A part of me, tucked under my consciousness, had been circling this question for weeks. I’d held back, policing my thoughts, unwilling to state it so directly. Because the implications were devastating: Kristen, my oldest and closest friend, the only one who saw the ugliest parts of me and loved me anyway, who loved me unconditionally, might be a murderer. But I couldn’t ignore the evidence sloshing against me like a pounding surf: the bodies, all those bodies. Coincidence didn’t produce that kind of pile. I felt suddenly cold, and my arms and jaw began to shake.
Focus, Emily. I breathed deeply and imagined all my feelings, heartbreak and horror and disbelief and fear, crumpled down into a little ball, like the lump in the fireplace after we burned up Paolo’s things. That’s what was at stake—arrest, murder charges, our futures ruined. I had to know if I could trust Kristen. I had to know if she was truly safe.
Had Kristen killed anybody? That was the big question: not self-defense, not accidental death, but murder. The questions below it popped up like goosebumps. What had happened to her parents? To Jamie? Was her takedown of Sebastian an isolated incident? And what really happened the night Paolo died?
Something hysterical frothed up through my throat and came out as a moan. Focus. If this were an issue at work, the next step would be coming up with action items and carrying them out, one by one.
First, I read everything I could find on the fire that killed Kristen’s parents, which wasn’t much: a few sentences in the local paper, noting only that the cause was undetermined; obituaries for both parents, Jerry and Anne, plus a plea for donations to a charity in lieu of flowers. I searched for Kristen Czarnecki and 2001. Then her grandparents, one by one. I was slightly surprised to find that Nana’s real name was Tabitha, which felt just as made-up as Nana, but otherwise, no bombshells.
Who could help—who could tell me the truth about Kristen? Jamie was dead. There was Nana—I thought back to her strange, suspicious email, and to the end of that odd drink at their enormous home. Nana in the kitchen, nervously jamming her phone into my hands. Perhaps she was an ally, eager to help but unable to say more. I tried calling and hung up when her voicemail clicked on. I replied to my unanswered email, too, a polite, “Just following up!”
I drummed my nails against the space bar, thinking hard. Wait—there was someone else Kristen had opened up to, someone who knew the whole story. My mind went blank for a moment, and then it blazed out of my fingertips and into Google: Lydia Brightside, therapist, Wisconsin. Her headshot smiled at me from the top of the search results: a woman in her sixties with short reddish-gray hair, small eyes, arms folded in what was clearly the photographer’s suggested pose. So it wasn’t an alias, a name crinkled by Kristen’s memory.
The first link was a bio on the website for something called Westmoor Behavioral Services:
Lydia Brightside, MD, PhD, is a board-certified pediatric psychiatrist with a subspecialty in Conduct Disorder Treatment. She serves as founding executive director and chief medical officer for Westmoor Behavioral Services. Dr. Brightside has more than four decades of experience studying and developing unique pharmaceutical and pioneering therapeutic interventions to treat behavioral disorders in children and young adults…
Huh? I navigated to the center’s About Us page:
Founded in 1995, Westmoor Behavioral Health is a leading residential treatment center in Wisconsin for children and teens struggling with developmental disorders and mental and behavioral health issues.
This…didn’t sound anything like the grief counseling I assumed young Kristen had undergone. But maybe Dr. Brightside was in private practice as well? I found her CV on an academic website and scoured her work history—nope, she’d worked exclusively at Westmoor Behavioral Services since cofounding it a quarter century ago. Was Kristen keeping even more from me than I thought?
I pulled the center up on a map: It was about two hours from here, in a semirural area dappled with lakes.
In college I’d donated plasma a few times, and while most of the process didn’t bother me—the prick, the waiting, the marbled bruise and wooziness afterward—there was one sensation I spent the whole forty-five minutes dreading. I’ll never forget the feeling of plasma-stripped blood flooding back into my veins, a snaking rush of unpleasant cold, like frozen lightning.
And that’s exactly how I felt when my eyes sank below the map to the user reviews. Coldness tearing through everywhere blood should be.
No one comes here except by court order, the first one read.
And then the real upshot: This is where judges send kids who are too rich to go to juvie.
Juvie. My God. Was her time there related to the three deaths circling her head like horseflies at that age? Was she a danger to herself and, more terrifyingly, others?
If Kristen had been involved in a juvenile court case, the records would be sealed. But who would try to prosecute her? What did she do that would land her in an inpatient clinic, meeting regularly with Wisconsin’s preeminent expert on “conduct disorder”？ Perhaps she started acting out as she grieved her parents’ death: anger, despair, and survivor’s guilt all churning with the hormones of puberty. Maybe she clapped back at teachers and mouthed off to her grandparents. But would that land her in a bougie alternative to a juvenile detention center? That seemed more like the proper treatment for a child who’d…
I flashed to it, Kristen at the lake house, bottle of lighter fluid clutched in her hand. I’m really good at building fires, she’d said. And: My mom wasn’t even supposed to be home. No way could twelve-year-old Kristen have…
My heart raced. This couldn’t be a coincidence. And if it meant what I thought it did—if the answer really was “Murder, Kristen, yes”—then, God, what did that say about our last night in Chile? Hell, what did that mean for me, right now?
In a rush, I created a throwaway email address and contacted Westmoor under the guise of being a grad student researching psychiatric care in the state. Just general sniffing around. Nothing specific about Kristen.
A jolt as I hit Send, and then I sat back, feeling unseemly.
The next morning, an email was waiting for me from Westmoor Behavioral Services.
Dear Ms. Schmidt,
Thank you for your inquiry. To answer your questions, Westmoor does not accept insurance and therefore serves a very selective community. We work closely with the Wisconsin court system to identify minors who would benefit from our inpatient services; families cannot check a patient in without a referral. Westmoor’s mission of providing a safe, supportive environment for children with severe behavioral issues is unique in the state, although we see similar models in other regions.
“Severe behavioral issues”—so it was true. Young Kristen was diagnosed with this as a child. But surely she didn’t spend weeks or months in an institute?
But then my eyes widened:
In regards to Dr. Brightside’s history, she has seen patients at Westmoor exclusively since the center opened in 1995. She is not in private practice, and full-time resident patients at Westmoor are her only clients （in addition to group therapy with parents, siblings, etc.）。 I’ve attached a PDF of our brochure. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.