Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

“Ex-wife,” Rebecca said.

“What?”

“No wedding ring.”

“I didn’t even notice.”

She shrugged. “I meet a guy who looks like that, that’s where my eye goes.”

I laughed. “And how does Mr. Rebecca Carter feel about this tendency?”

“You’re funny, kid. Number one, you don’t get to talk until you’ve been married a hundred years like me. Number two, it’s an old habit. Waitressing, I learned to check.”

“The single guys tipped better?”

“Nope. The married guys who wanted to pretend to be single for the night. Eliza!” Rebecca shouted across the newsroom. “So what did you think?”

“He looks the part,” Eliza said. “I don’t know. Six out of ten.”

“Tough crowd,” Rebecca said. “Violet here can vouch for him.”

“Really?” Eliza cocked an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“Let’s do this over lunch,” Rebecca said. “My date canceled and there’s a table at Michael’s with my name on it. You’re coming with us, Violet. We want the gossip.”

When I got back from lunch, there was an e-mail from Corey waiting in my in-box.

Dinner on Friday?the subject line said. In the body of the e-mail: I’m new here, so you name the time and place, city slicker.

As the week crept by, my initial reaction to seeing Kyle—tremors, vomiting—seemed overblown. Each passing day was a step toward freedom. By Tuesday he would have said something, surely. By Wednesday I was almost starting to relax. And then, on Thursday morning, Anne called.

“Someone saw her,” she said, before I could even say hello. “Some bartender on Long Island. Walter is driving out right now, to talk to him.”

“Wow,” I managed to say.

“I’m running to catch a flight home.” She sounded breathless. Behind her was the babble of an airport announcement in another language. Italian, or maybe Spanish. “You and Oliver should plan to come up tomorrow morning. We need a family meeting right away.”

“Of course.” I squeezed my eyes closed, took a deep breath.

“Oh, God, Violet. I knew she was alive. I knew it.”

Oliver was spending the night at the apartment. Around midnight, he switched off the TV and stood up from the couch. “Aren’t you coming to bed?” he asked.

“I won’t be able to sleep,” I said. My mind was spinning through the same frantic loop. What would Kyle say? If they put it together, my borrowing Stella’s name so many years ago, how bad would that look? I reached for the remote and flicked the TV back on. I found it soothing, the blare and repetition of news and commercials, news and commercials.

Oliver looked at me like I was a simpleton. “The police get these bogus tips all the time. Walter probably only brought this up because he’s trying to justify his salary.”

“That’s pretty cynical.”

“My sister is gone, Violet. Whatever happened happened.” He yawned, stretching his arms above his head. Oliver was truly a sociopath. “Don’t let this get to you.”

Fazio was stuck in traffic and running late. The wait was excruciating: Thomas and Oliver talking stiffly about work and Thomas’s preparations for Everest, and Anne chattering about her travels, the times she was certain she had spotted Stella, only to realize it was someone else, which made sense now, given that Stella was on Long Island. Ginny nodded and held Anne’s hand, glancing over at me several times, skeptically. My pale exhaustion must have been obvious, even with concealer and blush.

Anne liked having Ginny there. She filled the role Anne was no longer capable of filling: the levelheaded woman, the person who kept track of the details. When Fazio arrived, Ginny answered the door, took his coat, offered him coffee. Anne herself was nothing but nerves, crossed legs jiggling as the detective took his seat.

“I talked to this young man last night,” Fazio said. “The bartender who claims he saw Stella. He says he first met her over three years ago, and recognized her as she was leaving the bar last Friday night. It took him a few days to put together that this was the same person he’d been hearing about in the news.”

He paused. “I hesitated to bring this up. I’m afraid this might not get us anywhere. But it’s been a while since we had a fresh lead, and I know you like to be kept in the loop.”

“Of course, of course,” Anne said, nodding vigorously. She had been calling Fazio every day for updates. Oliver looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Well, here’s the catch,” Fazio said. “The bartender says she didn’t look like the picture on the news. Similar, but not the same. She didn’t answer to the name Stella when he approached her, and then she left the bar abruptly. I asked him if he was certain this was the same person. He said it could be, accounting for the makeup that TV people wear.”

“And where precisely was this, Mr. Fazio?” Ginny said.

“In Sag Harbor. At a bar called the East End Tavern.”

“That’s where we were on Friday,” Oliver said.

“ What? ” Anne said.

“Violet and I,” Oliver said calmly. Across the room, Ginny’s eyebrows shot up. “We had a drink before dinner. The American is under renovation right now, which is too bad. But if Stella was there, she was doing a good job hiding. We must have been there for, what, Violet, an hour? Right around the time this man claims to have seen her.”

“Was there a security camera?” Ginny asked.

“No,” Fazio said. I felt a ping of relief.

“This cannot be a coincidence,” Anne said. “Stella appearing at the same bar as Oliver and Violet? She’s getting ready to come home, isn’t she? Maybe she’s been watching us! Doesn’t that make sense?”

Anne’s eyes were wild with hope and pain, looking for someone to agree with her theory. “ Well? ” she said, when the five of us remained silent. “She wants to see how we’re doing, doesn’t she? She misses us. She wants to be with her family.”

“Anne,” Ginny said quietly, taking her hand again.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Bradley, I think this guy may be another crank,” Fazio said. “I was hopeful at first, too. He seemed certain. But maybe he recognized Oliver from the news. Or maybe he overheard them talking about Stella. He figured this was his chance for attention. And Oliver and Violet being at the same bar that night would give his story some credibility.”

“No,” Anne said. “No. I don’t get it. Why would he do that?”

“In a case like this, you get a lot of bad tips. We’ve had them from the beginning.”

“Should we talk to him?” Thomas said. “See if anything he says rings a bell?”

“With all due respect, Mr. Bradley, I spent several hours questioning him. I can show you the footage of the interview, if you’d like. And he’s been in for larceny, breaking and entering, a DUI. He’s behind on his alimony. I suspect this is a scheme to make money.”

The tattoos on Kyle’s forearms. The soft eyes, concealing some long-ago mistake. He was a kind man, an honest man, but certain things are held against you forever.

“So, what? We just ignore this?” Anne said. “We haven’t made any progress?”

“Mom,” Oliver said. “Calm down. You’re making yourself hysterical.”

“Don’t you condescend to me,” she snapped. “What the hell is wrong with all of you? Why don’t you care? ”

I felt nauseous. I had thought Anne might react to Stella’s disappearance like before, with a cool and correct bearing. But in these months without closure, the raw pain had transformed her. Her color was high. Her hair was long and her skin tanned. She looked younger, inflamed with purpose. Her old armor of cashmere and pearls and La Mer had concealed the resemblance. But with that discarded, it was staggering.