Zoë clicked to display the program's details. "Yesterday," she read aloud. "While you were traveling."
I tucked my hands under my chin and closed my eyes. "I guess Marta must have been watching it while I was gone."
I heard rapid dialogue in Spanish and I opened my eyes to see Zoë had started playing the recording. "What? You're actually going to watch it? You don't understand a word of Spanish."
She shrugged and set the remote down next to her. "Nothing else on this thing but Extreme Makeover."
I closed my eyes again.
"Ooh," I heard Zoë cry out. "This is a good one. I saw this one. It's when Gabrielle turns all that stuff over to the FBI that leads to her husband's conviction."
It took a moment for me to register Zoë's brief episode synopsis, but once I did, I opened my eyes again and sat up. "What do you mean? She turned in her own husband?"
She nodded. "Don't you remember? She found all those documents in the safe that implicated him in the crime he was pleading not guilty to. And she was so pissed off that he had been hiding them from her, she handed the information over to the feds. Then he was found guilty for laundering money or whatever and they sent him to jail."
I racked my brain. The story line was definitely familiar. I had seen every episode of the show, so it had to have at least rung a bell. But at this moment, I couldn't believe the idea hadn't crossed my mind before.
I reached over and grabbed the remote. "Let me see that scene."
I fast-forwarded through three quarters of the episode until I found the event Zoë was referring to. And sure enough, there it was. Of course, it was in Spanish, and I really only understood about every other word that was being said. But the intention was pretty clear, no matter what language was being spoken.
She betrayed her own husband – in a selfish act of revenge.
All because he had betrayed her first.
"?Es tan simple!" I cried out, jumping off the couch in my first burst of energy since I had left Jamie's hotel room.
Zoë looked at me like I had suddenly become possessed by some type of Spanish-speaking, Desperate Housewives–watching demon, and she feared she might have to start looking through the yellow pages for an exorcist. "What's simple?"
"And positively genius!" I hurried into the office like a crazy mathematician off to chart out his next thirty-page equation on an old dusty chalkboard.
Zoë warily pulled herself off the couch and followed after me. Most likely just to make sure I hadn't completely lost it and retreated into my office to fetch my book of magic spells.
Instead she found me kneeling on the floor in front of the closet. The mirrored doors were slid all the way open, and inside was a metal file cabinet, one that I used to keep locked up with a hidden key so that anyone who was inside my house wouldn't accidentally happen upon it and come face-to-face with the truth about my life that I had carefully concealed for more than two years. But now there was really no point in hiding it anymore. It seemed like these days just about everyone knew my secrets.
I pulled out the bottom drawer, and immediately began thumbing through the maroon-colored hanging file folders. "I can't believe I didn't think of this before," I said, mostly to myself, but Zoë just happened to be there to hear it.
"What are you talking about, Jen? Have you eaten anything today?"
I ignored her question as I continued rummaging through the drawer, mumbling incoherently to myself.
"Jen?" Zoë demanded an explanation.
I stopped my mad file search long enough to look up, and with sheer excitement in my eyes replied, "I think I just figured out how to take down Raymond Jacobs."
32
All But Erased
I NEVER contact a client once the assignment is complete, mostly because there's just no point. It's awkward enough telling a woman her husband tried to have sex with me; I didn't see any reason to attempt to build a relationship on that.
I gave them what I promised to give them. And after that, my part was done.
Divorce, custody battles, uncomfortable nights on the couch, therapy sessions – those all fall under the category of things I just didn't need to know about. And in all honesty, I don't think I even wanted to know.
But then again, I suppose there are always exceptions. And I think I had just encountered my first one.
Zoë stood behind me and watched curiously as I flipped through hundreds of folders in my file cabinet. All appearing essentially identical – except for the printed name on the top.
A graveyard of the betrayed.
I pulled out the file folder labeled "Anne Jacobs" and began to flip through it. As much as I always attempt to distance myself from my clients and their lives, flipping back through the pages of Anne's file was like flipping through the pages of a diary.
These weren't just pages in a locked archive somewhere; these were pages of my life. And stories like hers – like those of all of the clients in this cabinet – were my memories from the last two years.
That was the choice I had made. And this file cabinet was the very proof that my choice had produced results... many of them.
Anne's file was laid out in the same way all my client files were. Stapled to the inside front cover is the photograph of the subject, supplied by the client during our initial meeting. The first page of the file is a client bio for the person who hired me, followed by a subject bio for the man in question. I always prepare a one-page overview for every person I evaluate. It includes the basic information: name, age, occupation, hobbies, school affiliations, a summarized background of the relationship with my client, and then a section that describes the client's reason for suspicion. I also note the date, time, and location that the assignment will take place. Then, at the end, I leave a small space for any additional notes or comments that pertain to the case.
These bios are always prepared before the assignment...or pre-facto. The next page of each client file is the post-assignment review. This is basically just a summary of exactly what happened during the assignment (or as well as I can remember). I try to be as precise as possible, throwing in times and exact locations or room numbers if I can recall them. After all, this was a business like any other. And in order to keep it as professional as possible, I had to treat it as such.
Plus, you just never know when the information might prove useful.
Case in point...right now.
"Is that him?" Zoë asked, peering over my shoulder at the photograph stapled to the inside front cover of the file. "Is that the Raymond Jacobs guy?"
I followed her eye line to the haunting picture staring back at me. I shuddered as I allowed his eyes to pierce through me. All I could think about as I glared at the picture was the look on his face when I sat across from him in his office. That look of pure satisfaction, knowing that he had all the power. And I had nothing.
That is... until now.
Or at least I hoped.
I casually flipped past all the articles I had collected and committed to memory on Kelen Industries, Raymond himself, and the automobile industry in general, until I finally arrived at what I was looking for.
At the back of every file are the handwritten pages of notes from the client meetings themselves. These are the things I write down in my portfolio as the client is telling me their all-too-familiar story. The raw data, before it is skimmed through and filtered for all information deemed important enough to include in the bio.
And the reason I was so anxious to reach that particular page of nearly illegible scribbles was because of a very small, very tiny detail that, taken out of context, might seem fairly insignificant. But put into context (especially the context of my current situation) was exactly the opposite.
I could just faintly remember something that had come out of Anne Jacobs's mouth as we began to wrap up our initial meeting. As she was walking me to the door she stopped long enough to ask me a question about confidentiality:
"Just one more thing," she had s
aid. "I just want to make sure that this whole thing is kept between us. Raymond's reputation in the industry is almost as important as the reputation of his engines themselves."
And at that moment I had stopped in the middle of her hallway, re-opened my portfolio, and jotted down one final thought before walking out her front door.
"Of course," I had said, snapping my portfolio shut again. "I've made a special note of it. But please rest assured that all of my assignments are done on a confidential basis. Just as I would expect my clients to keep my information confidential, I offer the same courtesy to them."
"What the hell does that say?" Zoë said, leaning over my shoulder and attempting to decipher my handwriting. I looked down at the folder in my hands, and there it was. Just as I had remembered. In my own, indecipherable handwriting: Confidential. Reputation of subject is high priority.
I snapped the folder shut and looked up at Zoë with a confident smile. "It says he's got a lot to lose."
"Ah," Zoë said, sounding somewhat disappointed. I could tell that this little episode in my closet wasn't quite living up to the Da Vinci Code–esque fantasy she had been hoping for. I pulled myself to my feet and shut the file cabinet with the heel of my foot. "And this woman knows exactly how much that is."
AFTER ZOË left I stood in my dining room and reopened the file to the client bio page in the front. I carefully dialed the printed phone number, praying that after not having spoken for over a month, and God knows what kind of repercussions, she would still take my call.
"Hello?" Anne Jacobs answered, in a cheerful, airy tone.
My tone, on the other hand, was high and squeaky. "Hi!" I cleared my throat. "Hi. Um, Mrs. Jacobs?"
"Speaking."
"Hello. This is...uh... this is Ashlyn?" My voice rose at the end of the sentence, as if I were actually asking her who I was. Or more like asking her to accept who I was.
There was a long pause, and for a moment I was more than convinced that she was going to hang up on me. At least she was contemplating it – seriously. I glanced at the clock on my oven. The silence was making me nervous and extremely uneasy.
So I spoke again. "I hope you remember me. We, um...Well, I, um..." Holy crap, this was difficult. "You hired me to..."
"I remember you," she quickly interrupted, clearly preferring that I didn't complete that particular sentence. "What can I do for you?" It was obvious that I was no longer deemed worthy of receiving the cheerful, airy telephone greeting that she reserved for her more welcomed callers.
I sucked in a hopeful breath. Here it goes. "Oh, good. You do remember!" I said, trying to duplicate her initial cheerfulness.
"Kind of hard to forget."
"Right." I scratched the tip of my nose. "Well, Mrs. Jacobs, I don't normally—"
"Actually, it's Lappelle now. Anne Lappelle. I went back to my maiden name."
I swallowed. "Of course."
Damn, that was fast.
"You were saying?"
As she spoke, I couldn't help but detect traces of blame in her voice. My last name is Lappelle now... whose fault is that? But I quickly told myself it was just my imagination.
"Yes, I was saying," I began timidly. "I don't normally contact clients after the...I mean, once the assignment is complete, but I kind of, well, I ran into a little... actually..." I stopped. The words weren't coming out right. I felt like a babbling fool. I paused and tried to collect myself.
"Look," Anne began impatiently, "I don't have a lot of time. I'm late for a—"
"I need your help," I blurted out desperately.
There was another long pause on her end, and for a moment I thought that she might have just set the phone down on the table and continued about her day. "Hello?" I asked cautiously.
"I can give you five minutes," she offered in a sharp, unforgiving tone.
"I'll take it."
Anne hung up after she agreed to meet with me in her home the following morning. She was by no means the warmest person on the phone. And, in fact, it came as somewhat of a surprise after the kind hospitality she had shown me the last time we met face-to-face. But given enough time to let reality truly sink in, to let divorce lawyers start working their black magic, and to let the bruises really start to take shape, I guess anyone can turn cold on you.
Not that I blamed her. I'd come to expect every woman I met under these circumstances to be cold and distant. More often than not, it's probably a defense mechanism. And I knew I was the last person on earth they'd want to be cordial to.
Yes, Anne was the one who had hired me. She had reached out to me. But sometimes that was just how it went. It's part of the job...or at least it was part of the job. When it actually was my job. Being hated, even by the person you supposedly saved, was always in the description. I suppose that was the one big difference between me and Superman. When Superman rescues you from a collapsing building or a plummeting airplane, you're eternally grateful. Unfortunately, the women I "rescued" from collapsing marriages and plummeting relationships didn't always see it that way. And I feared the person I was about to encounter at eleven o'clock the next morning would be no exception.
"ASHLYN," ANNE said impersonally as she opened the door. It sounded more like an obvious statement of my existence than an actual greeting. I followed her into the living room and she motioned toward the same seat I had occupied under completely different circumstances less than two months earlier. When this all started. When Raymond Jacobs's spies were outside taking down my license plate.
I sat down and glanced around me. The room was, of course, familiar. And for the most part everything looked the same. Some of the plants were facing opposite directions to maximize or minimize sun exposure, the framed artwork had clearly been moved from wall to wall in search of a happier ambience, but it was, all in all, the same living room. The same house. And the woman sitting in the all-too-memorable seat across from me on the couch was the same woman I had spoken with only a short time ago.
But in sitting there, across from her granite face that revealed nothing, it certainly didn't feel the same.
And it wasn't just the obvious shift of power: Me now sitting in the figurative seat she had once occupied, asking her for help, pleading for her compassion... instead of the other way around.
There was a void in the room. An emptiness that was palpable.
That's when I noticed the photographs on the table.
The same photographs that I'm sure I once tried desperately to ignore, because they said too much. Because they divulged details that I didn't want to know, details that I didn't need to know.
A month ago the framed pictures showed five people. Five seemingly happy faces. Now there were only four. Anne and her three sons – who all appeared to be under the age of ten. It was as if someone had taken a plain, old-fashioned rubber eraser and painfully eliminated one particular face, wiping out all evidence of him.
That's also when I noticed the empty ring finger on Anne's left hand.
If I had tried to ignore it up until now, there was no use trying anymore.
It was the answer I never wanted to know – to the question I never dared ask. And now it was staring me straight in the face, refusing to be ignored.
I remembered when I was in grade school and my teachers always required that we write in pencil. We were never allowed to use a pen. Because it wasn't erasable. It wasn't fixable. If you made a mistake in pen, misspelled a word, accidentally wrote a backward R, you had to scratch it out, leaving behind a messy and very unsightly blob of black ink on your page. Proof. Evidence that you had erred. And everyone would know – everyone would see it.
Pencil, on the other hand, was so impermanent. So, changeable...so forgiving. Or at least that's what they told us. You make a mistake, you erase, and you rewrite, and no one knows the difference. No one sees the ink stain. Your steps are essentially untraceable.
But that argument never seemed to make a whole lot of sense to me. Because as I soon came to notice, s
itting at my wooden desk, frantically trying to purge my errors with my brick-shaped Pearl eraser, they never completely vanished. No matter how hard I tried to rub out that flawed lettering, that misused word, that backward R, no matter how furiously I ran that rubber eraser back and forth across my page, leaving behind mountains of pink, confetti-like dust, the mistake never fully disappeared. I could always see traces of it.
It was always there.
Peeking out from behind the forward-facing R's and the replaced words.
And even at such a young age, all I could think was, At least the unsightly pen blotch was honest.
Sitting in the former Mrs. Jacobs's living room that day, I saw the traces. The ones the magic eraser just couldn't seem to fully remove. They were there, in the faces of her three children, in the rotated ficus plants, in the rearrangement of the art on her walls – and especially in the lightness of her left hand, the one that not so long ago had borne a ring of diamonds so heavy that sometimes her fingers cramped at the end of the day – but she never complained.
In that moment I understood why I never stayed in contact with any of my clients. It was self-preservation. Because the weight of all those diamonds, all those photographs, all those faces – somehow, in the process, I unconsciously transferred it over to myself. And it was far too heavy for me to bear.
Even if reasonable logic told me I had no responsibility for these outcomes, and even if I knew that I had once offered this woman a gift that many women never have the opportunity to receive, as I looked into Anne's eyes I knew I wasn't the right person to blame, but for her, I certainly was the easiest. And I would continue to be for the next several years... maybe more.
"What was it that you needed to talk to me about?" Her question was polite but unfeeling.
I did my best to ignore her cold demeanor and accusing stare. This woman was the only person I knew who could help me. I had to at least ask.
I reached down and opened the black leather briefcase I had brought with me and removed my laptop. I turned it on and waited as it awakened from hibernation.