The Drowning Girls (22 page)

“At least it’s not windy. The Asbills have their pool house right behind the fence.”

Allie was gripping my arm, her short nails digging into my flesh. We hadn’t brought our coats, but the air was warm, as though we were roasting ourselves over a spit. She pointed through the crowd. “There’s Phil.”

He was standing off to the side by himself, hands in his pockets. His face reflected the flickering light.

Someone said, “The Zhang boys called 911. They were playing tennis and smelled the smoke.”

“Probably some kind of wiring problem.”

“There’s been people working on this house all week. I thought it was almost done.”

Allie asked if I had my phone. I shook my head.

“We should go check on Mom,” she said. “She’s going to freak out if she hears those sirens.”

I nodded. “Let me tell Phil we’re going.”

He didn’t see me until I was right next to him, waving my hand in his line of vision.

“Allie and I are going home,” I said. “We’re going to tell Mom and Danielle what’s going on.”

He stared at me blankly.

“There’s nothing you can do, Phil. The fire department will be here soon.”

“There was nothing I could do,” he repeated.

I touched him on the arm. It was the most intimate gesture that had passed between us in weeks. “Don’t do anything stupid.” I meant it as a joke, but when he didn’t react, I shook him by the shirtsleeve. “Seriously. Let the firefighters do their jobs, and come home. Okay?”

There was a crashing sound, and I turned to see that the roof over the front of the house had collapsed, wood and materials splintering. Black smoke poured through the hole. It was impossible to look away.

Allie was calling for me, and I joined her. My upper body was flushed, but my feet were freezing in my black tights. More people were pouring into the cul-de-sac as we left. The Jorgensens, with Kelsey behind them, Brock and Daisy, Janet. We were on our lawn when we heard the sirens.

Mom was waiting at the front door. “What’s going on?”

“There’s a house fire,” I said. “Where’s Danielle?”

“I’m here,” Danielle called from the top of the stairs. “Whose house is it?

“One of the empty ones,” Allie called. “Mom, it’s the one we walked through yesterday. It’s so bizarre.”

“Horrible,” Mom said. “That beautiful house? What a waste.”

The four of us walked back to the fire a few minutes later, after Allie and I had changed clothes. Two engines had arrived by then, and the cul-de-sac was crawling with firefighters in yellow reflective suits. They’d pushed the crowd back to the other side of the street. Most of the onlookers were still in their party clothes, the women shivering now that they were away from the warmth. The general consensus was that it was horrible, another example of shoddy workmanship at Parker-Lane.

Not spotting Phil, I walked through the crowd. Victor was shooting a video with his phone. “Have you seen my husband?”

He jerked his head slightly in the direction of the clubhouse. “On the phone with his boss, I’m guessing.”

When I rejoined Allie and Mom, Danielle was standing off to one side, watching water pour onto the flames with Hannah Bergland. I gripped Mom’s arm tightly, and she reached up with her other hand, feeling along my face.

“I want to tell you something,” she said into my ear.

I leaned down so I could hear her better.

“Danielle left the house for a while,” she said.

I froze. “What do you mean? I thought the two of you were watching TV.”

“I wasn’t following the story, so I went into my bedroom to listen to a book on CD. But I heard your alarm, the one that tells you what door is open.”

“It told you a door was open?”

“Right. It said, ‘Front door open.’ And I called for Danielle, but she didn’t come. Then about ten minutes later she was back, because I heard the alarm again.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Oh, I know I’m an old fuddy-duddy. I just thought I’d tell you.”

“Tell you what?” Allie asked. “What are you two whispering about?”

I shook my head. To Mom I said, “You don’t have to worry about it. She has friends here, Mom.”

“I was only surprised,” she said. “I figured she would have told me if she was going to leave.”

It’s nothing
,
it’s nothing, it’s nothing.
I repeated the words to myself, tears smarting my eyes. It wasn’t just the smoke, of course. It was everything in my life falling apart, more of a slow burn than this fire, but a wreck nonetheless. The nightmare that was Phil, a horror I kept myself from fully imagining. Then there was Danielle, absent twice now during disasters in the community. I spotted her with Hannah, the two of them turned away from the fire. A cell phone screen glowed between them, and they were laughing.

Of course not.

But then again, maybe.

PHIL

Jacob Fitch laughed at first, thinking it must be a joke. He hadn’t been getting it all along. And then he saw my face and he asked, “What, she actually burned down a house?”

“She burned down a house,” I repeated.

“And you know it was her? You can prove it?”

I hadn’t told him about meeting her at that house, about my threat relating to her father. It was the best move I had, but she’d called my bluff. “Of course not,” I said. “She’s too smart for that.”

“Come on, she’s what? Sixteen. A sixteen-year-old isn’t smart enough to get away with arson.”

He didn’t understand. He hadn’t understood from the start. Kelsey Jorgensen got away with everything, based on the premise that someone so young, so entitled and so attractive would never do the things she did.

“If this is true, man—if it’s true—” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head.

“It’s true,” I told him. I hadn’t seen Kelsey since the night of the fire, when she’d stood in the flickering glow between her parents. I’d been waiting for my email to ping, delivering the selfie she’d snapped with the burning house as a backdrop. I’d scanned the video feed a thousand times, looking for her, before turning it over to investigators. Worried that she’d left a message inside the house, I’d donned a hard hat and walked through the damage with the inspector, half expecting to see my name sprayed across the wall in giant blue letters. PHIL McGINNIS IS A PEDOPHILE. But there had been nothing. Half the neighborhood turned out for the demolition and debris removal, but Kelsey wasn’t there.

The thing was—I no longer needed physical evidence. I knew, deep down, that she was capable.

But I could see Fitch’s hesitation, his appraising glance. He’d been willing to go along with a lot of things—the photos, the vandalism, the skinny-dipping in my pool, but I could sense him reevaluating the situation now. Was I really so special that a teenager would become obsessed with me, that she would commit a felony that could land her in jail?

No, of course I wasn’t. But that was part of her sickness.

“If it’s true, you have to call the police,” he said.

“Better yet,” I told him, “I’m getting out of there. I’m getting the three of us out of there. I have a plan.”

Fitch shook his head, almost admiringly. “This is just so wild. You know what it’s like? That movie, the one where Glenn Close shows up in the bathroom with that knife. What’s it—”

“Fatal Attraction,”
I supplied.

“Right.” He considered this. “And all because the guy had this meaningless affair.”

I stood up. It would be my last visit to Jacob Fitch. He’d never been interested in supplying me with legal advice. He’d listened to my story like it was a weekly podcast, on edge for the next titillating detail. He was a voyeur of my personal hell. “Except the difference is, I didn’t have an affair,” I reminded him.

On the way home, I thought about that movie, too. Glenn Close had been robbed of that Oscar—the thought of her in those final scenes terrified me even now, more than twenty years later. Of course, that movie hadn’t ended with Glenn Close’s character killing anyone. She’d ended up dead herself, shot in the heart.

* * *

After the fire, the
Contra-Costa Times
ran an article about The Palms. The newspaper was delivered each morning by a mother-son team in a falling-apart green Civic, but that morning the paper seemed to have arrived by divine circumstance. The photo accompanying the article showed the temporary orange cyclone fence that had been installed around the perimeter of the home’s blackened remains, a sort of modern-day House of Usher. It looked like a biohazard site rather than a community where the homes started at a million-five.

I flattened the paper against the kitchen counter and read:

Community on Alert after Renewed Safety Concerns at The Palms

A series of problems at The Palms, a luxury home development on the outskirts of Livermore, has residents on edge. Last fall, reports of a mountain lion in the area, followed by rumors of vandalism in the community clubhouse, prompted San Jose–based builder Parker-Lane Homes to invest in state-of-the-art video surveillance.

Now a recent fire has destroyed a new home in the community, and residents are speaking out against the builder.

“We’ve got security gates and cameras, but more and more, when I walk through this community, I don’t know that I feel safe at all,” said resident Helen Zhang, whose dog, an elite-bred Bedlington Terrier, went missing from her fenced backyard in November.

“There’s a certain amount of expectation you have, moving into a home like this in a place like this,” said Rich Sievert, one of the first residents of The Palms. “Now I find myself wondering if it’s all just a myth.”

Sievert’s residence is not far from the site of the new home that burned on December 26, shortly before its owners were set to move in. That owner, Mark Hassan, has since vacated his arrangement with Parker-Lane Homes. Hassan said that the “overall quality of workmanship was not as promised” and that he believed the “integrity of the building process was compromised.” The Hassans are now looking at a home in a gated community near Pleasanton, offered by a rival luxury home builder.

Early indications do point to a cause of faulty electrical wiring, but that hasn’t stopped residents from speculating. Janet Neimeyer, who walks past the ravaged home site daily, believes that lax security has allowed too many nonresidents into the community. “It’s horrible to look at people and wonder, does someone have a bone to pick with us? Is my house going to be next?”

Jeff Parker, vice president of development for Parker-Lane, is taking steps to reassure residents, beginning with a series of town-hall-style meetings to address specific concerns. “We’ve already installed state-of-the-art video surveillance equipment, and this spring we’ll be offering a series of safety workshops to our residents and focusing on improving our on-site emergency equipment.”

Myriam Mesbah, chairman of the homeowners’ association, believes this is not enough. “People are disgruntled. We pay thousands a month in fees, and it’s hard not to wonder if we’re throwing that money down the drain.”

Asked if he believes a home in The Palms is still a good investment, Parker noted rising home values in the area, including the lot recently damaged by fire. As early as the end of the month, that lot will be back on the market for a higher premium than before.

* * *

The article was written by someone named Andrea Piccola, and I looked hard at the thumbnail of her picture—a white face overwhelmed by thick, dark hair. She must have been out here, going door-to-door, interviewing the neighbors. Somehow she’d missed talking to me. It was just as well—I knew nothing about the planned town hall meetings or the safety workshops.

Parker-Lane wanted me out, and fast. When I asked Jeff Parker for a letter of recommendation, he didn’t hesitate. His praise was effusive, the letter full of statements he might have thought about me six months ago but had now been seriously called into doubt. His message was clear—get out, and get out soon.

I intended to do just that.

I’d made it through the first round of phone interviews with a builder in Los Angeles and knew I was a shoo-in for the job. The company vice president had ended up chatting with me for forty-five minutes after the official conference call. When I’d mentioned that I’d lived on Corfu—emphasizing myself as less of a co-owner of my brother’s bar and more of an entrepreneur—he’d told me a story of his gap year, a crazy weekend on the island. I could picture him there, blond and tanned, alcohol leaking through his pores. I might have made his dinner. I might have sprayed his vomit off the bathroom floor. Life was funny like that.

The second interview would be in LA. My plan was to drive to Oakland, take a midmorning flight, interview in the early afternoon, allow myself to be wined and dined around town and fly back the next morning. I told Liz only that I had a meeting in San Jose with Parker-Lane, and that if it went late, I would spend the night. She didn’t need to know anything about the new job until it was officially mine. And if I was lucky, I wouldn’t have to tell her everything—but it was all there, the files I’d saved on my laptop, the Kelsey Jorgensen saga,
A
to
Z
.

Allie and Liz’s mom were leaving that same morning as my interview, so my plan was to beat them out the door. We said our goodbyes the night before—a stiff, formal hug from Allie, while Liz’s mom held me as if it were the last time we would ever see each other. I nearly blurted that we would be seeing her soon—a perk of moving to Southern California that Liz couldn’t deny.

* * *

I was walking out the front door with my briefcase in hand when Kelsey pulled up in her silver Acura, a gift for her sixteenth birthday. Oversize sunglasses shielded her face even though it was only 7:00 a.m., the sun a thin wisp breaking through gray clouds. She stopped her car behind mine and rolled down the passenger window. “Where are you going?”

“Meeting,” I said.

“Meeting where?”

“I’m running a bit late, Kelsey, if you don’t mind.” I opened the car door and set the briefcase on the passenger seat, hoping she would take the hint and leave.

“Meeting where?” she called again.

I sighed. “Seattle.” Why did she deserve the truth?
Get away from me
, I thought,
you crazy, crazy bitch.

She waited, car idling. What would she do when I was gone, when Liz and Danielle and I packed up our belongings and left her, once and for all? I had a horrible fleeting certainty that she would find me there, too, wherever I ended up—that one day I would step out of our new place and Kelsey would be waiting.

“Move your car,” I ordered.

She didn’t respond. It was unnerving to see the hard set of my jaw reflected in her sunglasses.

I looked around—no one was out. The early runners were already back home, drinking their wheat-grass smoothies. The ladies who brunched wouldn’t appear for hours.

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

I jingled my keys. “Maybe never, if I like it.” I admit—I loved watching her eyes widen, her mouth go slack.

“You wouldn’t leave,” she said, like a dare. “Not for good.”

I walked closer to her car, leaned one arm against the roof as if we were having a friendly chat. If Deanna looked out her window right now, that was what she would see. “I don’t have a lot of choice anymore,” I told her. “Not after the house fire, you see. It seems I’m not the right person for this job.”

Her face was blank, her eyes unreadable behind the sunglasses.

“Now get away from my fucking driveway before I back into you,” I said, straightening. By the time I’d started my car and glanced at the rearview mirror, she was gone.