Confessions on the 7:45(49)

Oh, I know you will, Ben, she thought but didn’t type.

Good night.
“The con,” Pop always said. “Isn’t violence. Isn’t a smash and grab. It’s a dance. It’s a seduction. You always have to give something first. And then they’ll give you everything.”

She’d taken her time with Ben. They had a relationship, nearly three months of texts and long emails, phone calls where she kept her voice breathy and low. She told him about her scars from the car wreck. One on her leg, one across her chest, how self-conscious she was, how she didn’t like to bare her skin.

He didn’t talk about his wife much, far less than most men talked about their ex-wives, or girlfriends who had left them. Those guys couldn’t wait to rattle off their list of complaints and criticisms, catalog the many wrongs they’d suffered, painting unflattering portraits of the unfaithful, the controlling, the addicted women in their pasts. But Ben mentioned her only a couple times, briefly, warm memories, or funny anecdotes. He never talked about her illness or death. She didn’t pry; she really didn’t want to know. In fact, she liked him a bit more than was smart.

She closed the lid on the laptop, stared at the flames in the fireplace.

“Are you going soft on me?”

Pop sat in the chair, just a shadow tonight. She was never sure what form he was going to take. Sometimes she could hear his voice, clear and strong. Sometimes it was just an echo on the wind. He was a reflection in a mirror, a creak on the stairs. She turned away from his dark shape; she didn’t want to see him. But he was always with her.

“Of course not.”

When she looked back at him, he was gone.

The closed laptop. The silence of the house. The howling wind. She tried to sit with it, to go blank. Sometimes she tried to go back and back and back to the girl she was before, her true self. What was that girl like? What was her favorite food, color, flower? What had she wanted to be once upon a time? She loved animals. She remembered that about herself, how easy it was to be with a cat or a dog; how present they were. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of herself, like a shade slipping into darkness.

She picked up her phone. Nothing back from Selena.

She flipped on the television, scrolled through the news channels. Nothing at all about a missing girl. Opening her laptop again, she did a search. Nothing.

“I’m not sure I’m with you on this one.”

Pop again, this time standing in the corner. He’d bought this house for them. This is going to be our forever home, he’d told her. The place where we can really be who we are. And that had been true for a time. But the wolves were already at their heels then, though neither of them knew it. And forever isn’t forever.

“I don’t see what you have to gain here. They probably don’t have that much money. And that Selena, she’s not biting.”

She felt herself bristle; she didn’t like having to defend herself to Pop. She shouldn’t have to. The student had far surpassed the teacher.

“This one is not about the money,” she said.

“Ah. One of those.”

She opened the laptop again, visited Selena’s social media pages, which had no security settings whatsoever. Her life out there for everyone to see—her friends, where she worked, where her kids went to school. Where she spent her time, where she shopped. The entirety of her life, just out there like chum in the water for any shark that happened to swim by. Stupid.

Selena hadn’t posted anything since her happy pictures from the weekend. What a bunch of liars everyone in the world had become with their inane social media feeds; Selena’s husband was fucking the nanny and she took the time to make everyone in her life jealous of her pretend-perfect little family.

Selena Murphy, formerly Selena Knowles, was nothing special. Not the school homecoming queen. Not the valedictorian of her class. Just a pretty, upper-middle-class girl, with a traditional upbringing. Smart. Good grades. NYU graduate. Successful in her chosen profession—marketing and publicity, of all things. Lots of friends. Happy marriage (or so she’d like everyone to believe). She was a mother of two adorable boys. No, she was nothing special, a normie as Pop liked to call them—except that she had everything.

“You’re not jealous. Of her.”

Pop was over by the fireplace now. He was as she had last seen him, eyes glassy, a hole blown though the middle of his chest. She heard the echo of her own voice, carrying over years. Please don’t leave me here. Pop, please.

“I’m not sure it’s jealousy, exactly,” she said. “It’s just that it doesn’t seem fair, does it? That some people have everything. That things are handed to them. That they walk through life not even knowing what it’s like to want and struggle, to live without a safety net. You can see it on her face, can’t you? That blank entitlement, that ignorance to critical truths of the world.”

“So, this is about social justice?”

They both knew it wasn’t. That it ran so much deeper. That it was personal. “Maybe,” she said anyway.

He laughed. “I got bad news for you, kid. You can’t con a con.”

She threw a throw pillow at him and it landed softly by the hearth. She could still hear the echo of his laughter.

  Pearl and Charlie slipped right into it. It only took her a couple of days to forget Pearl, to become Anne. And Charlie with his new glasses, his crew cut growing out into its natural salt-and-pepper color, became Pop, the father she never had, never even knew she wanted. Somehow, he’d managed to age himself ten years. Or maybe with his other look, the round specs, the baseball hat, the black hair dye, he’d been able to capture a youthful essence for Charlie. Charlie, the young hipster Stella had brought home, the bookstore marketing whiz, he was someone else, too. A man she used to know, one she remembered fondly but knew she wouldn’t see again.