The Good Liar(41)

“What’s that for?”

“To thank you for waking me. I’ve got to go.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

Kate thought about stopping, trying to extract some greater promise. But the bus driver was looking around to see if anyone else was coming. She turned to the woman and said, “Thank you,” then crossed the station just in time to catch her bus.





The Triple-Tenner You’ve Never Heard Of by Ted Borenstein Special to Vanity Fair

Published on October 29

After a year of covering the Triple Ten tragedy, I thought I’d heard it all. That I knew it all. Every name. Every story. I’d literally helped write the (memorial) book, after all, and had spent the last six months of my life reliving each of their stories, cataloguing the grief.

Then, shortly after the six-month anniversary, a new name began to circulate around the survivor community. That name was Franny Maycombe.

I first heard of her at a fund-raising event for the Compensation Initiative, the organization that was established to dole out the donations that poured in from around the world for the victims. Its goal is something they call “total compensation”—they want to make sure every victim’s family receives the money they would have had but for the tragedy. A formal, legal way of saying they want to do right by everyone.

What that means in practical terms is that more money is always required.

“When you add everything up,” says Jenny Chang to me one night, “we’re talking about as many as twenty thousand people who’ve been affected. Not just those who died and their families but the thousands who were injured and their families. Total compensation means you make everyone whole again. Everyone.”

Jenny Chang is a twenty-three-year-old whose life was already marked by tragedy before she lost her father on October tenth. Jenny’s mother died of breast cancer when she was sixteen. An only child, she and her father were close. Though she was accepted to several prestigious schools with a full scholarship, she decided to attend the University of Chicago to stay close to home.

Midterms were approaching in her senior year when her father died. Since then, Jenny has completed her degree in astrophysics and put off the many internships she’s been offered to work full-time raising money for other victims’ families. She’s one of six people who sit on the Compensation Committee, an ultrasecret wing of the Initiative that has recommending power to the board regarding claims that have been turned down or held over by the adjudicator.

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Jenny says while sipping on a glass of prosecco in the Initiative’s stunning boardroom. “But it’s important.”

The Compensation Committee is celebrating surpassing another fund-raising goal, and the room is thick with men in Brionis and women in Louboutins. Jenny, wearing a spangled dress and incredibly thin, is younger than most of those involved, but she’s one of those who’s been hardest hit by the tragedy, though she doesn’t agree with that label.

“I think that honor goes to Franny. You must’ve heard of Franny? Her story is ah-mazing.”

I haven’t, and she gladly fills me in. Ten minutes later, my head is spinning—Franny’s story is amazing, unique. Adopted twenty-four years ago, she’d recently met her birth mother, only to lose her soon after when the building fell. Initially reluctant to get involved, she’s turned into a tireless advocate for the cause and is now the cochair of the Compensation Committee.

“You must talk to Franny,” Jenny says, looking around the room. “I thought she’d be here by now.”

Jenny promises to bring her to me but returns ten minutes later with a fresh glass, a canapé, and no Franny.

“I’m sure she’ll show up soon. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

That proves more difficult than I could’ve imagined.





Chapter 19


Poster What?

Cecily

Kaitlyn’s funeral was a hard day for me. Joshua was a mess, and her daughters were inconsolable. I know, sometimes, Kaitlyn felt like the kids were closer to Joshua than to her, that they remembered the time when she was postpartum after they were born or the echoes she felt after that, and had never bonded with her properly, but it wasn’t true. I often told Kaitlyn that she had a kind of dysmorphic disorder about motherhood. She saw herself in a completely different light than her children did, or anyone else who was watching. Those girls doted on her, emulated her, looked to her first when they said or did something they were unsure of. Joshua was a good father, patient and kind, but it was Kaitlyn who was the star of their everyday life.

Sitting on the hard church pew that was starting to feel too familiar, we clung to one another, Henry and Cassie and the girls and Joshua, as the service went on and on. We rode together in the limousine to the house, Kaitlyn’s daughters shuddering on either side of me, Cassie and Henry still brittle from Tom’s funeral two days before. A car full of broken people; how were we ever going to be made whole again?

Joshua’s cousins had stayed behind to get the catering ready, to make sure the canapés were hot and the crudités were cold, that there was enough booze to go around. I heard someone remark, as I went in the front door, that she’d been subsisting on cheap wine and spanakopita for a week, that she’d lost two pounds already. Then they saw me, and one of them turned red and the other said, “Sorry,” and I just shook my head because what did I care? They were right. If I hadn’t lost Tom and Kaitlyn, I might be one of those women, annoyed that I had to wear black for weeks on end, tired of the sadness, the endless parade of receptions and sermons, and happy that my clothes were fitting looser than they had in years.