Page 8 of You Say It First

“Look,” he interrupted. This whole thing was hugely annoying all of a sudden, the idea of some shiny new college grad sitting in a climate-controlled cubicle pestering people at dinnertime. His eggs, he realized, had begun to burn. “If people want to vote, they’ll vote. They don’t need you calling them up trying to save them from themselves.”

“I’m not trying to save anybody,” Meg protested, “I just—” She broke off. “Okay,” she said, and Colby could hear her taking a deep breath on the other end of the line. “Obviously, we got off on the wrong foot here. But if you could just let David Moran know that I called, then—”

“Dave Moran hung himself in our garage ten months ago,” Colby said, the words coming out before he’d even had time to think them. “So I don’t think he’ll be calling you back. You have a good night, though. Thanks anyway.”

He hung up the phone without waiting for her to answer. He dumped the ruined eggs in the trash.

Five

Meg

For a moment, Meg stared down at her handset like she’d never seen it before, like it was an artifact from an alien planet dropped unceremoniously from the sky. She set it carefully back in its cradle, her eyes flicking around the office instinctively to see if anyone had been listening. She could taste her own heart at the back of her throat.

“Everything okay?” Lillian asked, her head popping up over the half wall that separated their cubicles. The overhead lights reflected off her glossy black bob.

“Um,” Meg said, her whole body stinging, hot and humiliated. Normally, Lillian was exactly the kind of person she’d tell about something like this; Lillian had trained her to begin with and had foolproof strategies for dealing with all kinds of unsavory phone characters, from yellers to bigots to the occasional perv. “Yep.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to protect.

Lillian nodded and went back to her call sheet. Meg tugged on her bottom lip. There were strict rules against calling back if someone hung up on you—technically, it counted as harassment, to the point where if you were working off a computer and not a paper call sheet, the system deleted the numbers as they were dialed, just in case—but the urge to defend herself, just to clarify, was so strong it was nearly unbearable. It was like trying not to think of a purple elephant. It was like trying to hold back a cough.

She blew out a breath and dialed the next number on her printout, a not-in-service, then left cheery-sounding messages for the following two. She took a bathroom break, staring at herself in the greenish light above the mirror. She ate a churro from the box in the kitchenette.

Then she sat back down at her station and dialed Colby again.

This time the call went to voice mail, which wasn’t surprising. Meg didn’t know if she was disappointed or relieved. A man’s voice—not Colby, but someone older, a person Meg thought she was probably imagining sounded just a little bit sad—explained that the Morans weren’t available, but that if she left a message somebody would get back to her as soon as possible.

“Um, hi,” she said after the beep, glancing furtively in Lillian’s direction. “This message is for Colby?” She cleared her throat. “Colby, this is Meg from WeCount. You and I spoke on the phone a minute ago. I just wanted to apologize for...” She trailed off. For what, exactly? Pressuring him about the importance of the electoral process? Growing up in a liberal bubble? Not somehow magically intuiting that his dad had died from suicide? “I just wanted to apologize for our conversation earlier. So. Um. I’m sorry.” They were not, under any circumstances, supposed to give out their private phone numbers, but hers was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “Just, like, if you want to call me back or anything.” God, she was definitely going to get fired. “Okay. Um. Have a good night.”

The rest of her shift seemed to last forever. Half a dozen hang-ups, seventeen calls that went to voice mail, and a woman in Elyria who accused her of being sent by the government to try and read her mind through the phone. “I’ll let you go, then,” Meg said, staring up at the drop-ceiling tiles and reminding herself that there was no reason to feel like she was about to burst into tears.

When nine o’clock finally rolled around, she basically ran for the staircase, bursting out into the damp spring night and hurrying past the marble-tiled pastry shop and middle-aged-lady caftan boutique until she got to her car. As soon as she was buckled in the driver’s seat, she pulled out her phone; she had half a dozen texts from Emily, all Cornell-related. Ughhhh, she typed, ignoring all of them, I had the WORST NIGHT AT WORK.

Oh nooo what happened?? Em texted back right away. Did you hear??

No no, it’s not that. Nothing in the spam folder. Meg relayed the highlights of her conversation with Colby, leaving out the part where he’d had a stupidly nice voice. I feel so gross and guilty, she finished, stopped at a red light three-quarters of the way home. Like I was some pushy telemarketer who ruined his entire day because I couldn’t take a hint ABOUT HIS DEAD DAD.

I mean to be fair you are a pushy telemarketer... for FREEDOM, Emily reminded her, adding a bald eagle for good measure. But honestly though, who cares? People make up all kinds of lies on the phone. It was probably some rando bumpkin screwing with you.

Meg frowned, dropping her phone into the cup holder without answering as the light turned green up above. On one hand, she knew Emily had a point—after all, hadn’t her mom said all kinds of weird stuff to people looking for her dad once he moved out last winter? One time she’d convinced some unsuspecting cable guy he’d gone to jail for mail fraud just to see if she could.

Still, it certainly hadn’t sounded like Colby was messing with her. At the beginning, maybe—all that stuff about the EC and super PACs. But the part about his dad? Meg didn’t really think the kind of rawness she’d heard in his voice was something a person could fake.

The lights in the house were all blazing when she finally pulled into the driveway, like her mom had thrown a party and forgotten to tell her about it, though when she got inside it felt even bigger and emptier than usual. Her mom was asleep on the couch in the den, the same smudgy wineglass from earlier still sitting on the coffee table and the TV blaring The Bachelor. Meg hit the power button on the remote and plugged her mom’s phone in to charge beside her, then laid a pilling cashmere throw blanket over her and walked through the downstairs, flipping all the switches off one by one.

Up in her room, she changed into her pajamas and pulled her laptop into bed, typing every conceivable variation of Colby Moran + Ohio into Google and getting a fat lot of nowhere. He didn’t have any social media that she could find. Maybe Emily was right, then, about the whole thing being a con job. Shoot, maybe Colby wasn’t even his real name.

Meg stared at the keyboard, wondering exactly how deep she wanted to get in here. David Moran + Ohio, she typed. She gasped quietly, though there was no one to hear her—there it was on the first page of search results, a tersely written obituary in the Ross County Dispatch from the beginning of last June:

David (Dave) Moran of Alma died suddenly at home on May 25. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer; his two sons, Matthew and Colby; and his dog, Tris, who loved him best of all. Services will be kept private.

So, Meg thought, squeezing her eyes shut, her skin just a little bit too tight, Emily had been wrong.

She tried Colby Moran + Alma next, and this time she found an old picture from the paper—a bunch of boys in scout uniforms at a Veteran’s Day parade, Colby holding one of those dinky little flags. He wasn’t facing the camera, but even from the side Meg could see that he was a nice-looking kid: tall and lean and almost feminine, with long eyelashes and pale cheekbones that caught the light. The caption listed him as twelve, which made him eighteen now—the same age as her, not that it mattered.

He had a serious expression. He had a very nice mouth.

She was still staring at the photo like a creep when her phone vibrated on the nightstand, insistent. Hellooo, Emily said. Did you die?

Meg slammed her laptop shut, as if Em could somehow see her. No no, she typed, sorry. Home safe. You’re totally right though, he was probably a total scammer. I’m over it now.

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