by Kate Myles
He sat down on the bottom step to the upstairs and buried his face in his arms. “The police will come,” I said. He let out a moan. “How did you pay Erik? The Belize account? The Seychelles?”
He lifted his head and scowled. “You have been spying on me, haven’t you?”
“We need to act. Now.”
He sighed and let his face go slack. “An account in the Caymans.”
“That account is toast. Don’t touch it again. I set up a shell company in Nauru. We can transfer the rest there for the time being.” He glared at me. I wasn’t having it. “What else are you gonna do?”
He stood, his face a complete blank. “You really are a piece of work, Em.” He started to move past me toward his computer. I grabbed his arm.
“Don’t do it now!” I said. “Go to a café or the library tomorrow morning. Use their Wi-Fi. We’ll have to destroy both of our computers.”
It was pitiful then, watching him turn from me and walk up the stairs, his shoulders slumped. I almost felt sorry for him, for what I was about to do to him.
I went to Grace’s swing and slid my hands underneath her in one smooth movement. She didn’t wake up. I was getting better at this mothering thing. I brought her upstairs to her crib and took a pillow and blanket from the closet. I lay down on the floor next to her and slept soundly.
Doug was gone when I woke the next morning. I texted him.
Are you doing it?
Yes.
The nanny arrived at eight. I showered and changed and kissed Grace goodbye. I told the nanny that I was going for a hike.
“If there’s an issue, call Doug,” I told her. “Cell service is spotty where I’m headed.”
I made sure my burner phone was in my purse and checked that my iPhone was on. I turned on its location services. Then I hid the iPhone under the mattress.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHLOE
Chloe sits up in bed and opens her blinds. It makes the room happy, the way the light filters into it. Things are different today. She’s been having this awful sense until just now that there was a hole inside her, all bottomless and sucking her down. But this morning it feels filled in.
She looks on top of her dresser, the one Doug bought her. Her flip phone, the one Emily gave her, has been charging all night. She opens it, carefully, like she’s unfolding a secret valentine. And then it’s magic, what happens next. A text comes in. She wasn’t expecting to hear from Emily, not this soon.
Did you see the video?
Chloe is smiling, she realizes. She decides to keep the smile on her face. It’s easier. The last thing she needs is to give in to the fear lurking around her edges. She’ll start worrying if she does that, and she’ll never make it out of her bedroom. She taps out the letters on her numeric keypad.
Video?
Dr. Maryn
Chloe picks up her laptop off the floor, searches for the video, and watches, scanning the screen for signs of herself. She’s only visible in one wide shot.
Doug looks terrified.
She waits for another text, but this phone is so basic she doesn’t even get the blinking ellipses. She has no idea if Emily is typing or what. She types again:
Are you okay?
No.
You want to talk?
I’ll come to you.
Chloe throws on leggings and an old tank top. She rushes past the unopened mail scattered across the living room floor to the dishes piled up in the kitchen. She picks up her detergent bottle. It’s empty. It’s been empty for the last week and a half. She sniffs. Something smells. She opens the cabinet under the sink. Her garbage is overflowing.
Her intercom rings. Emily is here. It’s so soon. Chloe hasn’t even started cleaning. She shoves her dirty dishes, her mugs and glasses, into the cabinet under the sink. Displaced spray bottles of Clorox and Fantastik clatter onto the linoleum. “Crap,” Chloe says. She pushes them back. A can of Comet tips over, spilling gritty powder under her feet. Emily rings again. Chloe shuts the cabinet and buzzes Emily up.
Emily sweeps in. She’s wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap and jeans with a soft, long-sleeved T-shirt. Even in this casual outfit, Emily looks rich. She has a Starbucks tray with two coffees and a white paper bag. She stops in the middle of Chloe’s empty dining room and looks around the apartment. There’s one lone picture on the wall, above where the futon used to be, a print of a thick-brushed painting announcing Chloe’s senior-year dance recital. It’s crooked, Chloe realizes. She starts toward it. Emily brings the coffee to the kitchen.
“Don’t clean on my account,” she says. She opens the lid of a coffee cup and looks into the white bag. “Milk and sugar?”
Chloe straightens the picture. “Sure,” she says.
“They only gave me Splenda,” Emily says.
Chloe moves into the kitchen. She opens the cabinet next to the fridge and pulls out the cardboard Domino Sugar carton Sheralyn left behind, Sharpied with a giant S!!!!
Emily points to the writing. “What’s that?”
“My old roommate,” Chloe says. “Did Doug see the video?”
“He’s in a rage about it,” Emily says. She bristles. “He’s scaring me, actually.” She stirs sugar into Chloe’s coffee with a plastic spoon and then holds up the spoon. “Where’s your garbage?” Before Chloe can tell her to leave it on the counter, Emily opens the cabinet under the sink. She stares at the plates and toppled cleaning supplies.
“Chloe,” she says.
“I know.”
Emily has compassion in her eyes even though she’s frowning. “Sweetie, you can’t live like this.”
Normally someone saying that, it would make Chloe feel like she was in trouble, like there was something wrong with her. It would make Chloe mad. But Emily doesn’t give her the chance to react. “Let’s fix it,” she says. She reaches under the cabinet and pulls the dishes out, pile by pile. She doesn’t seem to mind when she touches a blotch of semidried ketchup. She stacks everything in the sink.
“I ran out of detergent,” says Chloe.
“Right.” Emily opens the refrigerator. It’s empty except for a bottle of mustard. Emily closes the fridge. Chloe is on the edge of embarrassment, of defensiveness. But Emily is acting all detached and matter of fact, like she’s a doctor or a jail guard. Professional. “Stay here,” Emily says. “I’ll be back in an hour.” She pulls her purse over her shoulder and heads outside.
Emily buzzes the intercom again an hour later. She asks Chloe to come down and help her. She’s standing at the front gate with eight grocery bags gathered at her feet. She hands Chloe two of them. Chloe looks past her, to the street.
“Where did you park?” she asks.
Emily turns. She waves to the stretch of empty space next to the sidewalk. “A truck was here a second ago,” says Emily. “I’m on the next block.”
They bring the groceries up in two trips.
“You want to unpack?” asks Emily. “I’ll do the dishes.”
Chloe lifts the brown paper bags onto the counter. The groceries smell cold. They smell like promise. She runs her fingers over each avocado, each orange, the cardboard on her brand-new carton of eggs.
“Thank you,” she says.
Emily pulls a dishrag from one of the bags and moves closer to Chloe. “It’s nothing,” she says. She puts a hand on Chloe’s shoulder and leans in. Her breath is seductive. Her voice vibrates close to Chloe’s ear. “Doug and I are through,” she says. “You can count on me, okay? Can we count on each other?”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
EMILY
Gaining Chloe’s trust was ultimately depressing. I was used to elite circles. I’d never sought out a relationship with a vulnerable, possibly ill person before. It required zero effort. She was a sign of what Doug had done to me, of how far I’d fallen. She didn’t even own a dishwasher.
I was in the kitchen with her, drying the last of her bowls with the dish towel. I covered my fingers with the terry cloth as I tou
ched it all so I wouldn’t leave fingerprints. I asked if she liked chicken soup.
“I love it,” she said. Of course she did. I set aside carrots, celery, and an onion from the groceries.
“Where are your knives?”
She opened a drawer to reveal a few pieces of mismatched silverware and a long serrated bread knife. It would have to do. I sawed at the onion, my eyes stinging from the fumes, as she sat on a stool.
“That smells so good,” she said. She reminded me of Bella, the way she tracked me as I moved from cutting board to stove top and back, sighing occasionally in contentment. I missed my dog.
“How do you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Make friends so easily?”
I stirred the sizzling onion in the pot and thought of my sorority sisters, my old posse. The video had come out the day before, and not one of them had checked to see how I was doing.
“Seriously,” Chloe said. “We were, like, enemies yesterday, and now you’re making me soup.”
“I guess it helps to have something in common,” I said and winked at her. She gave me a shy, flirty smile. I wiped my fingerprints off the knife with a wet paper towel. I did it right in front of her. She reached for one of my peeled carrots and snapped off a bite.
“You know what I mean,” she said as she crunched. An edge crept into her voice. “You’re, like, a popular-girl type.”
I nodded. I didn’t like where the conversation was headed. “I forgot to get bay leaves,” I said. I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a new carrot to replace the one she was eating. “LA is tough,” I said. “It’s not like I’m comfortable all the time.” I peeled the carrot with long strokes. “You know, when I first started out, I was backstage at a concert with these rock stars. I mean, the guys were legends. It was one of the first signs that I’d made it, you know? Then at one point, they started telling stories about being in marching band in high school. I couldn’t believe it. I even said to them, ‘You were in band?’ and they were like, ‘Of course. We’re musicians.’”
Chloe stared at me. Her mouth was open.
“The point is, Chloe, I’m surrounded by nerds here in LA. I’m out of my element. But I make it work.”
“I’m a nerd,” she said.
I pointed at her. “I suspected as much.”
“Not a band nerd. I was a dancer. It kind of saved me, having somewhere to go every day. My grandparents didn’t have a lot of money.” She quieted down and focused on the counter. She was about to tell me something. I could feel it. I could smell the loneliness coming off her.
“I was bullied pretty bad,” she said, her tone a mix of confession and confrontation. I narrowed my eyes at her, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t. She looked straight at me. I wasn’t sure what she wanted. An apology? Was I now the spokesperson for the former cool kids?
“Was it an ugly duckling–type thing?”
“No,” she said. “My mom tried to kill me.”
I dropped the carrot peeler, like she’d yanked me, pulled on my arm. The kitchen turned vivid. I blinked, aware of her skin, of her youth and lack of wrinkles. How old was she? She’d told me once, but I couldn’t remember.
“I think the other kids just didn’t know how to be around me,” she said.
Chloe looked down. I stopped blinking. “Are you fucking with me?” I asked. I was having crazy thoughts, wondering if Destiny Stimpson had something to do with this, with Chloe being in my life.
“What?” she asked, all clueless sounding.
She wasn’t a helpless person, not at all. I backed up to the middle of the kitchen as I ran through the major events in my head. She’d come to my office. She’d pursued my husband. The emails. The ease with which she’d let me enter her life. Chloe was a stalker. Or something. The fear was just a sliver, an irrational one, but it was sharp, that Chloe was somehow Destiny’s baby come back to life, come to seek revenge.
My voice came at her hard. “What did your mother do to you?”
She shrank in her seat. “Are you mad at me?”
I hammered her. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” She was just about the right age.
“Where are you from?”
“Phoenix!”
“Phoenix?” I said. “Have you ever been to Figblossom Valley?”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“What did your family do?”
Her eyes widened. “Why are you asking me this?”
“You lived with your grandparents? What did they do?”
“My grandpa was a golf pro.”
“Where?”
“Oh my God, Emily.”
I didn’t let up. “Where did your grandfather work?”
“He was at the Phoenician.”
I smiled. I had her. The Phoenician was an ultralux resort at the base of Camelback Mountain. I knew it well. “One of the pools there is lined in something unusual. What is it?”
Chloe brought her hand to her face. She looked like she was about to cry. “Are you talking about the mother-of-pearl thing? Why are you being so mean?”
No, Emily. I shook my head, like I was shaking something off. Destiny’s baby died. I crossed my arms over my chest. The baby died. I repeated the fact to myself, standing in Chloe’s kitchen. I didn’t believe in ghosts.
Chloe wiped the counter in front of her with frantic movements, sweeping bits of crumb and paper onto the floor. “I can never tell anyone about my mom. They always freak out.”
“I’m not freaking out,” I said. I was spooked. My actions, my plans—this whole situation was terrifying.
“You are,” she said. Her chin was jutting forward, like a toddler holding back tears.
I was losing her, ruining my plans with a reckless detour into paranoia. “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I am freaking out.”
Chloe looked at me, not satisfied but willing to listen. I had to explain myself. I closed my eyes and wished I were a more nimble liar, that I were more like Doug. But it was a long story, and it was easiest just to play it straight.
“Something happened when I was a kid,” I said. “It’s stayed with me.”
I told her about Destiny Stimpson, about getting her in trouble for shoplifting, ghosting her in middle school. I told her about the pregnancy, about the fact that my friends and I hadn’t known for sure she was pregnant, but we’d spread the rumors anyway.
“There were a lot of news stories that year with teen parents literally throwing babies away. One girl gave birth at her prom, in the bathroom. She went back to the party and danced afterward, like nothing happened.”
Chloe’s face grew injured looking, as if I were relaying facts that had to do with her. I clenched my jaw, furious at her self-absorption. “I made a crack in the cafeteria. I said that Destiny’s baby would end up in a dumpster. I didn’t realize, until one of my friends shushed me, she was sitting right behind me.” Chloe looked away, to the window. I wanted her to turn back, to see me. I was about to tell her something I’d never shared with anyone. “At least that’s one way I remember it,” I said. “That’s the version I told the principal. But I also remember saying it deliberately, knowing Destiny would hear. I honestly can’t tell you which version is true.”
Chloe nodded. She kept her face turned. “My mom left me,” she said in a monotone. “She left me alone in an empty apartment to be with her boyfriend.”
I raised a hand to my mouth. I’d just told her exactly who I was. It was a warning. She didn’t get it. She started picking at a scab on her thumb.
“I was seven,” she said. “All I had to eat was a loaf of Wonder Bread and a jar of peanut butter. After a few days, I started knocking on the neighbor lady’s door. She fed me. She gave me a bar of soap and told me to take a shower.”
Chloe winced and took a shaky, brutal inhale. Her eyes took on a narrow, wounded look.
“The thing that gets me was this woman,” she said. “She’d op
en the door just a crack and slip me cookies or chips. But she never invited me in. She never called anyone.”
I grimaced. I didn’t understand. “Is that how your mom tried to kill you?”
Chloe laughed. Her face relaxed into a cheerful expression. “Of course not! Gosh, that would have taken forever.” She came around the counter and lifted one leg of her yoga pants, almost to the crotch. There was a long scar on her thigh, raised and red against her pale skin. It looked like a gummy worm. “She stabbed me.”
I took a step back. Chloe’s smile was bright. Her eyes were twinkly.
“To be fair,” she said. “She only meant to threaten me with the knife. And she took me to the emergency room and didn’t even try pretending that she hadn’t done it. That’s when I went to live with my grandparents.”
I straightened, waiting for a cue that she needed comfort. She went to the stove and lifted the lid to the soup pot. She smelled it.
“Why are people so awful to children?” she asked.
I slid my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and shrugged. “Kids are weak.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHLOE
Emily comes every day that week. And then every day the next. Sometimes she texts first. Sometimes she just shows up with breakfast. She brings egg sandwiches and cereal, and then she starts bringing clothes. Long-sleeved shirts for the coming winter weather and a black, puffy down jacket. She brings orange juice, too, and even though Chloe’s never been a juice person, she drinks it because it’s so thoughtful, Emily helping her out like this.
They do a lot of talking, and they never leave Chloe’s apartment. It’s nice at first. Chloe starts to hate the outside. She stops going out, even on her own. She doesn’t have to, not with Emily coming over and bringing her food and coffee.
But after two weeks of this, Chloe feels jumbly, like she’s filling up with white noise, and she gets the idea that maybe fresh air will help her. She doesn’t open a window on her own, no. She doesn’t know why, but the idea of that makes her nervous. The next time Emily comes over, though, Chloe makes a suggestion. She asks if maybe they can go someplace together. Like instead of watching Netflix on her computer, maybe they can go out to a movie. But Emily stands up, all worried and shaking, and says she can’t risk it. She walks to the window and looks through two slats of Chloe’s blinds.