I smiled. “Me, too. Now I just need to go write it.”
“Well, the article was excellent, I’m sure the book will be, too,” Erik said, referring to the New York magazine cover piece I’d done on Thomas Price, as well as the book deal I’d gotten in its wake. “I never had any doubt what you were capable of.”
In the end, the assaults had spanned two decades and three universities, starting with Jenna Mendelson, who’d agreed to be interviewed for my article as long as I referred to her only as JM. I told Jenna about my connection to Sandy. It would have felt dishonest otherwise. But I didn’t tell her that we were still exchanging emails. Sandy had asked me not to.
Sandy had gotten her GED with honors the first day she was able—on her seventeenth birthday—and was already taking classes at the New School while waiting tables and making plans to apply for a scholarship to attend college full-time in the fall. She and Aidan were in touch, as friends only, Sandy had been quick to clarify. She wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, not until she got where she wanted to go.
“Steve’s allocution is today,” Erik went on. “You want to cover it for old times’ sake?”
He was joking, at least I was pretty sure he was, trying to make light of my very public situation. And I appreciated his kindness. It was a relief to have someone not ignore whom I’d been married to like it was some kind of shameful disease. In the end, Erik and Nancy had become the close friends I had always hoped they’d be. Right when I’d needed them the most.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said, “but I think I’ll pass.”
I never could have passed up writing the story on Thomas Price, though. He’d been fired swiftly, then arrested shortly thereafter for sexual assault. Finally, he was no longer in a position to threaten anyone; further violence was apparently his threat of choice. Four women, some not so young anymore, planned to press charges. Not Rose, at least not yet. She hadn’t resurfaced.
“I had a feeling about Price from day one,” Deckler had said when I’d finally caught up with him for my article. A supervisor at Ridgedale University now, he was allowed to wear khakis and a button-down shirt, which, even I had to admit, looked a little better on him. He’d been hired back, and given the promotion, after threatening to sue for wrongful termination. “Guys like that don’t bother to cover their tracks very well.”
“Why did you give me the files?”
He’d shrugged. “You were new to town. I could be sure you weren’t connected to anyone. Price had made real clear that he knew the chief of police from high school. That Steve would protect him no matter what. Same kind of lies he probably used to keep all of those girls quiet. After we found the baby and then you came around asking about Rose Gowan.” He’d glanced away, uncomfortable. He knew about Justin—that was obvious. “Turns out they’re not related, but I thought they might be. And I felt like that was enough. I had to do something, even if I lost my job.”
At least Price would finally pay for something. He’d never again work at a university and would likely see real jail time. And the publicity had thrown Ridgedale University’s procedures for handling sexual assaults under the microscope.
The door to the Reader’s offices opened again. It was Nancy, pushing a stroller. She looked elated and exhausted. Maybe a little more exhausted than Erik but also a little more elated. They’d fought so hard and so long for a baby that they seemed to be wasting not a second complaining about the less enjoyable parts of new parenthood. It was a wonder that Erik had been able to hold it together as well as he had during those first few days when I was working on the story about Hannah’s baby. The birth mother of Erik and Nancy’s baby had been having second thoughts. She’d taken off for her sister’s house, and Erik had gone after her, hoping to change her mind. Apparently, since absolute secrecy had been the birth mother’s prerequisite, Erik had been afraid to say anything to anyone about where he was or why. In the end, she’d decided to go through with the adoption.
Unable to resist, I went over to see Delilah, their impossibly chubby now-seven-month-old girl. “She keeps getting cuter and cuter,” I said, touching her little toes as she broke into an enormous toothless grin. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy said, beaming cheerfully. “But I have to say, I agree. She certainly has opinions, though.” She shrugged and smiled some more. “Like her birth mother says, I guess you’ve got to let go or be dragged.”
Let go or be dragged. It bounced in my head like the ringing of a bell. And then I remembered where I’d heard it before, in Rose’s hospital room. Stella had been the one to say it, but the words had belonged to Rose.
Ella and I went outside after dinner. The August night, fresh off a storm, felt cool and electrified. As I sat on our front steps, breathing deep the smell of grass and rain, I watched Ella race back and forth in the darkness, a long wand in her hand leaving enormous shimmery bubbles in her wake.
I was still watching her giggling in the fading light as my phone vibrated on the steps next to me. Justin, it said when I looked down at the screen. Calling again, as he did so often despite my repeated requests for emails only, and only about Ella. We’d told her the basics—Mommy and Daddy would live apart from now on, but that they both still loved her just as much. And no, Daddy wasn’t coming home soon. He wasn’t coming home ever. Civility, I was committed to that. But that was all.