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“That’s not how it works,” I say, remembering a case Scott worked on several years ago, a young man who convinced his elderly grandmother to do something similar and then sold the house out from under her to fund his drug habit. “Banks don’t care who’s on the title; they only care who’s on the loan.”
She looks grim. “I know that now. But back then? I was just a kid and my mother was in over her head.” She’s quiet for a moment and then says, “That was the hardest year of my life, living in our car with my mother. She tried to make it feel like this big adventure—‘We can go anywhere we want, on a moment’s notice’—but the reality was, we cycled through beach parking lots and the occasional shelter. In the fall of my senior year of high school, my mom got sick. Urgent care sent her to the ER and…” She trails off. “It was pretty fast after that. By Christmas, she was gone.”
All the ways I’ve pictured what could have happened to push Meg and her mother out of their home, I never imagined this. A part of me wishes I’d never asked, because it’s hard not to empathize with her. To imagine a younger Meg and her mother, sleeping in their car, knowing the man responsible for putting them there lived in their home. Still lives there to this day. I can’t pretend this is another one of her stories, because enough of the pieces fit with what I already know. “I’m so sorry,” I say.
Meg shrugs. “It was a long time ago. Time to move on, you know?”
This is a lie. This is why Meg has returned.
“How do you not want to kill him? Or make him pay somehow?” My words hang there, an invitation.
“Men and accountability,” she says. “They rarely go together.”
We travel in silence for a few blocks before she says, “What’s next for you? If not a new house, then what?”
“I’ll have to find something else to fill my days,” I say, though I’m having trouble moving past what Meg has just told me. The rage that must have consumed her for so many years, bringing us to this moment.
Meg shoots me a quick look. “A life of leisure isn’t suiting you?”
I stare out the window, trying to step back into the role I’ve cast for myself. “I guess I could pick up a few more yoga classes. Volunteer at the animal shelter.” I’m struck with the irony of two women, each of them trying to spin a web of lies and manipulation around the other, never knowing whose strings are wrapped around whom.
Meg laughs. “Just remember, work is a drag.” She hits the brakes, traffic piling up behind a broken light. I can make out the edges of the traffic cop at the center of the intersection, white gloves flashing.
I shift in my seat so I’m looking at her. “It must be fun though, having access to fancy houses and rich clients. What else are you working on? Anything interesting?”
“Ron’s taking up most of my time. He says he wants an income property, but he’s got me all over the map. Apartment buildings. Duplexes. Triplexes. But he hates them all. An investment property isn’t what he really wants.”
“And what would that be?”
“What all men like him want. Power. Status. The respect and envy of his peers. Which he won’t get from a duplex in Culver City.” Meg keeps her eyes on the car in front of us, masked behind her sunglasses, so it’s hard to read her expression. “He’s an all-cash buyer, so that keeps me hanging on. ‘Why get the banks involved,’ he says. But Ron’s no different than any of the other rich and powerful men I’ve worked with a hundred times before.” She gives a small laugh. “I know how to handle him.”
“And how’s that?” I ask. The traffic cop beckons us forward, and we ease into the intersection, the car picking up speed.
She smiles. “Tell them what they want to hear.”
***
Meg calls me after dinner. “I’ve been thinking,” she says when I answer. “I know you don’t need to work, and I know you’re weighing your options, but how would you like to be my assistant for a little while? It would probably be about twenty hours a week, searching for and previewing properties and some assorted paperwork. Everything’s online now, so you wouldn’t ever have to set foot in an Apex office. Plus, flexible hours, so we can still do yoga and brunch with Veronica on Wednesdays.”
A friend of Scott’s used to work undercover in the drug unit. Definitely better than a desk job, he used to say. He’d get up in the morning, put on a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, and head off to whatever neighborhood he was working that day. Sliding alongside junkies and drug dealers, hoping to gain their trust so that they could lead him to the person at the top.
In the past, I’ve always investigated from a distance, using my sources, the internet, and public records to piece a story together. But I’m realizing that won’t work with Meg. I don’t have any sources, and the internet is yielding only what she wants people to see. The only way to know what Meg’s up to is to step out of my comfort zone and become a part of it. “I’d love to,” I tell her.
