The Ones We Trust. Kimberly BelleЧитать онлайн книгу.
it would have been Maria. After all those pictures hit the internet, I’d obsessed about her welfare. Did she find another job? Had she made friends, come out of the closet, settled into a normal life? Was she living on the streets? But Maria had gone dark. Her phone was disconnected, her apartment empty, her email address unrecognized.
And then Chelsea surprised everyone by tying a noose around her neck and dangling herself from the showerhead—not an easy task, considering she had to rig the rope just right to support her weight and keep her knees bent as the oxygen stopped flowing to her brain. But she succeeded, and while the rest of the world shook their heads in compassion or tsked their tongues in holier-than-thou judgment, a chain of two words repeated in an endless loop through my brain. My fault—my fault—my fault.
And because Mandy knows me better than just about anyone, she heard them, too.
“Abigail, repeat after me,” Mandy said when I called to tell her the news, now coming up on three years ago. “I am not responsible for Chelsea Vogel’s death.”
“My phone and email are blowing up with people, my freaking colleagues, asking me how her death makes me feel.”
“Tell them it makes you feel unbelievably sad. For Chelsea, for her family, for everyone who ever knew her. Tell them her death is a tragedy, but do not, do not accept responsibility for that woman’s suicide.”
My fault—my fault—my fault.
A loud, exasperated sigh came down the line. “How many times have I listened to you preach about public enlightenment, how it is the foundation of democracy? That, as a journalist, it is not only your job but your duty to seek truth and report it to the world?”
“Yes, but I was also supposed to be sensitive and cautious and judicious in order to minimize harm, which clearly I didn’t, because I’m pretty sure suicide is the mack-fucking-daddy of harm.”
“If Chelsea Vogel didn’t want her dirty laundry aired, then she shouldn’t have had any in the first place. You reported the facts, Abby. Fairly and honestly and comprehensively. Just like you were trained to do.”
“Yes, but—”
And just then, a terrible, awful, horrible thought entered my mind unbidden. It was like an invasive weed that couldn’t be killed, climbing and coiling through my consciousness like kudzu, suffocating every other thought in its path.
And the thought was this: yes, I had been sensitive and cautious and judicious with Maria, perhaps even overly so, but I could have done better by Chelsea. I could have shown more compassion for how she was about to be involuntarily outed not just as a predator but as a lesbian. I could have thought a little longer about her husband’s and son’s response to the news, what would happen when they opened up their morning paper or switched on their morning talk shows. I could have been more sensitive to her right to respond to the allegations, could have been more diligent in seeking her out. I should have done all those things, but I didn’t.
“Yes, but what?” Mandy said.
“I have to go.”
“Not until you answer me, Abigail. Yes, but what?”
I hung up on her then, and she never badgered me about it again—a decided lack of interest that’s very un-Mandy-like. I suspect she heard those words, too. The loud and insistent ones I didn’t know how to smother, the ones telling me that while I might have done everything right with Maria, with Chelsea I did everything wrong.
“Earth to Abby,” she says now, waving a hand in front of my face.
I shake off the memory with a full-body shudder. “Sorry. What?”
“I said just think about it, okay? This job’s a great way to ease back into writing, and I really could use the help. The last copywriter I hired was a total dud. He missed every single deadline.”
“Great. So now I’m your last resort?”
She gives me a teasing half smile over her Starbucks cup. “You know what I mean.”
I nod because I do know what she means, even though my answer is still no. “No offense, but if I ever write again, it will not be for an app. It will be because I can’t keep the words inside. Because the story demands to be told. As awesome as tropical beaches are, I don’t think they qualify.”
But instead of being disappointed as I figured she’d be, she looks as if she wants to stand up and applaud. “Look at you, having a breakthrough.”
I snort. “Hardly. I didn’t say I was going to write. Only that I’m self-aware enough to know it has to be for the right topic. And honestly? I can’t imagine what that topic would be.”
“Maybe BenBird21225 can help you.”
For a moment, I’m confused. How does Mandy know about BenBird21225, the faceless handle who’s been badgering me by email and text for weeks now, his messages increasing in frequency and urgency. I have no idea who he is, why he’s contacting me, how he got my phone number, because the only thing he ever actually says in any of them is that he wants to talk to me.
She points to my phone. “He’s texted you ten times in as many minutes. Who is he?”
I pick up my phone and scroll through at least a dozen shouty texts. Ben wants a MEETING. He has something VERY IMPORTANT to say that must be said IN PERSON. Once upon a time, I would have followed this lead. I would have written back to Ben—asking for more details, setting up a time to talk, feeling him out as a potential source—instead of writing him off as I do now.
I delete them all, every single one, and toss my phone back onto the table.
“He’s nobody.”
When the doorbell rings in the middle of the day, nine times out of ten it heralds the arrival of the UPS man or a band of Jehovah’s Witnesses on a mission to save my soul. Today, like pretty much any other day, I ignore it. I’m not exactly in a position to go to the door anyway, my body wedged uncomfortably under the bathroom sink, both hands prying loose a particularly stubborn drain nut. This happens to be a crucial moment, one the internet tells me is best handled equipped with a bucket, a mop and an endless supply of rags.
But when the doorbell rings again, and then again and again and again, I retighten the nut, wriggle myself out, dust myself off and head down the stairs.
The person on the other side of the door is a kid, twelve or thirteen maybe, with long shaggy hair that falls in a honey-colored veil over eyes I can’t quite see. He’s prepubescent skinny, his beanpole limbs sticking out of baggy shorts and a faded Angry Birds T-shirt, his bony ankles tapering off into orange Nike sneakers. White earbuds dangle from his shoulders, the long cord trailing down his torso and disappearing into his pants pocket. He shifts from foot to foot in what I read as either a bout of sudden impatience or the sullen annoyance typical of kids his age, almost-teens with a laundry list of things to prove to the world.
“Can I help you?” I say, glancing beyond him to the street for an idling car. No bike or skateboard, either, and I wonder if he’s one of the neighborhood kids. Once they hit middle school, they shoot up so quickly I stop recognizing them.
“I’m Ben,” he says, and when my brow doesn’t clear in recognition, he adds, “The dude who sent all those emails?”
“Ben. As in BenBird21225?”
“Yeah. How come you never emailed me back?”
There are a million reasons I haven’t emailed him back, none of which I’m willing to go into with a twelve-year-old kid. I settle on the one I think would be easiest for him to comprehend. “Because I didn’t feel like it.”
He makes a face as if I just offered him raw broccoli. “I thought you were a journalist. Aren’t you supposed to, like, follow every