My phone buzzed from where it lay on the floor, Cal’s face suddenly grinning up at me. I jumped, heart pounding. One hand pressed to my chest, I waited until the call died, then peered at the text flashing on the screen: You went to Houndstooth without me! Such a betrayal…
A stupid joke, so divorced from the news of Laurel’s death that I almost laughed at the sheer incongruity—except for the image that flashed in my head: Cal sitting in his hotel room, at his laptop, poring over our credit-card charges. Checking my spending like I was a child. Knowing where I’d gotten my coffee this morning, from hundreds of miles away.
But he was only being responsible. Keeping the life we shared in order was a form of intimacy, wasn’t it? Plenty of the Highland Park husbands managed their household finances. I forced myself to leave the closet, heading back downstairs, but the slap of my feet against the steps wasn’t enough to drown out Jamie’s voice, Laurel’s death, Clem’s memory. The ghosts had been unleashed, and now I couldn’t stop seeing my life through their eyes, couldn’t escape the suspicion that if they saw me here, in this cold, empty house, they’d shake me by the shoulders.
Cal and I had gotten married a year ago, and everything had been fine until I’d quit my job six months ago. Then the balance of power had shifted. Cal would refuse to admit there was even such a thing as a balance of power between us. According to him, that wasn’t how good marriages worked. And maybe he was right, maybe I was too sensitive because of how I’d grown up, watching my mom contort herself to keep men around, or too paranoid because of what happened in college. Because every time I saw two people, I saw a scale, tipping this way and that. And the scale had been tipped toward Cal for a long time. Oh, he would deny it, but now he held the purse strings; now every big decision was ultimately his. It had been six months of checked charges, of attending fancy Highland Park parties on his arm, of insipid gossip and aching loneliness, of staring at the blinking cursor on my laptop’s blank screen.
Six months, and here was the truth: I wasn’t a writer. I’d turned into a housewife.
What would Laurel have said to that? Dear god, Clem?
I looked up and caught my reflection in the window above the sink. Raised fingers to my cheeks. I was crying, gentle tears tracking down my face. I hadn’t even felt it start. I’d trained myself to do this, years ago. To cry effortlessly, elegantly, like a silent movie actress. But now that I was older, the tears had a habit of creeping up on me, arriving when I least expected. Maybe I’d performed for so long I wasn’t capable of recognizing my real feelings. Were there even such things, or was everyone always reacting in ways we understood we were supposed to? When did the performance ever end?
Mentally, I slapped myself, and bit my tongue as punishment. It ended when you were dead, for fuck’s sake. When your body was found hanging from a tree or a showerhead in the place you loved most, the place you used to sit for hours reading scripts, or where you were a star, your body flying strong and triumphant across the grass. It ended when you killed yourself, or when somebody killed you, and all your chances to wake and breathe and cry were stolen from you forever. When everyone who was supposed to love you brushed your death aside, and the only one who cared to look deeper was a stranger. A true-crime podcast host.
But I cared. That was the truth I couldn’t shake, the one that followed me no matter where I hid, staring back from every mirror, screen, and window. I’d sequestered myself in a safe, faraway place, and still the past had found me.
Now I had a choice.
I could almost see myself making the decision, as if I were floating outside my own body. I would not let Laurel and Clem disappear into the fog of forgotten people. I’d told Laurel I would protect her, and instead I’d run. I’d promised Clem I would stick by her, yet I’d chosen wrong when it counted. I’d failed too many women.
I would not leave this to Jamie Knight, even if he was more qualified. I would go back to New York, and I would find out what happened to Laurel. I would trace the contours of her life since I couldn’t hold her hands. I would pick up her memory and cradle it. I would whisper my apologies; I would kneel on my hands and my knees in the place where she’d died and I would repent. If it was true someone had hurt her—if someone had killed her—then I would find out who and I would protect her, years too late, the only way I could.