“What do you think happened to Caroline?” It burst out. What I meant to say was, Get out.
“Hol and I have our little list of suspects. Whoever or whatever happened to Caroline, it’s not good, honey. She was a pain in the ass but you could always count on her to live by Caroline Warwick’s Golden Rules.”
“She stood us up,” Holly explained. “As prospective members, we got our invites a month ago to her annual candlelight séance. It was supposed to be last night. It’s like her best party of the year. Scares the pee-Jezus-crap out of people. Half of us showed up on her lawn to see if she’d conjure herself out of thin air.”
Tiffany pushed herself from the chair. “Think about those files, Emily. Women need to stick together. It’s why the club is so successful.”
Before I could answer, Tiffany was out the door, yelling something sugary at the cop car. Holly followed more slowly, before languidly turning back. The muscles in her bare arms and legs were sleek and buttery smooth. Every molded piece of her was high and tight. Chop off her forty-year-old Botoxed head, and she was sixteen. I felt fat and clumsy and about seventy, with or without my head.
I met her eyes, bracing myself for a final threat. But her eyes were a surprise. Little blue pools of fear. Hurting. Then they blinked, a magician whipping away his cape, and the real Holly was gone. Whatever had been reflected there was about way more than the sex toys under her mattress.
Holly was like me. Acting. All of these women were actors. Stars of a TV drama that had gone on a few too many years. Speaking in the same sarcastic cadence, weighted by their mistakes, a parody of themselves. How I felt more days than I wanted to admit.
What Holly said next was perfectly scripted.
“You scratch our backs, Emily, we scratch yours. Ask our husbands. Our nails are long, and they hurt.”
Eight very unsettling minutes with those two women and the possibility of plastic wrap cancer did not stop me from prying loose a drippy lemon square and taking a bite as soon as the door shut. It was like the sun bursting in my mouth, if the sun was tart and yummy and a few degrees cooler. I licked my fingers and decided the best thing was to stick to my plan. My past. Something I could try to follow in a logical line. However illogical Mike thought that was.
He picked up on the third ring.
“Brad Hellenberger.” A pause. “Anybody there?” Busy. Already irritated.
“Um, yes. This is Emily. Emily Page. You knew me as Emily Waters. At Windsor. But you probably don’t remember. We never actually met. Although I thought we did. Lucy Blaize gave me your number.”
What a ramble.
He fed silence back to me. This call was a mistake of monumental proportions. The unpregnant me always thought ahead in practical steps, but that me was long gone, taking a break somewhere on a sunny shore, decked out in a bikini and downing a rum drink.
“I remember,” he said.
Two words, so heavily weighted on the line that I knew without a doubt that I held significance for this Bradley Hellenberger.
“What do you remember?” I asked quickly.
“I remember a story that shouldn’t have seen the light of day.”
“But you wrote it.” Bitterness clipped my voice.
“I wrote it, without names. As per the rules of the Windsor journalism program and any credible newspaper, I was required to give the list of those names to my editor. I did.”
“And the pictures? What about the pictures?”
“The student editor-in-chief hacked them. The department investigation after the story ran uncovered that’s how he got a lot of his tips. In your case, he took the list of names I gave him and downloaded ID outtakes from a trashed campus directory file. Today, those photographs wouldn’t even exist, erased in a digital second as soon as they were deemed imperfect. I didn’t know he had those pictures or was planning to run them until I saw the paper the next morning.”
I wasn’t sure whether to believe him. He was certainly at the ready with a defense after all these years. I heard the rustle of papers and another line ringing.
“I’m not sure exactly why you’re calling, Ms. Page, but this seems like it’s going to be a longer conversation than I can do right now. In five minutes, three enormous egos will be descending on me to pick next month’s cover piece. Are you in the city?”
“No. I live… near Dallas. We moved from New York a month ago.”
“Well, here’s a coincidence. I’ve got a meeting in Atlanta tomorrow and I have a layover at DFW… wait a minute. Let me call up the ticket. I should have about forty-five minutes around noon tomorrow. Can you swing by the terminal?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. It seemed beyond coincidental. And why would a professional editor book any domestic flight with a layover?
“Yes,” I said. “I can swing that. I’d like you to consider giving me the names of the other four girls. I only have first names. I want to contact them.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”
“You might be after you talk to me. Could you check your old notes in advance of our meeting? I ask that fully realizing that you’re regretting that you even picked up the phone when you saw a strange number on your caller ID.”
“I pick up all strange numbers. My best stories arrive that way. And I don’t need to check my notes.”
What did that mean exactly? Was I still a story to him? Was he really refusing to look at his notes out of ethical concerns? Or were our names branded in his memory?
“This is nice of you,” I said cautiously. “To meet me.”
“I figure I owe you something, I trust anybody Lucy Blaize would send my way, and I’m curious why you’re finally calling me back after thirteen years. It’s a little late to give me a quote.” I heard voices in the background. “Gotta go. The egos are descending. I’ll text you my flight info in a few hours and we can arrange a place to meet.”
A few hours. Could this be because he hadn’t even bought a ticket yet?
As I hung up the phone, I thought that time is not at all the big pink eraser people say it is.
Thirteen years was nothing.
For Brad. For me.
Thirteen years was a blink.
The voice was female, nasally and one hundred percent Brooklyn.
“I’m trying to reach Ms. Emily Page.”
I gripped the receiver, head still planted on the pillow, clinging to fragments of an illusive dream starring Caroline Warwick in a Victoria’s Secret underwear commercial.
“Yes. That’s me.” My voice was froggy with sleep.
“I’m Latisha Johnson, representing the New York State Parole Board. You asked for phone notification of the Luke Cummings decision, correct?”
Oh my God, was that today? Was it already morning? What time was it? I glanced at the clock. Could it really be 10 a.m.?
That made it 11 a.m. New York time. I was going to be late to meet Brad if I didn’t hurry. But I was frozen in place, immediately nauseous. Good news or bad news? In my experience, it always seemed like a 50-50 shot.
“Ma’am, are you still there?”
“Yes, I’m here. Yes, that’s correct. I want to know.”
“The board has unanimously decided that Luke Cummings will be paroled one week from today. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, that’s great news.” And it was. The relief surging through my veins was the kind I rarely experienced, a no-holds-barred euphoria that usually followed a five-mile run or a generous dose of Percocet or a baby born perfect.
“Good girl. I been at this job a long time and holding on to all that hate is a mistake. God bless and have a beautiful day.”
I’m sure Latisha wasn’t supposed to drop the G word, but G bless her back.
A few seconds after we hung up, the phone rang again. Latisha must have forgotten something.