Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

I imagined someone standing outside my house, peering in those front sliding doors, the inside of my house lit faintly by the amber light of the living room lamp. Looking down the hall to the open bedroom door, the darkness beyond. Seeing two pairs of kicked-off shoes. Kyle’s dark jeans.

I imagined Davis Cobb outside my window, watching us. Bold, I thought. He was getting way too bold. Escalating even now.

I forwarded the message to Kyle, adding my own note on top: You said you wanted to see them. Well, here it is. First one I’ve gotten since. I heard he’s back at school, by the way.

I didn’t say anything about the words in the message or what they implied. I’d let Kyle come to that conclusion all on his own.

Cobb watched my house.

It was a terrifying, skin-crawling thought, and yet. . I wondered what else he might know, if he knew who Emmy was, if he’d seen her. I forwarded a copy to my personal email account before I left for the day – and for the first time, I debated responding.

Mitch caught me on the way out, beckoned me into his office. “Shut the door,” he said, his face pensive.

“I already heard,” I said, and his face dropped for a moment before his calm demeanor slid back into place.

“Okay, good, I’m glad. You’re okay with it? If you need anything, or want to talk, or anything at all–”

“I know where to find you,” I said.

He watched me go with a faint air of disappointment. As if one thing would lead to the next and he could watch the undoing of Leah Stevens, catching me on the way down.

THE PHONE RANG AFTERI parked in my driveway, and I flipped it over, seeing my sister’s name. I frowned, worried briefly about my mother. I hadn’t heard from her since I’d hung up on her Sunday.

“Hello?” I called, walking up the porch steps, keys out in my hand.

“Did you apply for a new job, Leah?”

“Did I. . What? No.” I slid the door open, shut and locked it behind me.

“That’s what Mom said, too. But I thought I’d check with you.”

“Why?” I could already guess the answer.

“I got some background request form for you in my email. Couldn’t figure out why the hell I’d be a reference, but it doesn’t seem to be a job reference form. It’s more. . confirming details. The type we send to other companies when we’re checking out a candidate, fact-checking their résumé, you know.” There was a pause, and she said, “What’s going on? Is it legit?”

I dropped my bag beside the door. “It’s legit,” I said.

“Leah, what the hell is this, then?”

I ran my hand across the back of my neck, felt the cold sweat, and forced myself to sit down, settle down. “I don’t know. The police, I think.” Or someone hired by the police. A background check.

“The what ?”

“Just fill it out. Okay?” I rested my head in my hand, leaned my elbows on the kitchen table, took a deep breath that smelled like wood grain and polish. “Everything’s fine. Just fill it out. They’re making sure I am who I say I am.”

“Who the hell else would you be?” To Rebecca, I was probably already the girl people only glimpsed, the one who slipped through the cracks.

“It’s a long story. Do you remember Emmy? Did I ever tell you about her?”

“No. Mom said you’re living with her now? Someone you knew after college? That’s her, right?”

“Yeah, I lived with her for a little while after college, and we’re living together now. Only she fucking disappeared, and there’s no record of her anywhere.”

Rebecca paused, and I imagined her switching the phone from ear to ear, swishing her hair over her shoulder, holding up a finger to a patient who needed assistance. “I don’t get what this has to do with the police and you, Leah.”

I groaned. “Yeah, well. I reported her missing, and her boyfriend, the guy I said she was seeing, just turned up dead. In her car. Well, in a car.” I let out a laugh, felt myself cracking. Cleared my throat. “A car that she used but wasn’t registered to anyone.”

Rebecca dropped her voice. “Are you in trouble, Leah?”

“No.” And then I paused. “I don’t know. Don’t tell Mom. Just don’t tell Mom. Please, Rebecca. Fill out the form, okay? Fill out the form, and everything will be okay.”

I hung up before she could object, and when she called back, I let it ring over and over until voicemail picked up.

I WASN’T SURPRISED TOsee him an hour later. I knew he had called Kassidy in the Boston precinct, that he had spoken to Noah, that they had reached out to Rebecca. But I was surprised he came alone. It must’ve been the email I sent that implicated him. I saw him look me over, taking in the red sweater. I saw the words again: There once was a woman in red. .

I swung the door open, made a show of gesturing to allow him entrance. “Well,” I said when he stood in the middle of the room, looking me over, “did you get what you needed?”

He frowned.

“Let me put it this way. Did my sister and my old colleagues provide you with everything you needed to know, Detective?”

He sat on my couch after taking off his jacket, leaning forward like he was wound tight, selecting his words carefully. “You never told me you were a journalist,” he said. His eyes briefly scanned me over, as if seeing me for the first time.

Here it comes, here it goes. The moment when he realizes that this is not the girl he thought he knew.

“Well, I’m not anymore,” I said. “And what did you do before you moved here? I didn’t know we’d made it that far yet.”

He shook his head. “You were hiding it.” He could sense it.

“I wanted a fresh start,” I said. Which wasn’t a lie.

“You were forced out,” he said, the truth wielded into a weapon. And then his eyes rose to meet mine, on the other side of the room, daring me to deny it.

I ground my back teeth. Didn’t deny it. “Who told you that?” Noah wouldn’t have outed me, not without taking himself and the paper down with him. And Kassidy didn’t know, not exactly. He knew there were whispers of libel but that they had died out. The university wanted to let the whole thing die just as much as we did, and nobody pushed.

“Nobody had to tell me, I am capable of reading between the lines. A colleague says the job got to you, an officer says there was some fallout over an article on campus suicides. He told me there were whispers of libel or something –his words. And now you’re here, as far away as you could possibly get, professionally. I read it, Leah. You even keep a copy of it here, don’t you? I remembered seeing an old edition of a Boston paper during the search. What did you do, Leah?”

“I didn’t do anything, Kyle.” I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, gave him the truth I’d been fighting to leave behind. “The paper thinks I made up a source. They think my claim was baseless, but they’re wrong.”

He was silent, processing the information. “You made up a person,” he said, repeating the statement for emphasis. Ignoring the rest of it.

“Not a person.” That was a step too far, but that was what they all believed.

“It’s the same damn thing.”

Except it wasn’t. He wasn’t talking about the same thing. He didn’t understand.

“Which source was it?” he asked slowly as I sat in the chair across from him. “Please tell me it wasn’t the one about the pills and the professor.”

And when I didn’t answer, his face blanched white, and his entire demeanor shifted. “You know what my boss thinks? That you’re keeping us busy chasing our tails. That you’re smarter than all of us combined.” He lowered his voice, looked me over again. “That there’s no one else who lived here.”