I GOT READY FOR school early, waiting to make the call until I knew he’d be up. And then, in the time I usually took my shower, I turned off the lights and watched out the window—looking toward the woods. Waiting to see who might emerge. If there was someone who watched, as I had believed. Someone who came during the time they knew I wouldn’t be focused or paying attention.
But by the time I was usually cleaning up after breakfast, nobody had made an appearance. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was imagining things. I searched my mind once more for the footsteps, tried to hear them again. Tried to be sure.
I checked the clock one last time, knew he’d be up, probably on his way out the door—and placed the call.
“Whitman,” he answered.
“Hi, Noah,” I said. “I need a favor.”
There was a pause, and his voice dropped lower, felt closer. “Gee, Leah, nice to hear from you. A favor, huh? I think that ship has sailed.”
I cringed. We used to throw idioms around like this as a joke. Somehow ironic, or so I’d thought. But maybe I’d only imagined that, thinking him more clever than he actually was.
“You owe me one, Noah. You know you do.”
“You’ve lost it,” he said.
“I know what you did. I know the deal you took, because you sure as hell didn’t earn that promotion. You think I won’t bring the whole thing tumbling down? Think your name won’t come into play? What do you think will happen to your career when people find out that you knew what happened and helped cover it up?”
“Jesus Christ, Leah,” he said, and I knew I had him. “I don’t know what’s in that Pennsylvania air, what type of shit they put out into the atmosphere, but it has seriously twisted your perspective.”
I felt a little flip of my stomach, the discovery that he knew where I was. I wondered if he’d looked me up, whether he wondered, whether he thought of me. And what that meant.
It had been my biggest mistake, confiding in Noah. Six months together, and a friendship before, and in the end, he traded it all in without remorse—I was a scoop he gave our boss, a step he used for leverage. His motivations weren’t pure, despite what he claimed.
Maybe he’d been that person at one time, maybe he thought he still was. Maybe he told himself it was the right thing to do—that the ends justified the means. But the fact remained that he had benefited where others had fallen.
The paper had to watch its back. That, too, was a business first. Even after Noah told our boss, Logan couldn’t turn on me completely. He just had to buy them some distance and hope it stayed buried.
Quit, he said, and I did.
They kept no loose ends. Even Noah, they sucked into the mess. His silence for a promotion. And by accepting, he had become complicit.
But maybe we were all complicit, with the company we chose to keep.
And maybe that was reflected in living with two other people in a four-hundred-square-foot apartment eight years ago. I slid into their lives, too comfortable, never putting up walls. I had followed Emmy here, this woman I truly knew so little about.
“They won’t believe you, Leah.” Noah had gotten a grip, and I heard his voice more pronounced now, his lines prepared and delivered with more clarity. “You’re a known liar.”
But I had his attention. We lived and died on reputation. Whether it was true or not, he had to wonder what it would do to him. “Everyone goes down, Noah. Everyone.”
“Listen,” he said. And there was something different about his voice, something knowing. “Are you listening? Do you ever listen? Because right now would be a great time to start, Leah. So turn off those gears and pay attention. There’s not even an inkling of a civil suit, okay? Not a peep. Let sleeping dogs lie.”
How had I fallen for someone who used the basest and most primitive of idioms? Everything about him grated on me.
“One thing, Noah. It’s just a name. You owe me. You know you owe me.”
There was silence, and I seized it.
“Bethany Jarvitz. I need everything on Bethany Jarvitz. J-A-R-V-I-T-Z. History, next of kin, known associates, everything. Date of birth, places of employment, current and past residence—”
“I got a call yesterday evening. Thought it was a job reference for you, which I thought was pretty ballsy, even for you. But it was just Kassidy putting someone in contact. Seems a colleague down in western Pennsylvania called about a Leah Stevens, last known residence of Boston, had your license and everything. A teacher, Leah? Really?”
So that was how Noah knew where I was. Someone had called him. It was beginning, the house of cards, ready to fall.
“Who was it?” I asked.
He laughed, like he knew he had me.
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Really.”
“Really. So what I’m thinking, what I’m really thinking, is that I don’t owe you shit.”
“I don’t believe you. You must have said something.”
“Like hell I did. All I said was Leah Stevens? Real nice girl. Real. Nice.” He dragged out the words, laced them with something else. “The job got to her, is what I told him. Was all I told him.”
The job got to me. I imagined who must’ve been on the other end of the line, felt my worlds colliding, felt everything in Boston too close now, as if I had summoned it here.
“Hey, Leah, were you listening? Kassidy put him in contact. Get what I’m saying?”
Kassidy, our favorite source in the police department, who knew that Noah and I were together.
“Kassidy,” I repeated.
“Yeah. So. You’re welcome. Let’s call it a draw, huh? I can only imagine the shit you’ve gotten yourself into this time if they’re calling ’round here.”
I gripped the phone tighter, spoke through my teeth. “I’ll do it, Noah. Swear to God, I’ll do it,” I said. But he must’ve been able to hear the lack of authority in my voice. I was a terrible liar.
“You know you wouldn’t win, right? If you make a stir, someone’s finally going to start asking the right questions. Paige Hampton has a case, and we all know it. You’ll lose, Leah. You and I both know there’s no source. Nobody will stand up in your defense.” And then he hung up.
Fuck you, Noah. I felt the words, felt them tightening my stomach, my grip on the phone. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.
I wondered if the paper had a plan in place for if it happened. A standard operating procedure for what to do when Leah Stevens went down.
Whatever mess I was stuck in, I’d have to dig myself out now. From Emmy. I’d have to get to her past first, before they got to mine.
I thought of her old friends, tried to think of who they were. Names in bars, faces flickering past, nothing that lasted. I thought briefly of John Hickelman, but there were probably hundreds of them. I imagined searching the White Pages for Hickelman, John, calling each one up, asking, Hey, did you have mirrors on your ceiling? And do you remember sleeping with a girl named Emmy? Did you have a watch that went missing?
I remembered the name Kyle had shown me before things turned. The woman who lived in the apartment before us. Whose name was on the lease. She lived in New Hampshire now. This, I could do.
* * *