The Last Good Girl

For my two sweet boys, the best storytellers in the family

T
he guy had beautiful white teeth and a dimple that appeared when she made him laugh, but all Emily could think was,
College is where romance goes to die.

They stood on prime real estate, belly-up to the bar at Lucky's, pressed together by the swell of bodies around them. The air was thick with sweated perfume, cheap beer, and the recycled breath of hundreds of young adults in their sexual prime. The boy drained his Bud, set the bottle on the bar, and issued a mating call.

“Wanna do shots?”

Translation:
Wanna get wasted, get laid, get out of my bed, and never to talk to me again?
There were no boyfriends in college. There were only hookups.

Emily smiled at the boy, tilting her head cutely to the side. To the world, she probably looked like any other carefree girl basking in a Friday night. It made her wonder how many of these girls were just like her. Pretending. Maybe all of them, in one way or another.

“Sure,” she said.

The dimple reappeared. The boy turned to wave over a bartender.

Over the hum of conversation and Pitbull, Emily heard the bells of the clock tower outside, striking midnight. Twelve solemn bongs marking the start of March 24, 2015. She'd heard those bells chiming on the hour, every hour, her entire life. As a girl, she'd lain in her pretty pink bedroom listening to their bass chimes, wondering what it'd be like when she was a college student herself, the adventures and grown-up secrets that would finally be revealed to her like beautiful presents to be unwrapped, one by one. That seemed like a very long time ago.

Tonight, the chimes meant Dylan and his friends would walk into the bar soon. She had to get out of here.

The bartender delivered two shot glasses filled with shimmery blue potion.

“I'm sorry,” she told the boy. “You're totally nailing the horny-but-caring-frat-boy thing. Maybe put your hand gently on my shoulder when you look in my eyes? Try it on one of them.” She gestured to all the shiny, uncomplicated girls who thought their prince was behind the next $1 pitcher of beer. Emily missed being one of them. “I gotta go.”

She picked up the first shot glass and downed the blue drink, then shotgunned the second one too. She tossed a twenty on the bar, grabbed her white North Face jacket, and threaded her way through the crowd. Preya and the other girls were somewhere in here, but Emily couldn't see them.

Wrapping her silvery scarf around her neck, she pushed out the front door and into the quiet night. She coughed on the cold air. March was Michigan's ugliest month. Dirty snow huddled at the curb, trapped in the purgatory between white powder and the warm April sun. Across the street, the bell tower shone like a warning as its twelfth chime echoed over shivering trees. The night seeped through Emily's sweater, pulling goose bumps from her skin. She shuddered, zipped her jacket, and looked down the street—right at what she feared most.

A raucous bunch of Beta Psi boys rounded the corner. Dylan was in front, of course. He was the alpha dog in any pack of males. Tall and swaggering, dressed in clothes that were both effortlessly casual and painfully expensive, he could be a poster boy for fratty privilege. The other guys clustered around him, vying for position.

Emily froze a few feet from the entrance to Lucky's. Its cone of light still surrounded her.

Dylan's eyes locked on hers. He smiled, walked over, and stood in her space. Too close. The other boys formed a semicircle around her. She felt unsteady.

“I don't want any trouble,” she said.

“Doesn't seem that way,” Dylan drawled. “Seems like you're doing everything you can to stir the pot.”

“Whore,” said one of Dylan's minions. The kid snorted, cocked back his head, and spat. His phlegm arced through the air, reflecting the light from the bar's neon signs, glittering and ugly. Everyone watched the loogie as it hung suspended for a moment at the top of its arc. Then it headed back down and splatted on her boot. The boys' laughter was loud and vicious. Anger pulsed through her gut, more acidic than any shot at Lucky's.

“You're disgusting,” she told Dylan. “And you can't even fight your own fights.”

Dylan frowned at his friends, and they stilled. Their silence was more ominous than their laughter. Emily was keenly aware that she could not control this situation.

“Head in,” Dylan told the other guys. “I'll be right there.”

“You sure, dude?”

“Yeah.”

The boys did what they were told. Music pulsed then quieted as the bar's door swung open and shut. Emily tried to move away, too, but Dylan's hand clamped onto her arm. They faced each other, a boy and a girl alone on an empty stretch of sidewalk, breathing fog into the night.

“Have you thought about what you're doing?” he said. “Like, really thought about it? Because, it's kinda crazy that this is how you want to play it.”

“I'm not playing.”

His fingers squeezed her arm through the puffy coat. “You know what this means for you? You are
done
.”

“Oh, Dylan.” She smiled. “I'm just beginning. I'm writing an editorial too. It'll be in next week's
Tower Times
.”

“Bitch,” he said slowly. “My family will end you.”

“I know who your family is. And pretty soon they'll know who you are too.”

Emily yanked away her arm away and strode off, warmed with the satisfaction that her words had cut him. For a moment, she heard nothing but the sound of her footsteps clacking triumphantly on the pavement. The whisper of wind through trees. A car passing, its tires slicing through salty slush.

Then footsteps, sharp and angry, behind her. She glanced back. Dylan was following her.

“Leave me alone!” she yelled.

He strode faster. His hands were fists.

On her left were shops, closed for the night—dark. On her right was North Campus Street, then campus itself—darker. Trees, dorms, the library. A little farther in was the president's house and the pretty pink bedroom of her childhood. None of these places offered safety.

Ahead, the lights from the shops ended in a yawning stretch of black. It was a block-long hole dug out for construction, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Students called it the Pit.

She hugged her purse and tried to walk faster, but her ankle-high boots had disastrously high heels. Dylan wore rubber-soled boat shoes. The slap of his footsteps grew louder, closer.

She broke into a run.

So did he.

She looked over her shoulder—he was right behind her. Wind whipped her long brown hair into her eyes. She shoved it back, stumbled, and pushed herself harder. She was running as fast as she could when she felt his breath on her neck.

T
he fire crackled and sighed, saturating the room with golden light. Anna balanced a laptop on her knees as she edited an appellate brief. Jody sat next to her, flipping through TV channels while holding her infant to her breast. The baby finished feeding and unlatched, and Jody wiped her daughter's mouth with a cloth. The infant met Anna's eyes with a milk-drunk smile. Anna felt the surge of love she did every time she looked at her little niece. She set her laptop on the coffee table and reached over. “Let me burp her.”

“Thanks.” Jody handed Leigh to her sister and refastened her nursing bra. She stood and stretched, then padded to the kitchen. “God, I can't stop eating.”

“You're burning like a thousand calories a day just producing milk. Go crazy.” Anna spread the cloth on her shoulder and shifted the baby onto it. Three weeks ago, she had no idea how to hold an infant. Then Leigh was born. After helping with dozens, maybe hundreds, of feedings over the past three weeks, Anna was starting to feel like a pro. She stood and walked around the room, stroking Leigh's back and humming “Hush Little Baby.”

She stopped as an image flashed on the TV: grainy surveillance video, the type that only became relevant when something terrible happened. It showed a pretty young woman in a white jacket talking to a handsome young man on a sidewalk. The young woman's long dark hair was elaborately curled, her mouth stained with lipstick. She'd clearly prepared for a big night out, maybe primping for some boy—maybe this boy. The young man held her arm and leaned into her space. Anna couldn't tell if they were sharing a secret or having a fight. The girl pulled her arm back, turned, and walked away from him. The boy strode offscreen after her. The news anchor, Carmen Harlan, looked grave as she said, “Emily Shapiro has not been seen since around midnight last night. Anyone who has information about her whereabouts is asked to call the police at the number below.”

Anna murmured a few words of prayer then turned away from the screen. She felt an instinct to jump in, but this was not her jurisdiction. It was not her case.

“Poor baby,” she murmured, her lips brushing Leigh's soft hair. “So much scariness in the world. You'll stay with me and your mama till you're thirty, right?”

Anna inhaled the sweet baby scent and wondered if there was anything more satisfying than the feel of a warm, contented baby on your shoulder. The thought surprised her. She'd never longed for a baby before.

Now wasn't the time to start.

She walked to the back window and looked out at the backyard. A few chickens pecked through the pale winter grass. Beyond them were rows of apple trees, bare for the winter, then an abandoned warehouse, its windows shattered and black. A mile farther, the Renaissance Center lit up the night sky. The linked skyscrapers were Detroit's iconic, ironic skyline, an attempt at renewal that had been a blip in the city's steady decline. But it did make a striking backdrop to the orchard. Not many farmers had a view of skyscrapers. Cooper's urban farm was the ugliest, most beautiful place Anna had ever lived.

She caught a glimpse of Cooper walking through a row of apple trees. He wore well-loved jeans, work boots, and a flannel shirt that stretched across his chest. His big white shepherd, Sparky, trotted at his heels. Cooper saw Anna in the window, smiled, and lifted a jug of cider in greeting. Anna waved back. The mere sight of him made her smile; it was an involuntary reaction, like her mouth watering for fresh-baked cookies.

It was too bad, really. Because, like a batch of cookies, Cooper was something to be savored briefly. His very deliciousness was his danger.

Anna had carefully built a life for herself in Washington, D.C. Everything she'd ever worked for—and she'd worked hard—was in D.C. Nine months ago, she'd come home to Michigan to defend Jody in a criminal case. Cooper had protected them when the whole world was against them. They'd been living in Cooper's house ever since Jody's home burned down. Cooper was a good friend and they shared a strong attraction, so Anna supposed it was natural that she'd ended up in his bed. But she'd been clear with him from the start. She was still reeling from her broken engagement. What she and Cooper had was a fling, just two friends having fun. They both knew she was going back to D.C.

And yet . . .

The back door opened and the click of the dog's paws preceded Cooper's asymmetrical footsteps. He walked up to Anna, bringing the scent of fresh air and pine trees with him. He kissed her lightly, then bent down to kiss the baby in her arms. She leaned her head up to meet his eyes.

“You look gorgeous,” he said. She was dressed up for a night out with him.