Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(50)

“Ms. Dryden,” I say, my voice a little louder. “We’d really like to hear your side of the story. People are saying some pretty awful things and we’d really like to give you a chance to…” TMZ and the rest come galloping out of the elevator, pushing up behind us.

“Did you get her?” says the girl from The Insider. She’s dressed for a stand-up: lipstick and foundation, no hat. I try to ignore her and knock again, more softly. “Ms. Dryden, could you just tell us if Frank is planning to come home?”

I hear a lock turn—everyone does—and like dogs sensing a squirrel, we all point our noses and notebooks and camera lenses toward 3E. But the door stays closed. And behind it, a woman’s voice.

“Please,” she says softly. “Can’t you please just leave me alone?”

“What’s she saying!” yells the kid from TMZ.

“Shut the f*ck up, *!” shouts Bill, but he doesn’t move from his pose, so he not only practically shatters my eardrum, but spits in my hair, too.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Dryden,” I say again, putting my hand on the door. I look at Maya and she nods. Keep going. “Are you planning to take Frank back?”

“Please, can’t you just go?”

“I’m really sorry, but none of our bosses will let us leave until we talk to you. It won’t be long, we just want to know if Frank is coming home. If you could just open the door for a minute…”

“Missy!” shouts TMZ. “Have you seen the photos? Ask her if she’s gonna do another soft core.”

Bill whips around to yell at TMZ, but he moves so fast, he forgets to lower his lens and smacks the chick from The Insider right in the face.

“Oooooh!” yells TMZ, sounding like a middle school boy witnessing a playground dis. “You okay, Chrissy?”

Chrissy is not okay. Chrissy is bleeding. She’s got her pretty leather glove pressed to her mouth. Bill’s kneeling, tending to his lens, which appears intact. He looks up at TMZ and hisses, “If you f*cked up my lens, I’m gonna f*cking kill you, motherf*cker.”

TMZ puts his hands up, like in surrender. “Tell your f*cking reporter to tell porn mom if she don’t come out, we’re gonna be on her and her kids and her f*cking whatever all day every day until she jumps out the window.”

“Hey!” I say. I look at Chrissy and I look at 3E and I’m not sure which to attend to. Chrissy’s lip is split. She’s done for the day—you can see it in the tired, blank sheen that’s fallen over her eyes. I’m done, too.





CHAPTER TEN


Sara Wyman arrives at the Starbucks a few minutes late. She has the rumpled, distracted look of a librarian, with ruby red–rimmed eyeglasses and half-gray hair cut in a shapeless bob.

“I saw the article about the gardener,” she says after we sit down. Up close, her face is much softer than it seemed at the funeral. She’s probably forty-five, and has very few wrinkles. “Not much real information there.”

Touché.

“Yeah,” I say, pulling out my notebook and pen. I’m going to get this right. “I’m hoping to round that out. Fill it in, rather. I spoke with a young woman she used to babysit. And her sister-in-law.”

“Miriam,” says Sara. “You mentioned that.”

“You said you knew her, too?”

Sara nods. “First,” she says, “I need to set some ground rules. I will tell you what I know, but my words do not appear in the newspaper unless I approve the language.”

Letting sources approve their quotes is frowned upon. But I’m not really in a position to be picky. At least I can use her name.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“Rivka began coming to my gatherings about a year ago. I host a weekly group at an apartment near the United Nations. We have an open door policy. People hear of us through friends. Those who come are unhappy in their Orthodox identity somehow. They come to have a supportive, positive place to think and question. To sort things out with the help of others.”

“Do you know why Rivka started coming?”

“She had just lost a child,” says Sara.

“Yes,” I say. “Someone else mentioned that. A miscarriage?”

“No. The baby was nearly eight months old. A little girl named Shoshanna. She was devastated. Rivka said it was asthma. The little girl had a breathing attack. She was devastated, and I think it changed her.”

“How did she change, do you think?”

Sara sighs. “I didn’t know her before, but she was angry. And she talked about feeling that she had just woken up to the anger. At the group meetings, she kept things close to her chest, but when we met separately she was less circumspect. You said you’d met Miriam?”

“Yes.”

“Rivka spoke often of Miriam. You know she’d been away for many years.”

“Away?”

“Yes. Miriam had problems. Mental health issues, we call them now. Rivka said that starting around age eleven she just couldn’t act like everyone else. She wouldn’t always wash herself, things like that. Seemingly purposeless defiance. And she had rages. Rivka said she gave herself a concussion banging her head against the kitchen wall when she was barely thirteen. Rivka and Miriam had been friends since they were very young, and Rivka went to live with the family after her mother died and her father was unable to care for her.”