Someone named Maggie Jo, @MaggJoWentworth, last name and all—just posted:
#CAConfession—When I was married I used to screw this guy and his wife caught us cheating. She was one of my bf’s and he was my husband’s bf. We blackmailed her into not telling my husband or any of our other friends.
Holy crap. And the replies:
Yeah, you do look just like the sketch, you’re dead.
You deserve it, Bitch
Don’t think that’s what he means by confess. Better start listing actual names if you want to be absolved.
Enough of that. I move on to the next, from Kara, @KaraCrossWhite:
#CAConfession—I must come clean about a lie I spread as a health insurance exec: I made big $$ to pump idea that Canada’s single-payer system meant huge lines and terrible healthcare. I was paid to lie and I did it for a lot of $$.
I don’t read the replies but tap on the posters’ profile pictures and see they have similar hair and features. But noses are off, foreheads vary, hairdos differ with assorted curls, waves, and parts.
Madness.I want to fling my phone across the room. I do not want to be thinking about any of this when my plate is already full with my still relatively new business and looking after Jess.
But there are two people dead. It’s unthinkable.
I must admit, a part of me is relieved that othershavebegun sharing their sins because that means many other women out there assume the photo might be of them, confirming what I’ve told Jess. But none of it makes sense. If this guy knows what people did when they were in eighth grade, why does he need them to confess only now, years later?
And me?Ifthis is me? Should I sit tight and gamble that it was some other poor woman? Or should I share the thing I feel most guilty for?
No. Absolutely not. I could never let that one out. I can’t do that to Jess. I can’t abandon her. Or Sam.
And after the ordeal in my old job, I refuse to feel like a victim ever again.
My short time on the force—four years—was chock-full of complications. At the end of my third year on patrol, when I was preparing to take my exams to become a detective, I worked under a lieutenant named Roger Hartley.
Old school, old mentality, old ways. Cop culture. Cover-your-ass culture. Like DNA passed from adult to offspring. Cops being cops.
It was Roger Hartley who commented on the way I looked, that he preferred my uniform tight or that he’d love to see my long legs in ashort skirt or shorts instead of the stock-issued pants. He bugged me to go for drinks: “Hey, gorgeous, when are we gonna grab a beer?”
When I’d say no, he’d ask if I was still planning on shooting for detective and bring up the fact that he wasverygood friends with the captain, and that hemightjust have to inform him that I’m not much of a team player. Of course, he said this with a wink, as though he was only joking around, as if he was evolved enough and woke enough to mock the idea of quid pro quo.
One day, he told me several of the guys were getting together at a nearby pub and that I should stop in, that a few of the female techs would be there, too.
He was there when I arrived.
And very much alone.
He stood and hugged me. I returned it, dropping my arms quickly, but not before catching a whiff of his acrid booze breath. His clothes smelled earthy and sour.
“Where is everyone?” I said, even as I knew I’d been tricked.
He looked at his watch. “They’re coming.”
There was no need to stare at the door. I knew. And I was not happy.
He downed his vodka and insisted I order a drink. I ordered a glass of ice water and told him that my boyfriend was waiting for me to have dinner, that I couldn’t stay long. Hartley ignored this, said to the bartender, “Give her a pint, whatever you have on draft.”
“Sam Adams?” the bartender asked.
I nodded.
When Hartley’s gaze slid from my mouth to my neck, to the area between the buttons over my chest where the fabric of my blouse slightly gaped, I set my beer down and told him I needed to be on my way. He mocked me, calling me a stick-in-the-mud.
