The Lies I Tell(45)

But I don’t see any. He pauses the game, his expression serious. “Have you considered the possibility that your con artist friend followed you home? Feeding her a bullshit story about an inheritance from Aunt Calista might have been a mistake.”

“Why would she risk being caught?” I ask.

He sighs. “Mail fraud is some of the easiest to perpetrate. You can get all kinds of information with the right piece of mail. A bank statement would be like gold to someone like Meg.” He glances toward the front of our building, with its drafty vestibule and broken outer door latch. “It’s not like our lobby is exactly secure,” he adds.

I sit down hard on the couch, thinking back to what I’d said the day I told her I wasn’t going to buy a house after all. A throwaway comment now comes back to haunt me: I like seeing that huge number on my bank statement every month. An invitation to come and take a look.

My heart begins to race at the chaos a compromised bank account would create in my life. In Scott’s. Neither of us have much—Meg would surely be disappointed by what she’d find there. And then a new worry comes crashing in.

“If she stole them, not only would she realize there’s no inheritance, she’d see that the name on my account doesn’t match the one I gave her. All she’d have to do is Google me to figure out who I am and what I do. All that work I put into building a relationship with her, gone. Along with the story.”

“If she knows who you are, you’ve got bigger problems than losing the story,” Scott says. “You’re actively trying to expose her. A con artist isn’t going to just let you walk away. She’s going to want to make you pay.”

For the first time, I consider the possibility I might be in over my head.





Kat


July

I’m finishing up a paid copyediting job that’s due this afternoon, my mind foggy with exhaustion. I’d woken up at two in the morning with a night terror—heart racing, drenched in sweat—and hadn’t been able to fall back asleep again.

“You okay?” Scott mumbled.

“Bad dream.”

“It’s this story,” he’d said. “It’s putting you around all of the same people again, and your body is reacting. It remembers.”

“Maybe,” I’d whispered. In my dream, I’d been in a car with Ron and Meg, and they’d taken turns trying to get me to drink from a flask. “Go back to sleep.”

But I’d remained awake, catching up on paid work I’d let slide, only taking a break to drink the cup of coffee Scott had poured for me before he left for work.

When Jenna, my best friend from journalism school, calls at ten, I’m grateful for the break.

“Hey,” I say.

“Is now a good time? I’ve got a window before I have an editorial meeting.”

It’s been a year since Jenna moved to New York to take a staff position at the New York Times. After she left, I dropped away from our small circle of grad school friends who’d settled out here. It’s hard to be happy about someone’s piece in the Atlantic, or their byline in the Times, when I’m still struggling at the bottom. My mother is always on me about networking. Meeting people. You can’t hide inside the cocoon of your relationship with Scott or rely on Jenna’s contacts forever.

“That story you did on corruption inside the SDNY was great,” I tell her now.

“Thanks. It almost didn’t run. Long story. But tell me what’s going on with you. What are you working on?”

“Meg’s back,” I say.

I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Really? Tell me everything.”

I fill her in, telling her about the Google Alert and tracking Meg down at one of Ron Ashton’s fundraisers, then posing as a potential buyer and befriending her. “She’s hired me as an assistant,” I say.

“How’s that going?”

“Depends on who you ask,” I tell her. Then I explain about the missing bank statements. “Scott thinks it’s possible she knows who I am and that now she might be targeting me.”

“Seems pretty risky for her if she is,” Jenna says.

“That’s what I think. Plus, in the two weeks since they’ve gone missing, nothing’s different. We spend at least four hours together every day, and I don’t see any change in her behavior or attitude toward me. I don’t care how good she is at what she does, no one’s that good.”

“Where do you think the statements went?” Jenna asks.

“Maybe they just got lost in the mail,” I offer. Though even as I say the words, they don’t ring true. That it’s possible the woman who didn’t think twice about encouraging a young female reporter to meet with Nate might easily be the kind of opportunist Scott thinks she is.

“So, after all these years of wondering, what’s she like?”

I think about how to answer. The careful dance we’re both doing—each of us lying about who we are and what we want, always one careless comment away from the edge. Then I think of Meg’s sharp humor. The vulnerability she’s shown.

“If I didn’t know who she was and what she did, I’d probably be her friend.”

“I think Scott’s right to be concerned,” Jenna says. “Whether she knows who you are or not, you need to be careful.”