Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

It was a few minutes before noon. Ours was the only car in the driveway. “I’m going to look around,” I said to Jamie, who stayed in the car and nodded behind his sunglasses.

Willow lived inside the confines of a water management area. The trees were tall and vibrant green, and the lakes and creeks we’d passed were filled with crystal-clear water. Signs along the road pointed to hiking trails and canoe launches. This had always confused me about Florida: that a place of such overwhelming natural beauty could contain so much man-made ugliness. It felt like a perfect metaphor for something.

The ticking chorus of birds and insects was interrupted by the sound of an approaching car. I rapped on the window and Jamie startled awake. The car, a modest gray compact, came to a stop. Willow stepped out, but she stood behind the open door like it was a shield.

“You’re the newspeople?” she said.

I waved. “We talked on the phone. I’m Violet Trapp, and this is Jamie Richter.”

She slung a bag over her shoulder. “I’m guessing you want to come inside.”

As we followed her through the front door and my eyes adjusted to the indoor dimness, I was struck by how clean and spare her living room was. The walls and floorboards were painted white. There was a brightly colored Mexican rug, three minimalist armchairs, a few pictures tacked above the desk in the corner. I’d been expecting simplicity, but the kind that reflected panicked transit: a suitcase, a mattress on the floor. This was not that. This was a life that had been arrived at carefully, after rigorous purification.

“Thank you for talking with us,” Jamie said, as Willow emerged from the kitchen holding a glass of water. She was beautiful, and her clothing aligned with her simple home décor. Like a Calvin Klein model in the nineties: jeans, a white shirt, sleek dark hair.

“Willow,” I said, “at this point, we’ve turned up a lot of information about—”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not my real name.”

“What would you prefer?” Jamie said.

“Nothing. You should just know that I hate the name.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “That’s fine. What I was saying is, we’ve got plenty of evidence against Danner. If you choose to go on the record, you won’t be taking them on alone. Several other people have spoken out. And you’ll have reporters and producers and KCN executives—every resource we have will be behind you.”

She stood up and left the room. From the kitchen came the sound of running water. The living room was oppressively hot and still. My forehead was dotted with sweat, I was thirsty and craving air-conditioning, and the heat made me feel slow and exhausted. Willow took her time in the kitchen. Jamie caught my eye and shrugged.

When she returned, she was holding an orange. She stood between the kitchen and the living room, leaning against the doorjamb. The scent of citrus spiked the air as she dug a fingernail into the skin and began slowly peeling it away from the fruit.

“You realize how much I don’t want to do this,” she said.

“I understand,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow, like, do you?

“Violet probably explained this,” Jamie said, “but there are things we can do. We can keep your face in shadow during the interview. We don’t have to use your name, or your location. The world doesn’t have to know where you are, who you are, today.”

Willow peeled the orange in one long spiral. She hefted the naked fruit in the palm of her hand, like she was testing its weight. She broke the orb into two symmetrical halves, then handed one to Jamie and one to me.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

Jamie looked at her quizzically. “Do you have any questions for us?”

“I sleep with a gun in my nightstand,” she said to me. “Did George tell you that?”

“He did,” I said.

She crossed her arms. “Let me guess. You were thinking you’d come down to Florida and find some ruined woman. Drunk off her ass in a trailer.”

“I didn’t think anything,” I said, although she was exactly right. This picture—white floors, scent of oranges—it was not what I’d imagined.

“I’m in school now. I’m getting my business degree. That’s where I was this morning. I happen to be at the top of my class. Did he tell you that? ”

“George spoke highly of you,” I said.

“I bet he did. What a knight in shining armor.”

“Willow, we won’t force you. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

She held my gaze. “I don’t want to do anything. I have to.”

After a long pause, Jamie cleared his throat. “We can do the interview tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll film you here. Violet and I will be with you the whole time.”

Jamie drove us back to the hotel, where we would call Eliza and tell her that the interview was set for the next day. But in those final moments of quiet in the car, I felt an anticipatory let-down. Wrung out by the heat, plagued by a thumping headache. Willow, in her little white house. There it was: the answer to the question we’d been chasing for months. It was both sadder and more ordinary than anything I’d been expecting. The world leaves people broken, but they find a way to put themselves back together again.

Jamie interrupted the silence. “That poor woman,” he said.

“I was surprised,” I said. “Weren’t you? Her house. The business degree.”

“That’s what worries me. The tough guy act. It’s not real.”

“It seemed real to me.”

He shook his head. “It’s going to crack at some point. You don’t go through what she went through without a reckoning.”

“So, what, you think she’s doomed? She can never have a normal life?”

“I’m just saying, she needs to take the measure of what happened to her. Didn’t that freak you out? She should be angry. She should be pissed. But it’s like she’s been lobotomized.”

“Maybe she already dealt with it and now she’s fine.” For some reason, Jamie’s reasoning irritated me. I wanted to believe in Willow’s life. I wanted to believe in the possibility of her reinvention. “Maybe she managed to put everything behind her.”

“Maybe,” Jamie said. “But I doubt it.”

BACK IN NEW YORK, we showed the raw interview footage to Eliza and Rebecca. Rebecca grew wide-eyed at Willow’s graphic descriptions of the doctor’s violence. Eliza wore a grim frown, which deepened as it went on.

“What a fucking bastard,” Rebecca said, when it was over.

“It’s awful,” Eliza said. “It makes you sick.”

“I was sure she was going to bail on us,” Jamie said. “She almost backed out that morning. Violet calmed her down.”

“She wanted to be sure it was worth it,” I said. “That her talking would actually help to change something. Not just result in her getting sued.”

“Christ Almighty. If a story like this doesn’t change something,” Rebecca said, “then I don’t even know why we’re here.”

Ginny joined us later that afternoon. In the conference room, Eliza and Rebecca showed her everything we’d assembled: the interviews with Willow, George and the other sources, the scattered bits of evidence that finally added up to something coherent, and damning.

“When are we going to Danner for comment?” Ginny said, clasping her hands atop the table. Her lack of emotion was normal. Rebecca got hot with outrage, Eliza was fiercely competitive, but Ginny was the ballast that kept the whole ship steady.

“Monday,” Rebecca said. “We’ll give them twenty-four hours.”

I spent the weekend working. There were several producers on the story by now, but it didn’t stop me from obsessing: double- and triple-checking every fact and quote, asking the beleaguered editor to try dozens of variations. I sat with the writer who was polishing Rebecca’s script, even though Rebecca would inevitably rewrite it herself just before airtime. On Sunday evening, Eliza stopped by the office and saw me at my desk.