by Zoje Stage
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2021 by Zoje Stage
Cover design by Gregg Kulick
Cover art © Gallery Stock
Author photograph by Gabrianna Dacko
Cover © 2021 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-24270-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935941
E3-20210706-DA-PC-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Zoje Stage
In loving memory of my mum,
Ruth Stage (1942–2020)
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PROLOGUE
It might not have been a beautiful day. In her memory, the golden leaves of a ginkgo tree shimmered in poignant juxtaposition to the harrowing splatters of blood. But in reality, it could have been an ordinary maple tree. And the blood, though it had been shed, pooled indoors, beyond her field of vision.
Within moments of it happening, Imogen lost track of what was real, what was imagined. Had she heard screams? Or were those in her head too? Later, she could only tell the police her name, why she was there, what time she’d arrived, and other unhelpful details. When they asked what she saw, Imogen had shaken her head, distrustful of her awareness.
Unsure of her faith and skeptical of organized religion, she’d been going to the Etz Chayim synagogue for only a month or so. Growing up, her Jewish mother had insisted she was Jewish—it being a religion of maternal lineage—but as a family they hadn’t really practiced anything or discussed their beliefs. Imogen was the only one among her old school friends who hadn’t gone to Hebrew school or had a bat mitzvah. She’d tried telling people she was half Jewish and half Christian, but even at ten that hadn’t made sense. She’d never liked that empty space of not knowing where she belonged.
It wasn’t until Kazansky’s closed—the deli she’d relied on for matzoh ball soup and Reubens and kosher pickles—that Imogen even started thinking about the culture she didn’t know. The matzoh ball soup had satisfied an easy kind of hunger, and without it she wondered what else there was. The first book she read on Judaism made her blink as if she’d just awakened, emerging into sunlight after a long slumber beneath a dusty tarp. She’d never heard of a tree of life that mapped levels of reality, or the possibility that the soul might have five distinct planes. Judaism wasn’t opposed to the concept of God as a tree, or the universe; it didn’t exclude those who believed one thing in the morning, and another thing in the evening, and nothing the following day. The spirituality of it intrigued her.
Curiosity killed the cat.
Imogen didn’t die. But she hadn’t been the same since that October morning. She’d gotten in the habit of going early, as that was when a group of the older congregants arrived to socialize: men and women whose parents had gotten them out of Germany before it was too late; Pittsburgh-born seniors who reminded her of her grandparents, dead for over a decade. They were friendly and welcoming, happy that a “young lady” was rediscovering her heritage. Almost thirty-four, Imogen remained petite and youthful, with a smattering of delicate black tattoos (which she kept covered in the synagogue), and had been assumed younger than her actual age for much of her life. She enjoyed their attention and their eagerness to chat with her.
The shooting had started as she’d approached the glass front doors.
That was how she saw herself, in her memory of the morning. Her arm outstretched, her hand never quite making it to the door handle. Frozen.
It was her first time in the vicinity of a human slaughter but she instantly recognized the sound. As loud as a cannon. (An exaggeration.) Flesh ripped through with bullets meant for a battlefield. (Not an exaggeration.) She couldn’t decide if her fragile early-bird friends had looked surprised, mouths agape, dentures exposed in shock. Or had they, in their wisdom, always known it was coming.
A part of her had wanted to rush in, find the gunman, launch herself in front of his weapon or onto his back to tear out his hair, puncture his eyes. The part of her that lived in the real world scampered off to the side of the building to hide behind a bush.
She kept trying to call 911 but her hands were shaking too hard and she couldn’t even unlock her phone. It didn’t matter. The sirens came anyway. And more sirens. And more. And the SWAT team. And television crews. She was still hiding behind the bush when the news alert first broke on the internet and her neighborhood plunged into mourning.
1
They were too busy to watch the sunset, or the moonrise, beyond the two-story windows of Beck’s Flagstaff living room: they would be getting up before dawn, and still had a lot to do. The cathedral ceiling was buttressed with thick timber beams that suited the rustic locale and made the space feel huge in spite of the heavy furniture and clutter. Night now hid the pine trees that made a perimeter around the house, but Imogen swore she could still smell them, even through the glass wall.
It looked like a bomb had exploded. Ziploc bags filled with travel-sized toiletries, first aid gear, fire-lighting stuff. Puffy sleeping bags, backpacks, mattress pads—of both the egg crate and inflatable varieties. Hiking boots, padded socks, hoodies, adjustable nylon straps, compact flashlights, bamboo walking sticks, plastic bowls, protein bars, crushed rolls of toilet paper, fuel canisters, water canteens. Of some item
s there was only one: the small stove; the pot it fit in; the fluorescent orange plastic trowel for burying poop. Of some items there were many: lumpy freeze-dried food packages that turned into tantalizing dinners with the addition of boiling water.
Imogen’s sister, Beck, had lured her out of her hermit’s cave with the promise that nature would be healing. The subtext couldn’t have been more obvious: Stop brooding and get out of the damn house. They’d talked about it on the phone four times in a span of two weeks. When Imogen questioned if she could fly all the way to Arizona by herself, Beck reminded her she’d done it many times before; when Imogen questioned if she was strong enough for such an arduous trip, Beck reassured her that backpacking was in her blood. For every doubt Imogen expressed, her sister was ready with a breezy counter. She’d said “You can do this” so many times that Imogen had started to believe it.
In the months since the shooting, Imogen had cycled through bouts of overwhelming sadness, and fear, and maddening frustration at her own uselessness, all of which had made her reclusive tendencies even worse. She’d started ordering delivery instead of going around the corner to pick up her Vietnamese food. Once a week she headed up Murray to the Giant Eagle for bananas and snacks, and hurried home with her eyes on the sidewalk. The names of her lost friends were still posted in the storefront windows, another tragedy for the Jewish community to never forget. Crocheted Stars of David dangled from branches, parking meters, telephone poles, shipped to Squirrel Hill from around the country; a constant reminder that Imogen didn’t want to see.
And yet, her hermit’s cave was no longer the sanctuary it had always been, where she could shut away the world and make productive use of her imagination. She hadn’t believed writer’s block was a real thing, but over the past year every story she considered felt empty, unworthy, too trivial to bother with. It was a miracle of good fortune that her second novel, Esther’s Ghost, had sold just weeks after the shooting; it gave her a slight distraction from the horror and lack of words. While Beck grew ever more cautious about inquiring about the “dry spell” or the “wordless hiccup,” Imogen knew it fueled her concern. No doubt that if Beck needed inspiration she’d find it in the Grand Canyon, but would it work for Imogen?
The months of preparation—walking up and down her building’s stairs with a daypack full of canned goods—had brought back fond memories of backpacking with her family. (Though she couldn’t pretend she’d done nearly enough exercising; every time one of her neighbors exited their apartment she’d scurried back to her cave before anyone could see her.) She’d never had an apartment with so much as a Juliet balcony to stand on to watch a thunderstorm or get a breath of fresh air. But once upon a time, nature had been a balm, an essential thing that satisfied her soul. After Beck had first suggested the trip Imogen realized just how far she’d pushed nature to the back of her thoughts, as something she couldn’t have. Her world had been shrinking for many years, even before what happened at the synagogue. She appreciated that her sister wanted to give her a gift and return her to a place where she’d once felt at peace with her surroundings. But it came with its own hiccup, beyond having to leave the safety of her four walls.
Tilda.
Tilda, whose friendship had once filled a critical void and helped Imogen survive high school. No, she’d been more than a friend—the trio had been like sisters, present for each other as their home lives imploded. It was a formative time, their three reckless paths converging as they dog-paddled toward a future they couldn’t quite see.
Tilda hadn’t called even once to check on her over the past year and it wasn’t like she didn’t know; the massacre was international news.
Sometimes, when Beck and Tilda were back in Pittsburgh for a holiday, the three of them got together for a museum excursion or high tea at the Frick. Imogen and Tilda could smile at each other and speak in upbeat voices, but they were mere masks of civility. Imogen was better acquainted with Tilda’s public persona, which she followed on Instagram. Real-life Tilda scared her a little; Imogen often couldn’t read her. They hadn’t had a serious conversation in four years.
Their relationship had gotten rocky after their first year of college. Imogen left the University of Pittsburgh during her sophomore year, a consequence of The Thing (though she would’ve denied that was the reason). They never talked about The Thing, but it left a residue, a rust-colored ring like a half-healed wound; Imogen understood it slightly better now, but only because of how society had changed.
As Tilda and Beck surged forward with their busy, ambitious lives Imogen was alternately proud of their success, and envious of how easily they moved through the chaos of ordinary life. She harbored a more recent, more specific jealousy too; Tilda’s six-figure book deal was another thing they hadn’t gotten around to discussing. There were periods over the years when they grew closer, but it never lasted. Someone would say something that ruffled the other’s feathers, and they’d stop communicating again.
The silences were getting steadily longer. Beck seemed confident she could function well enough as a bridge between them, and that spending real time together as a trio would bring them closer. But Imogen was less sure. Backpacking in the Grand Canyon was difficult enough without the added burden of personal baggage. Yet, here they all were.
With the grace of a dancer, Tilda’s pedicured magenta toes found floor space amid the detritus as she held her phone over the scattered piles of gear and snapped photos. Tilda had been documenting her expedition prep on Instagram and YouTube for weeks: the purchasing of her pack, boots, clothing; scenic strolls in the San Gabriel Mountains with her boyfriend, Jalal. When Beck revealed that she’d planned the trip for the three of them, Imogen was certain Tilda would bow out, perhaps at the last minute. Her idea of a vacation was a five-star hotel with its own private crescent of beach. Could Tilda even survive being dirty and sweaty without the refreshing promise of the false-blue water of her Los Angeles swimming pool?
Beck insisted Tilda had been game from the get-go, ready for an adventure and a chance to discover new things about herself: she’d never been so much as car camping or spent an entire night out of doors. (Rather than an “adventure,” Imogen thought it more likely that Tilda needed new material for her motivational speeches and videos—and possibly her book.) Imogen was well aware that Beck had cleverly manipulated them both into coming, suggesting to each of them how a week in the wilderness would benefit their personal situations—and tying it up with a bow at the reminder of the twentieth anniversary of their friendship. Dr. Beck liked to fix people, even when they weren’t her patients. Imogen didn’t want to invest too much thought in a grand reconciliation; she had no idea where Tilda stood on the matter. Even now, Tilda would barely make eye contact with her.
The connection they’d shared as teen misfits was long gone, but for years it had been effortless. The week before the Blum sisters transferred to Beechwood, a private alternative high school run by hippies, Imogen had turned fourteen; Beck was crashing toward sixteen. They were barely past the threshold when Tilda Jimenez sashayed toward them, beckoning them in with her vintage cigarette holder, everything about her as flamboyant as a drag queen. While she was Beck’s age, the three had all bonded over shared feelings of parental abandonment: the Blums were workaholics even before the divorce, Mr. Blum a commercial photographer (who preferred his wife’s last name), Ms. Blum a local politician. Mr. Jimenez, an engineer, drowned himself in work too, after Mrs. Jimenez’s sudden death. At the time, their parents’ failings—avoidable or not—had been unforgivable.
Tilda might’ve been destined for fame. And Imogen might have encouraged it, writing her a starring role in the school musical that earned them all their first press coverage. There was no question that both Blum sisters were impressed—amazed—by how much mileage Tilda had gotten out of finishing eleventh on her season of American Idol: she’d turned her fifteen minutes of fame into a twelve-year career. But the more of a public person she became, the less Im
ogen could relate to her. Tilda expressed things to strangers that sounded more personal than anything she’d say to Imogen. Now Tilda was the opposite of an outsider or a misfit. She lived for other people’s approval and couldn’t exist without a constant influx of Likes.
Imogen wasn’t sure what to expect from her on this expedition—was Tilda just playing a role? Was this a performance piece for her followers? Would Imogen be expected to applaud? But given that they were going to be together for the next week, Imogen hoped they could avoid any awkwardness by simply being nice—a superficial solution, but potentially effective.
“You look fit,” Imogen said, noticing Tilda’s muscle definition, even through her leggings.
“Thank you!” Tilda beamed, and stopped taking pictures. “Extra yoga classes. Spinning. Plus my weekly hikes with Jalal. I may not be outdoorsy, but I can handle exercise.”
Beck grinned. Imogen had almost forgotten how much game Tilda had when she was embracing a new challenge. She’d always had an enviable, curvy shape, and with the muscles packed on Imogen could admit to being a little jealous. Imogen was like a squished version of her sister: lean and short (bordering on scrawny) instead of lean and long (bordering on majestic). An image came to her of Beck and Tilda dressed as warriors. Beside them, Imogen felt like the hand servant who scurried after them to clean their weapons.
“I like your hair—it changes with the light.” Tilda tilted her head, examining Imogen from different angles.
Imogen touched her bobbed hair, which she’d dyed lavender the week before. “I was going for an inspired-by-the-sunset color, but I bet after a week in the sun it’s going to look really washed out.”
Tilda shrugged. “It’s still cool. You were the only one of us to ever make brave hair choices.”
That sounded mostly like a compliment, but Imogen wasn’t absolutely positive. (Brave, in this instance, could also mean questionable.) Beck had been wearing her sandy-brown hair short for more than twenty years, and for just as long Tilda’s nearly black hair could usually be found in a messy knot atop her head.