Megan MIRANDA - The Perfect Stranger

KYLE ONCE ASKED ME,when I told him, how I knew it was Aaron. Not if but how. He already knew all the details, the connections that could tie one case to the other. But that wasn’t what he meant.

Couldn’t Bridget have gotten the pills elsewhere? Couldn’t she have taken them herself? Well, sure, all of this was possible. Those slivers of doubt that it’s best to ignore.

It’s hard to trust someone’s memory. Especially after time. It’s all bogged down in what the person wants to remember and the narrative they’ve constructed. Sometimes, and I know this is where my old colleagues and I disagree, the facts don’t really matter.

Sometimes I don’t remember if I saw the pills in the medicine cabinet before I fell. If the water was running before or after. I don’t really remember if I tried to fight the darkness, if I was able to draw any blood, make any sound. Maybe I didn’t. And this is where things get murky, because what does it mean if I didn’t do either of those things?

I am sure of nothing.

But what I do remember is the hot fear, the simmering rage, the anger that coursed through me eight years later at the prickle of his name. His face in the mirror – that’s the clearest image I have. The moment I knew I was in trouble, before his words, before anything at all.

His face was how I knew.

THIS WAS WHY Istood at the window. For this moment. Of course she’d be coming home now. This was always her schedule – a creature of the night, returning in the early morning when the rest of us were just beginning our day. I heard her steps up the porch. Heard when they paused. The sound of metal on metal as she reached the doorknob; I imagined the links sliding through her fingers. She ran back down the steps, and I could finally see her clearly. She had John Hickelman’s watch in her hand, and she was scanning the road, then turning toward the woods, looking into the trees off to the side of the house – her face in profile. And that’s when I saw it, the moment I was sure.

I snapped a picture of her with my phone as her face was in motion. Her head darted back and forth, and she balled the watch tightly in her fist. She called my name tentatively into the trees, standing perfectly still, the breeze moving her hair. My name sounded foreign on her lips. Laced with something else. Fear, I thought.

She stepped back, and then again, watching the tree line as she moved. And then her hand found the railing and she backed slowly up the steps, as if she could see the world stretched before her. As if she could see the danger coming.

Not realizing she’d already welcomed it inside.

When the door opened, I saw Emmy. For a moment, she was the Emmy I had always known. And then, suddenly, she was not. Or she was exactly who she’d always been, and finally, I was the one who could see it.

I caught her in profile. I saw Ammi, and Melissa, and Leah. All the versions of her and the parts I didn’t want to see. I saw her, truly, for the first time.

Her steps faltered when she noticed me standing beside the window; like her, I abruptly didn’t know what I was doing here. But then she switched on, nudging the door shut with her hip, smiling her practiced smile, like this was all still a joke, roles we were playing.

“Leah,” she said, my name rising and falling from her lips in feigned delight. So different from the way she’d said it outside, as someone else. She dropped her parka to the nearby chair, slid the watch around her wrist, the links jangling up her arm. She shook them again, making music. Her laughter was both familiar and foreign.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, stepping closer, like this was what she had planned all along. “You know what happened, right? I couldn’t go back.” She shook her head, the ends of her hair longer now, brushing over her shoulders. “But I knew you would find me,” she said.

I wanted it to be true, but I could also taste the lie on her, the desperation, see the many faces of her as she set out to frame her story. “Well, here I am,” I said, waiting, for once, to see where she would take this. If she would tell me what had happened. If she would wait to see what I knew.

She rubbed her hands together, fighting the chill, and glanced out the window. “Did you walk?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. Held the house key out to her, the childish woven key chain. “You left this.”

Her fingers, I noticed, were shaking as she took it. She must’ve known what else I had found in that box. I wondered if she realized I’d traced both her crimes, then and now.

“Are you staying?” she asked, as if I would be welcome.

“No, I’m just passing through town, here with my boyfriend.”

Her eyes lit up. “Boyfriend, huh? Who is it?” Slipping closer, so effortlessly working around my edges.

“His name is Kyle. He’s a police detective. I met him when I reported you missing. I met him when they thought I was involved in the death of James Finley. I met him because Bethany Jarvitz was taking over my identity, which was given to her by you.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “Leah,” she said, and she held out her hand like I had everything all wrong. “Bethany Jarvitz killed James Finley. I found out what Bethany was doing. I protected you. I did it for you.” And I could see it in my head, the story playing out in a film. Emmy sitting at the edge of the woods, that day with the owls, watching for her. Protecting me. The version of her I’d hoped she would be.

But the beginning didn’t match up with the end. There were too many pieces that wouldn’t fit, no matter how desperately I wanted to believe it.

“Really?” I said. “Because this is how I see it: You lived as the woman in the basement apartment in Boston, using her name. Taking my money. You stole my wallet, used my identity when you needed a job. And then you ran. You ran and did God knows what, but you weren’t leaving for the Peace Corps.” I was shaking now, unable to control the anger in my words. The betrayal. The realization that there was no other explanation than that she’d been using me from the start.

She flinched, and I realized she had underestimated what I knew, what I had learned.

I pressed on, showing her that I’d figured her out. That she couldn’t fool me any longer. “You hopped from one identity to the next until Bethany got released. And then you came back for me. Eight years later. Eight years later when you knew Bethany would be released from jail. I was like a gift you brought to her. Until you didn’t like what you found and got rid of her, too. Left the murder weapon in my house. The call from my school. I was the only one left behind.”

“Leah, I can explain it. You know me. I know you.” She kept coming closer, as if by mere proximity she could prove none of this was true.

I held up my hand to stop her. “No, this is what I know. You killed a man, with Bethany, long ago. And now she’s dead. And here you are, finally able to live as yourself. You’re out. You’re free. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“ I didn’t kill that man. That was Bethany again. I swear it–”

“He was from your hometown, Emmy. Melissa. Whoever you are. You were the one who must’ve known him.”

“You of all people should understand, Leah. You don’t know what he was like. What he did.” I thought of the scar on her ribs. The fear in her eyes. The pieces I was fitting together on her behalf as she spoke. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know if it was true. If I believed her. A nonexistent fiancé who’d scared her; a boyfriend who’d kicked her out – so many stories, and I wasn’t sure if even she knew who she was anymore.