Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“I’m starting to worry,” I said. The words were false, but the nausea was real.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Oliver said. “I think she’s trying to punish Jamie. She wants everyone to make a big fuss, and then she’ll say it was his fault, and he’ll feel awful about it. This is a game to her. It always has been.”

“That would be pretty extreme, even for Stella.”

“I might be wrong. In which case I’m a jerk for saying what I just said. But you’ll keep it between us, right?”

I managed to smile. “Do you mind dropping me at the train station on your way back?”

Oliver smiled back. “Why don’t you just drive back into the city with me?”

“I can give you a ride down to the Village,” Oliver said, as we crossed the Triborough and the Manhattan skyline came into view against the dark evening sky.

“Are you sure?” I said. “I’ll just take the subway downtown.”

“Please,” Oliver said. He drove past the exit on the FDR that would have delivered him to the Upper East Side, where he lived. “It’s nothing.”

“And you know,” he added, after a few moments of silence. “I’ve never even seen your apartment. Stella never once invited me over. Crazy, right? My own sister.”

“Oh,” I said. Oliver glanced at me, then his eyes flicked back to the road. There was a long pause. “I mean, do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to.” He smiled.

I had imagined Oliver’s car idling in front of our building while he took a brief tour. But there was a parking spot open on our street, and his Audi sedan fit neatly into the space. He locked the car with a satisfied beep. It seemed he was planning to stay a while.

“Wow,” Oliver said. As I turned the lamps on, he did a lap around the living room. He ran his hands across the back of the couch and the top of the mantel, squeezed the pillows, tested the springiness of the armchairs. He was like a lion in a nature documentary, pacing his territory and sniffing out intruders. “Did my mom do the decorating?” Oliver said. “This has Anne written all over it.”

“She gets the credit,” I said.

“When I moved into my place a few years ago, I asked her to help pick things out. You know me, I’m terrible at that stuff.” He shrugged and laughed. I laughed weakly, too, although I didn’t know Oliver nearly well enough to possess that knowledge. “But she said no. She said that was the kind of thing that a girlfriend would want to do, in the future. You know, when I finally got one.”

“Oh,” I said.

“But for Stella, she’d move heaven and earth.” He rolled his eyes as he went into the kitchen. “My perfect little sister. Look. This is our grandmother’s china. And has Stella ever used this?”

“Actually, yes. She likes it for her toast in the morning.”

“Well, still.” Oliver stared covetously at the delicately patterned plate, as if it were a gold medal that a competitor was letting him look at but not keep. “It’s obvious who the favorite is.”

“No one thinks she’s perfect,” I said. “And they love you just as much, Oliver.”

“They love us in different ways. I hold up my end of the bargain. I work hard and I don’t embarrass them. And who wants to be loved for that?” Oliver stopped, surveying the doors that lined the hallway. “Which one is her bedroom?”

“On the left,” I said. It was almost too late by the time I remembered—he already had his hand on the doorknob, was already twisting it open. “Oliver!” I shouted.

He jumped and spun around. “What?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Behind him, in the bedroom, glaring evidence stood out: the slept-in bed, the clothing piled on the armchair, the damp towel on the bathroom door. I knew how bizarre and inappropriate this would look, my sleeping in Stella’s room for the past week. It was just that her room was so much bigger and nicer than mine. It seemed a waste for it to remain empty.

“Um,” I said. “I just remembered. I want to show you this thing in my room.”

My bedroom was more like that of a girl who had been missing for a week: airless, pristine, spooky. I looked for something plausible to show Oliver—but what, what? I had nothing worth remarking upon.

“Ah,” Oliver said. “Etchings, right?”

“Huh?”

“You had some etchings you wanted to show me. I get it.”

He sat down on the bed and leaned back on his elbows, taking in the cheap furniture and the bare walls. “This is more my speed, anyway,” he said. “This is kind of what my apartment looks like. You should come see it sometime.” He raised an eyebrow suggestively.

Was it possible that I was the stupidest person in the world? Yes, it was entirely possible. Why else would I have practically dragged Oliver to my boring bedroom, were it not because I wanted to have sex with him? He was waiting patiently for me to sit down on the bed so that the obvious part could begin. Shit, I thought. Shit, shit.

Oliver laughed. He had noticed my crossed arms, the tight expression on my face. “It’s okay. I get it. It is kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“That she’s not here, and it’s just the two of us.” Oliver stood up from the bed. For a moment, I panicked. Was he going to come closer? Initiate what he thought I was too shy to initiate myself? But instead he said, “I’ll get going. It’s been a long day.”

I walked him out. As he was waiting for the elevator, buttoning his coat and wrapping a scarf around his neck, he smiled at me. When Stella and Oliver stood side by side, you couldn’t help but notice the differences between them. But with Stella gone, the similarities were more pronounced. The blond hair, the confident gaze, the lanky height. The way he talked to Detective Fazio, the way he leaned back on my bed: I recognized that easy, satisfied sense that everything will work out as it should. That perfectly bred poise.

The idea wasn’t even half formed. But it was enough to stir up a hot feeling of shame, remembering what she said on the boat that night. You’ve attached to my family like a leech. Stella would have hated this. I could imagine the disgust on her face. My awful brother? What could you possibly see in him?

Oliver stepped inside the elevator. As the doors started to close, he looked up at me. He stuck out a hand, and the doors slid back open.

“How about dinner sometime?” he said.

STELLA WAS OFFICIALLY declared a missing person on Monday morning. The police in Maine examined the house and noted the obvious clues. Stella’s car was still there, the keys sitting on the kitchen counter. Her wallet and phone were gone. Many of the lights had been left on, but the door was locked, and there was no evidence of forced entry. There was an empty slip in the boathouse, and Thomas confirmed that the speedboat was missing. He also confirmed that the contents of the safe were missing: the jewelry, and the gun.

Oliver and I drove up to Maine on Wednesday morning, the day before Thanksgiving. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived. I was hoping for a chance to shower and change after the long car ride, but there was a detective waiting in the living room.

“Violet, honey?” Anne said. “This nice man needs to speak with you.”

“Oh—sure,” I said. The story was an easy routine by now. “Of course.”

The detective led me to a small study, considerably shabbier than the rest of the house. Overstuffed bookshelves, boats in glass bottles, stacks of magazines and papers, and a dark leather couch, where I sat while the detective pulled over a chair from the desk.

He was short and stocky, built like a high school football player. He cleared his throat. “Now, Miss Trapp. You were the last person to see Stella.”