Only If You're Lucky(85)

“I think he watches me,” she had said, twirling that diamond between her fingers before lifting it slowly, kissing it to her lips. “I think he’s out there right now.”

It was never Levi she saw, that silhouette in the distance, my body cold as I imagined him watching in the dark. He wasn’t the source of the cigarette we found beneath her window; he wasn’t the one who watched, night after night, a looming presence we could all feel. It was Lucy out there, observing quietly. Drinking in all the little things about Eliza that made her so rare: the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she made everyone around her love her so fiercely. Studying the way her fingers tugged twice at her hair, bit down on a pencil until her teeth left marks.

Played with that necklace clasped tight around her neck, a gift from her father she never took off.

Her father, Mr. Jefferson, whose name is still burned onto my laptop screen.

Mr. Jefferson, the one who owns Lucy’s house in Fairfield, North Carolina.

I lean back on my headboard, letting the truth settle over me. It was Lucy who broke into the Jeffersons’ that night, curtains fluttering as she wandered around the living room, up the stairs and into Eliza’s room. It was Lucy who touched all her things, the source of that foreign presence we could all feel. Who saw those pictures on the wall and plucked one from the center, taking it for herself.

That picture not of me, not of Eliza, but of Mr. Jefferson tucked tight between us.

Mr. Jefferson, Lucy’s father.

I think back again to that night on the roof, the way she stalled when I asked about her parents, her dad, like that bit of information was just a step too far.

“He gave me this,” she had said, diamonds glinting between her fingers. Pulling me close, her breath on my neck. “He said it reminded him of me because I was named after that song.”

The information is all here, all online, right in front of me and ripe for the picking: the deed, ownership history, property updates and tax bills. Mr. Jefferson bought the house in Fairfield back in 1999 and I do the math in my head, counting backward, just to be sure: twenty-three years ago. The same age as Lucy. Eliza’s parents have been together since high school—I’ve seen the pictures myself; the two of them at prom, so young at their wedding—but finally, I feel the pieces slide into place and everything from the past two years suddenly makes sense.

I see it now, as clear as crystal: a young Mr. Jefferson, so charismatic and charming. So wild and free. A musician, a poet, a man with money—the temptation, I’m sure, was always there. Despite how strange it all feels, how at odds with the person I thought I knew, I let myself reach out and touch it and it feels surprisingly solid, like I’ve somehow known this part of him was there all along. I imagine him traveling, untethered, the way he was before settling down on the coast. I imagine him finishing a gig and meeting a woman, letting the lust take over and cloud it all. A single lapse in judgment, a fatal mistake, a weekend away from his wife that left a girl pregnant and threatened to disrupt his entire life. So he did what people with money always do: he bought her silence, her shame. A house somewhere in the country that would keep her satiated and sustained and far, far away.

I think of him the night after Eliza’s funeral: the two of us on the porch together, rocking slowly in the dark. The smell of stale whiskey on his breath and his jet-black hair glinting in the night. I remember turning to him, his face heavy with emotion, with exhaustion, with all those unanswered questions he kept torturing himself with: “Was anything bothering her? Did she have any enemies? Anyone who might want to see her get hurt?” Something had clearly been troubling him that night, weighing on his conscience, but I assumed he was simply trying to process, to grieve. Trying to make sense out of something so senseless.

Trying, like I had been, to find someone else to blame.

Now, I can’t help but wonder if he knew that Lucy had found him. If he knew she had been coming around, watching his family, seeing that their life was so different than the one she had with her mother back home. I wonder if he suspected that it was her who broke in that night and that’s why he refused to call the police, made up those excuses, probably so afraid of his secret slipping out, ruining his perfect family. His perfect life. Because that’s what they were, the Jeffersons: they were perfect. It was the way they ate dinner together, windows open and old music leaking out. It was the genuine laughter, the overwhelming love, Mr. Jefferson tossing Eliza’s mom off the dock and bringing out his telescope when the sky was clear and the stars were out. I always thought that if I could just get close to them, it might rub off on me, too. That I could be one of them, part of their family instead of my own—but Lucy, she must have felt that longing to such an extreme, knowing what she could have had, should have had, but was given instead.

I think of the two of us on that beach now, New Year’s Eve, the bottle between us as we stared at the sky. The distant pop of the fireworks as we whispered our secret wishes, our deepest desires, like if we muttered them out loud, they might just come true. “I guess I was curious,” she said, another little honesty she waved in front of me, knowing I would never see it for what it truly was. She wasn’t just curious about Levi, wandering into his house on Christmas. Sitting on his bed, taking his head in her hands. Wondering what his lips might feel like on hers.

It’s all so clear now, so painfully obvious.

“When you’re friends with Lucy, she makes you feel special.”