The Girl She Used to Be Read online

  These are your tax dollars hard at work.

  It is Farquar’s job to pick up my pieces, no matter how many or how small, and glue them back together into a slightly different shape, feel, and sound. He takes what was once a Terry and converts her into a Shelly, carefully wipes clean the slates of bills, addresses, employers, credit histories, licenses, even my Social Security number—everything that makes me me. Or at least the government’s version of me. For now I am whole.

  I am complete.

  I am a complete fabrication.

  But it’s only a matter of time. I may be whole now, but I’ve been living off Columbia Pike in Columbia, Maryland, for eighteen months and in some way I can imagine that little Farquar is waiting for his phone to ring, and he pinches his brow in anticipation, wondering how much longer I can remain whole.

  Well, get ready; in approximately seven hours, Sandra Clarke is going to shatter.

  I have no children, yet I can tell you without fail that the best baby monitor on the market today (and the most popular) is the Sony 27 Channel BabyCall Nursery Monitor, with The First Years Clear and Near 2.4 GHz Monitor a close second. I’ve got most of them—Fisher-Price, Safety 1st, RC2—but the Sony model will blow your mind. The sound is crystal clear and it has a range that is truly astounding.

  Now, add to that piece of knowledge this: The two operating items in the baby-monitor system are the receiver—which the parent usually carries around so that he or she can hear the baby—and the transmitter, which is usually positioned near the child’s crib or bed. Both have on/off switches but—and I can say this with certainty—the parents usually leave the transmitter plugged in and on.

  I have lived in many different apartment buildings over the course of my adult life, and the first thing I do on the first night of my stay in my new residence is set up those monitors (no transmitter needed) one by one and fiddle with the channel combinations until the static disappears and the noise of a child begins. In a building with over twenty apartments, the odds are that one of those apartments has a youngster who needs a monitor and has parents who carelessly leave the transmitter on twenty-four hours a day.

  While my neighbors are stealing connections to unsecured wireless networks, I’m stealing a family.

  And here in Columbia, this is how I came to know little Jessica—a name I have always desired but WITSEC would never permit me to use—and her wonderful yet predictable suburban upbringing. I would fall asleep at night to her deep, rhythmic breathing and wake just before the sun to her gentle cooing. I weathered the long bout of pneumonia she had this past winter and called in sick for two days to make sure she was okay. I would laugh as her father read her the same story every night—Where, Oh Where, Is Kipper’s Bear?—and how Jessica would giggle at the pop-ups and how her father would have to interrupt the story repeatedly to keep her from pulling the pages apart. And I would cry as Jessica’s parents would whisper their loving approval of their daughter, their creation, each night as they put her down. Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she perfect? Look at our baby girl.

  Jessica is the little sister I never had and the daughter I will never be able to have. They are a safe family, with a regular schedule and regular jobs and regular stresses. They live and love and experience what many would find boring but remains a dream to me. And of all the places I have lived, of all the families I have adopted, this one was the closest to home I might have ever known, though I never caught a glimpse of them or found out what floor they lived on or whether they were even in my building.

  I will miss Jessica.

  In my final hours in this place, I scan my apartment for anything I want to take with me. I won’t have much room, so it needs to be small. I will be leaving with the clothes I’m wearing and not much more. I grab a garbage bag—because, theoretically, I’m in a hurry—and fill it with some undergarments, a robe, some personal hygiene items, a toothbrush. Everything that belongs to me, or this version of me, must stay. I can take no books, no pictures, no identification.

  Nothing.

  I am about to start over. Again.

  I have a few hundred dollars on me, but they’ll give me more—though not much more.

  This is where I walk to the edge of the cliff, close my eyes, and take the dive. There is no turning back.

  And all it takes is one simple lie.

  I do not call the school and tell them I am not coming in—or back, for that matter.

  I do not call my landlord and let him know he will have a new apartment for lease.

  I do call the number that connects me—directly—to my federal contact.

  “Farquar.”

  “It’s Melody Grace McCartney,” I say.

  He sighs and I can hear him rub his beard through the phone. “Why aren’t you using your proper name, Sandra?”

  “They found me.” I yawn.

  “Who, Sandra? What are you talking about?”

  “Who,” I repeat, annoyed by his assumption that I’m making this up, as valid as that may be. “Is this a joke, Farquar? I answered my phone a few minutes ago and what I got was some guy with a New York accent, repeating, ‘Sing me a song, Melody.’ ”

  He sighs again, but doesn’t try to hide it this time. “I don’t suppose you got this on tape.”

  “What? Of course not.”

  A pause, a third sigh, then he puts me on hold. It is important to note he is U.S. Marshal Farquar and not Agent Farquar. All of the dealings with Witness Protection are indeed struck out of negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice, which sort of lends one to think that the FBI will be taking care of you down the road. But, in fact, it’s a different branch of the Department of Justice that handles WITSEC: the United States Marshals Service.

  Justice, Integrity, Service, or so the motto goes.

  He comes back on, laughing, and hits me with “At least they didn’t send you a dead fish. Because that really sends a message—”

  “Listen, are you suggesting I should sit in my apartment and wait for something to happen? Would that make you feel better? That way you can repeat the excellent line of service you provided for my parents twenty years ago.”

  Guilt has managed to shut him down year after year and I had no reason to assume this time would be any different.

  “Just sit tight,” he mumbles. “Are you safe?”

  “How should I know,” I say, feigning a little anger.

  “Well, you are now.”

  And with that, a squad car with three federal marshals pulls up to the front of my building. The marshals race up the steps, snatch me from my apartment, and whisk me into their noble chariot. These are my knights in shining armor.

  One thing I am sure Farquar never liked about my most recent locale was the proximity to his office. He’s based out of Baltimore, a mere twenty-minute ride from Columbia. And within thirty minutes of my call to him, here I am, seated in a cold, sterile conference room on the third floor of the Garmatz Federal Courthouse on West Lombard Street. I’ve seen the inside of so much government office space that it’s come to feel more like home than any new address they’ve ever assigned to me. Phoenix, Little Rock, Raleigh, Louisville, Albuquerque—I’ve visited them all. I’ve had to sit on the same hard chairs and drink the same lousy coffee for two decades of my brief life. And here I am again, feeling like I’m under investigation, about to be given the cold, hard news about my future, with all the limited options of a heartless killer—except an attorney.

  Three sips into my mud and Farquar comes strolling in. He looks thin and ill and about three or four years late for his retirement.

  “McCartney,” he says, tossing my file—now a solid two inches thick—down on the metal table. I let it resound for a few seconds before I respond.

  “It’s been awhile,” is my meager response. I cannot look him in the eye.

  He sits down and sighs through his nose, hard, like he’s trying to make a point. All I notice is that he forced something out of his right nostril that h
as become lodged on the edge of his mustache.

  “It’s been less than two years,” he says. “Do you know some of my cases I have not seen since we put them into the program?”

  “You mean the dead ones?”

  “This isn’t a joke. We’ve tried to accommodate you every way we can. You wanted to live more urban, so we did that. You wanted to have a job involving math, so we got you one. And now here you are on our doorstep again. You think spending another hundred grand to relocate you—yet once more—is funny?”

  I sit up. “Are we going to have this conversation again?” I lean toward him and give him a reminder of why I am here in the first place. “You want to talk about cost, Farquar? You wanna put a monetary value on my parents—both dead—so that the feds could spend millions on a trial they’d eventually lose anyway? You owe me, big—for the rest of my life.”

  He stands up, in a nonconfrontational manner, but I stand to match him anyway. He’s about three inches taller than my five-foot-seven stature, but I can pretty much look him straight in the eye—though I can’t help but stare at that thing on his mustache. I want to hammer him some more but I feel compelled to say something.

  “Listen, uh, you got a—”

  “I’m officially off your case.” He looks down and puts his hands in his pockets.

  As pathetic a protector as he was—even a pathetic government contact—he was my protector, my safety net. He was the only guy I knew in the system, in WITSEC. Ever.

  “Wh—why?”

  He makes eye contact again. “I’m leaving.” He pauses for effect, it seems. “I’m done. I’m out. I can’t handle it anymore.”

  I sit back down and slouch and all I can think of is how incredibly tired I am of starting anew.

  “It’s just time for me to go,” he continues. “I’m sixty, and I’ve been here for almost thirty years and… I don’t know, things have changed. The priorities have changed.” He scratches his beard and the thing drifts from his upper lip into the dusty oblivion below. I’m thankful. “It’s just time.”

  “When’s your last day?”

  “One week from today.”

  I bristle. The only person who ever understood me was Farquar—understood me in a sense that I met him when I was six, the day we entered the program, and has been the only recurring character in my weird drama. I consider saying something but I merely phase out, stare into the distance.

  Farquar sits on the table in front of me and puts his hand on my head and strokes my hair gently, like I imagine my father might have at this moment. “You’ve got to make this the last time, okay? The last time. They won’t allow this to continue.” He bolts up from the table and walks to the door and I feel like, yet again, I am losing the only static person in my life. “Deputy Marshal Douglas will be taking over your case. He’ll be in shortly.”

  I hold my breath and watch as he reaches the door.

  He turns back and smiles and says, “Good-bye… Michelle.”

  And as the door closes behind him, I writhe; I don’t want to be a Michelle.

  I sip the last cold drops of coffee from my foam cup and begin to wonder what is taking Douglas so long. A few laughs at his new project with Farquar? Maybe making a few more Internet stock trades before having to spend the afternoon with the problem child in conference room number three? All I want is to go through the typical debriefing and document signing and be off and running with my new persona. I want my new moniker and my new address and my new hourly wage and my new apartment where I can set up my baby monitors and alphabetize my carryout menus. I want my new bed where I can dream of a person I can never be: myself.

  The door eventually opens but the only thing I see is a meaty hand on the knob. I hear a voice and the end of a conversation with an unseen party, a laugh, and, finally, words in the form of a whisper, “No… unfortunately, I’m going to be in here the rest of the day.”

  And then U.S. Deputy Marshal Douglas welcomes himself into my life.

  Time freezes for a moment as we size each other up. The first thing I notice—that anyone would notice—is his size. Easily standing six-foot-four, he has the build of a football-player-turned-coach. The guy was probably in great shape about five years ago; he doesn’t show obvious signs of flab but he’s definitely softening. The next thing I notice is his hair, which is short, but full and thick and black, in an Irish way, not Mediterranean. His eyes, too, blue like cobalt, speak of a northern influence and fade into not another color but a deeper hue of the same. Smooth skin, firm chin, pointed nose. I’ve forgotten Farquar already. Then he smiles and all I see are white beams and dimples and I feel like I’m looking at Matthew McConaughey and I wait for the matching goofy southern drawl to dribble out but instead he puts out his hand for a shake—oddly, his left hand—and instead of shaking it, I sink at the sight of a bright gold wedding band.

  This is not my day.

  “You’ll earn a promotion for taking this case, you know.” I half stand and reach out to shake. His hand is big and warm. But so is that freaking wedding band.

  He holds my hand for an unusually long time and I sit back down while still in his grip. Finally, he lets go and stands back. He stares at me, gently, and all he says is, “Melody.”

  The fact that he chose to say my real name as the first word between us has already won my favor.

  His stare acts as a reminder that he’s sized me up too, that he’s noticed I’m frazzled: no lipstick, smeared eyeliner, hair akimbo. I want to tell him I really look better than this but all I can deliver is, “Marshal Douglas.” I better get used to saying those words; they will probably come out of my mouth again—in another eighteen months.

  His smile fades, but he keeps those blues right on me and I’m starting to wonder if Farquar’s vivacious nose chunk made its way to my face. I involuntarily brush my lip a few times.

  “Before we start,” he says, “is there anything you need?”

  “I don’t want to be a Michelle.”

  “I meant, like… food or a trip to the rest room.”

  “Oh.” I shake my head and rub my temples.

  He opens my file and starts perusing it for what seems like the very first time and I start getting a little fumed. Somehow I know this is Farquar’s fault but I take it out on Douglas instead.

  “You’re a little young to be a marshal, aren’t you?”

  He looks up and smiles and suddenly I’m staring at McConaughey again.

  “I’m thirty-three.” He looks back down at the file, but continues, “I’ve been with the Marshals Service for about… eight years. With WITSEC for three. Before that I was with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “What?” I smirk. “Who leaves the FBI to come to the Marshals Service?”

  He ignores me, but shifts his body enough to signal that I’ve touched a sore spot.

  He closes the file and shoves it away, almost right off the table. “You can call me Sean.” He stares at me again and smiles a little, puts his elbows on the table, clasps his hands and rests his chin between his knuckles.

  I start to blush—and I’m really not in the mood. This is outside my realm of control. I point to the folder. “Don’t, um… don’t you want to familiarize yourself with my case?”

  “That file is full of other people’s opinions of you, of your history, of who you are. I’d rather hear it from you.”

  “We’ll be here all week.” I laugh a little, nervously. He stares into me and I quickly feel ineffectual.

  “If that’s what it takes.” He says this like he’s trying to win me over, in a professional but sublimely sensual way, that maybe, at some point in his life, he learned the only way he could garner the trust of a woman was by charming her, seducing her. He leans on the table, close to me, like he wants me to meet him halfway for a kiss, and I find myself reading his irises like a favorite novel. He closes the deal with, “I will do whatever it takes.”

  I swallow, hard enough that I’m sure he hears the gulp. />
  Regardless of how convenient it would be to have a marshal as a lover, I break myself away and remember where I am and why I am here—or, rather, why I put myself here—and that there is nothing charming or sexy about the Federal Witness Protection Program, their generic suburban addresses, and their boring names.

  “Well, Sean… I guess I can start with how this is all my fault. How I managed to kill my parents.”

  He slowly sits back in his chair, rests his hands on his stomach, and begins to twist his wedding band around his finger, as though it’s his only weapon against me.

  “I’m not a psychotherapist, so if you want to go down that path you can become Michelle Smith or some other faceless digit and we’ll send you on your way to rural Wisconsin.” He inhales deeply. “Or… you can help me understand what makes you tick. And we’ll get you a better life.”

  “You guys have done such a great job so far in—”

  “I’m not Farquar.”

  We stare at each other for a moment and with the patience of a dog I am determined to stare him down. He looks like he’s trying to read me—like he actually is a psychotherapist, or studied the discipline at some point—and as I feel my eyes yearning to look away, to blink, I slowly raise my arms above my head and put my hair into a ponytail to see if he’ll let his eyes stray to my chest.

  Alas, his eyes do make the journey away from mine, but not to my breasts. Instead he glances up at my hair and raises a curious, slightly disapproving eyebrow.

  Call me samurai.

  I look down and slowly pull the band from my hair as I say, “No, you see… I did cause my parents’ death—I mean, indirectly.” I purse my lips. “You familiar with the Bovaro family?”

  “You’re kidding, right? I work for the Justice Department.”

  “I know, Sean, but since you were probably fourteen when this happened, I figured it might not be fresh.” I begin tapping my empty coffee cup, staring at the black residue lining the bottom. “You know what led to the arrest of Tony Bovaro?”