Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

I waited for a long time to be sure she was really gone. But the night, despite the wind and waves, was ordinary and peaceful. The world looked no different than it had before.

After I was certain, I began to move quickly. The keys, which Stella had dangled above my head not thirty minutes earlier, had fallen near my feet when she was thrown overboard. It took a few minutes to get used to the boat’s steering wheel and throttle. From the compass on the dashboard, I knew that I was pointed in the right direction—west, back toward the Bradley property—but I had to steer in a southwesterly direction to account for the strength of the current. Stella had taken us far offshore, and it was a long time before the lights of the house finally came into view.

When I approached the dock, there was a small pinging noise. There, on the bench seat behind me, was Stella’s phone glowing in the darkness. It had just resumed contact with the cell towers. There were several texts on Stella’s phone, from her parents and friends and Jamie. I unlocked the phone—her password was her birth year, backwards—and typed replies to each of the messages. Her texts were easy to mimic: lazy and short, affectless except for occasional strings of exclamation marks. The only thing I added was a hint of mystery at the end. Jamie had written to her: You should know that I still care about you and respect you. I don’t want things to be weird for us at work. Violet-as-Stella replied: fine, but I don’t, and you’re still an asshole. we won’t be seeing each other again, so save the crap for someone else.

Just as I was about to get rid of her phone, I paused. Even with my adrenaline surging and heart pounding, my mind was calm and rational. I opened her e-mail and spent a few minutes composing a message. Then I scrolled through her recent calls. There was a number, a local area code, that she had called several times in the last twenty-four hours. The man on the other end answered with a gruff “Yeah?”

“Hello?” I said. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Who is this?” the voice said.

“Hello?” I said. “You’re breaking up.”

I kept him on the line for almost a minute before he hung up. I did that a few more times, for good measure, until he eventually stopped answering.

The screen cracked easily under the heel of my boot. I stomped on the phone several more times. Then I picked it up and threw it into the water. My own phone had remained back at the house, which meant it wouldn’t betray my movements.

There was a small towel tucked under the bench seat, and before climbing out of the boat, I used it to wipe down the steering wheel, the throttle, the edges I’d clung to in the tossing waves, and the pool of Stella’s blood on the bow. After scanning the interior one last time and throwing the towel into the water, I stepped onto the dock and shoved the boat clear. The current was strong, and it quickly carried the boat away from the dock, the white speck diminishing until it vanished entirely.

The story was beginning to formulate in my head. What would Stella need, if she were running away? In the master bedroom, I cataloged her possessions. She had a few hundred dollars in her wallet. Surely she would go to the bank and withdraw as much as she could. But this didn’t fit into my plan. Every ATM was equipped with a camera these days. And if Stella wanted to run away, if she really wanted not to be found, she would ditch her credit cards. But the cash in her wallet wouldn’t get her very far.

I felt something like tenderness. As if I were truly gaming this out for her benefit. Poor Stella. Beneath her confidence, she was a girl who became easily overwhelmed. How many times had the world told her she was gorgeous and charming and dazzling? Enough times to hollow her out entirely. This was the ending she should have had—an escape from the manufactured pressures of her life. A chance to start over. If people were going to believe that she’d really made a break for it, she needed as much runway as possible.

The gun, glinting on the nightstand, reminded me. In the closet, the safe was still open. The real Bradley treasures were kept closer to home, in their Beacon Hill mansion or in the vault at their bank. But Grandma Bradley’s one indulgence was fine jewelry, even up here in Maine. There, in a black velvet bag in the back of the safe: there was Stella’s ticket out.

They glittered in my palm. A pair of diamond earrings, a few carats each. A tennis bracelet with a neat row of cushion-cut gems. And a ring, which I recognized from when the Bradleys entertained on a grand scale, hiring caterers and a string quartet while the guests dined at long tables on the lawn, overlooking the ocean. This was the ring that Grandma Bradley would wear on those occasions. A sapphire, hefty like a walnut and blue like the summer sky, ringed by a band of diamonds.

The jewelry was cool and solid in my hand as I closed the safe, pressed the lock button, and wiped it clean. When would anyone bother to check the safe—would it be days from now, weeks from now? I would have to remember to act surprised. The diamonds were gone, the Bradleys would say, worrying and speculating. And so was the gun.

My hair was tangled and my skin salty from the ocean air, so I took a scalding hot shower. I started to turn off the lights and thermostats, but then I thought, what would Stella do? That had to be my guiding mantra. Stella wouldn’t bother to check every little thing. She would just leave. So the heat remained on. The occasional lamp stayed burning.

The walk to the motel took almost an hour. From a distance, warm squares of light shone through the lobby windows, and the neon sign blinked vacancy. It turned out it wasn’t so hard to cry on command. The water table was high, ready to reveal itself with just a little bit of digging. I cried so much that my eyes puffed and swelled. But it wasn’t guilt or distress that I felt, so much as an overwhelming recognition.

You’re a heartless snob, my mother once said. You can’t wait to get rid of us, can you?

That dark impulse, which I’d suppressed for so long. Stella Bradley was dead, and I saw who I really was. Who I had always been. It was the first time in my life that I recognized what I was capable of. Death forces you toward honesty. There is always a perfect understanding between the killer and the killed.

Port Authority after midnight: the stores are closed, awaiting the morning rush. The alcoves and nooks near the heating vents are occupied by the sleeping bodies of homeless men. The fluorescent lights are set to a low hum, and the air smells cloyingly of fast food, with a tinge of sweat and garbage. The only motion came from those like me, passengers emerging from the end of long bus rides, moving like ghostly fish toward the exits of this strange aquarium.

But I didn’t mind it. I didn’t mind any of it. I had slept most of the way, and I was glad to be back in New York. When the cab drove south down Seventh Avenue in the earliest hours of Monday morning, all I could think was I made it. I meant this in a very simple sense. Two of us had left the city for Maine on Friday morning. One of us had come back. One of us had what it took to persist, and the other one didn’t.

Pete, the doorman, was on duty that night.

“You have a good weekend, Miss Trapp?” he said, as he opened the door of my cab.

“I was in Maine with Stella. She’s still up there.”

“Nice to get away from the city,” Pete said. “Have a good night, Miss Trapp.”

I debated how to tell the Bradley family. It had to look real. If Stella had kicked me out and hinted at disappearing for a while, would I be surprised? Alarmed? Or would I think, this is just Stella being Stella? Nonetheless, I called Anne on my walk to work that Monday morning. It was mid-November, and the weather was persistently perfect. The trees held the last of their crimson leaves, crisp temperatures just right for sweaters and football. While waiting for Anne to pick up, I decided that I couldn’t remember a more beautiful autumn.