Anna Pitoniak - Necessary People

But when Rebecca began speaking, it was clear that she’d written this ahead of time. Maybe her show of surprise was just that: a performance. Her words were beautiful, thoughtful, precise. After she thanked Ginny in a suitably lengthy manner, Rebecca turned to Eliza.

“Lize,” she said, a catch in her voice. “What can I even say? Except that I hope everyone in this room gets to experience what we’ve experienced. You’ve made me so much better. Every single day, you challenge me and fight with me and push me to work harder. It may not be pleasant, but as I get older, I see the truth, which is that I need you. I’d be nowhere without you.”

Eliza smiled. She put her hand over her heart, mouthed, “I love you.”

Rebecca laughed, lifting a finger to catch a tear before it spilled into her makeup. “I’m getting soft in old age,” she said.

“Wrap it up,” Eliza said. “Thirty seconds ’til commercial.”

The room rippled with laughter. “See what I mean?” Rebecca said. “Okay. I’ll stop, because brevity is the soul of ratings. Right, Ginny? I just want to say thank you. Life is about the people we surround ourselves with. And I feel so lucky to be surrounded by all of you.”

At that moment, the lights dimmed, and two assistants emerged from the kitchen, bearing a cake covered in flickering candles. When Rebecca leaned forward for one long moment, she was the only thing illuminated in the room. After she blew out the candles, and everyone applauded, she leaned into Eliza. Just for a second, she rested her head on Eliza’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Eliza kissed the top of Rebecca’s head, an automatic and unthinking movement. The two of them, their friendship a version of unconditional love.

I blinked and shook my head. Standing beside Rebecca and Eliza was Ginny. She was staring at me. It was clear that she had been waiting for me to notice her.

She knew.

And, I realized, I wouldn’t be able to avoid this forever.

“Want another drink?” Jamie said. “I’m empty.”

“Actually, I need to…” I glanced around the room. Ginny was now talking to someone else, laughing in a fake way, her hand lifted to her chest like a prim Victorian lady, her fingertips resting lightly above her heart.

“I forgot,” I said. “I have to run an errand. I’ll be back.”

“Now?” Jamie said. “Violet. Where are you going?”

It’s not like I was stupid. I knew I needed an insurance policy.

The week before, I visited an unassuming public library branch out in Queens, to use the free online browsing on their clunky computers. I wore a baseball hat, my hair tucked under the cap. My cover story (I was in med school, and my laptop was broken, and I was writing a paper about heart arrhythmias—specifically, the chemical triggers of ventricular fibrillation) wasn’t necessary. The library, with its dusty afternoon light, was a place of purposeful anonymity.

When the police were investigating Stella’s disappearance, they found the drugs she brought to Maine. But they never found her stash in New York, beneath the loose floorboard in the back of the coat closet. That night, I left most of it where it was. I only needed a tiny amount, the plastic bag practically weightless in my pocket. The human heart is a delicate thing.

When I returned an hour later, the party was dying down. Half the crowd had left, responsibly avoiding hangovers, and the half that remained was drunk. Jamie was one of the responsible ones.

The room emptied as the clock neared midnight. Rebecca left, and then so did Eliza. There were a few diehards in the corner, clutching beer bottles in one hand while steadily attacking the remaining birthday cake with the other, gossiping at a careless volume, their eyes too glazed with booze and sugar to notice me at my computer.

Then Ginny appeared beside my desk. “You’re still here,” she said.

“It seemed like you had something you wanted to talk about,” I said.

“I think this conversation requires a drink,” she said.

At the bar, she poured two Scotches. “It’s time to go home,” Ginny said sternly to the drunken cake-eaters, who scurried away in shame, leaving us the only people in the newsroom.

Ginny led me into the spare office. She sat behind the desk, and I took the guest chair. “I was in Sag Harbor this afternoon,” she said. “Kyle, that was his name. Detective Fazio was so quick to dismiss him, but I wasn’t so sure. It bothered me.

“And then,” she said, swirling her Scotch, releasing the peaty aroma. “After the police found the boat, I thought to myself: something doesn’t add up.”

She took a slow sip of her drink. “You’re very quiet,” she said.

“I’ll let you finish,” I said.

Ginny’s upper lip curled. “People are impressionable, especially in the face of power. You know what it means to lead the witness? That is exactly what Fazio did. He showed a picture of Stella to Kyle, and he said, could this be her?

“But what he should have done,” Ginny said, “and what I did today, is say to Kyle, describe her for me. Forget about the pictures you’ve seen. Close your eyes and tell me exactly what this person looked like—this person who you remember as Stella Bradley.”

Ginny smiled. “Well, Violet, this man has quite a remarkable memory. Dirty-blond hair, parted on the left. About five foot seven. Brown eyes. Bitten-down fingernails. And a scar, just above the right eyebrow.”

She touched her forehead, mirroring the location of my scar. It was small, but clear enough if you were looking for it.

“He told me about the first time you met,” Ginny said. “Thanksgiving, several years ago. You told him your name was Stella Bradley. You told him about your family. He remembered everything about your little… encounter. With affection, in fact. Which is why he was so upset to hear you’d been lying to him.”

“It was an old game we used to play,” I said. “Stella and I switched names all the time. Haven’t you ever given a fake name to a man hitting on you?”

“Then why not clear up this simple confusion? Why not explain to Fazio that the bartender, in fact, spotted you that night?” Ginny paused, noting my silence. “Because it’s not simple confusion, is it?”

“Maybe it’s embarrassment.” I met her gaze, level and straight. “That’s all.”

“I doubt that.” She arched an eyebrow. “From what I can tell, you lack the gene for shame.”

“Ginny, honestly, I don’t understand where this is coming from.”

“Stella has been driving that boat since she was eight years old. Her grandmother started drilling her in swimming even before that. She practically grew up on the ocean. She knows what she’s doing. So what happened? She simply fell off the boat? She drowned, as the police seem to believe so fervently?” Ginny laughed harshly. “I don’t buy that for a second.”

“You seem very confident,” I said. “But what if Stella had been drinking?”

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“Well, I was there. And I can tell you, Stella had been drinking plenty that weekend.”

I set my glass of Scotch down, leaned back into the chair, recrossed my legs. Ginny’s confident expression slackened. She looked, for the first time, vaguely apprehensive. She didn’t know where this was going.

“I saw those pictures in your office,” I said. “You loved Stella. You never had a family, but she was the closest thing you had to a daughter, wasn’t she?”

Ginny twitched, but stayed quiet.

“It’s so sad,” I said. “It happened with Anne and Thomas and Oliver. And now it’s happening to you, too. The grief is driving you crazy. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”