I nodded.
“Your roommate from Woodscape?”
I nodded again.
“That bitch.”
“No, she did me a favor. I couldn’t have a horse anymore. I have a different kind of life now.”
“Oh, Lorrie.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, it’s not okay. I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean.”
“But can I tell you something really strange?”
“Of course.”
“It feels weird to talk about all this now, with Charlie . . .” Reflexively, Lennox looked down at her phone. “Anything?” I asked.
“No,” she said. She paused. “Say what you were going to say,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “Right after Orion got picked up, Naomi came out and said his board had been paid for the rest of the summer. And you know who’d paid it? Underhill Enterprises.”
“As in Victor Underhill?”
“I think so. I mean, I don’t know any other Underhills. And I told you how he basically interrogated me when he caught Charlie and me on the beach.” Lennox nodded. “I also saw him at the hospital when Susannah had to spend the night.”
“Hold up. Susannah was in the hospital?”
“She got burned.”
Lennox sucked in her breath.
“She’s okay now,” I said quickly. A few thousand dollars later, she was nearly as good as new.
“Thank God. I feel awful that I didn’t know about it.”
“Don’t,” I said. “It was my fault for not telling you.”
“But I know you—I should’ve known something was really wrong.”
“I don’t think knowing someone is anyone else’s responsibility. I’m not even sure I think it’s possible to really know anyone anymore.”
“Even a best friend?”
I shook my head. “I just felt like I wasn’t good for anyone to be around—you, Charlie.”
I winced when I said his name, and Lennox’s face was a mirror—the same pain, the same grimace.
I went on. “My life is so crazy, so unreliable. You and Charlie, you have so much more in common with each other than with me.”
I paused and dipped into the pint of vanilla bean. But my stomach was in knots. I left the bite uneaten on the spoon.
“I was jealous,” I said. “And it made me feel so bad—what kind of friend was I, being angry that things came easily to you? It made me feel like you were better off without me. Charlie, too.”
“Oh, Lorrie,” Lennox said.
“But I don’t want to lose you,” I said.
We were both quiet for a few seconds. Something was nipping at my ankle, and I reached down for the kitten—one of Wren’s siblings, probably—and pulled her into my lap.
“You’re not losing me,” Lennox said finally.
“I’m sorry, Len. I’m sorry for the things I said, and for what I didn’t say.”
“You know, this is the first time you actually owe me an apology.”
“Do you accept?”
“Of course I do,” she said.
“I just—” I began, but my voice cracked. Lennox put her hand on mine. “I hope I get to apologize to Charlie, too.”
She nodded. “Now, tell me about Susannah.”
I brought her up to speed as best I could—about the electricity being out, and my sudden need to find my mom, and the darkness, and the candle. “I found my mom’s old journal,” I said. “She was having an affair with someone named Junior. That’s why my dad left her. He started drinking again and he left. And Susannah—” I cut myself off.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I haven’t found her yet.”
Lennox shook her head. “Your mom doesn’t deserve you,” she said. “But at least now you can get Orion back.”
“I can’t,” I said miserably. Now it was past one o’clock in the morning. At that very moment Orion was spending the night at a rest-stop barn midway between New York and North Carolina. In just a few hours he’d be reloaded into the trailer and driven the last two hundred miles or so to Beth-Ann Bracelee. “Board expenses don’t solve all our other bills—I used Beth-Ann’s money to pay them. Besides, I can’t take anything from Underhill without knowing why I’m getting it in the first place, or if any more is coming. I used to just spend money based on faith that I had a trust and there’d always be more, but that didn’t really work out for me.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I went over to the Copelands’ to confront Underhill, but he wasn’t there.” I paused. “But the senator answered the door, and he recognized me.”
“From the tree house? That’s kind of incredible, don’t you think? He only saw you for what—two, three seconds, tops?”
“I don’t think that was it, Len.”
“Explain, please.”
“Charlie asked me not to,” I told her. “But I guess all bets are off now, huh?”
Lennox looked at her phone again and shook her head.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said.
The kitten was teething, and I balled my fist to let her chew on my knuckles. “Have you ever known anyone who died before?” I asked.
“My grandmother,” she said. “You?”
I shook my head. “No.”
We were quiet for a few seconds. I stroked the kitten’s back. Her gray fur was as soft and light as the puffer flowers we used to wish on. Susannah must’ve named her, and she’d probably told me the name, but I couldn’t recall it if my life depended on it.
“I know sometimes you think you can’t,” Lennox ventured. “But the truth is, you can tell me anything.”
“The senator knew my mom,” I said. “He thought that’s who I was, and he went on about how much he wanted to be with her. He said Underhill tried to keep them apart—maybe that was the rift between the two of them? But he said he sent her flowers, and he was sorry; it was all an accident. It was so strange, and then Charlie came in and told me that his father gets confused sometimes and that I needed to leave. It really seemed like there was something very wrong with the senator. But, Len, I don’t think Junior was the only person my mom had an affair with. I think she had one with Senator Copeland, too.”
There’s a silence that comes after a revelation. I stared at the melting cartons of ice cream between us. We’d finally had our ice-cream talk, though neither Lennox nor I had managed more than one bite. I picked up my spoon and let the little nameless kitten lick off the remnants.
Lennox picked up her phone and gasped. “There’s another Copeland alert,” she said.
“Tell me Charlie’s okay,” I said.
Lennox was holding the phone away from herself, staring at it as if she’d forgotten what it was. “It wasn’t Charlie,” she said. Her face had drained of color, like it had been emptied. “It was the senator. He’s dead.”
22
CULPABILITY
WE WENT UPSTAIRS—THERE WASN’T EVEN A discussion about whether or not Lennox would spend the night. She was crying, and I don’t think she noticed the wallpaper hanging in shreds off the walls, or the patches of cat urine squishing under our footsteps. I very nearly forgot to be embarrassed by them myself. Inside my room we sat on my bed, Mom’s antique lace quilt pulled up over our legs. That blogger must’ve been right, Lennox said through tears. It wasn’t just a political opponent’s smear tactic; the senator really did have a drinking problem, just like my dad did, and maybe even worse. It explained everything: why Franklin Copeland had been hidden behind the scenes at the Fourth of July party, and why Charlie and Underhill had contradicted each other about his trip to New York or DC. It was why the senator had acted so strangely earlier in the day and confused me with my mother, why Charlie had quickly ushered me out the door, and why his dad had driven so recklessly and ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
“Charlie was trying to protect him,” Len
nox said. “He’s probably been doing it for years. That’s why he told you not to say anything.”
My trusty journalist had figured it out. But I couldn’t shake the vague feeling of culpability. I had just seen Senator Copeland. Presumably I’d been one of the last people to see him. And I’d upset him. Even if it wasn’t my fault, for the rest of my life I would have to know that. And Charlie would know it, too. My relief that Charlie himself was okay and I’d get to see him again was shadowed by the fact that he’d always connect me to this tragedy.
“I still can’t figure out how the Underhill payment fits in,” Lennox said. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose loudly.
“That seems like the least important thing right now.”
“Do you think it’s okay if I text Charlie again?” she asked. “You know, now that we know about his father? Just to tell him we’re thinking of him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tell him you’re here with me, and tell him . . . tell him I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
“I’ll text him that from us both.”
I don’t remember what we talked about after that, or if we talked at all. Lennox fell asleep, improbably, and I lay there thinking about everything that had happened that day. It was the day Senator Copeland had died, and the day I found out he’d known my mother. It was the day Lennox came inside my house for the first time in years. And it was the day I’d lost Orion.
And to think there were other days where nothing remarkable happened at all.
Silently, perhaps out of habit, perhaps to pass the time, I began repeating my mantra in my head: yim, yim, yim, yim. And then the word began to transform in my head, to the rhythm of my breaths: Ori-yim, Ori-yim, Ori-yim. And then it was just: Orion, Orion, Orion.
Yim was a nonsense word to begin with, but the senator had been wrong; the more I said it, the more it sounded like it meant something, something dear to me.
I don’t remember falling asleep myself; not that the moment of falling asleep is ever something you remember. It’s more like an inexplicable miracle that happens each night. The kind that, the next time around, when you’re tossing and turning, seems impossible to duplicate. But I must’ve been sleeping, because I woke to the sound of Lennox insistently calling my name. “Lorrie, Lorrie. Get up.”
It had somehow become morning, and a stream of light was cast across the floor. “What’s the matter?” I asked.
What else could possibly have gone wrong?
“I got a text from Charlie,” she said. “He wants us to come over.”
I took the phone to text him back myself. I wanted to write how happy I was that he was okay, how sorry I was for what had happened, and especially how bad I felt about yesterday. But instead I wrote: Yes, of course. When?
It was just past seven in the morning. He wrote back within seconds: As soon as possible.
LENNOX AND I EACH WASHED UP AND GOT DRESSED. I looked in the mirror and started brushing my hair, but then I felt self-conscious to be worrying about looking pretty, and I left the room with a few knots remaining.
A couple of cats were lounging on the stairs as we made our way down, but it seemed that most of the creatures of Edgewater—human and otherwise—were still sleeping. I pulled the front door open.
“Hold up,” Lennox said. “You should write a note and say where you’re going.”
“No one will be worried,” I assured her.
“But this is the thing I was getting at before,” she said. “Maybe it’s up to you to change the system.”
I took an empty envelope out of the money drawer and borrowed a pen from Lennox’s purse.
Senator Copeland died. Went to the Compound with Lennox. Home later.
x L
We took Lennox’s car, and we didn’t talk much as she drove alongside the ocean. There was a lot of traffic, and a detour set up well before we got to the Point, so we couldn’t see the accident site. Lennox made a right onto Eastern Road and a left onto Breezy Drive, which snaked around and brought us back to Break Run, but on the far end, so we approached the Compound from the other direction. The street was already choked with news vans, their antennas shooting into the air like church steeples. On the side of the road, men and women in suits were holding microphones, and guys in jeans were pointing cameras at them. Then there were dozens of others, presumably regular people, who didn’t have a job to do there but had simply come out to the Compound to be a little closer to the tragedy. A roadside memorial of flowers and candles had been started. Some people were crying, and some were praying. And the ones in suits were talking into microphones, and the guys with cameras were filming it all.
The space just in front of the Compound gates was guarded by a police officer. A flock of butterflies took flight in my abdomen as Lennox pulled up and rolled down her window.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the officer said. I was almost relieved to hear him say it. Being here now felt like a mistake.
“Charlie asked us to come,” Lennox said. She brought out her phone to show it as proof. “I’m Lennox, and this is Lorrie.”
The officer said something into a walkie-talkie. Outside, the cameramen had pointed their cameras toward us, recording our riveting experience of sitting in a car and waiting. It felt like a glacier could’ve melted in the time we spent there. “I’m going to text Charlie that we’re trying to get in,” Lennox said.
A few minutes later a staticky voice came over the officer’s radio. The gates opened, and he waved us in. The crowd surged toward us, and the reporters shouted out questions, but the gates closed behind the car, and we continued up toward the Main.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” I admitted to Lennox.
“The worst has already happened,” she said. “And I think it’s really important that we’re here. I don’t think Charlie has friends besides us to call.”
“He has a best friend,” I told her. For some reason, that was what made me feel choked up. “Sebastian.”
“I mean in Idlewild,” Lennox said. “His family has been away for so long.”
“I just think maybe I’m not supposed to be here,” I said. “There’s some connection to my family, and, frankly, it’s scaring the shit out of me. What if Victor Underhill sees me?”
“Then he sees you. You can ask him about the Oceanfront payment.”
“I couldn’t do that today.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong, being here.”
“But yesterday,” I said. “He was so . . . I don’t know how to explain it. Agitated to see me. The senator, I mean.”
“I know who you mean,” Lennox said. “But he was messed up before you got there, so you didn’t drive him to drink or anything. Besides, Charlie asked you to come.”
“I know.”
“Listen to me, Lorrie,” Lennox said. “I’m your best friend, so I say this with love: Being here today, it’s not going to be about you or your family. The Copelands have a million other things to worry about right now. But if you want to turn around, I will.”
“No,” I said. “Keep going.”
CHARLIE WAS STANDING ON THE FRONT STEPS AS we came up to the Main. I felt instant happiness at the sight of him, and then guilt for my own happiness. There were quick hugs hello, and Lennox and me both saying, “I’m so sorry.” Lennox cried a little, and Charlie comforted her. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay,” he said.
She smiled sadly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so awful. You shouldn’t have to be comforting me.”
“Come on, let’s go inside,” Charlie said.
“Charlie!” someone called—Brock, the guy from the campaign office—as Charlie closed the door behind us. The soles of his shoes made loud smacks against the marble floor as he rushed toward us. “Your mom has been looking for you.”
Charlie turned to Lennox and me. “Sorry,” he said. “This’ll just take a minute.”
Lennox and I stayed put as
Charlie began to walk across the floor. But then he turned back to us. “Aren’t you guys coming?”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”
And so we did, walking down the same hallway I’d followed Charlie down a couple of weeks—it felt like years—before. I guess I’d expected the house to be different, too, in mourning. But the rooms were light and airy and pulsing with life like a train station at rush hour. In the informal dining room, aka Julia Copeland for Congress Campaign Headquarters, Julia’s team was assembled, everyone on their phones per usual—though now it was Franklin Copeland Funeral Headquarters. I caught snippets of “dignitary arrivals” and “Andrews Air Force Base.” There was a collective pause in the conversations just briefly as we walked past, and everyone turned to give Charlie looks that were equal parts sympathy and curiosity. Which was, frankly, how I felt about it, too: How awful and interesting it must be to be Charlie. I was glad Lennox was beside me. I wanted to reach out for her hand, but I felt too self-conscious to do so. After all, I wasn’t the one who’d just lost a parent.
We found Julia Copeland in the library. She looked as polished as she had on the Fourth of July, except that she was in slacks instead of a dress and her hair was down around her face, the ends curled under and grazing her shoulders. Her assistant hovered over her shoulder with a glass of water.
“I said I didn’t want any, Annette,” Julia said sharply. “I need you to get this down—we need a motorcade into the city. Franklin attended the Church of the Heavenly Rest when he was a child, so I want the public viewing there. Then a flight down to DC, and another motorcade to the service at National Cathedral. I was up all night, and I’ve got fifteen hundred people on the guest list so far—”
“Mom?” Charlie said.
“Charlie. I wondered where you’d gone.” She seemed about to say something else, but then she noticed Lennox and me hanging in the doorway. “May I help you?”
“This is Lorrie and Lennox,” Charlie said. “You met them at the party. They just got here.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Copeland,” Lennox said, her voice thick again.
“Me, too,” I said.
“Thank you, girls,” Julia Copeland said. “But I’m sure you understand that this is not the best time. Annette will show you out.” She nodded toward her assistant.
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