Mr. Prager's visit was extremely upsetting. Sean and I stopped communicating. We didn't trust each other, that much was clear. Maybe we never had.
I was intrigued to learn that Mr. Prager read my blog—another sign of how far my message in a bottle has traveled, how distant a shore it's washed up on. I was tempted to read back as far as I could to see if I'd posted anything incriminating. But whom would I have incriminated?
After Mr. Prager left, I asked Sean what was going on. Could he please—finally—tell me the truth? Had he and Emily pretended she was dead in order to collect an insurance payout? Had they played me? Was I the sucker in their scheme? Was I still?
He insisted that nothing like that had happened. He claimed that he was as confused as I was. He'd really believed that Emily had died. Otherwise . . . He didn't have to explain. I knew what he meant. Otherwise he wouldn't have invited me to share his life.
He was understandably fixated on the fact that Emily was a twin. And I had to admit: That was a very strange thing to learn about your wife of six years. I'd been shocked to find that out—and she'd only been my friend for a relatively short time.
Had Emily ever told me the truth? Was Sean being truthful now? Not knowing should have made me hate them both. It was weird that it didn't.
I was going to have to make some changes. Though perhaps they'd be made for me. What if Sean and Emily both went to jail? Had I been chosen and groomed to take care of Nicky in case the worst happened? Emily hadn't been thinking of the worst that could happen. She wasn't even thinking of Nicky. Or the two million dollars. The lying and the game were what had gotten her high. The lying to everyone. Especially me.
I had a momentary fantasy: What if Emily and Sean were sent to jail and I got custody of Nicky? I'd always wanted to have a second child. Allowing myself to let that thought cross my mind, even for a split second, made me feel so guilty that I pinched myself to make the fantasy go away.
There were so many questions that Sean hadn't asked Mr. Prager. If the dead woman was Emily's twin sister, how did Emily's sister die? They already knew that. She'd drowned, her system overloaded with alcohol and pills.
* * *
A week or so after Mr. Prager's visit, out of areacame up on caller ID.
I knew I should despise Emily. She'd lied to me. She'd mistreated me. She'd betrayed our friendship. She'd terrorized me. She'd stalked me from the woods behind her house and entered my house when I wasn't there. So I cannot explain how happy it made me just to hear my friend's voice. I can't pretend, even to myself, that my emotions make sense.
Emily said, "Stephanie. It's me. I desperately need you to help me. Please."
The way she said please made me want to blog about it—about helping a friend in need. About how we know when a friend really and truly needs us. I could never write the whole truth. But I wanted to write about why I couldn't say no. Maybe if I blogged about it, I would understand myself and why I did what I did, why I was willing to forget, or at least overlook, all the awful things that Emily had done to me.
All I knew now was that Emily needed my help. She'd gotten herself into a dangerous situation.
She said, "A man is following me. He's been following me for a couple of weeks. He's not making a big effort to stay hidden. I don't know what he wants."
"What does he look like?" I said.
"Middle-aged. Light-skinned black guy. Always in a suit and a bow tie. He looks a little like that hit man on The Wire."
