Reputation

Reputation by Sara Shepard



LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO



Maybe you got it at birth. Maybe you gained it through hard work. Perhaps you have yours because you’re charitable, or ambitious, or an asshole. It’s your reputation. Everyone’s got one. And if you think reputations don’t matter, you’re wrong.

Good reputations lift velvet ropes. They get you approved for loans; they’re your ticket to prestigious universities. Good reputations land jobs, find you a spouse, earn you the right friends.

But have a bad reputation—well. Here come the whispers. Here come the slammed doors. Just try to shake off your bad name: Ten years later, a girl will still be known as the sophomore who had the affair with her track coach. Twenty years later, the only thing neighbors know about the man down the street is that he beat his wife; or that the woman in the grocery store is a frigid spinster; or that the lady on the library steps had something awful happen and she went crazy.

So it makes sense to preserve a good name, sure. But how far would you go to preserve your reputation—especially when you fear you’re about to be exposed? Would you work on a good cover story? Would you lie? Would you kill?

You’re shaking your head: I’d never do that—I’m a good person. But until you’re in the thick of it, you have no idea what you’re capable of. If something needs to stay hidden, you just might do whatever it takes.





PART


   1





1





KIT


MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2017


I’ve already had two strong martinis before hitting the rooftop bar at the Hotel Monaco in Old City, Philadelphia, which isn’t like me at all. But my foundation’s clients, the very reason I’m on this business trip? They bailed on me at the last minute. Decided to go to a horse show instead. I tried to insinuate myself into their outing—not that I wanted to go to a horse show—but either they didn’t get my hint or they didn’t want my company.

I take my job very seriously. I raise money for Aldrich University, one of the best private colleges in the whole United States—it’s up there with the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, and actually tougher to get into. Ever since my first husband passed away, I’ve been the university’s leading ensnarer of Big Fish donors. I seek out alumnae far and wide, vetting their newly minted positions as heads of hospitals or as CEOs, tracking the science prizes they’ve recently won, making it my business to know if the books they’ve written have hit the New York Times Best Sellers list. And then I pounce, stroking their egos, showering them with praise, reminding them of the prestigious academic roots from which they hail and that the right thing to do, when enjoying their kind of wealth and success, is to give back. I get a rush when I receive a huge check from a new donor—it’s my version of doing drugs. So when I find out that Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hawser of Devon, Pennsylvania, will be watching dressage instead of coming out with Kit Manning-Strasser of Aldrich University Charitable Giving for some wining and dining, I take it pretty damn hard.

Have I done something wrong? I’m not even the one who groomed these people—it was Lynn Godfrey, a pushy, grating, competitive woman from my department. I consider calling her and chewing her out, but I don’t chew people out. I am graceful and humble and know when to back off. Next week, I will reach out to the Hawsers again. I will be kind and forgiving and gracious. We will start over.

But right now I have nothing to do in Philadelphia. I’ve checked in with my airline: All flights back to Pittsburgh tonight are booked. I don’t feel like seeing the Liberty Bell. I don’t feel like walking down South Street. I could finalize the plans for the Aldrich Giving Gala this Wednesday, but the party is such a well-oiled machine that there isn’t much to do.

I’ve never been great with idle hands.

I uncap the first airplane-size vodka bottle in my room and call my daughters. First, I reach sweet, cheerful Sienna in her dorm room (she’s an Aldrich freshman, and I’ve interrupted a study session). After a forty-two-second conversation in which Sienna profusely apologizes for not being able to speak longer, I then speak to quiet, sullen sixteen-year-old Aurora. She’s at home but getting ready to go out. “Where?” I ask, suspicious. It’s a school night. Aurora assures me she’s just going to Sophie’s house to study for a physics test, nothing to freak out over.

I mix the next drink as I dial Greg, my second husband of two years. Our conversation is short and about nothing but the basics. I don’t tell him that my clients have bailed on me because, well, it isn’t the picture of myself I want to paint. Greg doesn’t ask me why I sound so down because that isn’t the man he wants to be for me . . . though I believed he did, once. I confirm I am alive. He tells me the same. I remind him that the giving gala is in two days. It’s kind of like an adult prom, the university’s biggest fund-raiser of the year, and Greg is a no-brainer choice for my date, not that I’m exactly looking forward to it.

My phone pings shortly after I hang up with him. When I look down, it’s a text from an unlisted number.

    Get ready.



That’s all it says. Frowning, I write back: Who is this?

No answer. A chill runs up my spine. Get ready for what?

A loud horn honk outside startles me. I turn and notice that my window curtains are flung open, affording me a view of the rooftops and the bridge beyond. A pigeon flaps from a nearby roost. I have a tingling sensation that I’m being watched.

Sara Shepard's Books