“Blow up a building? Their own famous building?” Cassie had never heard anything stupider. “With people inside?”
“They thought everyone was out, I guess. It was a Saturday, right? Maybe they didn’t mean to blow it up, you know? Just like—have a fire, and then have damage and then insurance would pay for everything.” Marianne had added another textbook to the stack in her arms as she talked. “I mean, how do I know? I’m just telling you what everybody’s saying.”
“Everybody’s an idiot,” Cassie said.
“You were in there,” Marianne replied. “Did you smell gas?”
“What are you, police?” Cassie was sick of it, and didn’t want to talk about it, and every time Marianne insisted on it, which was like all the time, it made Cassie sadder and angrier and more heartsick. “And no, I didn’t smell the freaking gas.”
Which she hadn’t. But maybe you didn’t. She’d only smelled fire. And that was after. She still smelled it.
Police cars were parked everywhere on campus. Big trucks emblazoned with the green-and-blue PENNGas logo were stationed at each building.
Wharton Hall was now surrounded with a hastily erected temporary chain-link fence, the building’s historic windows boarded with thin plywood, its iconic stone façade blackened and charred. Across the front door, a barricade of yellow plastic tape draped from a series of orange cones. Classes were reassigned to other buildings, and things were supposed to be back to normal.
But how could Cassie concentrate on Baudelaire or quadratic equations when her entire brain was filled with something else? The hospital’s aggressive fluorescents buzzed and glared above her, a muted television mounted to the wall flickered sports scores. Each breath she took smelled like disinfectant. And death. Would he die?
Gray double doors marked NO ADMITTANCE barricaded her from the patients’ rooms behind. With a clang and a lurch, one of the doors banged open. A white-coated doctor, her gray-streaked hair in an efficient ponytail and glasses dangling on a loopy chain beside her stethoscope necklace, consulted the clipboard she held and walked toward her. Cassie’s heart beat with hope, beat so hard she had to stand up.
“Are you—” The doctor looked at her, then at her notes again. “Beresford?”
Cassie’s shoulders sank. “No. But is it about Professor Shaw? I’m his—”
The doctor, with a wan smile, kept walking. Headed, as Cassie watched, toward a frazzle-haired woman and a pink-cheeked little girl, a grieving Madonna and child holding hands in the corner. Family, Cassie knew. You had to be family to find out.
Cassie lowered herself into the chair again and stared at the grass-stained toes of her white sneakers, trying to look into the future. But she couldn’t make it feel real.
“Are you family?” the receptionist had asked when Cassie first arrived.
“No,” she had to admit. “I’m his—”
“I’m sorry, hon,” the woman had said before Cassie could finish. Her name tag said Sarita M. A vase of white carnations and a mug of red ballpoint pens made a barrier on the tall slate counter between them. “Family only. I’m sure they’ll make it public when the time comes.”
Cassie couldn’t stand it. “Is he okay, though?”
At the receptionist’s withering expression, she realized what a stupid question that was. “I mean, I know he’s not, and that’s why he’s here, but I mean, will he be okay?”
A tall, thin woman, with a cascade of dark hair and holding a narrow spiral notebook, had stepped up to join Cassie at the reception desk. “Sarita? I’m Tosca Manukian. From The Journal?” the woman said. “Working on the Berwick story, and I wondered about Professor Shaw.”
Cassie had eyed her up and down, curious.
“You need to call public information, Tosca. You know that,” Sarita interrupted.
“Yeah, but—” Tosca went on.
“No buts, Tosca. Just rules.” Sarita swiveled, putting her back to the two of them.
“You were asking about Zachary Shaw, I couldn’t help but hear.” The reporter had turned her attention to Cassie. Flipped a page in her notebook. “Might I ask—are you Professor Shaw’s—”
Cassie could feel the woman assessing her.
“Student? Were you there at the Wharton Hall explosion?” The reporter clicked her ballpoint open. Poised it over the pad. “Can you tell me your name? What you heard and saw? I know the police are on campus. Did they talk to you?”
No. No. No. She could never say a word about it. Not to this reporter, not to anyone.
“No,” she said out loud.
She tried to calculate how big a lie she could get away with. The other people, there hadn’t been many, but still, had all marched out, obedient. No one could have known Professor Shaw had stayed behind. Except for her.
Oh. And Jem Duggan. He’d been inside, too. He must have stayed around the office—she hadn’t noticed—and then followed her out.
“No to what?” The reporter clicked her pen open, then closed, then open again. The clicks sounded like Cassie’s brain trying to get into gear.
“No to anything. Everything.” Cassie needed to end this conversation, now, and decide what to do.
She turned and walked back to her seat, felt the reporter’s eyes on her, tried to ignore it.
As the reporter moved out of her line of vision, she felt that part of the pressure relent. Plenty of other students for her to interview. She’d never remember Cassie. Cassie’d never even said her name.
Bells pinged, and something buzzed, the murmur of conversation wrapped her in a blanket of soft sound. Cassie put her head in her hands, defeated. She needed to talk to him. To make sure he didn’t blame her. Tendrils of guilt began to creep up her arms, wind around her shoulders, twist around her throat. If he died, was it her fault?
She felt a presence. An arrival. She looked up, her eyes welling with hope. But it was not a nurse. Or a doctor. Or the police.
“Jem?”
NOW
CHAPTER 24
LILY
Lily stood on the sidewalk outside the smoked glass street-side window of Lido Bistro, watching as Banning tried the restaurant’s front door. According to the chic black lettering on the burnished aluminum, the place was closed. “Cocktails at 5,” the sign said. “Post-theater supper at 10.” She’d insisted on coming with him, though he’d initially tried to dissuade her.
“Let’s give them a minute,” Banning said, giving the curved door handle a last rattle. “I know they’re inside, maybe they’re back in the kitchen. Owner already told us this morning he knew Ms. Whitfield. But didn’t see her last night. There’s a maître d’, though.” He flipped open a notebook. “Aiden? Cowley? Aiden Cowley ring a bell? No?” At her shrug, he flapped the notebook closed. “He’s off today, apparently. He might have seen her last night. We’ll find him.”
The two of them, side by side on the cracking gray concrete, had parted the flow of the ear-budded college students who attended classes in the midcentury stone office buildings along the block. Once a mecca for insurance companies and law firms, a performing arts college had scooped up the city block at the edge of the theater district and created a makeshift urban campus, bordered on one side by the historic green expanse of the Boston Common and on the other by the asphalt and nonstop traffic of the Mass Turnpike.
She and Banning had arrived here a few minutes earlier in his unmarked beige four-door. Unmarked and undercover, Lily figured, since the car didn’t have a police radio or computer console or wigwag lights.
But why Lido? Someone might have chosen it, she decided, specifically because of its proximity to departure. They could swoop a someone—Greer—down the clammy rabbit hole of the crowded Boylston T stop, or hustle her into a car and straight onto the Pike. It could have happened so quickly. So seamlessly.
“Detective?” Lily’d asked as they drove closer, trying not to picture that. “You’re sure she’s not home?”
“That’s why we’re looking for her,
” Banning began. “You know the people who live next door to her?”
She didn’t. Lily almost blushed, thinking of how she’d never been to Greer’s house. Or apartment. Wherever. But they weren’t friends. They were colleagues. That was Greer’s personal life.
“No,” she said.
“They said they hadn’t heard Ms. Whitfield come home last night. Said that’s never happened before. They went to her door, and it was wide open. They went in, looked for her, but nothing. So, yeah.” He’d shrugged, stopped at a stoplight.
“Does she come to Lido often?” he went on. “You ever been here with her?”
“No,” Lily said. Greer did her job, Lily did hers, and they went home to separate lives. It was true, but embarrassing to articulate it.
“You’ve worked together how long?”
“Greer and I—we’re not really friend friends. We work together, but we’re not much for girl talk.” Explaining it made her sound so indifferent. “I have a daughter, maybe is the reason, and she doesn’t.”
“And your daughter’s father? Your husband?”
“Single mom,” she’d told him. Then worried. “Does that matter?”
“Just asking,” he’d said.
They’d arrived at Lido, and his questions stopped as he’d maneuvered the car into a tow-zone space across the street.
“Look around.” Banning gestured at the squatty gray office buildings, the neon marquee of the Emerson Colonial Theatre, the trendy façades of tiny, hip restaurants. “You know anyone else around here who might know her? Someone who works in one of these buildings, for instance?” He looked at her, expectant.
“Isn’t there surveillance?” Lily peered up at the front of Lido, then at the other businesses, scouting for the telltale fishbowl lenses of video cameras.
He’d actually rolled his eyes.
“Ms. Atwood? Surveillance isn’t going to tell us whether there’s someone Ms. Whitfield knows who works in one of these offices. Someone who might have asked her to meet him? Her? Here. Anyone?”
She shook her head, slowly, trying to think. A police car, blue lights swirling and siren blaring, screamed by, careening up Boylston Street. Banning glanced at it as it passed but seemed unconcerned, even paging through his spiral notebook.
She wondered what the two of them would look like to someone watching from above. Or from across the street. Or from behind the smoky Lido window. A couple in navy blazers and jeans. Lily always expected to be recognized, but so far, not a glimmer from passersby. College kids, she figured, reassuring herself, weren’t much for watching local news on TV.
College. Berwick. Where Cassie had disappeared.
“Detective?” Lily couldn’t keep this from him. Greer’s list. But the door to Lido had opened. She took a step toward it.
“No,” he said. “Stay here.”
He disappeared inside, leaving Lily in the noon sunshine, hearing the final fading notes of the police siren and the tick-tick-tick of the crosswalk timer at the corner. Tick-tick-tick, she thought. Was time running out for Greer?
Greer’s notes had meant she was researching Cassie, and now Greer herself was missing. That had to be connected. Or it didn’t. Lily stared at the sidewalk.
Problem was, there was no way for Lily to investigate on her own. She didn’t trust this Detective Banning, and he clearly didn’t trust her. And it could very well be that Greer’s curiosity about Lily’s past was not connected to wherever Greer was now. Which might be the dentist, or the gym, or in someone’s bed, Lily tried to reassure herself. Still, Banning was looking for her, so there was something serious he hadn’t deigned to tell her yet.
But the moment she brought up the list, it could send the detective down a dead-end path and not help find Greer at all. Even make this situation worse. She yearned to keep the past in the past, but discussing the list would force her to tell Banning exactly what those words meant. And the past meant gossip, and drama, and publicity, and pity. Perfection is in the perception, how many times had Greer said that to her? Screw up, and your viewers will never look at you the same way. Lily might even be fired. They’d couch it, in some phony way, but she’d know why. Perfect Lily had to stay perfect.
But Greer. Finding her was the most important thing right now. And what if … Lily stared into nowhere, seeing only the blur of the lunch hour crowd and the hard stairstep architecture of the Boston skyline and her own uncertain future. What if Greer had found a link to Cassie? And had gone off on a hunt of her own?
Would that be wonderful? Or a disaster?
The door to Lido opened. Banning came out, squinting into the sunshine.
“She was there at nine fifteen last night,” he reported. “One of the waitstaff recognized her from that press pass.”
“Was she with someone?” Which would be either the good news or the bad news. “Did they know who? Did they pay with a credit card?”
“Oh, I didn’t ask that.” Banning blinked slowly. “No, there’s no record of that, Ms. Atwood. And they’d never seen the guy before.”
“A man, though,” Lily said.
“Yup. Totally narrows it down.”
She could do without the sarcasm. “Wait. Is that why you had me stay outside? Did you tell them to look at me through the front window? Are you, like, parading me?” she persisted. “Were you trying to see if they recognized me from last night or something?”
“You’re Lily Atwood, ma’am.” Banning raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need you to be here in person for people to know who you are. All I had to do was say your name.”
Lily frowned. “Why wouldn’t you let me go in, then?”
“It’s not my job to tell you things, Ms. Atwood. And I needed to see how you’d react.”
The ticking of the crosswalk timer started again, depositing a new group of chitchatting students on their side of the street. College kids always reminded her of Cassie. Two young women, arms draped over each other’s shoulders and sharing a pair of earbuds, ambled up the sidewalk, all sunglasses, ripped jeans, and beach hair. Like life was everlasting, their time on earth incalculably infinite. The last time she’d seen Cassie, back that last Christmas vacation, she’d been about this age, just turned eighteen, her image indelible in Lily’s mind. Memories didn’t age, but people did, so Lily’d once put Cassie’s photo into an online age-progression program, trying to embed a new mental photograph of her sister.
She’d burst into tears at the result. Cassie looked exactly like their mother, a crushing emotional combination that had sent Lily to Rowen’s bedroom, needing to watch her sleeping, to make sure she was still there, penguin in arms and comforter kicked aside. She’d drawn the downy white covering back up over her little girl’s shoulders, breathing a grateful prayer. Had her own mother prayed for Cassie?
The blast of a car’s horn brought Lily back to the Boston street.
Banning was taking his cell from his pocket. “Banning,” he said into the phone. He held it up, looked at her. “Gotta take this,” he said. “Give me a sec.” He walked a few steps away.
Maybe it was news about Greer. She watched him, trying to overhear. Then Lily’s phone, in the back pocket of her jeans, vibrated, too. Maybe this was Greer. She put it to her ear, hope filling her heart. “This is Lily Atwood.”
“I see you,” the voice said. “I see you both.”
Smith.
“And getting along so nicely, you two.”
Lily looked up, scanning the endless expanse of office windows around her—shades, blinds, curtains. Lights on, lights off. Precariously rusting fire escapes zigzagging up the sides of the gray stone and red brick. Every parking place on the street was full, car windows rolled up. Where was he? How was he seeing them? He’d helped her, her and Greer, given them stories and inside tips. He’d never misled them or steered them wrong, never been anything but courteous and respectful.
But yesterday at Graydon, she’d worried he was watching, too. He was the boy who cried wolf, Greer had
said. And now Greer was gone.
“Where are you?” She felt if she kept scanning, she’d see him—her?—a silhouette behind a window or a figure in a doorway. But she couldn’t look everywhere, and if he could see her, he’d know when to hide. “How can you see me?”
Banning had looked up from his call, maybe concerned by the tone of her voice, and had turned to watch her, concerned.
“There a problem?” he mouthed.
She shook her head, put up one forefinger, waved him off. This time, she turned away from him. Hunched her shoulders, trying for privacy.
“Watch it, lady!”
A kid on a scooter zoomed past her, ball cap turned backward and a brown paper carryout bag looped to his handlebars, leaving a wake of marijuana and french fries. She made herself even smaller.
“Smith?” she whispered.
“You want to find your friend?” the voice said. “Tell the nice detective about Cassie.”
BEFORE
CHAPTER 25
CASSIE
Cassie had been in hospital rooms before, heard the incessant alarms and beeping monitors. She’d watched her father struggle for breath in his too-small bed under the too-tight sheets, the bars raised on either side of him like he was a child in danger of tumbling out. She’d never forgiven him for dying. For leaving her.
Now, five years later, sitting in the Penn General waiting room with herself five years older and her life truly just beginning, there was barely a sound. Silence mostly, or the papery rustle of magazine pages, quiet murmurings. No one here was happy. The happy ones got to go home, she thought, leaving only the grieving hopefuls, cloaked in their gray sorrow.
Professor Shaw couldn’t blame her, she told herself. How could she have known it was a real fire? She needed to cut that worry out of her brain. Discard it. Move on.
She’d looked up to see Jem Duggan, lankier than she’d remembered, paler. Taller. Older. He had a bandaged right arm, a square gauze pad taped to the right side of his face, and a patch of his dark hair shaved away to allow a row of crisscrossed stitches high on his temple, scabbed now with browning red. That macho confidence he’d had in the Wharton hallway, coming on to her, calling her invisible, seemed as far away as her own happiness.
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