You Can't Catch Me(91)

And oh, now I’m letting you down. I let people down, I do. Ask your mother. She’ll explain. I can’t write down why. I’ve locked it away so deep I can’t let it out. But go see her after you get this. Ask her and she’ll tell you, and then, maybe, you’ll understand.

I love you so much, Jess. I know you think you failed me, but you didn’t.

And now I’ll be free from all of it for real this time.

Forgive me.

Love, Kiki





June 10, 2021

Dear Liam,

Have I told you enough, my love, for you to understand?

I started writing this as a way to pass the time, and to process what happened. I’ve had so much time to fill this last year while I watched us disintegrate and I waited to be discovered. Only, if I’m being honest, I didn’t think I would be. I truly thought I’d get away with it. All the planning would pay off. So, I was also writing this as, maybe, my true comeback piece. A book. A novel. Who knows? I’d change enough details, if need be. Some chapters I’d take out entirely and replace with the stories I’ve told you.

But things are not working out like I planned, and I don’t want to leave you with questions, so . . . Here’s what I did. The unvarnished truth.

That piece I wrote about the Land of Todd, the one that started my career—I wrote that about Kiki. Maybe you’ve worked that out now that you know about her. I didn’t ask her permission, and she wasn’t happy about it. It was a shitty thing to do, but I knew she’d forgive me, and I knew it would help me make my mark, so I did it anyway. That should have been a clue to myself. A warning that I wasn’t as far away from Todd as I thought.

If I heard it, I ignored it.

Jessie was Kiki’s roommate at the school she went to in Ohio. Her name was Karen Rivers then, a name I’d find out later was fake. I don’t know what she did before she became Karen. If she’d done anything truly bad already. Perhaps she was escaping a terrible childhood, trying to start over. It’s possible those stories she told me about foster care were true. Or maybe her life was idyllic and she was born that way. Nature versus nurture. What would I have been if Todd had never gotten ahold of me? So many questions.

It doesn’t matter why, though; it only matters what.

The consequences. The ripple effects.

Bad luck for Kiki to end up roommates with her. Worse luck still when Kiki told her about the money from the settlement. Jessie befriended her, seduced her, gained her trust, and took all Kiki’s money. And then she disappeared.

Kiki was devastated. Not about the money, she wrote me, but about the betrayal of her trust. I get that, but I’ve never understood why she felt like killing herself was the only option. Why she couldn’t reach out to me for help. That’s probably my fault. If I’d done the right thing from the beginning and gotten her proper help, she would’ve made a different choice.

You can drive yourself crazy with what-ifs, I’ve learned.

I don’t know what Jessie thought would happen. I presume she didn’t know Kiki would take it badly and that her betrayal would be one straw too many for Kiki to bear.

Didn’t know or didn’t care. Another thing that’s impossible to know and doesn’t matter in the end.

But I do know that she had no idea Kiki would send me a letter before she did it, telling me what had happened, why she was ending her life. Because of who. Which meant I knew something Jessie didn’t. I knew about her. That she was responsible for Kiki’s suicide.

I told the police what she’d done; that’s how I found out about her fake identity. But she was missing. Living under some other name, maybe in another state. They said it wasn’t going to be easy to find her.

I thought I could do better. I started off trying to track her down. I used the skills you taught me, and the revelation I had one night, something I’d overlooked. Kiki’s driver’s license was missing. When I collected her things from her dorm, it wasn’t there. I couldn’t find her Social Security card, either, or the birth certificate I’d helped her get. I was sure Karen was using it, because who would look for a dead girl?

Turned out I was right. Karen was living as Jessica Williams outside Chicago. I held on to that information for a while, watching her from afar. I’m not sure why I didn’t turn her in immediately. Maybe I was thinking of revenge, even then. And then she moved to Wilmington and floated that story about winning the lottery, and I couldn’t help but wonder. Why would she draw attention to herself like that?

I looked into it and found the police report that she’d filed after “Jessica” stole her money. And there it was—her whole new scam laid out. She’d realized how much easier it was to take someone’s money when you had their ID. There’s no photograph on a birth certificate or a Social Security card. If you find someone with the same name, you’re all set. But she had to be careful. If she was going to use Kiki’s identity, she had to have an alibi. Be hiding in plain sight. If she played the victim card, she might escape detection if anyone ever went looking.

I’m not sure what tipped her off that there were other Jessica Williamses. Maybe it was something as simple as a Google Alert. I get a dozen hits a week for someone with my name. I just prayed that Kiki hadn’t told her about me. How our parents had given us the same name when we’d been born on the same day.