Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

“From where,” I said. And then louder. “Where was the call placed from.”

He pressed his lips together, stared back for seconds, moments. “From the school,” he finally said.

I shook my head, stepped back. Understanding that first day in the school office, seeing it fresh. The questions, the glances. The reason they were there, questioning the women teachers. Not because they had Davis’s phone and had seen the calls to me. Because of something else. A voice shaking on the line – from my place of work. “You thought it was me.”

He tipped his shoulder. “She said, He’s been harassing women. I think he hurt her .”

The line of questioning to find the source.

It was too much.

Had she been there? Waiting for me to arrive? But I’d gotten sidetracked by the scene itself, found my way to the shore of the lake, staring at the place a body had been.

Or had she placed the call from the school because she knew it would be traced back to me?

I left from the parking lot of the apartment complex on foot.

“Leah? What are you doing?” Kyle called after me.

“I need some air,” I said, even though we were already outside, and the air already felt like too much. I needed to understand something. Tracing her path in reverse, the way Theo moved in the night, the way Martha had seen her walking. I waited at the edge of the lot. Waited for Kyle to turn around and make a call, and then I slipped out of sight.

Down the other way, from the main road. The way Martha said someone would walk if cutting across town, down by the lake – where Bethany was found. The houses I passed had the outside lights on, marking the path with waypoints. The ground was covered in leaves now, dry and brittle underneath my feet. The water beyond seemed to have a current, with the wind.

I stood at the spot Theo had drawn, where I myself had waited that morning, the area trodden by the police and witnesses and Bethany herself. And then I pulled up the map program on my phone and picked my way through the underbrush.

How far was this, truly, from my backyard? I was unfamiliar with the ins and outs of town, but when Bethany was found on the shore of the lake, the police had told me it was less than a mile from your house. As if they thought she could’ve been mistaken for me. But now I was thinking less than a mile from your house, thinking where it could’ve all begun. One mile wasn’t too far. It wasn’t too far to pull a body. Bethany had done it from her apartment to Lakeside Tavern, where Theo had seen her and Emmy had found her. Ditching him in the lake, she must’ve told Emmy. And Emmy had come running.

Theo had said Emmy was panicked. She was innocent, unaware of what had happened. Drawn into the mess not by James Finley but by Bethany herself. Everything happening in an instant.

And now I was imagining Bethany injured somewhere else, being taken to this spot in the woods specifically, for a reason. So close to Davis Cobb’s place of work. That asshole Cobb, who Emmy believed had been calling and calling me. And Bethany, who looked similar enough that Emmy had been willing to give her my identification. The anonymous call coming in much later, placing him at the scene of the crime. The call from school – where it could’ve been me. Leaving herself far removed from the crime.

I traced a path using my phone, straight to the back of my house.

Her necklace, that I’d found on the back porch. The place it had all begun.

She’d been watching the woods for days. Watching and worried. About Bethany?

If Bethany had killed James Finley because of what he knew, was I supposed to be next? After all, I was the only witness who would know that car in the lake belonged to Emmy. Bethany had my ID, my signature, the facts of my life. Emmy had promised she would help her, and eight years later had shown up in Boston, looking for me. For my ID, pieces of my life, to give Bethany a fresh start. And I’d ended up going with her, straight to Bethany. I wondered if Bethany had seen another opportunity. Like James Finley at the bottom of the lake – no one had even noticed he was gone.

Emmy’s necklace on the back porch, the last piece of her left behind.

Emmy watching the woods, the last day I’d seen her.

Did she imagine someone would be coming? Did they?

I used the key on the back door and walked down the hall– her footsteps lulling me to sleep. Stopped at her room and looked inside before continuing to the living room, standing a moment in front of the big glass windows, then walking into the kitchen. Bethany had been hit on the side of her head. I had imagined a bat. A log. Until Kyle said it was probably a rock from the side of the lake. Dodge said they hadn’t recovered the evidence yet.

And suddenly, my legs went weak. I braced myself against the kitchen table, staring back at the gnome with his tight-lipped smile. Made of stone, the paint chipping near the bottom–

I picked him up by his hat, turned him over with both hands, and stared at the underside. His red coat, chipped away near the base. The bottom scrubbed clean. My fingers running over the grooves and indentations, the faintest, faraway scent of bleach.

The sounds in the middle of the night. Emmy under our house afterward, scrubbing the blood from the gnome.

Emmy Grey pulled a fast one on all of us.

She never existed.

She’s a ghost.

She’s gone.

The police showed up at school the next morning. We could see the two cars pull in from our classroom window, and the whispers grew in force. I heard the crackle of the overhead speaker, and I knew what they were here for.

“Ms. Stevens,” Mitch said. “Please send Theo Burton to the front office.”

Theo’s face whipped forward – to me. But I gave nothing away.

I didn’t look at Izzy until he’d gathered his things and left the room. “This way, sir,” I heard from the hallway. Kyle, making sure he didn’t try to run.

Izzy looked from the door back to me, and I wanted to say: I promised, didn’t I? I do protect the source. I always do.

THIS WAS WHAT Ihad given them: Theo’s journal entries, the drawings he had made of me, the phone number he’d been calling from, a burner phone that I knew they wouldn’t be able to trace but would signify to him that I know; and my statement. He’s stalking me, I’d told them. I could tell them, and he could do nothing about it, now that Bethany had been identified as James Finley’s killer. I knew that with the little I had, it wouldn’t be enough, but it would get him into the system. Get his name on the radar – link him to anything he’d tried in the past, maybe even stop him from trying something in the future. I wondered if it would tip him over the scales toward me, make things worse somehow. But I knew what to do with him. He needed to be careful of me.

KYLE STOOD IN MYhouse later that night, in the living room, where I’d cleared out everything she had brought inside. The gnome, of course – gone for good. And all the little things she’d taken and surrounded us with. Her clothes, though, were the last to go. He stood in front of her room, in the middle of the bagged items, and looked at me as if asking something.

“I don’t want her here anymore. Not a trace.”

“Who was she?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he said. He stared at me, and I stared back, and I thought, Don’t ask me again. Please don’t ask me twice.

I NO LONGER TRUSTEDthat I was the one to decide on innocence or guilt. Still, this was what I wanted to believe: She made a mistake, and it snowballed. She and Bethany had set out to burn down that house, knowing he was in it, or not. But targeting him for a personal reason. The reason she could see things in me. And then: running, thinking she could somehow outrun her past, with enough time or distance. Bethany getting caught and Emmy running some more. Flirting with the idea of setting me up as another suspect, reasonable doubt. But for some reason, she hadn’t done it. Maybe she realized it would drag her too close to the case, putting her at risk. Maybe Bethany had pleaded guilty before Emmy had the chance to set me up instead. Maybe it was because of me.