Chapter 14 #3
“You don’t, Cassidy. You really don’t. Imagine the most embarrassing thing someone could do to you.
The thing you’d hate yourself for, even if it wasn’t your fault, because you still were a part of it.
Think about the thing you would never want anyone to know had been done to you, and imagine it on every front page of every newspaper.
Imagine the whole world laughing at you—not just the kids who bullied you in middle school or the one cousin you hate, but like, grown men on network news.
Your parents’ friends. Anyone who’d ever sacrificed anything to get you where you are.
All thinking they knew it all along, that it was always going to be this way, and it was all your fault because either you’re too stupid to be where you are professionally, or you’re totally toxic, or you’re spoiled and undeserving, or probably a mix of all the above. ”
“I don’t think people would say that,” I said. Maggie ignored me.
“Now put the fear of that on top of watching the person you love, the person you’ve built yourself up around publicly but also in private, go through the lowest point of his life. You don’t get it. It isn’t possible for you to get it.”
“But you could leave—”
“If I leave Jason, let me tell you what happens. He gets depressed. He relapses. The press paints me as the villain. Things get bad.”
“But that has to be better than—”
“Besides, Jason didn’t hurt Sally Ann. Give me a break.
Jason’s not the one who messed with her food.
” Maggie paused. I remembered the footage, Maggie’s back turned to the camera, her hands on the takeout containers, deliberately out of view.
I’d been so sure she was unwittingly covering for Jason.
But she knew about the affair. She had a reason to hate Sally Ann.
Had she actually been covering for herself?
Maggie gave me a pointed look, as if watching me come to this realization. Then she leaned closer to me, lowering her voice. “But if Gabe’s been spilling, surely you know that already.”
“What?” Even as she swore I had no possible idea about her life, I’d understood what we were talking about. Now she was losing me. “Gabe?”
She gave a fake look of concern—Maggie might have been good at playing different versions of herself, but she was never a very good actress.
“He didn’t tell you?” She licked her lips.
How expensive must that lip gloss be to hold up through her jog and now this awful conversation?
I felt dizzy. “Of course he didn’t tell you. ”
“Tell me what?”
“We were in it together.” Maggie looked triumphant, eyes sparkling, sweat at her hairline.
“We . . . ? Like . . . you and . . . ?”
“Gabe. Me and Gabe. The whole thing was his idea.” I thought she was making a terrible joke, but then she started to cry.
Not in the six months we’d been working together had I seen Maggie McKee cry, not while filming through the stomach flu, not when Jason got snippy, not watching ASPCA ads on TV.
Even as a kid, she’d been preternaturally poised, able to plaster on a smile and bury inconvenient feelings.
Now, she bit the inside of her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.
She took a few long, slow breaths that I knew were the suggestion of some culturally appropriated wellness retreat.
Her spiritual guide was probably a white lady who’d once been to an all-expenses-paid resort in India, and now Maggie was calling on the spirits of colonial infantilization to absolve her of the consequences of doing whatever the hell she wanted, regardless of cost. Her eyes shot open.
“I don’t want to fuck Gabe over,” said Maggie. “But I will if I have to. If this comes out, I’ll go public saying he did it. We’re already linked in the press.”
“Gabe isn’t part of this,” I said. “He can’t be.”
“Maybe,” Maggie shrugged. “But maybe not.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Am I? Why didn’t he tell you he was meeting me? Once you guys were dating.” Maggie shrugged. “How well do you really know him, Cassidy? I’ve known him for years.”
She was right. Gabe had lied to me. That was why we were no longer together.
If what she was saying was true, I’d made the right choice in deflecting his attempts to make things up.
If this was true, the foundation on which I’d built the past few months had always been rotten.
But it didn’t feel true. It felt like Maggie, cold and desperate, trying to deflect blame.
I couldn’t see Gabe planning Sally Ann’s death, but I could suddenly see Maggie doing it. She was cleverer than Jason, more calculated. I remembered the way she’d stood just out of the shot, her body blocking the food on the counter.
She hadn’t yelled for someone closer to Sally Ann’s purse to get the EpiPen and use it.
And wasn’t that the thing to do? I didn’t know to look for the EpiPen—how could I have known?
Maggie had known, and she had chosen to wait before acting.
She was a master of timing; that’s why everybody found her so funny on-screen.
I pictured her whispering in Jason’s ear, puppeteering as he passed out the food.
Counting down the seconds until she could administer the medicine and know it was for show; she’d missed the window during which it would be working.
Maggie wasn’t a dumb blonde. She was a monster.
“Anyway, we don’t even know what Jason hit that night,” she continued. “It might have been nothing.”
“It might have been nothing.” I was repeating Maggie’s words, but not really understanding them. She’d come out on the wrong side of the looking glass. What was this public image she’d hold on to at all costs? More importantly, what would she be without it? “It might all be nothing,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Maggie. “I knew you’d understand.” She patted below her eyes with her fingertips, trying to keep her makeup from smearing. She stood up.
My head was pounding. I’d been wrong. It wasn’t Jason.
It was Maggie. Maggie had killed Sally Ann.
And for some reason, I still felt bad for her.
I’d wanted to help her, even as she’d threatened Gabe, even as she’d made excuses that leaked water like a sieve.
Now I understood why Gabe was worried about her.
Maggie McKee was absolutely not okay. If only Gabe had been worried enough to keep her from killing someone.
“Does my face look funny?” Maggie asked. “I don’t want my face to be all weird. They get the cameras going right when I’m coming back up the driveway, but you know that already.”
“It’s fine. It looks normal.”
“Good.” She took a long breath, and stretched out her back. “Good talk,” she said. Off she went to continue her jog.
That was the last time I spoke to Maggie McKee until the morning of my wedding, four years later.