It’s twenty degrees colder up here than it was in the city—a bracing cold that bites at my cheeks and makes my eyes water. And as I drive over the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge, over the frozen tundra of the Hudson River, the crumbling piles of ice blending into the dull sky, I think about how I used to love the winter when Emily was alive. I was in a poetry workshop back then, and I wrote some terrible haikus about the “kindest season,” how it buried the dead leaves and blown-down branches of fall beneath a blanket of white and put everything to sleep. Winter was, I believed, a chance to hide all the year’s mistakes, to freeze them dry. It was a chance at rebirth.
What a load of crap that was.
My phone dings. An incoming text, but I don’t even glance at it. After an arrest and a parking ticket, the last thing I need is to get pulled over for texting and driving. It dings again and then, when I’m over the bridge and heading up Route 209, it rings into the Bluetooth and I answer it.
“Oh, hello, Camille.” It’s Glynne Barrett, and she sounds strange—as though she’s surprised to hear from me, even though she’s the one who called. “I just texted you.”
I glance at the clock on my dashboard. It’s 1:25. “Hi, Glynne. See you at the coffee place? I just have to run by my house to pick up my laptop, so I may be, like, five minutes late—”
“Listen. I . . . uh . . .”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think I’ll be in need of your services.”
My fingers tighten on the wheel. “Oh.”
“I . . . I rechecked my finances and it’s not in the budget. Sorry.”
“But we didn’t even go over pricing. I work on a sliding scale.” I don’t like the tone of my voice, the desperation in it, but I can’t help it. I know why she’s pulling out. I know it has nothing to do with money, and I know she won’t be the last to do this to me. “We can figure something out. I really think you’ll be pleased with the designs I’ve come up with. . . .”
“I’m truly sorry.”
“Glynne.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve seen the video.”
“Yes.”
“I can explain.”
“Camille. You truly are a dear, but . . . I think you need a rest right now.”
“You have no idea what I need. You don’t even know me!” I shout it into the windshield. Thankfully, she’s already hung up.
I stare out at the gray road, the sky already starting to darken, that bleak, mummified winter sky. Here’s the thing: I don’t need Glynne Barrett’s money. Matt and I paid off the mortgage on the house a long time ago. Plus, we got a big settlement in our wrongful death suit against Pi Sigma Phi—a move that made Harris Blanchard’s lawyers categorize us as moneygrubbing opportunists but that left both of us more than comfortable, even after the divorce. The way I spend, which is hardly at all, it’ll take me decades before I make a dent in it.
No, I don’t need money. I need the job. I need to spend a certain amount of my day focused on things like fonts and resolutions and links, or else my mind will go to that dark, cold place it goes whenever it has nothing else to do. I’ll relive that night five years ago, relive it over and over again but with different outcomes. Impossible outcomes. I’ll break things. I’ll drink. I’ll hurt people who don’t deserve to be hurt, when the one person who does deserve it continues to thrive. To sparkle. To win awards. I need this job to survive.
I hit redial on my phone, expecting Glynne Barrett’s voicemail. She picks up, though. “Camille,” she says.
“I’ll do it for free.”