You Are Not Alone

by Greer Hendricks

  As I open the car door, I realize I left the flowers on the table. I’m about to risk going back to get them when I hear someone call out, “Hello!”

  I spin around, my heart exploding. A woman in jeans and a flannel shirt, with short white hair, is kneeling in the garden edging the sidewalk. She’s obviously the neighbor who lives directly across the street.

  She stands up and approaches me and I take an instinctive step back.

  “Are you a friend of Amanda’s? We were so sorry to hear the terrible news.” She clearly wants to talk; maybe she even watched Amanda grow up in this neighborhood. But I can’t get into a conversation with her.

  “I’m sorry, I’m in such a rush.” I slide into the car. “Nice to meet you.” I wave through the open window as I drive away.

  In the rearview mirror, I see her staring after me.

  I slowly let out my breath as I turn the corner too quickly, my wheels squealing. I drive another few blocks, then pull over and reach for my phone.

  I got the necklace back from the police, I text to Cassandra and Jane. Happy to bring it to you anytime!

  I put away my phone and step on the gas pedal, more lightly this time.

  My vow to stop lying lasted less than ten minutes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AMANDA

  Two months ago

  “MOM, I’VE GOT TO GO,” Amanda said over the wail of an incoming ambulance’s siren. “My break’s over.”

  It wasn’t, but she wanted to get off the phone. The slur in her mother’s words caused Amanda’s stomach to clench reflexively. And she had far more pressing things on her mind today than her mother’s complaint about a neighbor’s son who’d blocked her driveway again.

  Amanda tucked her cell phone into the pocket of her scrubs.

  It’s now or never, she told herself, feeling a hitch in her heartbeat.

  She walked back toward the hospital, triggering the ER’s automatic glass doors.

  The uniformed security guard behind the desk nodded. “Heat’s on today.”

  She flinched before realizing he was referring to the temperature outside.

  “So hot the chickens are laying hard-boiled eggs,” she replied, swiping her key card to gain entrance into the ER.

  She hoped the guard didn’t notice that her hand was shaking.

  It had all seemed so simple when she’d been at Jane’s apartment, sitting next to Cassandra and feeling the eyes of the other women on her. I can do it, she’d offered. No problem.

  Oh, Amanda, you’re the best, Cassandra had responded, leaning over to give her a quick hug. She’d felt Cassandra’s silky hair sweep across her cheek as she inhaled the notes of rosemary and mint from Cassandra’s shampoo. Amanda knew the precise brand; she’d once peeked into Cassandra’s shower and medicine cabinet, wondering which beauty products Cassandra used.

  Amanda had five minutes left in her break.

  I do this every day, Amanda reminded herself as she walked toward the medication room that contained the hospital’s arsenal of narcotics.

  In other departments, nurses typically dispensed medication on the even hours—ten A.M., noon, two P.M., and so on. That meant the half hour before those time slots were the busiest, as nurses hurried to collect the various drugs their patients required.

  Things were different in the ER; predictability didn’t exist here.

  Right now, the room was empty. But another nurse could rush in at any second.

  Quickly, Amanda told herself.

  Her body felt icy as she pressed her fingertip on the keypad, then punched in her ID number. She retrieved the bottle of liquid morphine sulfate she needed for the burn victim who’d been brought in earlier today; he was due another dose soon. Up until this moment, she’d done nothing wrong.

  Now came the tricky part; the moment she crossed the line.

  Her fingers closed around a second bottle of morphine. She slipped it alongside the first in the pocket of her scrubs.

  She closed the cabinet and exited the room, walking briskly toward her locker at the end of the hallway, her Crocs squeaking on the glossy linoleum floor.

  Her chest felt tight; eyes were everywhere in the hospital, from security guards to other employees to cameras. But no one had any reason to be watching her, a nurse who’d diligently worked there for several years.

  She pushed through the door to the break room. Her luck held: No one was there.

  She opened her locker and retrieved an empty travel-size container of mouthwash from her insulated lunch bag. Carefully she transferred sixty milligrams, trying to still her shaking hands. She then replaced the Listerine bottle alongside the scalpel she’d wrapped in a medical towel earlier today.

  A wave of exhilaration rose inside her, pushing down her anxiety, as she envisioned texting Cassandra and Jane as soon as she left the hospital: I got it!

  Each of the seven women in their group had special skills, but only Amanda could perform this particular task. Liquid morphine extinguished pain, and it also typically caused extreme drowsiness. This stolen dose would be used for those precise qualities.

  Her hand, with the mostly full bottle of morphine, moved toward the pocket of her scrubs.

  “Hey, girl, hungry again?”

  She fumbled the bottle, almost dropping it. She closed her fingers around it tightly and swept her hand behind her back as she spun around.

  “Gina! You surprised me.”

  Was her supervisor looking at her strangely?

  Amanda tried to smile. “Just grabbing a snack.”

  Gina walked to her own locker. “Me, too.” She pulled out a granola bar. She unwrapped it and sat down heavily on the bench in the center of the rows of lockers. “Did you see the guy who almost cut off his thumb slicing a bagel?” Gina shook her head as she bit into her granola bar.

  “Another one? We usually get those on Sundays.” Amanda turned back around and eased her hand into her pocket, hoping her body had blocked Gina’s view. “See you back out there.” Amanda stepped toward the door.

  Gina was definitely looking at her strangely now. “What happened to your snack?”

  Amanda felt her cheeks heat up. She shrugged. Tried to come up with a quick joke, but her mind was blank. “I’m not really that hungry,” she finally responded.

  She hurried out of the room before Gina could say anything more.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CASSANDRA & JANE

  TONIGHT WAS SUPPOSED TO be a triumph for the Moore sisters. It’s the Manhattan premiere of a film featuring one of their clients, an actor named Dean Bremmer, who is being compared to a young Denzel Washington.

  However, instead of sipping champagne in their offices while getting their makeup done, the sisters spent the hour before the premiere strategizing.

  Daphne called twice today, her anxious voice soaring into a higher octave, convinced a police officer in a cruiser was staking out her boutique. But when Valerie broke away from reconfirming RSVPs to the premiere to hurry to the West Village, the officer had already driven away. It was probably nothing, the sisters agree. The officer could have been doing any number of things, including simply taking a break.

  Still, neither Cassandra nor Jane can eat dinner. “I’ll skip Dean’s premiere and stay by my phone,” Jane says.

  Cassandra agrees that one of them has to be reachable at all times; too many land mines surround them.

  After Cassandra leaves—her hair slicked into a high ponytail, since she canceled her appointment for a blowout, and the black stilettos she’d planned to change into forgotten beside her office sofa—Jane sits at her glass-and-chrome desk, trying to catch up on the paperwork that has piled up.

  But it’s impossible to focus. Every time her phone vibrates with a text or email, she flinches.

  Then a sharp sound cuts through the silence: The office phone is ringing, even though it’s after business hours. Jane checks caller ID: City Hospital.

  Amanda’s former workplace.
>
  Jane slips on her headset and immediately accepts the call.

  It’s Gina, who was Amanda’s supervisor in the ER. As soon as Gina explains that Amanda’s mother gave her the PR firm’s number, Jane’s shoulders unclench.

  “We finally cleaned out Amanda’s locker earlier this week,” Gina says. “It took her mom a few days to call me back. And she wanted me to ask if you and your sister could take Amanda’s things. It isn’t much—some clothes, an umbrella, and a few toiletries.”

  “Of course.” Jane can imagine how the conversation played out: Amanda’s mother has been all too willing to abdicate responsibility to the sisters for everything from clearing out Amanda’s apartment to organizing and paying for the memorial service.

  The sisters are more than willing to take responsibility for anything relating to Amanda.

  “I can swing by tonight,” Jane offers.

  “Oh, I’m just about to leave. Would sometime tomorrow be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Gina was one of the few people outside of the group that Amanda sometimes texted—forwarding a cartoon joke about nurses, or coordinating details about a baby gift for a colleague. Gina couldn’t attend the memorial service because it conflicted with her shift.

  This is an opportunity.

  “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Jane says.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  “I guess I feel like I should have picked up on something, but I didn’t notice anything different about her. Did you?”

  Gina hesitates and Jane can hear the hospital’s noises through the phone: the static preceding a loudspeaker announcement, a distant siren, voices rising and falling. “She did seem a little … well, off isn’t quite the right word, but it’s the best I can come up with. I guess I started noticing it a couple weeks before she died.”

  “Mmm…” Jane grabs a yellow notepad and a pen. She can’t transcribe the conversation on her computer because Gina might hear the clicking of the keys.

  “And then, right before she died, she was acting really strangely. She made a few mistakes, which was unlike her. And on our last shift together, she raced out midway through. I never saw her after that.”

  Jane’s body is rigid. “I wonder what was going on.”

  “I really have no idea. It was all so out of character.” Gina exhales.

  Jane does, too.

  “It’s such a terrible loss. She was a wonderful nurse. It’s easy to get burned out, to put up a buffer between you and your patients so you don’t get your heart broken if they don’t make it. But Amanda didn’t do that.”

  “I know. She really cared, especially about the underdogs of the world.” Jane puts down her pen and stands up. Her water glass is empty, so she heads to the small Deer Park cooler by the reception desk to fill it up.

  “Just the other day, this woman showed up with flowers to thank Amanda for saving her life.”

  “That’s sweet.” Jane presses the water tap. She’ll wrap up work soon—she’s too distracted to get much done—and uncork a bottle of wine at home, then check in with Daphne.

  “Yeah, she seemed really affected by Amanda’s death.”

  Jane freezes. Then she shuts off the tap, though her glass is only half full. She quickly returns to her desk, struggling to keep her voice casual: “Is that so?”

  “Anyway, I should get going—”

  “Sorry,” Jane interrupts, her pen poised over her page again. “The woman with the flowers—was she tall, with brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses?”

  Jane can feel Gina’s surprise swelling through the phone lines. “How’d you know?”

  Jane grips the pen. Shay, she writes, underlining the name so heavily that her pen rips through the page. “It’s a long story and I’ll explain everything, but could you just quickly let me know what else she did?” Jane’s stomach tightens as she waits for the reply.

  “Nothing really.” Gina sounds puzzled now. “She asked for Amanda’s mom’s address so she could send a sympathy card.”

  Jane closes her eyes. “Did you share it with her?”

  “No, I told her I couldn’t give it out, but I’d be happy to forward the letter on.”

  Jane is already grabbing her bag and coat. “I don’t want to alarm you, but this woman has been doing some really strange things,” Jane blurts. “She showed up at Amanda’s memorial and lied about how she knew her. I don’t believe she was ever a patient. I don’t know what she could be writing to Amanda’s mother, but it’s definitely not a sympathy card.”

  “Oh, wow, are you kidding me? I had no idea. She was so convincing.”

  “Her name is Shay Miller. If she shows up again, please call me right away, okay?”

  “S-H-A-Y? She gave me a different name, started with an M, I think. Hang on, I’m going to get to a computer and check something.”

  There’s silence for a few moments. Then Gina says, “No one named Shay Miller was ever a patient here. I searched our records.”

  “I’m going to reach out to Amanda’s mom now. She can’t open that card.”

  “Wait.” Gina hesitates. “Come to think of it, she never did drop it off.”

  * * *

  “There’s a reporter from E! Entertainment heading this way,” Cassandra says to Dean Bremmer, the twenty-two-year-old actor by her side. “He’s going to ask two questions. The first is what it was like to work with Matthew McConaughey. And then he’ll ask what drew you to your character. You’ve got this; you’ve answered these questions a dozen times before.”

  Dean nods. “Is this ever going to get easier?”

  “Definitely.” Cassandra smiles at him.

  The bright lights of the E! camera have just illuminated Dean when Cassandra feels a hand grip her elbow.

  Jane leans in close. An onlooker might imagine she’s whispering to her sister something about how much she enjoyed the movie.

  “I just spoke with one of Amanda’s coworkers, Gina, then I called Amanda’s mom,” Jane murmurs.

  Cassandra smiles, as if delighted to hear it.

  “What was it like to work with Matthew?” the reporter asks Dean.

  “Oh, a total nightmare!” Dean cracks, flashing a winning smile.

  Cassandra nods at Dean as Jane whispers again.

  “A few days ago, Shay went to the hospital and pretended to be one of Amanda’s former patients. She was trying to get Amanda’s mother’s address.”

  Cassandra stiffens almost imperceptibly.

  The E! reporter asks the second question Cassandra has approved in advance: “What drew you to play this complicated and sometimes infuriating character?”

  “It was all about understanding his truth,” Dean replies earnestly.

  Jane continues, “Gina didn’t provide the address and I phoned Amanda’s mother on my way here. She hasn’t heard a word from Shay. But she said today, when she woke up from a nap, she found a bouquet of flowers on the front porch.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cassandra murmurs. “Someone left Amanda’s mother flowers, but didn’t try to talk to her?”

  Jane speaks four words into her sister’s ear:

  “She brought yellow zinnias.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SHAY

  One of the best ways to get someone to like you is to ask them to do a favor for you. In one study conducted in both the U.S. and Japan, people who thought they were working on a joint project ended up reporting liking someone more when that person asked for their help with the task. This is called the Benjamin Franklin effect. The phenomenon is named for the way the founding father used this tactic to appeal to a political rival, by asking the man to lend him a book from his library.

  —Data Book, page 32

  WHEN THE INTERCOM BUZZES, I press the button to let in the Moore sisters.

  I’m holding Jane’s sun charm necklace, thinking about how I couldn’t tell them the truth: that I’d gone to the trouble and expense of renting a car and driving four and a
half hours to retrieve the necklace. It would make me seem desperate. Plus, how could I admit I’d basically stolen it back?

  Now I look around my apartment, realizing how small and unsophisticated it appears. I consider hurrying downstairs to meet them, but that seems rude.

  Sean and Jody are sprawled on the sofa, her feet in his lap, watching a Tina Fey movie. They don’t even look up at the sound of the buzzer. They probably think I’ve ordered in Chinese food. I haven’t had a visitor in months, since Mel came over for dinner before her baby was born.

  I clear my throat. “Hey, um, someone’s coming by to—”

  There’s a single, sharp rap on the door.

  I open it and see the sisters looking as if they just stepped off the runway. Cassandra wears a black-and-white-patterned sheath, and Jane is in a belted suede minidress with over-the-knee boots. Their hair is shiny and smooth, despite the fact that it’s a windy day. The vision of the two of them standing in my narrow doorway with the peeling paint feels almost like a mirage.

  “Come on in.” I smile.

  Their heels click against the wood floor, and the faint scent of their floral perfumes mingle in the air.

  Jody sits up instantly, yanking out her scrunchie to release her ponytail, her attention no longer on the movie. Sean clicks it off and looks back and forth between the sisters.

  “Cassandra and Jane, this is my roommate, Sean, and his girlfriend, Jody.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jane says.

  “How do you all know each other?” Jody’s puzzlement is obvious.

  I have no idea how to answer.

  But Cassandra gives one of her high-wattage smiles: “Oh, we met a few weeks ago and became instant friends.”

  Jody looks at me as if she’s never before seen me—or maybe it’s just that she hasn’t seen me in this particular light: as someone whose company is sought after by these cool, mysterious women.

  “Here.” I hand Jane the necklace.

  “You’re the best.” She hugs me tightly.