Couldn’t Get Over His Ex
Everything about this article—if it can be called that—is like reading the earlier stories through a cracked, distorted mirror. Here, Reid is no genius, no nerves-of-steel hero. He’s a guy with a grudge, smart but vindictive, always insecure.“Everyone knew she was out of his league,”one of the article’s anonymous sources says.“He knew it, too. He was wrecked when they split.”
I keep scrolling, shoving the thought of Reid’s reaction to Avery—wrecked—two nights ago out of my mind, getting to the place where my name becomes a part of this horrible scandal.
Sources close to the Coster family say that Sutherland resisted Avery’s decision to call off their planned wedding, even going so far as to accuse others of sabotaging their relationship. Several people who knew the couple recall his certainty that their already-completed wedding program—designed by Meg Mackworth, the lately-in-demand “Planner of Park Slope”—contained a hidden message that the marriage would be a “mistake.” “Who thinks there’s a hidden message in theirwedding program?” one source we talked to said. “Clearly, the guy has a screw loose. I’m pretty sure it’ll come out that he’s the one behind this so-called fraud.”
No, I want to shout at this stupid, wrong rectangle, immediately defensive of Reid. I can see it, how this angle will take off, how it will spread like wildfire. Of course thenumberswon’t be interesting. Of course the breakup with a beautiful, beleaguered socialite will be.
But this isn’t how it went!
Or at least, it isn’t . . .quitehow it went, not so long as Reid has been telling the truth. About him, about Avery, about the feelings between them.
And hehasbeen, right?
Except . . . Reid never told me he’d shown anyone else those hidden letters. Reid never told me anyone else knew about them at all.
Don’t panic, I chide myself.He promised he’d explain.
I take a deep breath, deciding this could be so much worse. Sure, my name is tied up in this, but no one willbelievethis accusation about a hidden message. It’s like this so-called friend says: Whowouldthink that?
Then I read the next paragraph.
Maybe Sutherland does have “a screw loose,” but there’s at least some evidence to suggest he wasn’t paranoid about Mackworth’s program. We got ahold of one of these never-used programs, and once you start looking for it, the “mistake” is pretty clear. Did The Planner of Park Slope know something Ms. Coster didn’t? We’ve reached out to Mackworth—who we hear is still in touch with Sutherland—via her website, and to the shop where she used to peddle her secret-code scribbles, but so far, haven’t heard back.
Beneath it, there’s a photo of the program, marred with red circles around every letter featuring one of my cleverly drawn, traditionally whimsical characters.
There it is, for the whole world to see. The word, the pattern, the code.
The mistake.
I don’t know how long I sit on my couch, frozen in shock, but I know that by the time I move again—minimally, only to grab the remote for the TV—the light outside is waning and dusky. Beside me, my phone continues to light at regular intervals—unknown number after unknown number, and every time, my stomach leaps and turns with stress.It could be Reid, I think, every single time, but that hope didn’t serve me well the first four times I answered and found myself immediately confronted with a reporter.
Confrontation after confrontation, living in every corner of that phone.
But not the one I’m desperate to have.
Notification after notification.
But not the one I’m desperate to get.
He doesn’t call. He doesn’t text. He doesn’t e-mail. It is profoundly clear that he is not at home.
All I can do is wait.
I need to deal with my clients. I need to call Cecelia, Lachelle.Lark, my God. What must Lark, who guards her privacy so completely, be thinking? And I didn’t think I had much chance at all with Make It Happyn after today’s presentation—my gorgeous, not-what-they-wanted sketches—but now? Now I’m sure the idea of hiring Meg Mackworth exists somewhere on a continuum ofneverandnot if she were the last hand-letterer in the whole, entire universe.
I think of running. A rental car, my hastily packed bag. Some way to simply . . .go. To get away from this awful exposure, this hidden thing I don’t want to face. Every time I try to move, though, something—something—makes me stay.
The television lights up the darkening room, and I flip through the channels until I find it, coverage of the Coster arrest. The story seems to repeat at regular intervals, on a rotation with the day’s other biggest news stories. When I see it for the fifth time—the room around me totally dark now—I very nearly have the visuals memorized. First, Coster himself, being led out of the building, his eyes cast down, his gray hair mussed. Then, stills of him in happier, more successful times—shaking hands with the mayor, smiling on the red carpet on the night of a New York City ballet opening, posed with his wife on the steps of the Met. Next comes his mug shot, then a clip from outside his Upper East Side home, which was apparently also raided this afternoon.
And then comes Reid.
There’s a single clip of him, and I can only guess it’s played on every local station. For this one, the chyron is dark blue, and the lettering identifying Reid is slim, all caps, white.it reads, and I’m relieved, at least, that the television media isn’t going with blaring, base “scorned fiancé” headlines.
But nothing else about this clip is relieving. There’s so little to see of him in it: He’s surrounded by people in dark suits, one on either side of him and two at his back, one who moves in front, arm outstretched to block the crush of people who are holding cameras and video equipment. On my third time seeing this clip, I notice that the two men on either side of Reid—their faces set in frustrated impatience at the click-clamor surrounding him—have a length of clear, curling wire descending behind their ears. Security. ForReid.
It doesn’t take me three times to notice every single thing about him, though. Pale, stoic, stern, his blue eyes blank when they—for the briefest of seconds—flicker upward to the camera lenses. Dark blue suit, white shirt, his gray tie straight, tight against his collar. In the very last seconds of this clip, when two of the photographers stumble over each other, jostling their surrounding colleagues and putting the men around Reid on high, tense alert, Reid raises his hand to his hair, and the very worst thing is revealed for the most fleeting of seconds. A flaring patch of skin that peeks from beneath the cuff of his shirt.
