by Andrea Bartz
I turned away. Why had I shown him the video? Tessa, Damien, and now Alex: Everyone promised to help. And then they dug a little deeper and told me to back away.
“Just let me know if you think of anything else, okay?” I said. “I tried to track Greg down, but he’s out on paternity leave. Oh, I want to talk to Lloyd—do you have his contact information?”
“Not anymore, no. Maybe you can find it online?”
I shook my head and stood up. “Don’t worry about it. You should probably be getting home, right?”
He stayed planted. “So you haven’t said anything to Sarah?”
I shook my head again. “I’ve been trying to sort of pursue this on my own. Back when we had dinner, she had a lot of conviction that her whole Edie-was-killed theory was stupid.”
He propped his elbows on his knees, his chin on his knuckles. “But it might not be. Let’s talk to her. She might not know what she knows.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Good point. She did follow the same thread, albeit ten years ago.” Never mind that I was a little afraid of shining a spotlight on her memories: Alex and me screaming our hexes on Edie from the rooftop, the little tiff before she headed to the concert.
“Ask her to lunch, something casual,” he said. “I’ll be a surprise. We won’t say it’s to grill her, obviously—just a little reunion. Maybe it’ll knock some memories loose.”
“I’m on it,” I told him. It was nice, having someone else plan the next move—someone decisive and confident, too. In fact, it was hot.
He glanced back at the laptop. “We don’t need to mention the video. Do you want to send it to me? I can check if I recognize anyone else in it or anything.”
The nausea boomeranged back. “I just don’t really want it, you know, in the cloud.” Never mind that Damien and Tessa had copies already. God, if anyone else found it…
“Isn’t it already in an app?”
“Just a filtering app.”
He frowned. “Tomorrow I’ll send you an invite for a file-sharing method. Encrypted. You probably shouldn’t be keeping that on your hard drive, just in case…”
“In case what?” Suddenly I was crying again.
“Aw, Bach. It’ll be okay.” He rose and leaned forward, and I let him wrap his arms around me, my tears streaming into the warmth of his collar. I leaned back and he kissed my forehead; then I turned up my chin and suddenly we were kissing, urgently, his warm soft mouth on mine.
I yanked away first and froze, his face an exact mirror of my shock. Finally I shook my head and wiped the tears off my cheeks dramatically, with the backs of my hands, the way little girls do.
“I’m sorry,” he half whispered, and then he was gone.
I returned to my computer, trancelike, clicked on the folder of Flip cam videos, and opened one from early June. I’d thought it was one of the gang at Rockaway Beach, one where Alex and Edie couldn’t keep their hands off each other, where they embraced in the chest-high water, laughing and kissing and bobbing like a single buoy. Self-flagellation, something to make me feel extra terrible after what I’d done.
But I mistook the date and what popped up instead was a dark scene in a bar. With a little effort, the lens focused on Sarah and Kevin, playing Jenga and sipping beer. Why did we play so much Jenga? Everyone waved languidly at the camera and went back to what they were doing. The Levee, that’s where we were, a beer-y dive near the subway stop. Sarah was gossiping—her old roommate Jenna had been caught selling drugs in Calhoun, and rumor had it that Anthony the landlord had really been the one dealing, but he’d thrown her under the bus, the exact kind of microcosm-y drama we thrived on—and begging Kevin, who probably knew the drug scene better than most, for more details. Kevin was doing his usual reserved shtick, neither confirming nor denying.
“Is it true Jenna and Anthony are sleeping together?” Sarah asked, a little too eagerly.
“Why don’t you just ask her yourself?” Kevin said, poking a middle block loose.
“That’ll be the day,” she replied.
“Hey, let the man focus,” my voice broke in. “We’re going for a new world record.” Slowly I scanned the tower of blocks, from the bottom to the top. Then I zoomed in on his maneuver. Kevin had chosen one of the last three-block levels left, and the move threatened the whole stack’s structural integrity.
Kevin took a break, flexed his fingers. “I feel kinda bad. I mean, a bunch of people in Calhoun deal.”
“A bunch,” Sarah offered, smacking her glass on the table. “Shit.” The stack tumbled over, slow mo at first and then in a big crash. A few pieces skittered across the floor and I canted the camera down, focusing on the downed blocks for a few seconds before turning the Flip cam off.
Sarah had been so on top of the gossip, so quietly in the know. Onward, forward with the plan. I texted her and she agreed to come see me in the city that weekend. But to minimize her commute from New Jersey, she asked that we meet near Penn Station, which meant hanging around New York’s tourist-clogged hellmouth. I sent the info to Alex, all business, and he responded with a thumbs-up. He never did send me the video encryption link he’d promised. Perhaps he, too, had a hard time remembering anything we’d talked about before the kiss.
* * *
At work, I had a simple goal: to think of anything but Alex’s mouth on mine. I failed miserably and nearly doubled over in shame when Tessa texted, cheerfully asking how I was doing. I didn’t answer. My mind kept showing me snippets: a married man, on an errand his wife didn’t know about, sitting on my couch and sipping secret scotch. His hand gently guiding my head to the crook of his neck. The kiss like a stamp on my brow and then his eyes meeting mine…
I grabbed my phone and opened my messages. My text to Josh the night before was still unanswered: “How’s work otherwise?”
I drummed my fingers on the desk, then tapped out another message: “I confirmed everyone at Sir thinks the design startup is all smoke and mirrors, too. So your job should be safe. ☺”
A few minutes passed, then thirty. Then an entire afternoon.
Chapter 12
The Saturday subways were all delays and reroutes, but I still arrived early to the diner off Thirty-fourth Street. I sipped my bad coffee and felt my quickened pulse thumping in my fingers and neck.
Sarah burst in sweaty and frazzled and ten minutes behind schedule. “I walked the wrong way at first,” she gasped by way of apology. I waved it away and sped through the obligatory chitchat, my eyes on the entryway.
The front door jingled and Alex appeared, slick with sweat. He looked handsome and eager, like a golden retriever, and I watched him until Sarah cut herself off midsentence and twisted in her seat. Then she whirled back to me, confused.
“Alex, over here!” I waved, and he grinned and sauntered over, pausing to give us both hugs. I let go before he did. Sarah was smiling now, too, but still looking flummoxed.
“Well, surprise!” I said as Alex slid in next to Sarah.
“That’s for sure! I had no idea you guys were even back in touch!” Sarah leaned her elbows on the table.
“Yeah, we bumped into each other, and I thought it would be fun to get together,” I said. “Impromptu reunion.”
Sarah and Alex fumbled through some polite catchup. As I watched them, an eerie feeling spread through my stomach and ribs. Here was the crew from the rooftop, sitting in the same triangle ten years later, drinking sweaty cups of ice water instead of beer and shots.
“So, Lindsay, you said you had something to discuss,” Sarah prompted. “Was that just a ruse?”
“Actually, I did want to talk to you guys. Together. I’ve been reading more about Edie’s death, and I sort of suddenly realized I have the skills to really examine it. And, like, the distance, maybe?”
Sarah’s face was politely blank, a passenger waiting for the flight attenda
nt to take her drink order.
“I basically—I’m realizing I don’t remember it as clearly as I thought I did, like maybe I did actually black out, and it’s this missing piece of my memory that…that you guys were all present for, and that was really bothering me.”
She’d stiffened. Alex kept his eyes on his place mat.
“I went through the case files, and like you said, it just—it doesn’t add up,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this ten years after you…after all of it. But it’s been keeping me up at night. We owe it to her to get it right.”
Sarah looked at Alex, then at me. “So what’s your question?”
“I just—I don’t have all my memories of that night. And so I guess I came to…to ask for yours.” My voice cracked on the last sentence, but I kept the rush of tears from breaking free.
Sarah’s chin trembled and she turned to gaze out the window. “I’m sorry, Lindsay. I’m sorry you were spared the life-altering experience of finding your roommate with a bullet in her head because you’d had too much to drink. But I don’t feel like it’s a good idea for us to talk you through it so you can implant some false memory of being there.”
“Harsh,” Alex said, knee-jerk. We were still. This time I blinked hard and let the tears fall, one from an outer corner, one from inside, along my nose. I felt the pink steam of shame, of disgust with myself.
“Am I wrong?” she said to Alex, eyebrows high.
“I’m sorry,” I said before he could answer. “I really didn’t think through what I was asking. I know it’s not fair. I…I’m sorry.” I swallowed with effort and began to rise from the booth. My thigh stuck on the vinyl and made a ripping noise.
“You know, I was basically ostracized for saying it wasn’t a suicide,” Sarah offered.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” I said, sitting back down. “I didn’t even know you were going through that. But I’m sure everyone was…It was hard enough to process as is.”
“Look, we were all having a hard time,” Alex added, as if that were an apology. “We were worried about you. Like…now we were losing two friends instead of one.”
She nodded. I felt a childish spray of annoyance: three friends, right? Weren’t they sad to see me go?
“Listen, I’m really, really sorry nobody listened to you.” I leaned my head against the booth and closed my eyes. “For what it’s worth, Kevin told me he didn’t think it was a suicide, either.”
“Really?” They said it almost in unison.
I nodded.
“I didn’t know that,” Alex said accusingly, and I shot him a look: As far as Sarah knew, all of this was new material.
She sighed. “So Kevin had his suspicions, too. I can’t figure out if that makes me feel better or worse.”
The waitress came by; Alex got a beer, and Sarah ordered chicken noodle soup, an odd choice. It was strange to watch our old dynamic creeping in: analytical Sarah; confident, patronizing Alex. His fingers brushed mine when he grabbed his glass, and I pulled my arm away; I had to focus.
“Did Kevin say anything else?” Sarah asked.
“No, just that I should figure out what really happened that night.”
“And you looked into it? What’d you find?”
“No real bombshells.” Well, apart from the incriminating Flip cam video. “It’s weird that the cops didn’t talk to Greg, isn’t it? The guy she dated before you, Alex.”
“I did; I looked into him,” Sarah replied.
“Really?” Alex and I both turned to look at her.
“Yeah, I was in total Nancy Drew mode for a while. He was out of town for a conference the week Edie died. He gave a presentation, so it was pretty well documented.” We must have looked astonished. “I went deep on this.”
“Did you know her mom was there that night?” I said.
She nodded.
“You did?” Alex perked up.
“Yeah, the night she died. Shortly before you came over. I told the cops, and it always bothered me how little they wanted to hear it. Like, I was staring at the guy with the pen thinking, ‘Aren’t you going to write this down?’ ”
“What’d you tell them?” Alex asked.
She let out an old, tired sigh. “Well, Edie and I were alone in the main room—I was in the kitchen doing dishes, she was on the couch drinking whiskey and typing away into that diary she kept on her computer—and her phone rings. She talks into it for a little bit, sounding angry and I’m trying not to listen, especially since I’m still annoyed with her. Then she hangs up and says, ‘What the f-word?’ Like, loud enough and then with a waiting air, so I turned around and said, ‘What?’ She made a face and said, ‘My mom is here.’ ” Sarah played with a lock of hair. “I remember looking around and noticing the bong and cigarette butts and empty beer bottles and stuff everywhere, so I was like, ‘She’s coming in here?!’ And she said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll just go meet her,’ all annoyed like I’d told her her mom wasn’t allowed in. So she grabbed her purse and walked out. That was the last time I saw her. I mean, alive.”
The diary—Mrs. Iredale had mentioned it, too. I made a mental note to double-check that I hadn’t missed it in the case files.
“Alex, where were you during this?” I asked.
“Earlier that night? I was hanging out with Kevin and his bandmates. We went to the taco truck.” He was tearing the cardboard coaster into shreds. “Her mom was pretty intense, right?”
“Super intense. Always made me uncomfortable,” Sarah concurred.
“You think her mom did it?” I said, looking back and forth at them. I knew even as I said it that it was a crazy leap.
But Sarah took it seriously. “Probably not. I dunno. Edie didn’t really seem to like her parents, but…I mean, her mom was obsessed with her. I dunno why she’d kill her.” Her soup appeared and she sprinkled it with oyster crackers.
“But it’s chilling she was there that night, right?” I pressed. “What if she hung around after they talked and then snuck up to the apartment?”
Alex crossed his arms. “That’s a lot of luck, to get all the way in and out without anybody seeing you. It was a Friday night—there were people everywhere.”
“Well, no one saw Edie going back to her own apartment,” I said. “Or—if there was someone else, if we’re correct that she didn’t kill herself—nobody saw the other person coming in or out. Calhoun was a labyrinth.” It was its own dimension. Maybe portals lurked below the staircases and between the floors, wormholes for sudden inexplicable entrances and vanishings.
Sarah shrugged. “I told the cops about her stopping by, but they never even made a note about it. Actually, how’d you figure it out?”
“I went and saw her last week. Her mom.”
“Whoa. What’d she say?” Sarah asked.
I flicked a glance at Alex, then leaned forward. “She told me she left Edie with the guy she was secretly seeing. Lloyd.”
She frowned. “He had the bouffy blond hair, right?”
“Wait, you knew about him?” Alex said.
Her eyes bulged, then dove to the bowl in front of her.
I started laughing. “This is so ridiculous.” I was surprised that this revelation still stung—that I now cared more about Edie sharing the secret with Sarah than having the secret at all. The sudden singe of feeling Left Out. “This is like a fucking soap opera. I forgot what a drama magnet Edie was.”
A tense silence.
“That’s why we broke up,” Alex offered finally. “I found out about Lloyd when we were still dating. So if you were…Lindsay said you guys always wondered what happened.”
Sarah’s cheeks were scarlet.
“I had a huge crush on Lloyd, which Edie knew about and encouraged, so that’s not humiliating or anything,” I said. The teensiest part of me
wanted Alex to feel jealous. When had I slept with Lloyd? It was before he and Edie had begun hooking up, right?
Sarah tilted her bowl to collect the last of the broth. “I talked to him, back in the day. Just ’cause I knew they’d been seeing each other, but then I figured out he was the last one to see her. But his alibi held up, and he didn’t really have anything to add. He’d been in the neighborhood and Edie had texted him begging him to come, like, rescue her from her mom. They talked by the front door a minute, he had to leave to shoot a concert, and then—I mean, we know he was onstage when it happened.”
I frowned, working through the timeline. “He told you they were at the front door?”
“Uh-huh.”
I shook my head. “You said this was around when I came over. And I didn’t see them. Alex, you didn’t either, coming back from the taco truck.”
“I probably took the side entrance,” he said, cocking his head. “You reach it first if you’re heading east. You would, too, if you were coming from your apartment.”
“That’s true.” How different would my life be if I’d walked one hundred and fifty feet farther? I turned to Sarah. “When did you talk to Lloyd?”
“That fall, right in the middle of everything.”
Ten years ago. “Had you met him before?”
She shook her head. “Edie had pointed him out once, but they never really hung out at Calhoun. I guess where you could see them.” She nodded at Alex. “I only talked to him that one time.”
“Alex, you could have seen them at Calhoun that night, talking to her mom.”
He shrugged. “Guess you’re right. They were lucky I took the other door.”
“Sarah, do you still have his contact info?”
“Seriously?”
I nodded. The waitress tipped more coffee into my mug, brown liquid sloshing everywhere.
“Of course not.”
“Okay.”
Now Sarah leaned back. “I just wish I could figure out what she was doing,” she said, “for that last ninety minutes or so. She said goodbye to Lloyd—didn’t tell him anything about where she was going—and then she obviously didn’t come back to the apartment, because we were all still in there. There’s just this…gap.”