Kate’s borrowed iPad chimed with another comment.
Why did you leave? asked Anonymous4Life. He was one of the cheaters who seemed to form the majority of the website’s users. Kate had the impression that many of them were simply looking for other like-minded people for further adventures. As if the site was a coy Ashley Madison. A4L had cheated on his wife twice with the same woman, three years apart, and claimed he’d joined the group as a way of avoiding telling her.
They were better off without me, Kate replied. And given how quickly she’d left them when she had the opportunity, that was clearly true.
Once she had the additional cash, she’d walked to the Greyhound station near the water. By the time she got there, fat blisters had formed on the soles of her feet. Her work shoes were not meant for walking or the running she’d done earlier. She checked her reflection in the glass of one of the stores she passed. She looked disheveled but not entirely out of place.
The bus station was in a bad area of town. But as she watched the weak sun glint off the black water of the lake, she didn’t feel as if she was in danger. She’d survived. She felt insulated, wrapped in bubble wrap.
Lucky.
Inside the cavernous building, she checked the schedule. There was a bus headed to Canada in three hours. She waited in line with twenty others, an impatient group held back by nylon tape barriers. She’d been worried the bus station would be closed. But other than the intense way people were looking at their phones, everything seemed to be business as usual.
When she got to the counter and asked for a one-way ticket, the clerk told her the price and asked for her passport. She reached into her purse for the cash and thanked her continued luck that she had both her passports with her.
That was the key to her success, if she did succeed. Her two passports. Her American one, because that’s where she lived and mostly who she thought of herself as being these days. And her Canadian one, because that was where she was born and where she still traveled to frequently for work. Since she was a citizen, Canada required her to enter on her Canadian passport. But were they linked? She’d never thought to ask. Would the fact that a dead person used a passport hours after she was supposed to be dead raise a red flag somewhere, someday? She’d have to take the risk.
Her passports were still in her purse from a trip to Toronto a few weeks earlier to attend a tech convention. And her Canadian passport still had her maiden name on it because she’d never bothered to make the change when she renewed it after she was married.
The woman at the bus station scanned her passport. She said something about how she’d move to Canada if she could, what with the way the world was these days. Kate smiled and nodded, holding her breath. Nothing happened other than the woman handed her a bus ticket tucked into the pages of her passport. She went to wait for her bus.
There were two hours until it left. She settled into an uncomfortable seat. She rested her purse on her lap and fixed her gaze on the television so she didn’t make eye contact with anyone. She watched the breaking news about her former workplace, wondering what had happened to everyone. There were all kinds of theories. The CNN anchor reminded people to remain calm. Their sources were telling them it was a gas leak. But still, there were rumors of bombs in other buildings. Suspicious packages being left behind. Certain types of people to be rounded up. Civil liberties that needed to be violated.
She watched TV for a while. Then she went to the small store and bought a few things she would need. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A backpack. A T-shirt and sweatshirt with the same logo on them. She needed clean underwear, but that wasn’t available. In the bathroom, she took off her blouse and jacket, stuffing them into the bag. She washed the dirt and sweat off her face and neck. Then slipped the T-shirt over her head and then the sweatshirt, pulling the hood up so she’d have something to retreat inside of. Already she felt different. More like the woman she’d been before she got married. Before . . .
She went into a stall and sat down on the toilet and wept. Was she actually going to do this? Walk away from her children, her husband, her life? Let them think she was dead when she wasn’t? Was the pull of something different so great that she had to take such a drastic step? There was divorce, surely. There were alternatives she hadn’t considered.
She sat there for a long time. Her rear end turned numb, and she felt almost faint from the combination of emotion and shock and not having had anything to eat that morning because she hadn’t been able to swallow her breakfast.
She’d almost talked herself into changing course when an announcement sounded over the PA system, a robotic voice like the one used to make announcements on the “L.”
All departures are canceled until further notice.
The city was on lockdown. And it was only then, with her plans most likely thwarted, that she knew she must press ahead. That the only way for her was forward.
That in order to live, she had no alternative but to die.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
TJ: Who didn’t Kaitlyn tell about you?
FM: Her friends. Her family.
TJ: She didn’t tell her husband? I thought you said she had?
FM: That’s what she told me. But she hadn’t.
TJ: How did you find that out?
FM: You’ve heard the story, haven’t you?
TJ: I’ve heard a few things. Why don’t you tell me what actually happened? I want to hear your side of the story.
FM: You don’t care about
