There were more practical offerings as well. Every other shop offered candy, water, luggage tags, and toothbrushes. Stuff you might have forgotten or need on the way.
You saw it, said the voice as Stevie was cleared through security. You walked right by it.
“Are you okay?” Janelle said. “You haven’t said a word in almost an hour.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “I should get some water.”
She spent the last of her English cash on a giant bottle of water and a candy bar. England was going to be over in less than an hour. Every step along the stark white corridors of Heathrow was a step away from everything. It was over. They followed the golden-yellow signs to their gate, where they had to go through one last passport and document check. Stevie was behind her friends, letting her vision go blurry.
If you go, the voice said to her, you will never know.
I have to, Stevie replied internally.
Then you’ll never know what you saw. Never know what happened.
Nate was beeped through. Janelle. Vi.
Stevie stepped out of the line.
“Where are you going?” Nate said.
“I just need to pee,” she said. “I’ll be there in a second.”
They had already crossed into the lounge. Stevie stepped back into the bathroom that was a few feet away from the line and locked herself into a stall. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and the fluorescent glow of the bathroom made a halo around her view of the world.
It was so close. It was right there. She squeezed her eyes shut. What had she seen?
A buzz. A text.
Are you okay? Janelle wrote.
Fine. Peeing.
Still?
Hurry.
We’re getting on.
Stevie, we’re on the plane.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Stevie was in the stall. She remained there when she heard, “Final call for flight seventeen to Boston. All passengers must immediately report to gate twenty-seven.”
They just closed the boarding door?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON
Stevie stepped out of the stall and gripped the edge of the sink as the announcement came that the gate was closed. She lifted her phone and texted a reply.
I have to finish this, she wrote to the three of them. I will get another flight. Not lying. Not pulling you into it. I will see you at home.
She switched off her phone and turned around to leave the airport.
29
MAKING HER WAY BACK INTO LONDON, BY HERSELF, AT NIGHT, WAS A different experience. She took the Heathrow Express, backtracking to Paddington. There was no warm bed waiting for her. No loving boyfriend. No friends at her side. No support of Ellingham Academy backing the trip. Just her and a phone rapidly running out of charge. There was enough to send one text message. As soon as she got the reply, she put her head back and tried to close her eyes. Tried to focus. Tried to keep the grief from pressing on her chest.
There was work to be done.
The train dumped her at Paddington, where she emerged in a crush of commuters. She used the remaining battery power on her phone to navigate the streets, winding her way back to Angela’s shiny black door.
Izzy was waiting there, in her blue coat and a big pom hat. Doorknob wound around her. Izzy wore no makeup, and her eyes were puffy from crying.
“You missed your plane,” Izzy said in greeting, as Stevie approached the door. “Are you going to be in trouble?”
“Yes,” Stevie said simply.
“What are you looking for?” Izzy said, unlocking the door.
“I don’t know. But I know I saw something, the thing that makes this all make sense. I just have to look at everything again until I recognize what it is.”
Left unattended, even for a few days, houses take on a strange feel. The cold accumulates in the corners. The dark settles down and pools on the furniture. Quiet leaks everywhere. The air sours. Doorknob was fine with all this. He scrabbled inside, ran up the stairs like a bat out of hell, ran down again just as fast, chasing nothing.
It struck her instantly. She’d been too preoccupied to see the obvious. She went right to the little cabinet under the stairs, which was still partway open. She turned on her phone flashlight and shoved her head into the space, digging around until she could put her hand on Doorknob’s disgusting little treasures: part of a dead mouse, a used tea bag, a dirty cotton swab, a tissue . . .
Two buttons.
She plucked them out and brought them into the light, setting them on the coffee table. One was bright pink, the other silver. And once they were on display, Stevie instantly began to dismiss them. If Angela had a critical piece of evidence in the form of a button, it seemed like she would lock it up in the secure fire safe rather than let her cat get it. Besides, these buttons were next to the fire safe.
“We think this is evidence?” Izzy said, looking down at them doubtfully. “From 1995?”
Stevie deflated a bit when she heard the tone.
“They’re buttons,” she replied. “I just wanted to see them.”
“This one,” Izzy said, pointing at the bright pink one. “I think this comes off a sweater she has. It’s this color and it buttons down the front. I can check upstairs. And this one . . .” Izzy leaned close to look at it. “It says Stella McCartney.”
Stevie drew a blank. The name sounded familiar. McCartney.
“I don’t think Stella McCartney was designing in the nineties,” Izzy said. “Let me check.”
Stevie deflated a bit further as Izzy checked her phone.
“2001,” she said. “And I think I might know what this is from because I borrowed it once.”
“I was just thinking about the button,” Stevie said, trying to seem in control of this situation. “I just wanted to check.”
“Of course!” Izzy said. Her voice was full of confidence. “Look around. I trust you. Do whatever you have to do.”
That landed strangely. Izzy trusted her. For a moment, the gravity of what she had done settled on Stevie. She had gone AWOL in another country, and now she was standing here in the half-light of a dead woman’s house, trying to work out a feeling.
She pulled off her coat and got to work.
She opened her bag and fished out her phone charger, then she walked up the stairs, touching the gray banister lightly with her fingertips, moving into the shadow at the top. She plugged her phone into the socket in the upstairs hallway, switched it to do not disturb mode, and turned on the mix of Britpop songs. She put in her earbuds and began walking around the upstairs.
She went to the bedroom first. Neat and precise Angela, cashmere sweaters folded and shoes in clear shoeboxes. Just one book on the bedside stand—a biography of Catherine Howard, bookmarked in the middle. One book at a time, not the jumble of books in process that lay splayed by Stevie’s beside. She went into the bathroom and took a moment to go through the medicine cabinet. Floss. Deodorant. Extra heads for her electric toothbrush. A tub of skin cream. Nail polish remover. A bottle of bright pink indigestion medicine, birth control pills, and cold medicine.
No sleeping pills.
In the office, she worked her way around the room, staring down the spines of the history books on the shelves. She looked at every framed photograph. There were the formal photos from Cambridge—the group shots, the graduation photographs in the strange, sleeveless dark gowns with the collars that looked like skunk fur. The framed posters from the Nine’s shows. Posters from her documentaries. Pictures of Angela with friends and family. With Izzy at different ages.