, this giant hole where instinct and reason should be.
“Laura…” he says. His surprise appears to be genuine, but I don’t let myself trust it. “Why haven’t you gone to the police? This is serious.”
I take the note back into my hands. I fold it and put it in the purse.
“I don’t know.” This is the truth.
“Do you have any idea who would do this? Mitch Adler’s family? Or a friend? And what about the homeless man who was sent to that institution?”
“No one from either family is local, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t come back when they heard I had returned. And friends—my God, it could be any of them. Mitch was really popular. But who would go to all this trouble after so many years?”