Tonight I am Someone Else

The first mistake was the real crime. The second mistake was the e-mail. Mara meant to send it to her best friend, Olivia. Not him. She had been composing an email complaining about the new lawyer, Vincent Blackwood. His slimy smile and cold eyes made her skin crawl. But when she hit send it was not Olivia’s name that blinked back on the screen it was Vincent Blackwood. She stared at the screen in horror at the words she wrote:

“Vincent gives me the creeps. Something is off about him. I don’t like his energy. He watches me like he’s already burying my body. I hope that he leaves soon.”

Panic surged throughout her body. She tried to retrieve the email and wished that she had hacker skills, like her cousin, Ray. But she neither had the skills or knowledge to get back the now sent email. She tried and failed.

She paced around her small apartment, clutching her phone waiting for it to ring at any moment. It didn’t. The next morning nothing. And when she arrived at the firm Vincent was already there. He stood there perfectly still in the conference room sipping his coffee like nothing had happened or changed. Maybe he didn’t read the e-mail. Maybe he never got it.

But something had changed.

His eyes met hers. And then he smiled very slightly.

The third mistake was trying to explain.

At 4:58 pm Mara with her heart pounding loudly in her chest, knocked on the glass conference room door. Vincent looked up from his laptop and waved her in.

“Miss Langley.” He said. “What pleasure do I owe to this visit?”

She cleared her throat. “I wanted to apologize for the email. It was meant for a friend. I was just venting. It was very unprofessional and I really regret it. It was kind of like a joke between me and her. Once again I apologize.”

He tilted his head. “You think I watch you like I’m planning to bury your body?”

Mara walked out of the room.

That night Mara called her friend and drank as much wine as it took to put her in a haze of sleep. She was desperate to forget his words and the sound of his voice. But exactly at 2:11 am her phone buzzed.

Unknown number. Text message: “You can’t undo what has been done. You want to bury the truth, I can help you with that.”

She panicked.

The text kept appearing in a loop, the same words over and over again. Than another text:

“You want to fix your mistake? Let Me show you how.”

She couldn’t eat and she couldn’t sleep. The third night a black envelope appeared in her mailbox. No name. No return address. Inside is a photo of Olivia, her friend, sleeping in her bed in her apartment.

Mara dropped the envelope and the photo. Her mouth went dry. His stomach was in knots. She called her friend immediately.

“I’m fine.” Olivia said in a groggy voice. “I’m okay. Why? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Mara was not okay.

The fourth mistake was agreeing to meet him.

She didn’t call the police. She couldn’t. Even if she could, what would she say? Was she supposed to say that a man whom she sent a rude email to is sending her cryptic texts? No, she instead called the last number which sent her the text message.

“What do you want?” She asked.

“To talk. I will be at the greenhouse at Park Eden. Meet me there at midnight. Remember this, I know what happened.”

Mara didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to go but she also knew she had to. He had to stay silent if he really knew what she had done.

The greenhouse was dark and abandoned at that time of the night. Half of it was swallowed up with vines and the other half was covered with the shadows of the night. Mara walked slowly to the entrance as her footsteps echoed loudly against the cement floor.

Vincent stood near the orchids.

“You came. I’m glad.” He said

“What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

“You want to try to fix a mistake. I am here to help you.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Yes,” He smiled. “Because you feel the truth.”

“What do you want? I don’t have any money if that is what you want.” She said loudly,

Vincent stepped closer. “I don’t want money. I want to give you a second chance.”

“A second chance to what? Why do you think that I need a second chance? What do you know?”

“I know the truth about what you did.” Vincent said calmly. “I know that the truth is going to catch up with you soon. I know that you are running from the truth about what you did so long ago to Bertha or more to the point what you didn’t do. .”

“You don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Yes, I do and I also know that if you want to stay free you must take this envelope.”

Vincent handed her an envelope with a new ID, passport, Social security card and credit cards all with a name she didn’t recognize, Elena Voss.”

“What is this for?”

“Tonight you can become someone else again.”

The fifth mistake was taking the envelope. She told herself that she was just going to hold onto it. After all, how could he know? How could anyone know? She covered her tracks. Nobody knew about that night. Nobody could know. But over the next month things escalated. She got more text messages and more photos. One photo of her old childhood home where she grew up. One photo of her dad’s grave and the last photo was of Bertha’s grave.

She was young and she made a big mistake. She was a witness of what happened to Bertha that night. She saw the people who had killed Bertha. She knew them. But she could not tell anyone. She was young, alone and scared and she didn’t want to be the next one to die. Nobody knew she was there. So she had thought. But somebody or somebody’s did know. Vincent knew and if he knew who else knew?

She withdrew cash from her accounts in small increments until she withdrew all of her money. She cancelled her lease and brought a train ticket to Boston under the name Elena Voss.

By the time she boarded the train at 10:09 pm Mara Langley was a ghost.

Life was quiet for a while. She had found an apartment and a new job at a small law firm in Cambridge. She had arranged it all slowly and tried to stay under the radar. She felt like she had stepped into a bad movie where someone else had written her role. All she had to do was follow the script. And she did that for six months.

Until one morning her boss called her into his office. A detective was standing there waiting.

“I’m here to ask you some questions about Mara Langley. You wouldn’t know anything about her would you?”

Mara’s heart stopped.

“No.” She lied. “Never heard of her.”

The detective looked at her face carefully as if he was studying every inch of it. “Interesting. You look awful like this picture of her. If I didn’t know better I would say you were her twin except for the hair color.” He slid a picture across her boss's desk.

It was her. It was not Mara and it was not Elena. It was both.

“I think this picture is you. I can’t help you if you deny it. Do you know anything about the murder of Bertha Cox who was killed six years ago?”

“No. I don’t know anything.” Mara lied.

“I think that you’re in danger. I also think that you are lying. I was only sent here to question you. But, if you say you are not that person then there is no way I can protect you. But, you better watch your back. If you know something please feel free to give me a call.”

The detective handed her his card.

The final mistake was trying to run again.

She packed a bag that night and she booked three motel rooms all over the city. She planned to disappear again for the second time and cut all ties with everyone. She needed to start fresh again.

As soon as she unlocked the door to the first motel room the phone buzzed.

It was a text message. A photo of the detective.

Dead.

His eyes were open but she could see that life had clearly drained out of his body. The message said: “You made it worse. You always do.”

She dropped the phone. Her hands were trembling.

“Come home Mara.”

She didn’t have a home anymore.

She returned to Boston just a 100 miles from where it all happened. Her apartment had been ransacked. Her new boss was gone. The law office where she had worked, empty. It was as if they never had existed. And sitting in her bedroom on her bed was Vincent.

“You can’t run forever. You can’t be someone else forever. You’re only making it worse. You deserve peace.”

Mara nodded.

“You were born Mara. You became Elena. But, identity isn’t a mask, it is a choice. You are still in the same prison no matter what the name you go by. It is time.”

“I just didn’t want to get involved. I was scared. I wanted out. I didn’t want to die. “

“No, you wanted to run. It’s not the same. You should have stayed and told what you saw.”

“What do I do now?” Mara asked tearfully.

Vincent stood up. “You fix it.”

“How?”

He smiled for the last time. “You know how Mara.”

The next morning a news story came across the TV.

“Woman finally comes forward as a witness to the murder of Bertha Cox cold case.”

After the trial, which took over two years, Mara looked at the woman in the mirror as she sat in her small apartment on her black love seat sofa. She realized that she could not run from mistakes any more. Running only makes it worse. She was home. She was Mara and she liked it that way.