The Ones We Trust

“Not until you answer me, Abigail. Yes, but what?”

I hung up on her then, and she never badgered me about it again—a decided lack of interest that’s very un-Mandy-like. I suspect she heard those words, too. The loud and insistent ones I didn’t know how to smother, the ones telling me that while I might have done everything right with Maria, with Chelsea I did everything wrong.

“Earth to Abby,” she says now, waving a hand in front of my face.

I shake off the memory with a full-body shudder. “Sorry. What?”

“I said just think about it, okay? This job’s a great way to ease back into writing, and I really could use the help. The last copywriter I hired was a total dud. He missed every single deadline.”

“Great. So now I’m your last resort?”

She gives me a teasing half smile over her Starbucks cup. “You know what I mean.”

I nod because I do know what she means, even though my answer is still no. “No offense, but if I ever write again, it will not be for an app. It will be because I can’t keep the words inside. Because the story demands to be told. As awesome as tropical beaches are, I don’t think they qualify.”

But instead of being disappointed as I figured she’d be, she looks as if she wants to stand up and applaud. “Look at you, having a breakthrough.”

I snort. “Hardly. I didn’t say I was going to write. Only that I’m self-aware enough to know it has to be for the right topic. And honestly? I can’t imagine what that topic would be.”

“Maybe BenBird21225 can help you.”

For a moment, I’m confused. How does Mandy know about BenBird21225, the faceless handle who’s been badgering me by email and text for weeks now, his messages increasing in frequency and urgency. I have no idea who he is, why he’s contacting me, how he got my phone number, because the only thing he ever actually says in any of them is that he wants to talk to me.

She points to my phone. “He’s texted you ten times in as many minutes. Who is he?”

I pick up my phone and scroll through at least a dozen shouty texts. Ben wants a MEETING. He has something VERY IMPORTANT to say that must be said IN PERSON. Once upon a time, I would have followed this lead. I would have written back to Ben—asking for more details, setting up a time to talk, feeling him out as a potential source—instead of writing him off as I do now.

I delete them all, every single one, and toss my phone back onto the table.

“He’s nobody.”

4 (#ulink_3baa5136-4e8e-5001-9260-7d9755ed787f)

When the doorbell rings in the middle of the day, nine times out of ten it heralds the arrival of the UPS man or a band of Jehovah’s Witnesses on a mission to save my soul. Today, like pretty much any other day, I ignore it. I’m not exactly in a position to go to the door anyway, my body wedged uncomfortably under the bathroom sink, both hands prying loose a particularly stubborn drain nut. This happens to be a crucial moment, one the internet tells me is best handled equipped with a bucket, a mop and an endless supply of rags.

But when the doorbell rings again, and then again and again and again, I retighten the nut, wriggle myself out, dust myself off and head down the stairs.

The person on the other side of the door is a kid, twelve or thirteen maybe, with long shaggy hair that falls in a honey-colored veil over eyes I can’t quite see. He’s prepubescent skinny, his beanpole limbs sticking out of baggy shorts and a faded Angry Birds T-shirt, his bony ankles tapering off into orange Nike sneakers. White earbuds dangle from his shoulders, the long cord trailing down his torso and disappearing into his pants pocket. He shifts from foot to foot in what I read as either a bout of sudden impatience or the sullen annoyance typical of kids his age, almost-teens with a laundry list of things to prove to the world.

“Can I help you?” I say, glancing beyond him to the street for an idling car. No bike or skateboard, either, and I wonder if he’s one of the neighborhood kids. Once they hit middle school, they shoot up so quickly I stop recognizing them.

“I’m Ben,” he says, and when my brow doesn’t clear in recognition, he adds, “The dude who sent all those emails?”

“Ben. As in BenBird21225?”

“Yeah. How come you never emailed me back?”

There are a million reasons I haven’t emailed him back, none of which I’m willing to go into with a twelve-year-old kid. I settle on the one I think would be easiest for him to comprehend. “Because I didn’t feel like it.”

He makes a face as if I just offered him raw broccoli. “I thought you were a journalist. Aren’t you supposed to, like, follow every lead or something?”

“I’m not a journalist. I’m a content curator.”

“Huh?”

“I mine the internet for content relevant for today’s active seniors.” It’s my elevator pitch, and I typically pull it out only when I want the person across from me to stop talking. It almost always works or, at the very least, results in slack jaws and glazed eyes and a very swift change of subject.

But Ben here doesn’t take the bait. “Like, Viagra and adult diapers?”

“No,” I say a bit defensively, even though Ben’s right. Viagra and adult diapers are relevant to pretty much every senior, even if it’s only just to brag about how their still youthful, virile body doesn’t yet need them. “Do you need a ride? Or for me to call your mom to come get you?”

“I’d love for you to be able to do that, but my mom is dead.” He runs his fingers through his messy bangs, pulling them off his face, and recognition surges. I know those gray-blue eyes. I’ve seen them before. I know the gist of his next words before they come out of his mouth. “She hung herself in the shower.”

From the start, I knew this day would come, though I always thought it would be Chelsea’s husband or one of her three sisters who showed up on my front porch, not her son. After all, journalists are threatened all the time by the people they expose. I’ve been bullied, intimidated and terrorized. I’ve gotten death threats on my car and answering machine, found knives stuck in my tires or front door, and once, a decapitated rat in my mailbox.

I get it, too. I understand why. It’s not a pleasant thing to have your dirty laundry aired for all to see. Chelsea never asked for that crew camped out on her front lawn, for the camera-wielding reporters that followed her around like a pack of hyenas, for the humiliation and discomfort that came with having her transgression plastered across every American newspaper, television and computer screen—and neither did her family.

And once your secret is out there, there’s no taking it back, ever. It’s so much easier to blame the reporter who broke the story than it is to admit your wife or mother or sister molested one of her employees.

But Ben here doesn’t look the least bit vengeful. He slips his hands in his pockets and waits, watching me from under his bangs with an intent expression.

“Look,” I say, my voice coming across surprisingly strong and even, “I don’t know why you’re here or what you want from me—”

“Because you haven’t read any of my emails,” he interrupts. “If you had, you’d know that Maria Duncan is driving around Baltimore in a brand-new BMW convertible. She lives in a condo in some downtown high-rise, the kind with a doorman and a pool on the roof, and she carries a different designer handbag every day of the week. She also has the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen. They’re fucking ginormous.”

“You shouldn’t say the F-word.”

The kid rolls his eyes, and honestly, who can blame him? His mother preached loudly and to anyone who would listen about God’s message of one man and one woman, and then she molested her female secretary. What’s a little curse word compared to his mother’s front-page hypocrisy?

“That’s it?” he says. “That’s your answer, is don’t say ‘fuck’?”

I shrug. “Maybe Maria has a rich girlfriend.”

“She has boyfriends. Boys. A billion of them. And none of them last for longer than a couple of pictures on Facebook and Instagram.”

“So she went through a phase with your mother. So she experimented for a bit. Lots of girls do.”

“You don’t think it’s weird that she’s suddenly so rich?”

“Maybe. But there are plenty of ways to get rich quick. Just because she’s found one doesn’t mean the money is connected in any way to what happened between her and your mom.”

“Okay, then.” He slips the iPhone from his pocket, fiddles with the screen for a few seconds, then flips it around so I can see. “How do you explain this?”

It takes a beat or two for the film to load, and then it’s Maria, all right. I recognize her sharp cheekbones and delicate ears, her ruffled pixie cut, her thin, suntanned frame in a skimpy red bra and nothing else. And Ben was right about the boobs. They are inflated to ridiculous, porn-freak proportions, swaying up and down, up and down to the rhythm of the man riding her from behind.

“Should you be watching this?” I say. Even with the blurring and voice distortion, this video is pornographic, and far too hard-core for a twelve-year-old.

My question earns me another mouth twist. “Please. Nothing can shock me these days.”