That certainly wasn’t just because of the protests or because of what the little-voiced caller had said during our few conversations. I didn’t know any better way to express it but this: I was beginning to have a deep sense that something was missing. Something was missing from the bigger picture of what had happened to Belinda. Some information. What was it? What about that particular night had combusted an ordinary lovers’ quarrel into a petroleum fire raging out of control? What? Was there another person involved besides Stefan? Was it this girl? Was there an earlier argument? Had someone used Stefan’s wildly over-the-top possessiveness to get at Belinda? Why would anyone ever want to hurt Belinda? No one was ever so seemingly stainless. It was beyond the bounds of imagination.
But nobody’s life was one-dimensional. Nobody’s life was the life she showed the sunny world. What was it this caller wanted to say? Was she part of this? Was she guilty also and afraid to come forward?
The wondering itched at me. At times in the past few months, I did try to reach out to the girl phone caller, but she was a kaleidoscope of phone numbers. The longer the silence stretched between her calls, the more fixated I became on finding her and extracting what she thought she knew, as if she alone held the key to that night. My brain ran up and down the possibilities like a dog at a chain-link fence: Did she really know Stefan? Did she really know the hoodie guy? Was he trying to intimidate Stefan into silence, or was he waiting for his moment to strike? Surely, he wasn’t brazen enough just to kill Stefan—or was he? Maybe he’d done it before. Why did the caller keep saying she knew who was there that night—and that I didn’t? I knew everything about that night. From what Stefan could remember. From the police report. Then it occurred to me that I had never set eyes on the actual police report, but our lawyer received information from the police about the crime scene. And at that time, I left it all in the lawyer’s hands. I didn’t have any desire to know one single detail more about the night that crashed into our lives like a burning car. But given the possibility that the caller might actually know something else, what was my excuse now? Maybe I wouldn’t be so frightened and blindsided by some creepy little death hag if I could make my own assessment of what happened at Belinda’s that night. And who might be after Stefan. Did ordinary citizens get to look at police reports? I assumed so. Why not, weren’t they public records? Reporters looked at them all the time, didn’t they?
Suddenly my protective instincts were fully engaged. I said to Stefan, “Look, you should avoid the media. Reporters are not your friends.”
Stefan shot me a confused, angry look. “So the only thing I am ever going to be known for in my life is something horrible?”
“I didn’t say that,” I told him.
But when Stefan walked away, Jep said, “That’s exactly what you said, Thea.”
I spilled it all to Jep then, about the caller’s messages and the in-person threats, and what Stefan had glimpsed on my phone. I couldn’t believe I’d held it back from him for so many months, despite the threat I often felt. That I had done so was a measure of how fully ensnared I had become in this web of menace. It was only responsible, I suggested, to warn our son now that he could be in real danger…but Jep cut me off.
“No, Thea,” he said. “I’m not going to let you put that fear in him. As it is, our son is like a piece of glass, he’s so tense. This project is the first thing I’ve seen him talk about that seems to make him feel like he can take control of his past. I’m not going to let you interfere with that by putting one more layer of angst on that.”
“But he needs to know the calls still come.”
“He does not need to know. Not at all. That…person is probably just one more crazy from your stable of crazies…”
“Just how are they my stable of crazies?”
“Because you answer them! You give them agency. You should just ignore them. Then they’d get tired of the game and go away.”
“This one is different, I know it is…”
“Thea, I love you and I’ve always loved you. But this is what you do. Stefan is trying to build a new life. Don’t put him in a bubble.”
I knew there was something to what Jep said.
And so, I decided I might as well go along, blow the horn, too, about Stefan’s new endeavor. Why? Sigmund Freud’s receptionist would have been able to explain it: If Stefan had something to prove…so did I.
Stefan had made plans that were meant to redress wrongs beyond his own needs, and this meant that Stefan wasn’t all bad, which meant, therefore, that I wasn’t all bad.