The Ones We Trust

“She’s happily married,” I say loudly enough so that the one closest to me, a Paul Bunyan type in a minivan, hears me through his open window. He responds by leaning into the dash to get a better look at her ass.

She collapses onto the seat next to me, snatches up her cup from the table. “Did you hear me? Honeymoon Channel wants me to redesign their app. It’s a big deal, Abby. You should be thrilled.”

“I am thrilled for you.”

“Be thrilled for us.” She lifts her drink in a toast, then pauses for a long pull. “I sold your services, too.”

“I already have a job, remember?”

If she rolls her eyes, she’s considerate enough to do it behind her mirrored sunglasses. After Chelsea died, Mandy made no secret of her disgust with my decision to shove my press pass to the back of a drawer, and she’s spent the past three years encouraging me, rather loudly and relentlessly, to get back in there. To write something good, something meaningful, do something more exciting than my current drudgery.

But what Mandy can’t seem to understand is, there’s no shelf life on guilt. Someone died because of me, because of words I wrote. Just because I wasn’t the one to pull the proverbial trigger doesn’t mean I wasn’t to blame. Words, even when they’re carefully crafted, can be just as deadly as a bullet.

“Come on, Abigail.” Mandy shoves her glasses to the top of her head and leans into the table. “I’ve seen your day planner. You row until mid-morning, you take weekly martini lunches—”

“I take them with you.”

She waves off my rebuttal with a manicured hand. “Not the point. My point is, you can do your job in your sleep. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’ve done your job in your sleep, and more than once. You have plenty of time for the one I’m offering.”

I shake my head, confused. Mandy is a technological genius who peppers her sentences with terms like HTML and search engine optimization and JavaScript. Half the time, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Why would she hire me for anything?

“I know nothing about apps,” I tell her, “except how to order pizza off them.”

“No, but you know about writing.” When I don’t respond, she cranks up her pitch a notch or two. “Have I mentioned it’s for the Honeymoon Channel? We’re talking beaches and cruises and European getaways. How is that going to harm anyone, except maybe with jet lag or a sunburn?”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

She sighs. “I know, I know. Your muse has vanished, your well’s run dry. But surely you have enough talent still lurking in there somewhere to spit up a few thousand words of catchy advertising copy.”

I turn and stare down the street, not eager to rehash this stale argument—yet again—with my well-meaning best friend. No matter how many times I’ve told her, she refuses to believe my not writing is so much more than just me missing my muse. It’s that I can’t. What happened with Chelsea didn’t just mess me up mentally but also physically. I know this because for the past three years, every time I sit down at a blank computer screen or pick up a pen and paper, my fingers freeze up. My brain shorts out. The words are piled up somewhere deep inside of me, but they refuse to come out to play.

If anything, I’d always thought it would have been Maria. After all those pictures hit the internet, I’d obsessed about her welfare. Did she find another job? Had she made friends, come out of the closet, settled into a normal life? Was she living on the streets? But Maria had gone dark. Her phone was disconnected, her apartment empty, her email address unrecognized.

And then Chelsea surprised everyone by tying a noose around her neck and dangling herself from the showerhead—not an easy task, considering she had to rig the rope just right to support her weight and keep her knees bent as the oxygen stopped flowing to her brain. But she succeeded, and while the rest of the world shook their heads in compassion or tsked their tongues in holier-than-thou judgment, a chain of two words repeated in an endless loop through my brain. My fault—my fault—my fault.

And because Mandy knows me better than just about anyone, she heard them, too.

“Abigail, repeat after me,” Mandy said when I called to tell her the news, now coming up on three years ago. “I am not responsible for Chelsea Vogel’s death.”

“My phone and email are blowing up with people, my freaking colleagues, asking me how her death makes me feel.”

“Tell them it makes you feel unbelievably sad. For Chelsea, for her family, for everyone who ever knew her. Tell them her death is a tragedy, but do not, do not accept responsibility for that woman’s suicide.”

My fault—my fault—my fault.

A loud, exasperated sigh came down the line. “How many times have I listened to you preach about public enlightenment, how it is the foundation of democracy? That, as a journalist, it is not only your job but your duty to seek truth and report it to the world?”

“Yes, but I was also supposed to be sensitive and cautious and judicious in order to minimize harm, which clearly I didn’t, because I’m pretty sure suicide is the mack-fucking-daddy of harm.”

“If Chelsea Vogel didn’t want her dirty laundry aired, then she shouldn’t have had any in the first place. You reported the facts, Abby. Fairly and honestly and comprehensively. Just like you were trained to do.”

“Yes, but—”

And just then, a terrible, awful, horrible thought entered my mind unbidden. It was like an invasive weed that couldn’t be killed, climbing and coiling through my consciousness like kudzu, suffocating every other thought in its path.

And the thought was this: yes, I had been sensitive and cautious and judicious with Maria, perhaps even overly so, but I could have done better by Chelsea. I could have shown more compassion for how she was about to be involuntarily outed not just as a predator but as a lesbian. I could have thought a little longer about her husband’s and son’s response to the news, what would happen when they opened up their morning paper or switched on their morning talk shows. I could have been more sensitive to her right to respond to the allegations, could have been more diligent in seeking her out. I should have done all those things, but I didn’t.

“Yes, but what?” Mandy said.

“I have to go.”

“Not until you answer me, Abigail. Yes, but what?”

I hung up on her then, and she never badgered me about it again—a decided lack of interest that’s very un-Mandy-like. I suspect she heard those words, too. The loud and insistent ones I didn’t know how to smother, the ones telling me that while I might have done everything right with Maria, with Chelsea I did everything wrong.

“Earth to Abby,” she says now, waving a hand in front of my face.

I shake off the memory with a full-body shudder. “Sorry. What?”

“I said just think about it, okay? This job’s a great way to ease back into writing, and I really could use the help. The last copywriter I hired was a total dud. He missed every single deadline.”

“Great. So now I’m your last resort?”

She gives me a teasing half smile over her Starbucks cup. “You know what I mean.”

I nod because I do know what she means, even though my answer is still no. “No offense, but if I ever write again, it will not be for an app. It will be because I can’t keep the words inside. Because the story demands to be told. As awesome as tropical beaches are, I don’t think they qualify.”

But instead of being disappointed as I figured she’d be, she looks as if she wants to stand up and applaud. “Look at you, having a breakthrough.”

I snort. “Hardly. I didn’t say I was going to write. Only that I’m self-aware enough to know it has to be for the right topic. And honestly? I can’t imagine what that topic would be.”

“Maybe BenBird21225 can help you.”

For a moment, I’m confused. How does Mandy know about BenBird21225, the faceless handle who’s been badgering me by email and text for weeks now, his messages increasing in frequency and urgency. I have no idea who he is, why he’s contacting me, how he got my phone number, because the only thing he ever actually says in any of them is that he wants to talk to me.

She points to my phone. “He’s texted you ten times in as many minutes. Who is he?”

I pick up my phone and scroll through at least a dozen shouty texts. Ben wants a MEETING. He has something VERY IMPORTANT to say that must be said IN PERSON. Once upon a time, I would have followed this lead. I would have written back to Ben—asking for more details, setting up a time to talk, feeling him out as a potential source—instead of writing him off as I do now.

I delete them all, every single one, and toss my phone back onto the table.

“He’s nobody.”

4

When the doorbell rings in the middle of the day, nine times out of ten it heralds the arrival of the UPS man or a band of Jehovah’s Witnesses on a mission to save my soul. Today, like pretty much any other day, I ignore it. I’m not exactly in a position to go to the door anyway, my body wedged uncomfortably under the bathroom sink, both hands prying loose a particularly stubborn drain nut. This happens to be a crucial moment, one the internet tells me is best handled equipped with a bucket, a mop and an endless supply of rags.

But when the doorbell rings again, and then again and again and again, I retighten the nut, wriggle myself out, dust myself off and head down the stairs.

The person on the other side of the door is a kid, twelve or thirteen maybe, with long shaggy hair that falls in a honey-colored veil over eyes I can’t quite see. He’s prepubescent skinny, his beanpole limbs sticking out of baggy shorts and a faded Angry Birds T-shirt, his bony ankles tapering off into orange Nike sneakers. White earbuds dangle from his shoulders, the long cord trailing down his torso and disappearing into his pants pocket. He shifts from foot to foot in what I read as either a bout of sudden impatience or the sullen annoyance typical of kids his age, almost-teens with a laundry list of things to prove to the world.

“Can I help you?” I say, glancing beyond him to the street for an idling car. No bike or skateboard, either, and I wonder if he’s one of the neighborhood kids. Once they hit middle school, they shoot up so quickly I stop recognizing them.

“I’m Ben,” he says, and when my brow doesn’t clear in recognition, he adds, “The dude who sent all those emails?”

“Ben. As in BenBird21225?”

“Yeah. How come you never emailed me back?”

There are a million reasons I haven’t emailed him back, none of which I’m willing to go into with a twelve-year-old kid. I settle on the one I think would be easiest for him to comprehend. “Because I didn’t feel like it.”

He makes a face as if I just offered him raw broccoli. “I thought you were a journalist. Aren’t you supposed to, like, follow every lead or something?”

“I’m not a journalist. I’m a content curator.”

“Huh?”

“I mine the internet for content relevant for today’s active seniors.” It’s my elevator pitch, and I typically pull it out only when I want the person across from me to stop talking. It almost always works or, at the very least, results in slack jaws and glazed eyes and a very swift change of subject.

But Ben here doesn’t take the bait. “Like, Viagra and adult diapers?”

“No,” I say a bit defensively, even though Ben’s right. Viagra and adult diapers are relevant to pretty much every senior, even if it’s only just to brag about how their still youthful, virile body doesn’t yet need them. “Do you need a ride? Or for me to call your mom to come get you?”

“I’d love for you to be able to do that, but my mom is dead.” He runs his fingers through his messy bangs, pulling them off his face, and recognition surges. I know those gray-blue eyes. I’ve seen them before. I know the gist of his next words before they come out of his mouth. “She hung herself in the shower.”

From the start, I knew this day would come, though I always thought it would be Chelsea’s husband or one of her three sisters who showed up on my front porch, not her son. After all, journalists are threatened all the time by the people they expose. I’ve been bullied, intimidated and terrorized. I’ve gotten death threats on my car and answering machine, found knives stuck in my tires or front door, and once, a decapitated rat in my mailbox.

I get it, too. I understand why. It’s not a pleasant thing to have your dirty laundry aired for all to see. Chelsea never asked for that crew camped out on her front lawn, for the camera-wielding reporters that followed her around like a pack of hyenas, for the humiliation and discomfort that came with having her transgression plastered across every American newspaper, television and computer screen—and neither did her family.

And once your secret is out there, there’s no taking it back, ever. It’s so much easier to blame the reporter who broke the story than it is to admit your wife or mother or sister molested one of her employees.

But Ben here doesn’t look the least bit vengeful. He slips his hands in his pockets and waits, watching me from under his bangs with an intent expression.

“Look,” I say, my voice coming across surprisingly strong and even, “I don’t know why you’re here or what you want from me—”

“Because you haven’t read any of my emails,” he interrupts. “If you had, you’d know that Maria Duncan is driving around Baltimore in a brand-new BMW convertible. She lives in a condo in some downtown high-rise, the kind with a doorman and a pool on the roof, and she carries a different designer handbag every day of the week. She also has the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen. They’re fucking ginormous.”

“You shouldn’t say the F-word.”

The kid rolls his eyes, and honestly, who can blame him? His mother preached loudly and to anyone who would listen about God’s message of one man and one woman, and then she molested her female secretary. What’s a little curse word compared to his mother’s front-page hypocrisy?

“That’s it?” he says. “That’s your answer, is don’t say ‘fuck’?”

I shrug. “Maybe Maria has a rich girlfriend.”

“She has boyfriends. Boys. A billion of them. And none of them last for longer than a couple of pictures on Facebook and Instagram.”

“So she went through a phase with your mother. So she experimented for a bit. Lots of girls do.”

“You don’t think it’s weird that she’s suddenly so rich?”

“Maybe. But there are plenty of ways to get rich quick. Just because she’s found one doesn’t mean the money is connected in any way to what happened between her and your mom.”

“Okay, then.” He slips the iPhone from his pocket, fiddles with the screen for a few seconds, then flips it around so I can see. “How do you explain this?”

It takes a beat or two for the film to load, and then it’s Maria, all right. I recognize her sharp cheekbones and delicate ears, her ruffled pixie cut, her thin, suntanned frame in a skimpy red bra and nothing else. And Ben was right about the boobs. They are inflated to ridiculous, porn-freak proportions, swaying up and down, up and down to the rhythm of the man riding her from behind.

“Should you be watching this?” I say. Even with the blurring and voice distortion, this video is pornographic, and far too hard-core for a twelve-year-old.

My question earns me another mouth twist. “Please. Nothing can shock me these days.”

I return my attention to the film, and I think how much Maria has learned since her last go-round with Chelsea. The lighting is softer, the images are clearer, the angles less awkward. It almost looks professionally shot, as if all the clip needs is some cheesy background music and a willing pizza delivery man to make it a halfway decent, if not predictable, porn flick.

And then I see the man’s hand, and what looks like an expensive watch winking on his wrist above a wedding band. He says something I can’t quite make out in a voice that’s distorted to be less dark bedroom and more Darth Vader. This isn’t a porn flick. This film is exactly the same as that decapitated rat some asshole once left in my mailbox: a threat.

Because it’s not a very far stretch to assume that whoever this man is, he would prefer his heaving, sweating, married face not be revealed on the internet, and his manicure and jewelry tells me he likely has the money to pay to make sure it doesn’t. Which means that the person who uploaded this film—and after what Ben just told me, my money is on Maria—did so with an intent to harm.

“You should take this to the police. Blackmail is a crime, and it’s punishable by law.”

Ben shakes his head so hard, his hair slaps him on the cheeks. “No way. That dude’s married. What if he has kids? What do you think will happen to them if his identity gets out? I’ll tell you what will happen. They’ll be fucking traumatized.”

This time, I let the “fuck” slide. Ben is right. They will be fucking traumatized, and so will his wife, his friends, his family, his colleagues, everyone he ever knew. The scandal will likely die down quickly, but by then it will be too late. The married man will have lost his family, his job and most likely a good deal of his savings.

Still, though. It’s really not any of my business.

“What do you want from me, Ben? I don’t write those types of articles anymore. I can’t...” I lift my shoulders and search for the words, settling finally on a definitive, “I can’t.”

“I don’t want an article. I only want to know that my mom was not the bad guy here. That she didn’t go after her secretary but the other way around. I want you to tell me that.”

I think about what he’s asking, for me to take another, closer look at Maria, to search for clues that she might have been a not-so-innocent victim of the affair with Ben’s mom, her boss. I think about what it cost him to come here, to the front door of the journalist who outed his mother and ruined his life, requesting not a retraction or even an article refuting my original claims against his mother, but an answer. All he wants is an answer.

But I meant what I told him before. Maybe she’s having an affair with a wealthy married man. Maybe she’s an amateur porn star on the verge of her big break. Maybe the money and film are not connected at all. I don’t know. My point is, there are unlimited possibilities, and the answer isn’t necessarily the one Ben is hoping for.

“What if I can’t tell you that? What if I do a little digging and find my original claims still stand?”

Ben thinks about it for a moment, lifts his bony shoulders. “Then at least I’ll know for sure. I’ll have closure.”

“I don’t know...”

I do know. The thought of reopening that old wound sends an army of fire ants skittering over my skin, biting me not with old guilt, but with new terror. After Maria’s pornographic performance, I’m terrified of what I’ll find. What if Ben’s right? What if Maria really isn’t as innocent as she made me think?

“You owe me.” Ben jerks his head sharply to one side, whipping his bangs off his eyes long enough to bore his gaze into mine. “You owe me everything.”

Those last few words come with a whiptail lash, and I stand there for a moment, waiting for my skin to stop stinging, for the spots to stop dancing in my vision, for the rope to stop squeezing my heart and lungs. But his words don’t settle. The knot around my middle doesn’t loosen.

Because, hell’s bells, Ben is right. I owe him everything.

I sigh, but it comes out more like a groan. “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

5

As soon as Ben leaves, I sit down at my desk and pull up Maria’s video, trying to ignore the shoveled-out feeling in my gut as the images light up my screen, trying to quiet the million questions that pull and tug at me, reeling me toward them with the appeal of an impending train wreck. I don’t want to see this clip. I don’t want to see it, and yet I have to look. Ben was right; if nothing else, at the very least I owe him an answer.

I prop both feet on my chair, wrap my arms around my legs and watch from the space between my knees. Now that I’m looking at the video on a bigger screen, I see I was wrong before. The angle is a little strange, as if the camera is wedged only a few feet or so away from Maria’s face and trained up. It gives me a fish-eye view of the left side of her face, her swinging breasts in all their porn-star glory, the man’s heaving chest and his hand as it slaps, over and over and over, a red splotch onto Maria’s ass. I don’t blink, I barely breathe, and I study every pixel for clues.

About halfway through, I drop my feet to the floor, hit Pause and zoom in on the frame. The man is middle-aged, somewhere in his mid-to-late fifties. Flabby skin over muscles fighting gravity, a few stray gray hairs on his chest. I lean in and zoom some more, see his wedding ring is a plain gold band, the watch a classic gold model, unadorned and without flash. He could be one of a million men in this town.

I push Play and watch the rest. There’s a lot of grunting and slapping, mixed in with some dirty talk—him—and exaggerated moans—her—and then, at the very tail end of the video, when the activity crescendos into a loud and rather explosive grand finale all over Maria’s back, I see it. What I missed the first time on Ben’s tiny iPhone screen. What plunges my stomach into the crawl space under my office floor.

Maria looks straight at the camera...and smiles.

The empty hole in my gut fills in an instant, swelling with a churning mush. I push back from the desk with a hard shove. “Fucking hell.”

Could Maria really be that brazen and greedy to have sex with someone, record it, then use it to squeeze some cash out of him? Could she really be so evil and coldhearted, especially after what happened with Chelsea? My nausea rises up, crawling through my stomach and strangling the calm, reasonable voice telling me surely, surely Maria couldn’t be that evil.

I rewind the last ten seconds and watch them again, stopping on the exact moment when her pretty lips twist in so much more than a smile.

They twist in a deliberate taunt.

With her face still filling up my screen, I reach for my phone and scroll until I find the number I’m looking for, the one I haven’t dialed in almost three years.

Floyd picks up on the second ring. At first all I hear is background noise—a shouted command, an explosion, the staccato stream of gunshots. I’d be alarmed, except I happen to know the battleground sounds come from a video game.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Abigail Wolff. I thought you’d gone off and died on me,” he says in the rapid-fire Baltimorese I’d forgotten he spoke.

I force myself to slow down long enough for small talk, then summon a tone friendly enough to smother my rolling stomach and hammering heart. “Hey, Floyd. How are you?”

“Not bad, not bad. I played fifteen rounds of Spartan Ops last night and ranked up from twenty-six to thirty-three.”

“I have no idea what any of that means.”

“Halo 4, hon. It’s the bomb.”

Though Floyd and I have never actually met, I’ve always pictured him as the type of guy who lives in his parents’ basement—hair a little too unwashed, social skills a little too awkward, middle a little too mushy from a constant diet of pizza and Cheetos. But if anyone knows how to flush out Maria’s shenanigans, it’ll be him. Floyd is a computer whiz who specializes in financial investigations, and one thing I know for sure is that money almost always leaves a paper trail.

“My bad,” I concede, then steer us on to the reason I called. “As much as I’d love to hear all about your mad PlayStation—”

“Xbox.”

“—your mad Xbox skills, I need you to check on someone’s finances for me.”

“An assignment, huh? I thought you quit.”

“I did.” I search for an explanation, then decide on the truth. “This one’s personal.”