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Experimentally, she placed a foot on the pavement.
Someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her back. When she turned, a sandy-haired man wearing a gray suit stared at her in shock. “Whoa. You okay?”
The sharp grind of metal on metal had brought Lenna back to the present. She started to shake.
“They almost hit you,” the man said, gently touching her arm. He had kind, hazel-colored eyes. “Drivers around here are nuts.”
Lenna turned to the street. One car had T-boned the other and sent a sedan flipping across the boulevard. The sedan still lay upside down, the driver trapped inside. A few people had rushed over; someone was calling 911. Sirens rang through the air.
Lenna burst into tears.
“Shit,” the man said, his face falling. He wrapped his armaround her. “Hey. It’s okay. I know. It was awful to see that, and be so close to them hitting you…”
But that wasn’t why she was crying. The accident was just the icing on the cake. That driver, Lenna felt, had crashed because ofher.She’d seen him glance at her walking into the road. Their eyes had met; maybe he’d noticed the steely resignation in her eyes. He’d wrenched the wheel and torn across the midline of the road just to avoid her. She knew it.
She seethed with self-loathing.
“It’s okay,” the man said again. He was still hugging her. But he was a stranger. Strangers didn’t hug people like Lenna. And yet it was exactly what she needed. She sobbed into his shoulder, more vulnerable than she’d felt in forever.
Finally, the man stepped back and looked at her. “Do you need medical attention? Maybe I could buy you a coffee? Or at least drop you somewhere. My name’s Daniel, by the way. I don’t feel right leaving you like this.”
At first, she demurred on coffee. But he persisted. He got her number, saying he wanted to check up on her, make sure she was okay. He asked if she’d take a rain check and get a drink with him the next day. Lenna wasn’t sure. She didn’t deserve to date someone, especially someone who seemed kind and decent.
But Daniel pushed gently. He wanted to make sure she was all right. Lenna needed someone; she let him care for her. At first, they kept their outings strictly as friends: movies, bowling excursions, hikes. Daniel planned it all. He picked her up in his sporty little BMW, which he’d bought with his tech salary. He was an adult with a job, not a weirdo who’d been fucked up by two friends and now had a murder on her conscience. He had a condo south of the city in Orange County, far enough away that it felt like another planet. Lenna liked going there. She didn’t recognize a soul, and no one recognized her. She felt safe. When the lease on her apartmentran out and she had no money to pay the next month’s rent, Daniel said she could stay with him officially. “As friends!” he said quickly.
When Lenna moved in, Daniel showed her the spare room he’d gotten ready for her. The bed was covered in a new weighted blanket—he’d bought it for her because she’d said she’d thought about getting one for her anxiety but hadn’t been able to justify spending that much money. “It’s yours, really,” he said gently. “You can keep it.”
It broke her. Lenna turned to him, unbelievably touched and sad and grateful, and kissed him, and of course he kissed her back.
It felt too easy after that. There was a part of her that figured that Daniel would eventually realize Lenna was deeply messed up. But amazingly, Daniel seemed to see something in her that she certainly didn’t. And unlike with Rhiannon, Lenna hadn’t felt like she had to be the best version of herself at all times. Nor did she ever feel like she had to walk on eggshells, as she did with Gillian. It was just…uncomplicated.He showed up to their apartment with dinners. He bought her thoughtful gifts. He read the piece about the Pilates studio that had published just as the whole Gillian mess was going down and said it was great. He even got her a gig freelance copy editing for his friend’s tech magazine, which at least brought her a little money. The work was boring, but she needed boring. And it had nothing to do with celebrity gossip or anyone who worked in that world, and that was even better.
The first time she was alone in Daniel’s condo, she ransacked the place, looking for a red flag. A weird fetish. Bodies in a closet. A wife and a family. His niceness made her put her guard up. Rhiannon and Gillian had been nice, too—and look how that had turned out.
But Daniel’s house held no mysteries. He didn’t have a manipulative bone in his body. He was steady, dorky, lovable, dependable. He didn’t have the radiance that Rhiannon had, or the incessantlove-bombing tendencies that Gillian did, but maybe that was okay. This was what she needed. Something less intense. Something that wouldn’t drain her.
She tried to forget what happened. During the day, she was okay. But lying next to Daniel at night—because, at that point, she was in his bed, not the spare room—all she saw when she closed her eyes was Gillian’s twisted mouth and terrified eyes as Lenna pushed her sideways. She was plagued with dreams of deep, deep holes in the ocean. She was a diver, finning toward them, her breaths loud inside her helmet. The flashlight she held bounced on something solid and pale. She drew back, realizing it was Gillian’s skinny arm. A lock of her frizzy-wavy hair drifted past.
Eventually, Gillian’s case dried up. Sadie was no longer a person of interest, though Lenna didn’t know the particulars, only that there were no charges filed. The very last story she read was something about how a body that might be hers had been pulled from the Runyon Canyon ravine. It was badly decomposed from the elements, and it had been found a ways from the running trail, but itmightbe a match to Gillian. That was all the story said. Nothing about a cause of death or previous assault. No reports on a cell phone that had also been found at the bottom of the ravine that matched the number for Lenna’s, arealemployee in theCity Gossipbuilding. No speculation had been made on why Gillian was faking her employment, either—Lenna would love to knowthatmost of all. Ironic: It would actually be a great article, a twisted tale gone wrong. Lenna could probably pitch it toVanity Fair.But instead, she made herself actively stop thinking about it altogether. She had to. It was swallowing her.
Except for this: A few months into their relationship, Lenna and Daniel had dinner with some of Daniel’s friends from high school. One of them was a park ranger in the city; the topic of Runyon Canyon came up, and Lenna went cold. The ranger saidpeople dropped so many things down its depths. “We’ve found all kinds of weird shit down there, stuff people don’t want to find,” Daniel’s friend said. “Money. Jewelry. Teeth. Dildos.”
“Cell phones?” Lenna blurted.
The guy didn’t even blink. “Tons. But they’re all smashed to pieces.”
It hit a sad place, dark and deep. Lenna pictured all her texts with Rhiannon—the funny ones, the vague ones, the stressed ones, and even Gillian’s fake one—smashed and ruined in that canyon somewhere. Gone for good. As hard as she tried not to think of Rhiannon, she thought of her all the time. Where she was. Why she’d floated back to Lenna in the night. How crushed she must have felt when she learned Lenna had been the one who got her fired. Rhiannon was gone for good. She’d never returned Lenna’s text stating her new number. That was okay, though. It had to be. Lenna took solace in the fact that the story had vanished. She’d gotten away with it. No one knew.
Except maybe someone did.
15
Lenna
October
Present day
Upon hearing Sarah’s voice, Lenna snatches Jacob back from Marjorie, mumbling an excuse that she needs to nurse. Then she’s in her room, haphazardly throwing items into the suitcase. Jacob lies on a play mat on the floor. Several soft items dangle above him, and he swats at them, trying to roll over. His sweet oblivion and cheerful mood are a relief.
