Under the Sink

"No," you say. "Sorry."

You say it easily. You're surprised how easily. You look at the photo for exactly as long as a man who's never seen that woman would look, and you shrug, and you hand the phone back.

"Gray hatchback," Farrugia says. "Oregon plates. Nobody's seen it? Small town like this?"

"Lot of people come through for the tasting rooms. Ballantyne Estates gets a hundred cars a day in September."

"Ballantyne. Right." He writes it down in an actual notebook, with an actual pencil, like a detective in an old movie. "Thanks, man. If you see her, I'm at the inn. There's a finder's fee." He winks. "A big one."

You buy your coffee. You don't drink it. You walk out to the truck at a normal speed, and you start it at a normal speed, and you pull out onto Main Street at a normal speed, and the second you're past the feed store you put your foot down.

The hatchback is still parked behind the farmhouse, where she's kept it since the first day, under the oak, where you can't see it from the road. That's something. But somebody photographed it at the gas station, which means somebody's looking at gray hatchbacks with Oregon plates, which means it has to go in the barn tonight.

Your mother is in the kitchen with the radio on. "She went for a walk," she says before you ask. "Down to the creek. She said she needed to think." She looks at your face. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Where's the big wrench?"

"Where it always is." She narrows her eyes at you. "Ethan. What happened?"

"I'll tell you later, Mamá."

The cottage sink has been dripping since the day she moved in. She mentioned it the second night, in a text, with a bracket that said [the drip is mocking me]. You told her you'd fix it. You haven't. You grab the wrench and a washer kit and walk up the hill fast, because you need to do something with your hands while you work out how to tell her, and because if Farrugia comes up the drive you'd rather be up there than down here.

The cottage door is unlocked. She never locks it. You've told her twice.

Inside it smells like her already, which is strange after only a few days: coffee, the cheap lavender soap from the feed store, something warmer underneath. The bed is made with movie-set precision. There's a stack of library books on the table, all about wine. One is called Grapes for Dummies. She's put sticky notes in it.

You get down on your back under the sink and open the cabinet.

The drip is the supply valve, like you thought. You get the wrench on it. You twist. And as you twist, your knuckles knock against the underside of the counter, and something up there that shouldn't be up there moves.

You stop.

You shine your phone light up into the dark corner behind the pipe. There's a gallon freezer bag duct-taped to the wood, flat and careful, the tape doubled. Inside the bag is a phone.

It's not her phone. Her phone, the one she's been texting you from, is new and black and has no case. This one is older. Pink case, cracked across the corner. A sticker on the back of a cartoon cat holding a knife.

You should leave it. You know you should leave it.

While you're lying there deciding, it lights up.

Through the plastic, the screen glows in the dark under the sink. A notification. No name, just a single letter.

O: Fi please. Please don't let them have it. I know I keep saying it. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you.

"What are you doing?"

You hit your head on the pipe.

She's standing in the doorway. Cap in her hand. Hair wild from the walk. Her face has gone completely still, the way you've seen it go once before, at your mother's table, when the news came on.

"Your sink," you say. Stupidly. From the floor. "I was fixing your sink."

She looks at the open cabinet. At your light. At the bag.

She closes the door behind her. She doesn't lock it. She just stands with her back against it for a long moment, and you sit up slowly, and neither of you says anything while the phone goes dark again under the sink.

"There's a photographer in town," you say finally. "Wynton something. He has a picture of you at the gas station. Your car. He showed it to me at the café. I told him I didn't know you. I came up to tell you, and to move the car, and I thought I'd fix the…" You stop. "I didn't mean to find it."

"I know." Her voice is quiet. "I know you didn't."

"You don't have to tell me anything."

She laughs, but it's not either of the laughs you know. It's a small dry thing with nothing behind it. "Yes I do. You just read it. You'll lie awake wondering. And you'll wonder in the wrong direction, because that's the direction everyone wonders in." She comes away from the door and sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, cap hanging from her fingers. "Can I tell you a story, Ethan? It's a short one. It's not a good one."

You sit down on the floor with your back against the cabinet. "Okay."

"My mother left when I was seventeen and my sister was fourteen. Just… left. A note on the fridge. 'Be good.' That's all it said." She turns the cap over in her hands. "I had a job at a sandwich place and a sister in ninth grade and rent due in nine days. So I went to an open call for a toothpaste commercial because it paid twelve hundred dollars. And I got it. And I got the next thing. And the next. And I raised her. Ori. Oriana. I signed her report cards. I went to her parent-teacher conferences in sunglasses."

She looks up at you.

"Last year Ori got a job as a production assistant on Prentice Vesey's movie. The Lantern Year. I was the lead. I got her the job. I was so proud of myself." Her voice cracks on proud. "She was twenty-three. He was forty-seven, and a genius, and everyone said so, and he told her she had a gift. He told her she could direct one day. He told her it had to be a secret because his marriage was over anyway and the studio would never understand."

Your stomach turns over slowly.

"The night those photos were taken," she says, "Ori was wearing my coat. The green one. She borrowed it from my trailer because it was cold. She has my hair, from behind. She's my height in heels. They had a long lens on his bungalow because of some other story, and they got a woman in Fiora Jardine's famous coat coming out at three in the morning, and they ran it."

"And you said it was you."

"Ori was in the hospital the next morning." She says it fast, like ripping off tape. "She didn't hurt herself. She just… stopped. Stopped eating, stopped talking, couldn't breathe. The doctors called it a breakdown. The studio called me at six a.m. and said they could make it go away if I confirmed it was me, because a movie star having an affair is a headline for a month, but a forty-seven-year-old director and a twenty-three-year-old assistant on his own set is a lawsuit and a career. His career. So I confirmed it. Two lines. And I've been the homewrecker of the year ever since."

The cottage is very quiet. Outside, the light is going gold.

"That phone," you say.

"Is hers. Her old one. Every message he ever sent her. Every lie. Every time he told her not to tell anyone." She looks at the open cabinet, then at you, and her eyes are dry and very bright. "The studio wants it. Vesey wants it. My sister begs me every night not to use it, because if it ever comes out, she has to be the girl in the photos forever."

She stands up. She looks down at you on her floor.

"If anyone finds that phone, Ethan, my sister's life is over." Her voice is barely a whisper. "And now you know where it is."