Then why were you watching me when I followed the Porsche out of the train station? Why didn’t you trust me, the way you’re asking me to trust you?
I type, I need to think on this, and send it.
0001: It would help if you stopped saying I and YOU and started saying WE. It’s always WE who do things. It’s always US. WE need to think on this. Say it out loud.
I grit my teeth, flick on the caps lock.
0417: WE NEED TO THINK ON THIS.
0001 replies with a screenshot from our first exchange.
0001: Can we trust you?
0417: Yes.
0001: Do you swear on your daughter’s memory that you will never betray us?
0417: Yes, I swear.
I start to reply, but she leaves the conversation.
“Define betray,” I whisper.
I shut down my computer, thinking back to just days before 0001 and I met—the morning I visited Emily’s grave and found a bouquet of flowers, the card attached that read A?layan Kaya. At the time, I felt embraced, supported, protected—not stalked, even though the bouquet of flowers was fresh and even though, as I bent down to take the card, I had the distinct sense that someone was watching me. . . .
“How do you know I followed Duval that night?” I say it aloud in my empty house, half-expecting an answer. “How the fuck do you know?”
I run downstairs to the kitchen, grab my flashlight out of the junk drawer and my car keys out of my purse, and step outside into the cold, misty night. For a few moments, I put my hands on my hips and gaze up at the stars—the same stars shining on 0001, wherever she is, whoever she is. Then I unlock my car, open all four doors, and start searching every inch of it.
AT TWO IN the morning I find a small black plastic disk affixed deep inside the right rear wheel well like a malignant growth. After I yank it off my car, I take a picture of it and blow it up big enough to see the tiny white brand name: Linix. After dropping the picture into Google Images, I see dozens of discs exactly like this one, most of them for sale in spy shops. It’s a tracking chip. Of course it is.
Carefully, I attach the chip to the garage door and head back inside, shivering from too much stress and winter air. I pop an extra antianxiety pill before going to sleep.
I DON’T GO online again till the following morning, when I search neighborhood Facebook groups for Croton and Tarry Ridge, then public pages of individual members, until I find out, on the page of one of the Croton administrators, that friends and family are currently sitting shiva for Natalie Duval at the home of Edward’s sister, Olivia Weiss, and, while his burial won’t take place until Sunday, those close to the recently deceased may observe his loss at the Weiss home as well.
After I shower, eat a few slices of bread, and chug enough coffee to feel semi-human again, I find another suit from my magazine days—navy blue with black velvet lapels, a onetime favorite. I put it on over a black silk blouse, hose, and sensible black heels and pose in front of my full-length mirror, appraising the look. Not bad. With a couple of barrettes and a little makeup, I will be ready to sit shiva for the stranger I killed.
OLIVIA WEISS LIVES on the outskirts of Croton, in a white ranch house with a screened-in porch and a beautiful blue spruce in her yard that makes me wish I could ask for cuttings.
There are several cars parked outside, spilling down her driveway and then bumper to bumper down half the length of her quiet street, so I feel reasonably comfortable as I park behind one of them and make my way toward the house. As I walk, I feel that same sensation I’d felt at my daughter’s grave and at Harris Blanchard’s funeral—that prickling of the skin at the back of my neck, the chill across my shoulders, as though I’m being watched.
I feel it even though I’ve removed the chip from my car, which makes me think that it’s not 0001 or the collective who have been watching me at these sad places; it’s the dead.