“Cool ride,” he said. I didn’t tell him that I had borrowed it from a man named Matt Miller. Or that Matt and I were kind of a thing.
When the work was done, he closed the truck door for me, and that was almost it. I had backed out of Susanna’s driveway and was halfway down the block when I saw him in my rearview mirror, walking toward one of the last cars parked on the street, lighting a cigarette. I reversed back and rolled down the passenger window. “I assumed you were one of Susanna’s weekend guests.”
“Nope. Just stayed late.”
He was in the driver’s seat and about to shut the door when I said, “I’m Angela, by the way.”
“I’m Jason. Thanks for the nice party.”
I broke down and asked Susanna for his last name two days later. She told me he was an economics professor at NYU. “He’s single, you know. I called him last year for background on a story we did about global trade, but then I happened to mention my house out here. He was looking for a rental. Anyway, he’s terrific. Want me to matchmake?”
I didn’t want to put Susanna in the position of suggesting that her college professor friend date a mom with a GED, so I made her promise not to say anything. “I was curious, is all.”
By the time Jason called me a week later, he was all I could think about. To this day, both he and Susanna swear that she never meddled.
9
When I got back from walking Spencer to school, I called out Jason’s name, but the house was silent. I sat on the living room sofa and flipped open my laptop.
If you search online for “Jason Powell wife,” you find out that her name is Angela Powell. You’ll find exactly one photograph of us together—at a fund-raiser for a mayoral candidate. Jason posts no pictures of me or Spencer on social media, and my Facebook page is under the name Angela Spencer and used only to be in touch with the other moms at the school. If you search for Angela Mullen, you’ll learn she was credited as a sought-after caterer in a few articles about summer life on the East End, but no mentions of her for the last six years.
If you dig hard, you might find some archived news articles—nothing national, only from the East Hampton Star and Newsday on Long Island, right around the time google became a verb—referring to a missing girl by that name. The police said there were no signs of foul play, and unnamed “sources” speculated the girl had left on her own, but her mother, Virginia Mullen, doggedly blanketed Suffolk County with flyers and swore she would never stop searching for her daughter.
But, at least with my online skills, you wouldn’t know for certain that the girl and the caterer were one and the same, or that Angela Powell used to be both of those girls, or where Angela Mullen was while she was missing, let alone why she might actually be of interest.
How long could Jason’s “scandal” make the rounds before someone started to wonder why his wife kept such a low profile?
I tried Jason’s cell once again. It was still off. Is he on the subway? Has he been arrested? Is he with someone—another woman, maybe? My imagination ran through every scenario. I wasn’t going to be able to do anything else until I heard from him.
When my phone finally rang, I swiped right to accept the call without reading the screen. “Jason?”
“It’s Colin. I’ve been trying to reach him, too. Do you know about these reports I’m seeing? Does he need a defense lawyer? I’ve got some names for him.”
In addition to being Jason’s closest friend, Colin Harris is also an attorney and the kind of person who likes to fix problems. Five years ago, when I had my medical issues, he bombarded me with recommendations for specialists who could help. He was not going to rest until my troubles were solved. That’s what Colin is like.
“He’s not answering his phone,” I said. “I mean it, Colin, if Jason’s not in jail, I might be, for killing him.”
“Did he know this complaint was coming?”
“I have no idea. I mean, he told me that a female intern complained he said something sexist. He sounded annoyed by the whole situation, but he didn’t mention the police. He left this morning for a segment he was supposed to do on New Day. They canceled it as if Jason were Ted Bundy or something. He didn’t call you?”
“No,” Colin confirmed.
I tried to find comfort in that fact. Colin was a well-connected insurance defense lawyer at a big law firm that represented big corporations. If Jason thought he was in legal trouble, surely he would have called Colin.
Now that I was on the phone with another person, I felt tawdry for scanning Rachel Sutton’s Facebook page. She probably had no idea that one of her classmates had outed her name in an online comment, and that others were now repeating it on various less-than-reputable websites.
Graduated with honors from Rice University in Houston, head of the Environmental Society. Volunteer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals while pursuing her graduate degree in economics at NYU.
There was a photograph posted a week ago of two hands entwined on a tabletop. The female hand bore a solitaire diamond ring. The caption read, “I said yes.” Seventy-two comments of congratulations followed for Rachel and the groom-to-be, who was apparently named Michael Logan.
Colin was asking if I had tried calling both of Jason’s offices, at the university and at FSS.
“He didn’t answer,” I said, scrolling down to scan more photographs of Rachel. She had dark brown hair, pale skin, and pretty almond-shaped eyes. She looked like she could be mixed-race. She looked nothing like me.
“Did you call Zack?” Colin asked.
I realized that Colin knew Jason’s professional friends better than I did, the consequence of my avoiding his work-related shindigs, where I inevitably felt out of my element. I have no interest in socializing with grown adults who always seem to launch a first conversation with “And where did you go to school, Angela?”
When I told him that I hadn’t reached out to Jason’s protégé, Colin said he would call Zack and let me know if he heard anything. Before he hung up, he told me to let Jason know that he had the name of a “hard-core crim shark” ready to go. He also promised that everything would be all right.
I found myself staring at a photograph of Rachel with two other gorgeous twentysomethings, one male, one female. According to the “check-in,” the photograph was taken at some place called Le Bain, apparently a rooftop bar at the Standard Hotel. Swanky.
I clicked on the name of the male friend tagged in the picture—Wilson Stewart. He had perfect white teeth and floppy, sandy brown hair. He was a frequent poster: politics, food reviews, lots of photographs. At this point, I was hitting my laptop’s touchpad at random to keep my mind occupied.
I was reading about the online persona created by this stranger—Rachel’s young, good-looking friend, Wilson Stewart—when my cell phone rang again. The screen told me it was Jason.
“Where are you?”
“At school. Shit, you heard already, didn’t you?”
“It’s all over the news,” I said, “online, at least. And Susanna called. So did Colin—he has a lawyer he wants you to contact. What the hell is going on, Jason? Rachel’s claiming you assaulted her? You told me it was an offhand comment.”
“It’s complicated, okay? I didn’t think it would come to this—”
When he mentioned it at dinner right after it happened, he’d sounded amused by it. Now it was complicated.
I heard him sigh on the other end of the line. “A cop called—a woman—while I was in Philly. I told her I wasn’t talking without a lawyer. I was ready to call Colin if she pressed it, but she didn’t. I assumed she was dotting her i’s because Rachel blew it out of proportion. Now this.”
I told him again I’d been trying to call him all morning. “Where have you been?”