No one answers when I ring the bell, so I try the handle on the front door and find it unlocked. There’s a mirror next to the door, a black cloth thrown over it, as is the custom at a shiva. There’s also a coat tree lurking somewhere beneath a mountain of high-tech fabrics and fur-lined hoods. I don’t take my coat off, but I do unbutton it and follow the muffled voices I hear to my right, through a small sitting area, pushing open a door to a living room buzzing with people, all wearing dark colors and speaking softly to each other, or milling around with paper plates full of cold cuts and stunned expressions on their faces. None of them turn to look at me as I enter, and I’m able to scan the group freely, until I catch sight of a drawn-looking dark-haired woman in a black sweater and pants, leaving the kitchen with a full plate and handing it to an elderly man sitting alone on the couch. “You should be sitting,” he says to the woman. “You should be resting, not me.”
Olivia Weiss. It has to be.
She wears no makeup, and her complexion is chalky, her eyes a dull, watery gray. We catch sight of each other before a woman in a navy-blue sweater dress approaches her and hugs her tightly, the two of them locked together for a long while. I wait until they separate and the woman in the sweater dress makes her way past me and out of the room, trailing expensive perfume and cigarette smoke.
The dark-haired woman is now standing alone, and so I approach her, my hand outstretched awkwardly, as though I’m trying to sell her something. A weird gesture, but she takes my hand anyway.
“Olivia Weiss?” I ask.
Her hand is very cold. “Have we met?” Her speech has a slight slur to it and her lids look heavy, the way mine do if I take an extra antianxiety pill. I’m sure it’s for the same reason. Who could blame her for self-medicating? Her brother and her sister-in-law, both dead of apparent suicides, in a span of three days.
“No,” I tell her. “But I’m sorry for your loss.”
She frowns, then twists her face into a weak smile. It’s easy to read her thoughts: Then what the hell are you doing here?
“My name is Camille Gardener,” I say. “I was the witness. I saw Dr. Duval . . . I was across the street from the cemetery when it happened.”
Her eyes sharpen up a little. “You saw him?”
“I wish I could have stopped it from happening.” It’s only after I’ve said the words that I realize how deeply I mean them, and I want to leave her to her grief, to give up this idea of mine and go home. But if I did, where would that leave me? Trapped in a powerful group I’m not sure I can trust with my own life, let alone with my daughter’s memory. （And what did that mean, anyway, that oath 0001 made me take, back when I’d convinced myself this was just a game? Did it mean that if I go against the group, it will destroy Emily’s memory, all over again?） I need to know who I’ve been dealing with. And for that to happen, I need to find out if 0001 was telling the truth about Duval. “I really do.”
“I do too.” She gazes at my face for a long time, reading the pain in my eyes, taking the bait. “You want a glass of wine?”
“Sure.”
I follow her into her kitchen—an airy space with shabby-chic cupboards and an enormous granite-topped island. A recent remodel, probably. If I were to walk in here under different circumstances, I’d have envied the owner—not so much for her money as for her desire to create a kitchen like this, so perfect for big family gatherings.
She opens the stainless-steel fridge, grabs a bottle of chardonnay that’s half-empty, divvies up the remainder into two red Solo cups, and hands me one. I don’t know that I’ve ever been offered an entire Solo cup full of wine—not since college, anyway. I take a few sips from my cup while she takes a long pull off hers. She says, “You were the last person to see my brother alive.”
“Yes.”
“He just stepped out into traffic, in front of a truck.”