Chapter 62
MAGGIE
Ihaven't slept for a minute. I lay rigid in the dark listening to Sloane not sleeping either, both of us pretending for the other's sake, until around five we gave up the pretense and got up.
There was nothing to do last night and there's nothing to do now, and that's the part eating through me.
I'm good in a crisis when the crisis has a shape — a sick animal, a storm, a fence down.
You do the thing. You haul the water, you call the vet, you drive through the night.
But this has no shape I can get my hands around.
It already happened and it's already out and the helplessness of it is worse than fear.
I keep standing up to do something, then realize there's nothing to do and sitting back down.
By six I'm making coffee because my hands need a job.
I bring two mugs out to the porch where Sloane's curled in a chair with her knees pulled up, looking as distressed as I feel.
The light's coming up over the paddock and I opened the barns early, but the animals were so confused by that that they're only starting to show their faces now.
I hand Sloane a mug and sit next to her at the table.
"If Ruthie saw it," I say — heard it, I mean — "then other people did too. Ruthie's not the only follower awake at ten at night." I turn to look at her. "How many, do you think? Realistically."
Sloane picks up her phone off the arm of the chair. I watch her thumb hover over it, watch the screen wake, and even from here I can see the wall of it — the little red badges stacked up the side, numbers high enough to make me nauseous just from the shape of them. She doesn't open one.
"It depends how fast people screenshot," she says.
"One person screen-records it and it doesn't matter that I deleted it anymore — it still lives out there, somewhere and it's not mine to take down.
" She swallows hard. "From the notification numbers — and I'm not opening them — I'd say a few hundred saw it go up.
Maybe more. Enough that some of them kept it. "
"How can you possibly know?" I wrap my arms around myself. "Has this happened to you before?"
"Once."
"It's happened to you before and this is the lesson you took from it?"
"Hey." Her chin lifts, and there's a flicker of the old fire in it.
"In my defense, you had just bent me over your kitchen counter.
I was not, at that moment, in a fit state to think straight.
My higher functions were offline and you did that to me.
You don't get to fuck someone senseless and then hold them responsible for what their hands do afterward. "
Despite everything I nearly laugh. "That's your legal defense, is it?"
She shrugs. "Diminished capacity."
"Diminished capacity." I sip my coffee. "What happened the last time?"
"It was nothing like this." She picks at the seam of the robe, the fight going back out of her as fast as it came.
"I was at a club, very drunk, and the camera was open and I didn't realize, and I posted about thirty seconds of the floor.
My own feet, the carpet, me talking nonsense to Sita over the music.
People laughed at me for a day. Someone made a little meme out of it.
And then it was gone, because it was nothing — it was a woman filming her shoes. It wasn't this."
"No," I say. "It wasn't this."
We sit with that as there's nothing else to say. Out in the paddock Hank ambles toward the fence for his morning apple, completely indifferent to the fact that the bottom's fallen out of everything.
"I'm sorry," Sloane says. Her voice has gone thin. "Maggie, I'm so sorry. If I'd had any idea the camera was still on I'd never — I would never do this to you, you have to know that, I'd never have —"
"Stop," I say. "It's not your fault. I was right there and I'm the one who took your phone from you while you were filming.
" I shake my head. "Neither of us was thinking.
It was an accident and sitting here deciding whose accident it was more doesn't change a single thing about what's about to happen once the world wakes up. "
She nods, teary-eyed, and turns her gaze to the paddock.
I have to look away from her, because the worst of it isn't the town, the gossip, or the strangers with their saved copy.
This woman spent weeks clawing her way out of being a punchline, finally got the whole valley rooting for her, and now she'll have to face it all over again.
And not only that, she just outed herself to the whole world, and not by choice.
I check the time. Six thirty. And I finally think of something I can actually do. Something I can get out in front of instead of waiting for it to land on us.
"I'm calling Officer Reeves," I say, standing up.
"What — now? It's half six."
"I know. She'll be up. People on probation have early check-ins, especially in summer.
" I head for the kitchen and find my phone.
"If this is coming out, and it's already out, I'm not having her hear it from someone who's seen it and wants to cause trouble.
" I find the number. "You're still serving a sentence and the last thing we need is this surfacing in a way that looks like we sat on it and hoped for the best. Or worse, that she thinks I'm taking advantage of you. "
"Maggie, you don't have to be the one —"
"I do. Trust me."
Reeves answers and I apologize for the hour.
I make myself say it in plain words. There's no graceful way to do it and trying for one would only be worse.
That a video was posted to the sanctuary's social media account last night, by accident.
That it was personal. That it involved Sloane and me — I hunt for a word and land on "involved.
" That it's been deleted, but some people have already seen it, and I wanted her to hear it from me before she heard it any other way.
There's a silence on the line long enough that I check the call hasn't dropped.
"Let me make sure I've got this," Reeves says eventually. "A compromising video of the two of you was posted to the animal sanctuary's account."
"Yes. By accident, obviously."
She exhales slowly and I'd put money on her pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Ms. Dawson, I've done this job eleven years and I've taken some strange calls before seven in the morning.
I want you to know this is a first of its kind.
Obviously." Then the professional flatness comes back and she gets to it — was it consensual, was anyone else present, how long has this been going on — and I answer every question straight, my face burning.
Sloane watches me with both hands pressed over her mouth, because there is no dignified way to confirm to a law enforcement officer at dawn that yes, it was consensual, no, nobody else was there, the camera was an accident, and it's been a few weeks.
"All right. Here's where we are," Reeves says when I've finished.
"Nothing you've described is illegal. Two adults, consenting, in a private home, after hours.
The accidental broadcast is mortifying but it's not a crime, and it's not a violation of her terms, so you can let go of that part.
" A pause. "But you're the supervising party on a court placement, and there's a power imbalance built into that whether either of you wanted one, so I'll need to come out and speak to Ms. Archer on her own.
Just to put it on the record that this was her choice and nobody leaned on anybody. "
"Of course. Whatever you need."
"I have a slot free tomorrow morning, ten o'clock. Tell Ms. Archer to be at the motel, I'll meet her there." And then, just before she goes, she says, "You did the right thing calling me." And she hangs up.
I lower the phone.
"Well?" Sloane stares at me.
"She wants to talk to you tomorrow, on your own — to confirm it was your choice. That I wasn't using the situation." I can't get the next part out smoothly. "She has to make sure I'm not the kind of person who'd use a court order to —"
"You're not. Maggie, if anything I'm the one who —"
"I know. But it's good that it's on the record. For both our sakes."
The morning light stretches gold across the paddock and Hank is braying for our attention. Normally this is my favorite time of day but I can't bring myself to appreciate the view.
"I get that you don't want to read those messages right now," I say. "And neither do I. But I need to know exactly what we're dealing with so I'm sorry. I'm going to google you."
"Okay." Sloane gets up with a sigh. "I can't just yet though. I'll give Hank his apple and start feeding."
As she wanders off, I open the browser and type Sloane Archer into the bar. The results load and I read the first line, then the second. It's much worse than I thought.