The List (40 page)

We talked off the record for a few minutes. I got us both more coffee and I promised
I wouldn’t print a thing Victoria told
me if it wasn’t by the book. Not that I had any idea where the lines were drawn, but
I would figure it out.

“And I don’t want my name in anything, anywhere,” she pleaded. “I only agreed to talk
to you because I wanted to make sure nothing had happened to Olivia. After she left
me, she didn’t keep in touch. Some do, some don’t, you know, it depends on a lot.
How well they get on with their new family, their age, how long you had them.”

“How long you have them in foster care . . . ” I said.

“Yes. In foster care,” said Victoria, shifting her weight nervously. “I took about
fifteen different girls in after I got divorced in ’87. Seemed like the right thing
to do, you know. And Olivia, I never had a story as sad as hers, and these girls had
some terrible stories.”

“I imagine they did,” I said, writing as fast as I could.

“Olivia, you know she was the one who found her mother after she shot herself in the
head. Left temple. Olivia ran outside screaming. They lived in the middle of nowhere.
She had to run half a mile to find someone to call the police.”

Suicide. I wrote the word three times and circled it. My source at Syracuse was right.

I imagined Olivia running down the dirt road Payton and I had driven on just two days
before. Had the same American flag been there? The car rusting in the yard? Or had
her mother made an attempt to mask the face of poverty? I thought about that porch
with the plastic chairs, Olivia tumbling out the door, yelling for help, only to realize
she was horribly alone.

“And when she came to me,” Victoria continued, interrupting my thoughts, “she was
such a scared, quiet girl. They had tried her out at a cousin’s house, but that hadn’t
worked. They couldn’t feed another mouth, they said, but the social worker on her
case told me that it wasn’t the money. They just couldn’t look at such
a frightened kid. And then she was with another foster family. I think they were closer
to her hometown, a younger couple living in southern Arizona. But she was taken out
pretty quickly. The social worker who brought her to me confirmed there had been . . .
abuse.” She whispered the word and shook her head.

“How long did she live with you?” I asked, trying to act professional, a nearly impossible
task considering I was operating in a state of shock. All these months, I had been
looking. I was always searching for the more complicated story, for blackmail, for
manipulation. This one seemed much simpler. Much sadder.

“Not very long. Less than a year,” said Victoria. “I would say about eight months.
She had a few visitors, but well, very few actually. A couple and their daughter from
her hometown, and one Mexican woman whose name I’m forgetting.” I thought of O’Brien
and his daughter telling me the pie was on the house and pushing the receipt into
my hand. “No family at all. Luckily, she was adopted pretty quickly. She was a cute
kid. And a Caucasian girl. That, sad to say it, helps move things along.”

“Cute, right,” I said writing it down. “She had red hair back then?” I asked, trying
to sound confident. “A few freckles?”

“A million freckles,” said Victoria, confirming. “But people grow out of those. I
hope she grew out of a lot of other things, too. Like those horrible memories.”

I flicked my braid behind my shoulder and put my pen down.

“Do you remember anything else about her?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate.

Victoria sat quietly for a second and then said, “I remember she didn’t like to take
showers. She only took baths and she always asked me to stay with her until she was
finished. I didn’t have a lot of time—there were other kids in the house when I had
her—but I did it. It was something about the way she asked . . . she didn’t usually
single herself out like that. And I
remember she would never take off this necklace she wore. She never said, but I think
it was her mother’s—a little silver chain.”

A silver necklace? I thought of the one she always wore now. It looked pretty new,
though silver aged well. But Victoria only furrowed her brow in confusion when I asked
if it was a Celtic eternity knot.

“The people who adopted her, do you remember their name?” I asked instead.

Victoria held her mug again, searching her memory.

“It was so many years ago. I remember them being nice people. Of course, the social
workers were in charge of that end, not me, but I met them when they came to pick
her up. They seemed like two kind, good people.”

“Were they the Campos?” I asked. “He’s a dentist in Texas. They still live there.
Dr. and Mrs. Campo.”

“You know, I think that’s it,” said Victoria. “Now that you say the name, I’m pretty
sure that’s it. I remember going over with Olivia what her new name would be. We agreed
it wasn’t such a bad one.”

“Are you pretty sure, or sure?” I asked, scratching my nails deep into my arm under
the table.

“I’m sure,” said Victoria. “Yes, I’m sure. Olivia Campo. That’s what her name is.
I hate to admit this, but I haven’t thought about her for so long. I had the other
girls for much longer. Some for years. Hers was just one of those sad stories that
consumes you in the moment, but then just goes away. I guess that’s what helped me
stay open to foster care for so long. I refused to let the sadness get to me. I just
tried to make things good for a little while.”

“Well, I think you succeeded at that,” I said. “She’s a very smart woman. Olivia Campo.”

“Is she? Well, that’s nice to hear,” she said, calming down. I looked at my arm; the
nail marks were starting to fade.

We both sat there and finished our drinks. I turned the page on my notepad so she
couldn’t see the words I had circled and rewritten.

“What are you going to write about her?” asked Victoria after she said she should
be on her way.

“I’m not quite sure yet,” I replied.

“It’s really nothing bad is it?”

“It’s nothing that isn’t true,” I said.

Victoria opened the front door of the coffee shop to let a few college students in.
She looked at me before she left and said, “You tell her I said hello. Tell her I’ve
thought about her every now and again and that I always hoped she was doing well.”

I assured her I would and gave her my number in case she wanted to talk about anything
else. But at this point, I didn’t need anything else. Over the span of a twenty-minute
conversation, everything had fallen into place.

I took my notebook back out and flipped it open. I now had a connection between Olivia
and Stanton that was more than just physical. Olivia’s life had been turned upside
down and bashed around because of the John F. Stanton & Company. Perhaps Drew Reader’s
death was the kind of accident that was bound to happen even in a well-run industrial
facility, but it sure sounded like the plant could have been more careful. And how
often does a deceased janitor’s family triumph over a bunch of bigwigs and their legions
of lawyers? If Olivia thought Stanton’s family was at fault for her father’s death,
and in turn, her mother’s, it would be understandable that she wanted to bring him
down. But in the midst of all that, she and Stanton must have found common ground
on foster care. Maybe he knew about her past—not his family’s involvement in it, but
the fact that she was in the system he was trying to reform. Maybe that’s what had
softened her, and kick-started their affair.

I still had a million questions to answer. But I also had far too many people who
knew where I worked and knew I was writing a story about Olivia Campo, aka Reader.
I needed it to go to print.

On the plane ride back to Washington, I rewrote my draft and when I was finished writing,
I wondered if Sandro knew about Olivia’s past. I mentioned that Olivia was married
to Sandro Pena, her college sweetheart, originally from Mexico, and now working at
the Organization of American States. But I stopped there. Sandro was the one point
she could use against me, if she tried to deny or fight the story in any way.

I wrote about Olivia’s childhood, her time in foster care, her obsession with coming
to Washington and working at the
List
. I scribbled lines about how she had likely harbored anger against Stanton and his
family because of what happened to her parents, and how she probably sought out the
senator with the intention of bringing him down, but something—emotions, love, lust—got
in the way, and was still getting in the way. Their affair was ongoing. I didn’t know
if the company was actually at fault for her father’s death, despite the court ruling
from years ago, but that couldn’t be solved before I went to print. I also didn’t
know if Olivia was still trying to ruin Stanton’s career, or if their affair had derailed
her original intentions. Those questions, as Payton said, would be answered later.

As the plane’s overhead lights flicked on, signaling that we were about to land at
Washington’s Reagan National Airport, I looked down at the page in front of me. I
had more than five thousand words and a slide show of digital photos that I had to
get out fast. I needed help.

T
hough Hardy and I exchanged about fifty short, lifeless emails every day, I had spoken
to him very little in person and never on the phone.

The
List
’s chosen method of communication was quick impersonal emails. Even when you sat next
to someone, you didn’t turn your head to speak to them. That was a waste of time and
saliva. But now felt like the right time to change all that.

Standing at an empty baggage carousel, away from the crowds waiting for their luggage,
I looked up Hardy’s number and dialed. His impatient voice came on the line after
one ring.

“Hi, Hardy, it’s Adrienne Brown,” I said after he barked his name.

The phone was silent and I imagined Hardy, emotionless Hardy, in shock that I had
called him.

“Hi, Adrienne. Why are you calling? Is something wrong?” he finally managed to spout
out.

Wrong? Yes. Many things were wrong. Like how awkward it felt to cry to Hardy for help.

“I’m at Reagan Airport,” I admitted. “I lied to you about my sister being hurt. I
was actually in Arizona finishing a story I’ve been working on.”

Hardy didn’t say anything. I thought he was going to start
screaming or berate me with his own brand of dorky North Dakota insults, but he waited
for me to finish.

“Between us, very between us, I stumbled on a little something a few months ago that
I was able to confirm and turn into a pretty big something.” It felt empowering to
say it. And to an editor who might actually help me.

“Okay,” said Hardy, still calm.

“It’s kind of about Senator Stanton,” I continued. “You know, from Arizona. Well,
Senator Stanton, it turns out, is having an affair with Olivia Campo. Our Olivia Campo.
And I have pictures of them in the act. Pretty damning photos. I can explain how I
got them and how this all came about, but maybe just not from the airport.”

After a few seconds of silence, Hardy simply said, “Wow.” He fell silent again and
then finally managed to say, “Adrienne, that’s very big stuff. That’s huge.”

“Yeah, I think it could do some damage,” I said.

“I’m glad you called me about it. I would like to help, but honestly, I think it’s
a little too big for me. For both of us maybe. You should call Upton.”

Call Upton? I couldn’t think of anything more frightening. Couldn’t Hardy call Upton?
Wasn’t that part of his job description? To protect me from the terrifying editors
at the top?

But I couldn’t ask Hardy to do that. It would be like asking your big sister to beat
up the school bully—which I actually had done twenty-one years ago, but then, Payton
wasn’t your average big sister. And I was no longer that lame. I had to take the reins
on this. It’s what I had been doing for months.

I thanked Hardy, who proved to be less of a bloodsucking beast than I thought he was,
and promised I’d keep him posted.

I had spoken to Mark Upton three times in my entire life: Once when I interviewed
for my job, another time when he
saluted me for my scoop on James Franco, and once when he stopped by my desk, observed
my glass full of cucumber water, and asked me if it was vodka. When I said no, he
held it up to his face and smelled it to see if I was lying. I had a closer relationship
with my UPS guy than I did with him.

But Hardy was right: I needed real, seasoned editorial help. I knew that Upton and
everyone else at the
List
loved Olivia, but even more than they loved Olivia, they feared having their good
name sullied. They would surely fire Olivia as soon as they read my draft, which might
take the weight of the article down a few pounds, but it was still a huge story. And
they were a newspaper that made money from huge stories.

When I got in a cab at the airport that night, I asked it to go straight past the
turn for Route 50 into Middleburg and keep on driving toward Upton’s house in Maryland.

We headed up Connecticut Avenue, turned left on Thorn-apple Street, and stopped in
front of the yellow house I had seen Stanton idling in front of while he waited for
Olivia. I walked up the granite slab walk, picked up the brass door knocker, and gave
a few loud thwacks. I looked down at my watch as I waited for someone to answer. It
was 11:17
P.M.

When Upton opened the door, wearing old jeans and a wrinkled work shirt, he looked
at me with confusion, clearly unable to place me.

“My name is Adrienne Brown. I work for you.”

Still nothing. He stood behind the screen door, just looking at me.

“As a reporter in the Style section for the
Capitolist
. Adrienne Brown.”

“Of course, of course,” said Upton, putting my name and face together. He leaned over
and opened the screen door. “I had trouble placing you outside the newsroom. Adrienne
Brown,
that’s right. Caroline Cleves Brown’s daughter. And what are you doing at my house
in the middle of the night?”