“Tell me about her,” Ellis says. “Alex. What was she like?”
I open my eyes to look at Ellis over the edge of my book; she stands just a few feet away, ignoring the shelves entirely.
It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for, of course. This is the moment when Ellis finally musters the nerve to ask me how it felt, to write for her the emotional arc of the Dalloway Five murders.
And so she wants to know about Alex’s murder.
I didn’t kill her.
I almost say it, but the words don’t come. Instead I lower the book, slowly, although I don’t put it down. It feels better to clutch the book to my chest, leather binding gripped in both hands.
Maybe I owe Alex this much, after what I did. Maybe if I put it to words…
They say knowing the name of a thing gives you power over it. And right now, I need power. As much of it as I can get.
Ellis can write whatever she wants.
“She was…very clever,” I say. I’m surprised by how even my voice sounds, almost like it doesn’t hurt. Almost like I don’t care at all. “She was in Godwin House, too. She read satirists, mostly.”
Ellis doesn’t say anything. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but it works; now that I’ve started talking, I can’t stop.
“She was funny. Sometimes that was a bad thing—if you got on her bad side, she could be…not cruel, not necessarily, but…”
I don’t want to disparage her. Not to Ellis Haley. Not to anyone, actually.
And because if Alex was cruel, then some might say that’s motive for murder.
I press my thumbs in harder against the book’s spine. “She liked dogs. You couldn’t take her anywhere—she’d have to stop every time she saw a dog. Had to say hello. She’d run into traffic if it meant she could pet a Labrador on the other side of the street. She was terribly allergic, but that didn’t seem to make a difference.”
“That’s sweet,” Ellis says.
“It was. She was.”
God. I hadn’t ever talked about her this much. Not even to Dr. Ortega, in therapy: Talking will help, Dr. Ortega had said. Remembering her how she was…
“She was outdoorsy,” I say. “She liked climbing, hiking, that sort of thing. I mean, she was a professional—or gonna be. She qualified for the very first Olympic sport-climbing team. She summitted Everest. Twice.”
All at once it’s harder to breathe, as if the air in here has become heavier. I can see dust motes sparkling in the air, dead skin particles from a hundred patrons, possibly even from the former owners of all the trinkets for sale in this place. I imagine that dust draping over us like blankets, suffocating us.
“I know this must be hard to talk about,” Ellis says softly. She has one hand on the surface of a nearby table. She doesn’t move, just says: “Because of the way she died.”
I swallow. The back of my throat feels like it’s covered in grit. “Right.”
For a moment we both stare at each other, Ellis’s eyes unblinking over the frames of those rickety pince-nez.
I try not to think about the abortive scream as Alex fell, cut off too quickly as she hit ground. I used to hear it everywhere: in my nightmares, in movies. Right now it echoes in the hum of the old record spinning on the turntable by the front desk, the music gone silent, static prickling at our ears.
I didn’t want her to die. I never wanted her to die. But I’m not innocent, either.
That’s the thing the doctors kept missing at Silver Lake, with their trauma therapy and white pills and cloying pity: That I’m the reason she died. If I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t walked into Alex Haywood’s life, she’d still be alive.
Ellis is looking at me like the doctors did, now—examining me, dissecting me for her goddamn book the same way those doctors might have used me for case studies. Like I’m confused, or misguided, or broken. Like I’m incapable of killing an ant, never mind a girl.
“I swear to god,” I say, “if you tell me it wasn’t my fault—”
“I wasn’t going to say any such thing.”
“Good.”
She lifts a brow. “It was an accident. Everyone knows that. Everyone who read the papers, anyway.”
I break first. I look away, down at the book still held against my chest. The dust threatens to make my eyes water.
“Yes,” I say. “Well.” The papers don’t tell everything.
Silence stretches out long and taut—easily broken.