The Lies I Tell(82)

“I can’t imagine his base is very happy about it,” his female co-anchor responds. “What do you make of the statement Mr. Ashton made? Any information on the family he’s referring to? Has anyone come forward?”

“Nothing as of yet. Mr. Ashton’s campaign has declined to comment, and Mr. Ashton himself couldn’t be reached.” Kent shifts to a different camera, ending the segment. “Stay with News Five for this developing story. Now let’s check in with Kristy and the weather.”

I lower the volume and turn back to Meg’s notebooks. I spent most of the night going through them, reading about cons in cities all across the United States, more detailed than my own missing notes ever could have been. I’ve got names, locations, old websites that no longer exist. The few calls I’ve made have been to people happy to discuss Meg, Megan, Melody, or Maggie, depending on where she was and what she was calling herself at the time. I’m so engrossed in what I’m learning that I jump when my phone buzzes with a text from Veronica.

Have you heard from Meg? Do you know where she is?

I think about what must be happening inside Ron’s campaign. Three million dollars, donations from supporters all over the state, gone. The chaos when they discovered along with the rest of the world where it landed.

Another text. Let me know ASAP if you hear from her.

A line from Meg’s letter comes back to me. One of the hardest things about what I do is the burden of always carrying other people’s trust. I feel sorry for Veronica, who never had any idea how Meg had manipulated and used her. Who will probably always wonder what happened to her friend.

I don’t know where she is, I text back. I went to her house yesterday, but it was empty. She’s gone.

Then I pull another notebook from Meg’s stack and keep reading.

***

Two hours later, my mother calls. “Tell me you’re writing about this.”

I set aside the notebook I’ve been reading, grateful for a break, though I’ve been dreading this call. “I’m writing about it,” I parrot.

“Was Meg involved? Surely Ron Ashton wouldn’t make that donation on his own. Was he coerced? Blackmailed? You have a unique angle here. No one else can write from the perspective you’ve got.”

It’s always this way with my mother, her insistence on dragging me along, chasing her dreams instead of my own. “She doesn’t appear to have had anything to do with it,” I tell her. “All the reports I’m seeing point to some kind of restitution for something that happened a long time ago. But Ron Ashton’s not talking to anyone.”

“Now’s the time to tell her who you are and what you want. You have a relationship with her. Promise to protect her identity in exchange for full access. A story like this will open every door for you.”

I look at the notebooks containing everything Meg could possibly tell me. “Meg’s gone,” I say. “I don’t know where she went.”

My mother exhales, a sharp sound that carries so much with it—blame, disappointment, impatience—familiar criticisms I’ve grown to expect. “All that time,” she says. “Wasted.”

“It wasn’t wasted.” I think about what Meg gave me. Not just the notebooks, not just the money to cover Scott’s debt, but clarity.

I found the pages that outlined her exit from Cory Dempsey’s life. An idea, jotted at the bottom of a page. Call Times re: Nate’s involvement. She couldn’t have known that the young reporter who’d answered the phone would do something so foolish. Context matters.

Blaming Meg for the lie that put me in Nate’s path was just a circumstance of chance, no more useful than blaming a lightning storm for a forest fire. Everything burned to a black pile of ash, until new growth can begin to emerge.

“Now that Scott’s not keeping you in Los Angeles, you can relocate. My friend Michael told me he heard about a fact-checker position at the San Francisco Chronicle. Work hard and in six months you might finally get back to where you left off all those years ago.”

My mother will never change. Never stop yearning for what she lost. But it’s not my responsibility to give that to her. “I have to go,” I tell her, “but I’ll consider it.”

After I hang up, I think back to the fundraiser nearly five months ago and what I thought I wanted. You only get one life—how do you want to live it?

I have some ideas.





Epilogue—Kat


December

I take a final lap around my apartment, now empty. All my furniture has been either sold or donated, my remaining belongings packed in my car. Clothes, photos, laptop, and Meg’s notebooks.

When I first started investigating Meg, I thought I knew who I was looking for—a master manipulator, an accomplished liar and chameleon. All the research I’ve done about con artists depict people with an innate ability to trick and obfuscate to their own advantage.

Meg Williams was all of these things. But she was also so much more.

Unlike most con artists, Meg wasn’t a sociopath. She was just another woman exhausted by the way the system seems to always fail us. She targeted corrupt men, skipping over smaller marks, refusing to take advantage of opportunities that might have been an easy win for her. Instead, she focused on people like the professor who plagiarized the work of his female colleague. A nephew stealing his aunt’s retirement. A high school principal and former math teacher who preyed on young girls. An ex-husband who didn’t know how to share.