The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(40)

When the doorman calls up to tell her she has a visitor, Jaycee has just thrown on a pair of yoga pants, a tank top, and of course her blond wig. She doesn’t wear it around the apartment when she’s home alone, but Beatrice, her cleaning lady, comes on Saturday mornings.

Usually not until later, though. Jaycee was about to sit down with her first cup of coffee and her laptop to enjoy a few moments’ peace.

“Who is it?” she asks Mike, the doorman.

“It’s Mr. Wallace.”

Cory. Of course. Always Cory.

She tells the doorman to let him up, then opens the laptop to quickly see if there were any overnight developments on Meredith’s murder.

Nothing, other than a death notice in a small suburban Ohio newspaper, with mention of today’s memorial service.

By now Jaycee knows that the others are either in Cincinnati or on their way: Landry, Elena, and A-Okay.

She got Landry’s e-mail with all the arrangements—I’m cc’ing you just in case you can join us last minute, Jaycee!—and knows they’re staying in a hotel out where Meredith lives.

Lived.

There’s a knock on the apartment door. Jaycee quickly deletes the browser history, closes the laptop, and goes to answer.

Cory is standing there.

“What’s going on?” she asks, stepping aside for the one person in this world who always knows exactly where to find her, even when she’s hiding.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be up.”

“So you came anyway? Were you going to wake me up?”

“Absolutely.”

He’s clean-shaven, wearing jeans and a polo shirt beneath a rain jacket, his reddish hair spiking up over his forehead to make him look like a boy rather than a grown man. On a good day, he reminds her of Kevin Bacon—young Kevin Bacon, from the Footloose days—and she adores him. On a bad day . . .

On a bad day, she doesn’t want to deal with him, period. Because she only wants to be left alone.

But most of the time Cory refuses to allow that. And once in a while she winds up grateful for his persistent presence in her solitary life.

“It’s a crappy day out there,” he announces. “Humid as hell, and it’s supposed to rain.”

Yeah, well, it’s a crappy day in here, too—this being the anniversary and all. That fact won’t have escaped Cory, she knows.

“Thanks for the weather report,” she tells him. “Is that why you’re here? Because I usually just check Accuweather online if I want—”

“I brought you a newspaper,” he says, thrusting it at her, along with a white paper bag, “and a bagel.”

“Thank you.” She opens the bag, peers inside to see that it’s sesame, toasted, plain, cut into four pieces. Just the way she likes it. “I’d say come in . . . but oh, look, you’re already in. As usual.”

“Love you, too,” he says easily on his way to the kitchen.

She closes the door behind him, locks it, and follows him.

He helps himself to a cup of coffee from the pot she just brewed. “Did you use the Costa Rican beans Adam gave you the other day?”

Adam is Cory’s longtime boyfriend. A travel agent, he’s always jetting off to exotic places and bringing back gifts for his friends. Jaycee is touched that he considers her one of them—even now, after all these years, after . . . everything.

She wonders, sometimes, whether he knows . . . everything. But the past never comes up. Nor does the future. Usually, they just talk about his travels, and food, books, films . . .

Things normal people discuss.

Right. Because you like to pretend you’re a normal person. It’s a nice . . . escape.

“I haven’t used the Costa Rican beans yet,” she tells Cory. “This time, I used good old American beans I bought myself.”

“Where, at Starbucks?”

“How did you guess?”

“You’re a fan.” He makes a face. “And it’s so . . .”

“Ubiquitous?” she supplies. They’ve had this conversation before. Ad nauseam.

“Exactly.”

“Some of us appreciate that.”

“Some of us don’t.” He opens the fridge to look for milk.

“So tell me . . . what’s the point of this visit?”

“Open the paper,” he says without turning around. “Page eight.”

Uh-oh.

I should have known.

She puts the paper down on the counter.

Opens it to page eight.

Scans the page, then looks up at him, shaking her head. “I thought you said we were going to get past this. It’s been—”

“I know how long it’s been. What you need to do is—”

“I know what I need to do, Cory,” she says grimly. “I’ve been trying to do it. It’s impossible, okay?”

“Nothing is impossible.”

He’s wrong about that.

If only she could go back in time and erase not just the past seven years, but the past twenty—pick up where she left off in that dreaded, dismal little town she left behind years ago . . .

It would be easy, then, to change the course of her life, become someone else.

Someone whose name had never been heard beyond a five-mile perimeter; someone no one imagined was capable of becoming a success, or making a fortune, or . . .