Florence ignored him. “And you?” she asked Idrissi. She felt a sudden reluctance for him to leave even though his presence in her life had done nothing but unsettle her.
Idrissi shrugged. “I do not know, Madame.” He seemed genuinely at a loss for the first time since she’d met him.
38.
The first thing Florence did after the men left was Google Jeanette Byrd. She found an article from 2005 in the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. A local seventeen-year-old girl with that name had been found guilty of killing a man named Ellis Weymouth in a motel room in Hindsville, Mississippi. The paper said that she had always maintained her innocence, but the alibi she’d given—that she’d been with a friend all night—had fallen apart when the friend changed her story. They didn’t mention the name of the friend because she was a minor, but Florence could guess it: Helen Wilcox.
Jeanette Byrd was Jenny. Ruby, from the book.
So she’d been paroled in February. Then what? After fifteen years in prison, she’d gone to find her old friend Helen? That was plausible, but it didn’t explain how she ended up in the compost pile. Helen was selfish and a narcissist but she certainly wasn’t a murderer.
Florence stopped herself.
Certainly? She wasn’t sure she could describe Helen, whose moods were as variable as the weather, who even Greta had called volatile, as “certainly” anything.
According to Massey, the corpse had been in the compost pile on Crestbill Road since February. That meant that the entire time Florence had been living there, Jenny’s body had been decomposing just yards from where she slept. She’d thrown banana peels on top of it.
What else had he said? That Helen had lied to both Jenny’s parole officer in Mississippi and a local Cairo police officer. Florence’s mind flashed to the overweight officer hitching up his pants in Helen’s driveway and Helen staring him down from the bottom step. She’d watched the whole conversation.
There were two possible explanations, as far as Florence could tell. Either Helen had been covering for Jenny, or else she had, in fact, killed Jenny—and Florence had been living with a murderer for weeks.
She shut the laptop, but didn’t otherwise move. She felt weighed down by a crushing lethargy. The need to leave Semat that she’d felt so urgently earlier in the day had dissipated. Now she wanted nothing so much as to sleep. She craved oblivion.
She couldn’t leave anyhow. She had no passport. The only identification she had in her possession was Helen’s driver’s license, and she obviously couldn’t be Helen anymore—Helen was wanted for murder. But she had nothing proving she was Florence. She was no one. She was nothing.
She pushed herself up and retrieved the whiskey bottle from the dining room. She poured a splash in her empty teacup and sipped it slowly. Outside, the leaves continued to drip.
Eventually, she knew, she would be able to convince whoever needed convincing that she was Florence Darrow. There were people she could call. There were documents they could dig up. But she felt no relief at this idea. Instead, she felt bereft. She hadn’t grieved after Helen’s death, but now she felt the loss of Helen’s identity keenly.
Besides, she would still have to explain Helen’s disappearance and all of the lies she’d told since the crash. She may not have murdered someone and shoved them in a compost pile, but she had killed someone, even if it was by accident. She was a criminal too. And somebody, somewhere, either in New York or Morocco, would make her pay. She was sure of it. That was the thing about being Florence Darrow: She always paid.
She wondered briefly whether she could transfer all of Helen’s money to Florence Darrow before she took up her old identity again. Or even a numbered account. How did one do that? But then they’d charge her with theft. Not identity theft, just plain old theft.
At some point, Amina came in and asked if she wanted dinner. Florence shook her head. When Amina turned to leave Florence called out, “Wait—Amina, do you know my name?”
“Your name, Madame?”
“Yes, my name.”
“Madame Wilcox, n’est-ce pas? It is on the paper.”
“You’re right. That is what’s on the paper,” Florence said with a resigned sigh. “Amina, do you ever feel like…like you’ve made so many mistakes you’ll never find your way back? And you’re not even sure if you want to go back?”
“Back to…the United States?”
“No. Never mind. I’m not making any sense. I’m sorry, Amina.”
“Amira,” the older woman said, patting herself on the chest. “My name is Amira.”
“Amira? I thought it was Amina.”
Amira shrugged.
“I’m sorry,” Florence said as Amira walked back to the kitchen.
She sighed. What had she thought Amira was going to offer her? A solution? Redemption? If she wanted either of those, she’d have to find them herself.
She poured another splash of whiskey in her teacup.
*
Florence’s eyes shot open. Someone was pounding on the door. She sat up and looked around. It was dark. She’d fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, the nearly empty whiskey bottle on the table next to her. She looked at her watch. Almost ten o’clock.
“Amina?” she called out. “Amira?”
There was no answer. She must have gone home.
Florence walked on shaky legs to the door and called out, “Who is it?”
“Me!”
Florence frowned. “Who?”
“Meg!”
It came back to her now. That morning, before breakfast, Florence had invited everyone over after dinner. That seemed like ages ago. She opened the door a few inches. Meg’s moon-like face filled the crack, first one eye, then the other.
“Did you forget?” Meg asked cheerfully.
Florence nodded, rubbing her eyes.
“Do you want us to go?”
“No, that’s okay. Come in.” She opened the door all the way. Nick was standing behind Meg, smiling. He came in and draped an arm around her shoulders. The others trundled in after.
Florence led them out to the back terrace. Now that the storm had passed, the stars gleamed as if freshly washed. Meg was carrying a six-pack and held out a beer in Florence’s direction. She nodded and took it.
They settled around the table on the terrace. Someday soon, Florence realized, this group might hear about a murder suspect named Helen Wilcox who’d fled to Morocco. What would they think? Would Nick be horrified by the thought that he’d slept with a murderer? Or would he know by then that the woman he’d been sleeping with had lied about who she was?
Nick caught her staring at him and smiled. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Just tired.”
Meg wanted to play a game called “Never Have I Ever.” Everyone took turns saying something they had never done before; if anyone else in the group had done it, they had to take a drink. Florence hadn’t done any of the things that elicited jeers and feigned embarrassment among the others. She’d never had a threesome. She’d never done mushrooms. She’d never joined the mile-high club.
For the first time, she felt keenly the age difference between herself and this ragtag group. She was only two years older than Nick, but somewhere along the way she had started to feel closer to Helen’s age than her own. Who cared about threesomes and plane sex? Those were their thrills? That was glory?