No One You Know by Michelle Richmond

anything, an attempt to leave that part of my past behind, to erase it, as much as possible, from the geography of my life. Although I still considered San Francisco home, I spent a good deal of my time elsewhere, among people who did not speak my language, landscapes that looked nothing like my hometown, places where I would not be reminded of Lila. I felt at ease wandering among the coffee trees, feeling the mist of a foreign climate and smelling unfamiliar earth. At home, I was always nervous, always looking over my shoulder. Abroad, I found a kind of peace.
    “I know,” he said. “I’ve seen you in the past.”
    “Pardon?”
    “It’s a small town. You stand out. The first time was almost five years ago. You were at the outdoor market. I was going to say something, but then it started to rain, and you hurried away.”
    I didn’t know how to respond. It occurred to me that perhaps he had followed me here, that he planned to do to me what he had done to my sister. It felt surreal, as if I had dreamt him out of thin air. I looked to Maria—for confirmation of his existence or, absurdly, for some kind of protection, I’m not sure. But she just smiled.
    “You said ‘the first time.’ There were others?”
    “Yes.”
    “How many?”
    He paused for a moment. “Three.”
    “Do you live here?”
    “For the past seventeen years.”
    I found myself staring at Peter McConnell’s hands, at his long arms. These were the hands, according to Thorpe, that had killed my sister, the arms that had carried her into the woods and left her there.
    “I came to Nicaragua because of the book,” he said. “My wife, Margaret, didn’t believe what Thorpe wrote, of course. But it was too much for her. It didn’t matter that she knew I wasn’t a murderer, everyone else thought I was.”
    I wanted to add, “You were, you are, ” but McConnell kept talking, in a steady, unrelenting rhythm, as though he had something to say and did not plan on stopping until he was finished.
    “Margaret and I held it together for a little while,” he continued. “Not for us, it had been over between us for a long time. We only made an effort to stay together because of our son, Thomas. He was three years old when the book came out. We picked up at the end of the summer semester and moved to the Midwest, where Margaret’s parents lived. We had hoped to leave the media circus, the suspicions, back in the Bay Area. By then the police had already questioned me twice, and they had no evidence on which to charge me, but that didn’t matter. As far as most people were concerned, I was guilty. Even in Ohio, we couldn’t escape that book. It seemed like everyone in my wife’s hometown had read it. In a way, I don’t blame Margaret for cutting me out of her life. She had Thomas to think of—she was afraid of what it would do to him to grow up under that kind of microscope, with that kind of stigma. And then there was Lila, of course. Margaret knew that I would never get over Lila.”
    McConnell talked with the urgency of a man who had not spoken to anyone in a long time. It struck me as strange that he would be defending his wife to me. I kept wondering how this was relevant. His wife, their son—it was just a minor side note, I thought, to the larger story: what he had done to my sister.
    “I used to follow you,” I said. “After I read the book, I went to Stanford and found your office. You had hours posted on the door. I was afraid to be alone with you, but I wanted to see you, to put a face with the name.”
    “My picture was in the paper.”
    “More than a face, I guess. I wanted to see you up close, in person. So I waited in the hallway outside your office one Monday. I wore a big hat and sunglasses. I felt ridiculous. You had the door shut. There was a line of students waiting. I kept hearing Lila’s name. It was obvious they weren’t all there to talk to you about class. It was more like they wanted to be a part of the action. One