“Right. Anyway, I should get that laundry on . . .”
Andrea had already lost focus, peering at her iPad with a squint because she refused to accept that she needed reading glasses. Kate went down to the basement, the location of the laundry room, and promptly threw up in the bathroom. Then she washed her face and put on a load of laundry in case Andrea thought to check.
Kate spent the rest of the day until the boys went to bed on autopilot. She’d spent the last year with her head in the sand. She needed to correct that.
When the boys were firmly asleep, she asked Andrea if she could borrow the spare iPad and went to the basement. Her new friends on IKWYDLS.com were right. It was time to explore more than TMZ. Time to see what the rest of the world had seen since she’d stopped watching a year ago.
Back then, after three days of nonstop coverage, Kate had worked up the courage to leave her depressing hotel room. She’d spent a week getting to know her new city. Listening to its sounds. Reviving the French she’d learned more than twenty years ago. She still thought of herself as Kaitlyn Ring then. A persona she tried to shed as she walked. Up to Mount Royal. Down to the Old Port and the Saint Lawrence River. Along the Lachine Canal for hours. Letting the cold October wind whip against her skin until it felt baby soft.
Montreal was full of churches. At the end of the week, she lit a candle for the dead in one of the cathedrals. And then another for her family. She thought of them every day. Not less as time went by but more. As she walked and slept and spent time alone, certain things became clear. Everything that had happened since the fog of her second bout of postpartum had lifted was a lie. She wasn’t better. The things she clung to as evidence that she was were just the gasoline she was dousing herself in. Waiting for it to spark, catch fire, and consume her.
So when she was faced with an actual fire, when her life had actually blown up, she’d taken the opportunity to run as far and as fast as she could. Thinking this would save her, finally, and for good. But it hadn’t. She was still who she was. The things that had dragged her down were still inside her. Everywhere she went, there she was. And now, added on to that, was the pile of lies and deceit and regret. So much of it she was afraid she’d be dragged fully under this time.
She had to live with her choices or end it all. And even that she couldn’t do because it would lead to her being identified. Which would be even worse for her children. To learn that she’d run away, and then taken her life anyway? No. She’d built this prison, and she had to live in it. She had to make the best of it. Because she had no one to blame but herself.
She upped her efforts to get a job, to find a better place to live, to start eating three square meals a day. A list that felt more and more desperate as her money dwindled and none of the jobs she applied for ever showed any interest. And then one did.
It was, of course, the job she’d applied for thinking she could never do it. That she’d never have to. Because she couldn’t be a nanny to someone else’s children after having run away from her own. She just couldn’t. But she had less than $600 left and no prospects. This position offered everything on her list: housing, income, food.
She spent two hours agonizing, then booked the interview. Then she went to the corner store and bought two cheap bottles of red wine that still cost more than she’d spent in the last three days. She drank them down like medicine until she could barely remember her own name. When she’d woken, groggy, her tongue thick, she said her new name out loud: Kate Lynch.
It was the name she’d grown up with. The person she’d been before Joshua and motherhood and the slow erosion of herself. Kate Lynch had started out as a carefree girl. Someone who laughed. Never planned. Was often irresponsible. She’d met Joshua after those traits had gotten her into trouble. Trouble she decided she’d never tell him about because he seemed the right mix of stability and love. And if Kate wasn’t broken inside, he would’ve been. She became Kaitlyn Ring willingly, soberly. She’d move forward without looking back. When second chances came around, you grabbed them.
This last year, it was, at times, as if she wasn’t Kaitlyn Ring anymore. As if she’d never been. But that had been a mistake. She should’ve surveilled her old life. She should’ve kept up with the news. Today, with Andrea, perhaps that wasn’t a close call. But next time, with someone less self-absorbed, it could be. Hell, even the twins had recognized her. She hadn’t actually changed beyond all recognition.
She typed a few key words into Google and started reading from the beginning, the oldest post she could find. A year’s worth of stories about her old city, her family, her friends. Her fingers were so slick with sweat she had to wipe them to get the iPad to swipe to the next story. But she didn’t look away. She read and read and read, every word she could find.
It was late. Time to sleep. But first she hit the “Reload” button one last time, and a new story appeared. Cecily had been photographed again, out at a restaurant with Joshua and the girls.
She clicked on the link. And that’s when she saw her.
Franny Maycombe.
The Triple-Tenner You’ve Never Heard Of
by Ted Borenstein
Special to Vanity Fair
Published on October 29
I start off by reading everything I can about Franny Maycombe. There had been scattered articles here and there when she’d surfaced soon after the tragedy. Her mother, Kaitlyn Ring, worked at a software company that lost twenty-three employees, including its cofounder, Tom Grayson. Mr. Grayson was Cecily Grayson’s husband, the woman whose photograph became one of the enduring images of the day.
“Cecily and Kaitlyn were great friends,” a neighbor and mutual friend tells me. “Cecily doesn’t get enough credit for what she’s had to go through. Losing her husband and close friend on the same day. And then having to learn about Franny. A lot of people would crack under the pressure, but not Cecily.”
Franny’s appearance at Kaitlyn Ring’s funeral was the first story about her in print. It ran in the local paper and managed to capture the attention of a neighborhood already in shock. It was a distraction, perhaps, something to gossip over rather than the complexities of grief. Some secrets were expected to come out with so many dead, so many gone, but not something like this.
“That whole funeral was a . . . That’s probably not fit to print. Let’s just say it was dramatic. Kaitlyn hadn’t told anyone about Franny. Not even her husband, Joshua.” She wipes a tear away. “But I don’t blame Franny. She had no idea. Kaitlyn told her she’d told her family about her, and can you imagine? Meeting your mother and then losing her like that?”
Was she mad at Kaitlyn for keeping Franny a secret?
“Oh, no. A lot of people did that then . . . still do it, I expect. Give a baby up for adoption and don’t tell anyone. She must’ve felt so ashamed and sad and . . . And though I’m sure she was thrilled to meet Franny again, how do you tell your husband or your children about something like that?”
Not all of Kaitlyn Ring’s neighbors and friends are so forgiving. One woman, who agreed to talk to me only on the condition of anonymity, spoke with some venom at the shock wave Franny produced at the funeral.