All she wants to think about is the fact that Talia has been caught. She’s been put away, and Meera is finally safe. Even if Amanda wasn’t so lucky.
She felt a little funny about it, but still, Meera went to Amanda’s funeral. It took place at a church in Georgetown, not far from where she and her sister were raised. In her eulogy, Kaitlyn talked about her sister hiding peanut butter sandwiches beneath her bed as a kid, a story that was somehow disgusting and touching at once. “I may not haveloved being her roommate,” she said in conclusion, “but I’m honored to be the keeper of her memory. And I will make sure that her memory lives on through me.”
Later, Meera approached Kaitlyn as she stood by the symbolic casket, a receiving line of one. After introducing herself, Meera said, “I’m sure your sister would have loved the ceremony,” because what else was there to say?
At this, Kaitlyn smirked. “No, she wouldn’t have. She would have hated it. But at least she wouldn’t have been able to give me shit about wearing all black for once.” Then she looked around the crowded room, seemingly lost in another memory. “So many people loved her,” she said, more to herself than to Meera. “I knew she had all those followers online, but I didn’t realize she had so many people who loved her in real life too.”
Neither of them mentioned Townsend, who was conspicuously absent. Who Meera half expected and never expected to show.
Townsend crosses her mind now as she sits at her desk in the empty Cuff office, putting together a presentation for her latest project. Capture the Red Flag, she’s decided to call it. The feature will give Cuff users access to a suite of safe-dating tools—including background checks, reverse image searches, reverse phone number lookups, and criminal record searches—they can use before ever arranging a date with someone. Her hope: to help users (and women, in particular) avoid cheaters, and catfish, and creeps. And potentially much worse.
If Amanda had known Townsend was a cheater, maybe she would have never agreed to go out with him. Maybe she would have never made an enemy of Talia, and maybe she would still be alive. It’s unlikely, but it’s a nice thought. It gives Meera comfort to know that—in designing this new feature—she could potentially save someone else’s life, even if it’s too late for Amanda.
Cuff’s COO, Betty Jeong, was surprised when Meera accepted her job back. “Frankly, I didn’t think you’d want anything to do with thiscompany after the grief we put you through,” she told Meera. “And I imagine it will be difficult to come back, considering ...”
Betty didn’t have to finish her sentence; Meera knew what she was thinking. How could she continue to work at the place where she’d met Talia, the woman who nearly ruined her life? But that’s precisely why Meera decided to return. She doesn’t want to use other people as an excuse for giving up anymore. She’s been dealt a bad hand, but she isn’t ready to lay down and die because of it. No, she’s ready to fight.
Aarav the custodian steps into the ML mod pod then, still empty save for Meera. “How is my Gracie girl doing?” he asks in Tamil.
“She’s great,” she says. “And as of last week, she’s eight.”
He smiles. He knows about everything that happened with Talia and Townsend and Amanda and Kaitlyn; Meera filled him in when he came to remove the contents of Talia’s desk. She also asked him about the note he left her, warning her not to trust Talia. How did he know that Talia wasn’t to be trusted? What did he notice that Meera herself had missed?
“I could see what she was doing, even if she never saw me,” he told her. “People don’t look over their shoulder if they don’t feel guilty.”
To Meera now, Aarav says, “I’m glad Gracie’s doing well. And I’m glad you’re doing well.”
“I am doing well,” she replies, and she means it. Her new doctor is helping her better manage her Hashimoto’s symptoms. Gracie is back home. And for the first time in a while, Meera is excited by her work.
Best of all, Talia is locked away in a place where she’ll never be able to hurt Meera again.
It’s almost eight thirty; the rest of the ML team will be here any minute. Meera tosses out the empty Diet Dr Pepper can she stole from her coworker Otto, because he’s an asshole and she likes to mess with him. Soon it will be time to present her new project, to prove to herself and her team what she’s capable of doing when she’s passionate about something.
But first: It’s time to get closure.
A letter sits on Meera’s desk, sealed and addressed to Talia Danvers, and she hands it to Aarav. “Would you mind dropping this in the mail for me?” she asks.
He nods without asking for an explanation. “Sure thing.” He seems to understand that Meera needs to do this, to say her final piece, even if she never gets the answers she wants from Talia in return.
She doesn’t expect a reply, nor does she want one. She doesn’t want to hear any more of Talia’s lies for as long as she lives.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn used to think that moving on would be impossible without knowing the truth. Now she’s not sure that one version of the truth even exists.
She tells her new therapist this during their first session together, to which Dr. Chavez says, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
Admittedly, Kaitlyn isn’t quite sure herself. She just knows that Talia—who, from the sound of it, oscillates between lucidity and delusion, depending on the day—claims to be as in the dark about what happened to Amanda as everyone else.
“Talia broke into Amanda’s apartment while she was out,” Kaitlyn explains to the therapist. “She’s owned up to that. But from there, her story always changes. Sometimes she confesses to attacking Amanda first. Sometimes she says Amanda attacked her and she acted in self-defense. But the weirdest thing ...”
Hearing her trail off, Dr. Chavez gives a nod of encouragement. “What is the weirdest thing?”
“Talia refuses to admit she killed her. She keeps insisting that Amanda was still breathing when she left. That when she returned to the apartment later, my sister was just gone. It’s like she thinks that will absolve her, pretending she had no idea that Amanda was actually dead.”
“What if it’s like you said? What if this is Talia’s version of the truth?”
