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Kat
October
Give me back my notes. My first text to Scott since I kicked him out, and he’s quick to reply.
Meet with me.
If it’s the phone you want, I don’t have it anymore, I text back. I already gave it to the police when I filed a police report against you.
I’d gone to the police station and stood at the Formica counter, giving the detective details that seemed to bore her, until I got to Scott’s name.
She looked up sharply. “Detective Scott Griffin?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “I’ve got credit card statements and the phone he used to open it.”
When she opened the evidence bag and asked me to drop the phone in, I hesitated. “I think I’d prefer to hang on to that, if it’s okay with you. I can let the detectives see it whenever they need to.”
She’d looked at me over her black-framed readers and said, “That’s not how it works.”
Scott texts back. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Please get the help you need, I respond.
***
As far as I know, Scott’s still working. My report is most likely either last in a very long line of fraud cases or slowed down by Scott. I’ve got an appeal with Citibank, though they’ve told me that without the police confirming it was fraudulent, I’ll have a hard time getting the debt forgiven because some of the charges—for food, and once, for our rent back in June—implicate me. No one seems to care whether I opened the account or not.
Accept the things you cannot change.A line from Scott’s twelve-step recovery pops into my mind. “What a crock,” I say aloud into the empty room.
I stare at my silent phone, then open up my text thread with Meg. My last message to her sits there, unanswered, and I worry that she’s already gone. That she’s disconnected her phone and quietly left town, feeding a story to Veronica to keep her from wondering about her abrupt departure. If the Canyon Drive escrow is closed, there’d be no reason for her to stick around.
My finger hovers over the call button. I have to know.
The phone rings, and I brace myself for an automated message informing me the number is no longer in service. Or a full voicemail box.
Instead, she answers.
“It was Scott,” I tell her.
She’s quiet for a moment, and I think about a conversation I had with her, back when she was showing me houses. Men will always show you who they are. Scott worked hard to distract me with things that weren’t true, forcing me to question my own instincts, telling me I couldn’t trust what I was seeing with my own eyes. He chipped away at my confidence, convincing me up was down, good was bad. Meg had been the one who’d tried to keep me facing forward, to help me see who Scott was, and in doing so, who she was as well.
“I’m sorry,” she finally says.
“I should have listened.”
“If you’d done something the moment you saw the missing bank statement, would it have made a difference with the credit card?”
I think back to what Citibank told me, about when the card had been opened. “No,” I tell her. “Maybe a few thousand dollars less, but not enough to change anything.” I exhale slowly. “I can’t stop thinking about the betrayal. The sense of powerlessness…it keeps me up at night, running through all the things I chose to ignore.”
Her voice is quiet. “It’s not your fault Scott’s a shitty person.”
“He’s going to get away with it.”
“Probably,” she says. “In my experience, men like Scott usually do.”
I think about how long she’s had to wait to hold Ron accountable. “Did you close on Ron’s house?”
“We did,” she says.
