Page 48 of You Will Never Be Me

I shake my head at her. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to watch it.”

Surprisingly, the next plea comes from Noemie. “Please, Mommy. Aunt Mer is our godmother. We want to know if she’s okay.”

Forget her!I want to scream. She’s not okay, not at all, and it’s best for everyone if you just pretend like none of this is happening. I never once considered that I would be in this situation, trying to comfort my girls about a murder I committed. “I don’t want you kids to scare yourselves.”

“We won’t,” Noemie says. My sweet, shy girl is being so brave, and I have never hated myself as much as I do right now. “We want to know so that we can help too.”

I know when I’m defeated. I hand the remote control to Noemie. “I—I’ll fix you girls a snack.” As I walk out of the living room, I hear the TV coming back on, but instead of the announcer’s voice, it’s my own voice coming out of it. “Please let her go…”It sounds like a ghost coming out of my TV. I turn around and dart back as Noemie and Elea shout, “Mommy, you’re on TV!”

It’s the video that Liv took of us this morning. My face is crumpled in sorrow and I’m ugly crying. The caption underneath the image says: “Missing woman’s friends make a plea to whoever has her to release her.” Thankfully, it switches to a different video of some other influencer, also crying and begging the fictional kidnapper to let Mer go.

“Wow, Mommy,” Elea says, looking at me in wonderment. “You were on TV.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, and walk out of there in a daze. This has blown way out of proportion. What is going to happen now?Nothing, I tell myself. Nothing will happen, because nothing will be found, and in a week’s time, some other awful piece of news will break, and everyone will forget about Meredith. They’ll assume she’s either on anEat, Pray, Love–type journey and has found herself on some exotic paradise island or that her kidnapper’s killed and buried her, in which case they’ll probably be looking at people who are most likely to kill attractive women. First, they will look at convicted felons in the area. Then they’ll…I don’t know. Look at the men in Mer’s life? Who knows? The key part is that they won’t look at me. They have no reason to look at me as a suspect.

Still, no matter how many times I repeat it mentally, I can’t quite get my mind to believe that the FBI isn’t about to kick down my door and arrest me. They’ll dig, and dig, and they’ll find something. Our fight. The stolen meetings. A witness that saw me leaving Meredith’s apartment, carrying her dead body. Anxiety crawls through me.

I’m pouring out some baby carrots into a bowl when I hear akey sliding into the front door. Panic flares up my chest, but then the door opens and it’s Ben. Of course it’s Ben.

He strides in without bothering to take off his coat, dropping his briefcase to one side. His expression is stricken, and I know that he’s heard the news too. “Aspen,” he says, “oh my god.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into a tight hug. It’s the first real hug we’ve had in a long time, and I close my eyes and let myself fall into the embrace, savoring the solidity of him. “Are you okay?” he murmurs.

I lean back and give him a brave smile. “Yeah. No. Well, I’m about as okay as I can be, I guess.”

Ben sighs and pulls me back into the hug, and now I want to cry because this is what it takes to get my husband to show me some love and concern? A possible kidnapping? Then it strikes me that, no, it’s not quite that. It’s the fact that he can once again take care of me. It’s the fact that I’m in distress, that I’m helpless, and he, big manly Ben, can stride in and finally be the man of the house.

Am I being ungenerous? Maybe. Probably. But I can’t shake the feeling that Ben’s only being affectionate because he thinks I’m flailing. I pull away from him and say, “I’m fine. I’m okay.”

And immediately, his expression cools, just a little. The walls slide back into place. I’m not a broken woman that he can try to fix after all.

I hug myself and shudder. “Honestly, I think I’m kind of in shock.” Ben’s face softens, and now it’s my turn to harden, though I don’t show it. But he’s just proved me right. He’s a man who doesn’t understand how to love a woman who isn’t in need. I let a note of fear bleed into my voice. “What do you think happened toMer?” I stare at him, wide-eyed, a silly woman waiting for a man to explain his theory to her.

“She must’ve been kidnapped by some guy she knew,” Ben says, with so much conviction that, if I didn’t know better, I would probably believe him. “I read a statistic once that says that most kidnappers are people who are already in the victims’ lives. My money’s on it being some asshole who probably has a crush on her. Maybe her personal trainer…”

Mer’s PT is gay, but I’m not about to ruin Ben’s fun.

“Or maybe even the barista at her local café. Someone who sees her every day and is secretly in love with her.”

I want so badly to believe that this is what everyone will assume. I wrap my arms around myself even tighter and grimace up at him. “My god, that’s horrifying. The thought of it being some guy who’s like, serving her coffee or whatever, secretly plotting to take her…”

Ben nods solemnly before rubbing my arms. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. With all the technology we have today, they’ll catch the sick fuck who did this. They’ll find Mer, and years down the road, this is going to be a story that she will tell at every party.” He actually smiles at this, like he has utter confidence that Mer will be found safe and sound, and this will be behind us within a week—two at the most. Oh, to have the confidence of a mediocre white man. “Listen, I want you to take the rest of the day off, okay?” Ben says. “Don’t worry about fixing dinner; I’ll take care of it.”

“Really?” Now I really am surprised. Ben hasn’t bothered cooking anything in the last three years. Whenever I asked, he’d say something along the lines of, “Are you sure? It’s not going to be ‘Insta-friendly.’ ”

“Yeah. You go take a hot bath or something. Go relax.” He steers me out of the kitchen with a bright smile.

“Okay, okay. Thanks, babe.” I kiss him on the cheek and head down to the bathroom. I could use a hot bath. I’m halfway down the hallway when I remember that I was supposed to get the twins a snack. I walk back toward the kitchen and catch a glimpse of Ben with his hands braced against the countertop, his head drooped like a wilted flower. The expression on his face is one of anguish.

That’s right, I recall belatedly. Ben had kissed Meredith. In fact, he’d kissed her the day she was last seen. Surprisingly, jealousy flares up. A weak flare, more like an ember than a flame, but just enough to make me think, fleetingly:Serves him right. I hope he stays worried.I must have made a noise then, because Ben’s head snaps up and he quickly rearranges his features into less tortured ones. I grab the bowl of baby carrots and say, “Just getting these for the twins.” As I head out of the kitchen, I turn around and say, “You okay, babe?”

He nods and smiles.

What must be going through his mind right now? I try putting myself in Ben’s shoes. A woman I kissed is now missing. Confusion. Terror. Disbelief. Fear that someone might have seen us and point to me as the kidnapper. Poor Ben. Despite myself, I feel slightly sorry for him. I know exactly what it feels like to have the weight of a deadly secret bearing down onyou.

24

How’s this for a turnfor the books? Meredith’s disappearance going viral is good for everyone involved. Well, except for Meredith, of course. But that can’t be helped. For everyone else who is still alive, the news cycle brings wave after wave of amazing surprises.

Mere days after Meredith’s disappearance was announced, my account is very nearly at seven million followers on TikTok, and is already at over six million on Instagram. It’s a growth rate unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Like I said, America is obsessed with beautiful missing women. Liv’s account has boomed too. She’s now at over three hundred thousand followers. She and I are posting content at a furious pace: three to five videos a day, most of them related to Meredith. I share past videos and photos of myself with Meredith—easy to do since there are literally millions of them in my folder.

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