Different Circles

“Well ... it is not like Meghan at all, of course, but with Jake’s reputation ... and ... well, I’m her mother! When someone tells you something like that you have to at least consider it might be true!”

“A fair point, I suppose,” Pauline said. “Did he name any names?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he tell you the names of any of the people who are alleging these things?” she asked.

“No, he just said they were sources he had contacted in town and some of Meghan’s friends.”

“But he did not tell you which friends?”

“No,” she said, “and, truth be told, Meggie doesn’t really have all that many friends. Not close ones anyway. She’s never had anything like a best friend. She’s always been a little bit of a homebody.”

“That’s kind of what I figured,” Pauline said.

“Are you saying that he’s making all this up?” she asked.

“Not in the strict sense of the word,” Pauline said. “What he undoubtedly did is to go trolling around the town and probably at the Cal Poly campus, trying to find anyone who even remotely knew who Meghan was. It’s not that hard to do now that the town knows she is working for Jake. And then he simply askes those people—who likely do not even really know your daughter on a personal level at all—what they think is going on. These people spew out gossip that they have heard or perhaps made up themselves, and the reporter writes it down and considers it a source. And that is how he will cite those sources in his story: ‘Someone who knows Meghan,’ ‘A close friend of Meghan,’ ‘A friend of the Zachary family.’ That is pretty much how tabloid journalism works.”

“That is terrible!” Mrs. Zachary cried.

“Yes, it is,” Pauline said. “And that is why a good portion of the world believes that my brother is a Satanist, that he is a wife-beater, that he threw a girl off a boat once, that he snorts cocaine from butt cracks, that his child might have been conceived at an orgy and that he is not actually the father, and, if I cannot put a stop to it, that your daughter is his sex slave.”

“How can you stop it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I can,” Pauline said, “but I’m going to give it a shot. Did you give any information to the reporter? Anything at all about Meghan, her life with Jake, anything else? Think carefully here, because if you did, he will cite you as one of his sources.”

“I just told him that Meghan was working for Jake,” she said. “I did say I did not approve of her doing that because I worried about her.”

“Okay,” Pauline said slowly. That would be one for the reporter. “Anything else?”

She thought for a moment. “Uh ... well, I did say that his information on how Meghan got hired was incorrect.”

“Really?” Pauline said. “How did he say she got hired?”

“His information, from his source, was that Jake recruited her using the internet. He put out an ad asking for applicants for the position of nanny, and asked that they attach a picture. He chose who to interview based on the pictures. And then, in the interview, the applicants were specifically told that having sex with Jake and his wife was part of the deal.”

“He told you this?” Pauline asked.

“Yes,” she said. “That was why I corrected him.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me this a few minutes ago when I asked you to tell me word for freaking word what the man said?? she did not yell into the phone. Instead, she took this information as the helpful tidbit it actually was. “Okay,” she did say. “This is helpful. What did you tell him to correct him?”

“The truth,” she said. “I told him that my oldest daughter was a labor and delivery nurse who helped Mrs. Kingsley deliver her baby. It was Danielle who told them about Meghan and they thought she might make a good nanny. Danielle put them in touch with her and they met her and hired her.”

“Did he ask to talk to Danielle?” she asked.

“No,” she said. “Not at all. In fact, he changed the subject to something else once I told him this. It was like he didn’t want to hear it.”

Pauline smiled. “He didn’t want to hear it,” she said. “It contradicts a rather juicy part of his story. This is very useful information, Mrs. Zachary.”

“In what way?”

“It suggests that the reporter has information that discredits his narrative. Journalistic ethics—which is what he would be judged under in any legal proceedings—demand that he follow up on this information and at least present it in the story. His lack of further questioning of you on this issue suggests he has no intention of doing that.”

“And that’s useful?”

“Potentially,” she said. “Tell me something. If this reporter prints this story as he presented it to you, with that bullshit about Jake finding her on the internet and telling her she needs to have sex with him intact, would you be willing to go on record with the true story of how Meghan came to meet Jake and Laura, and that you informed this reporter of this story prior to his publication?”