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Sadie’s mouth dropped open. It felt like Gillian had kicked her. Whowasthis person? How on earth was she part of Sadie’s life?
Something inside her snapped. Her hands shot out. She pushedGillian hard, square at her chest. Gillian’s face registered surprise. Her feet went out from under her, and her arms wheeled. She was over that pathetic little railing instantly. There was nothing she’d be able to grab on to—the rocks were so slippery in the rain, and the branches were mere twigs. As Gillian fell, Sadie screamed out her name and tried to grab her. But her fingers caught air. Gillian didn’t answer.
Sadie stood there a long time, her hand clapped over her mouth. Then, with a groan, she turned to the right and puked all over the trail. It was like her stomach wouldn’t stop emptying. She gagged and coughed and then sobbed for a good few minutes, so hard that her mouth tasted like salt. “Fuck,” she groaned, hugging herself. “Oh fuck, ohfuck.”
Then she turned to Lenna. The woman lay on the path, unconscious. Sadie considered dragging her to the house, but Lenna would ask questions when she awoke. Lenna would turn onher,maybe. It might be better to get out of here. She didn’t know what Lenna had seen, but maybe, when she woke up, she wouldn’t remember.
With shaking fingers, Sadie leaned down and took Lenna’s pulse. It was steady and strong. The rain was cold and dreary, but the air temperature was around sixty if not warmer. It was unlikely the woman would suffer hypothermia. She’d wake up soon enough.
Did she feel bad, leaving her there? She felt terrible. But at that moment, she was only looking to save herself. Her future baby. The only thing, she realized even more that day, that she really wanted.
She had to stay calm. She had to think this through. She channeled her most worried, distraught self when making the callto the police that Gillian was missing. She wanted to do itimmediately,but she knew that would look strange and telling. So she waited until that evening—even went to work. She couldn’t remember a single patient she saw or a single thing she said. All she could think of was Gillian’s startled, angry face as she fell.
The cops asked Sadie all kinds of questions: when she’d last seen her friend (before running); if Gillian seemed upset (maybe a little distracted); if they’d been having issues (not particularly); if she knew anyone Gillian was arguing with (nope); if she was in trouble at work. Where she was workingin general.
Where do I start?Sadie thought miserably. But maybe it was better to keep quiet about what she’d discovered about all the things Gillian was making up. Better to play the clueless friend who had no idea about anything Gillian was up to. As for Gillian’s phone, she reported that Gillian was using cheapo temporary phones because she was sure she’d lost her expensive device somewhere in the house and was too stubborn to buy a replacement—she had no idea what the phone number was, because it always came up unlisted. The strangeness of Gillian never having a permanent phone had occurred to her before, but she’d thought it was maybe a money issue, Gillian finding it too overwhelming to budget for a regular monthly plan. But maybe she’d underestimated Gillian. The burner phones helped perpetuate her lies. Burners were harder to trace.
Then she told the cops what Gillian had told her about her job atWellness.Let the cops unwind the lie for themselves. They’d come back to Sadie, surely, asking if she’d had an inkling, and Sadie would say, sure, she’d gone to Gillian’s building the day before and they didn’t have her listed in the system, but she thought it was a mistake, and then they’d chalk it up to an accident. Hopefully.
The story made the news. Thankfully, Sadie’s name did not—only Gillian’s. Sadie expected people to flock to LA for search parties. Gillian’s family, certainly. Old friends. And yet no one showedup. Sadie didn’t even know how to reach her family. They weren’t online friends—Sadie wasn’t online much to begin with, having removed a lot of her profiles after the assault. When she googled Gillian, she couldn’t find a Facebook account. She rifled through Gillian’s desk for an address book, a letter from her mom, a postcard from an old friend. There was nothing. She thought of the online social anxiety community Gillian mentioned. If only she’d sent a request to join the group like she said she would. At the time, she’d been sort of resentful of Gillian’s neediness and didn’t want to, but now it might give her a clue about who Gillian was close to and what went on in her head.
The cops went toWellness,and theWellnessstaff reported that Gillian had never worked there. As her picture was passed around, people started to say that yeah, they recognized her—lurking outside, sometimes even in the lobby. Proprietors reported seeing Gillian at lunch spots, things like that. As for other employers in the area, no one came forward to say Gillian was working for them, either. In fact, no one really seemed to know her or have any idea what she was up toinsteadof working.
Sadie was careful not to tell the cops about Lenna—for they would go to Lenna and ask her questions, and Lenna would point them right back to Sadie.
WherewasLenna, though? Why wasn’t she coming forward, telling her side of the story?
The cops asked Sadie if she could verify where she was the day Gillian disappeared. Sadie blurted out something about seeing Mrs. Rosen early that morning, the only time there was an actual hole in her alibi—the rest of the day, she reallywaswith patients. “She likes to meet early,” she said, even though this wasn’t necessarily true.
“Mrs. Rosen,” the cop said, writing down her name. His name tag readDIAZ.
Diaz asked for Mrs. Rosen’s phone number. “Just trying to be thorough. We’re going to talk to the neighbors, too. See if they saw anything.”
Sadie recited Mrs. Rosen’s number only because she had to. She barely held it together until the cops left. Once the door closed, she slid down the wall and started to weep. What the fuck was she going to do?
Maybe she needed to talk to Lenna. Figure out what she knew. Maybe she could convince her not to say anything. They were both there. They were both guilty of…something, anyway. Maybe they could keep quiet together?
Not that she had any idea where Lenna lived. Calling the office building and asking might be suspicious. Even if she had Gillian’s phone—which she didn’t, as it had probably gone into the canyon with her—she wouldn’t be able to get into her contacts. Instead, she turned on Gillian’s laptop. It was an old model, so it didn’t have a password to log in. The email program did, though. Gillian’s password wasn’t saved. Sadie clicked on the Google Chrome app, thinking that the pages Gillian had been looking at before shutting down the program might reload. But they didn’t. Nor did she save cookies or browsing history.
Then her gaze drifted to a file off to the left.Lenna invoice,it read. She clicked it, and lo and behold, it was an invoice for a payment Lenna was requesting through Wellness Inc. for the first draft of a writing piece.
Sadie squinted. Was Gillian fake-assigning stories for her fake job at the magazine? In the upper right-hand corner was Lenna’s home address. She even listed her social security number. Sadie felt sort of sorry for her, as sorry as she felt for herself. Hastily, she trashed this file, too, and then emptied the recycle bin.
Lenna lived in an apartment building in Hollywood, which sounded far more fancy than it actually was. The parking lot hadbroken glass everywhere. Someone was sleeping on the front steps to the lobby. Loud television sounds echoed from the unit next to Lenna’s; two people were bickering.
She knocked on Lenna’s door. No answer. She waited, shifting her weight, her heart pounding because suddenly she had no idea what she was going to say. What if Lenna wasn’t home, but instead was at the hospital? What if Sadie had killedtwopeople?
She said, “Hello?” Still nothing. Eventually, the two people who’d been bickering next door came onto the landing; Sadie jumped when they opened their door. One of them was a woman in a pink tracksuit and giant earrings. The other was a reedy man with tattoos on his forearms. They both stared at Sadie as though she was unwelcome.
There was no way Sadie could stand there with the two of them watching her. She apologized to the woman and went back down the echoing metal stairs.
When she came back to her house, there were police cars in the driveway. Her heart leapt to her throat. Someone had seen her, then. She considered turning around, but the cops had already spied her. There was no choice but to get out of the car. She tried to smile as she walked toward two detectives, including Diaz.
“Did you find Gillian?” she asked hopefully.
“Ms. Wasserman,” Diaz said sternly, and Sadie could suddenly tell how it was going to go.
They brought her to the station for some questions. Two things had come to light: First, they’d unlocked Gillian’s Instagram page. She was active in the mental health community, the cop explained; she wrote vulnerable, diary-entry-style Instagram posts, that sort of thing. He asked if Sadie knew about this.
