“Okay. Listen, I’m going to call you in a little bit, okay? I might need your help with something.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Great, thanks, Whitney.”
“Is everything okay, Florence?”
“It’s fine. Or at least it will be fine.” She paused. “I’m really glad I ran into you.” She considered how unlikely she’d have been to say that just forty-eight hours earlier.
“Me too.”
“One more thing—I’m sorry I never responded to any of your calls or emails after I moved to New York. I should have, and I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. People drift apart. I understand.”
They hung up, but Florence stayed by the phone and leaned her head against the wall. She was dreading her next call. Finally, she picked up the handset and dialed the only number she knew by heart.
Vera sounded bleary when she picked up. Florence looked at her watch. It was the middle of the night in Florida.
“Sorry to wake you, Mom.”
“Florence? What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I’m traveling.”
“Hang on.”
Florence heard the bed covers rustle then the click of her mother’s bedside lamp turning on. She could picture the room perfectly: the pink bedspread, the faded Monet posters on the wall. When Vera spoke again, she sounded more like herself.
“Florence? Is everything alright? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then why are you calling me in the middle of the night?” Florence heard the chill settle into her mother’s voice from all the way across the Atlantic. It took her off guard. She had assumed Vera would fall on her knees in gratitude when Florence finally got in touch.
“What?”
“First you tell me you never want to see me again, now you’re waking me up at three in the morning. Make up your mind, honey.”
“I didn’t say I never wanted to see you again; I said I’d be out of the country for a few weeks. You always exaggerate.”
“You absolutely did say never. I have the text message to prove it.”
Florence felt a wave of rage surge up from her gut. She’d never asked her mother for anything, then the one time she needed help, Vera couldn’t set aside her petty recriminations for even one minute. Florence slammed the phone down.
She went to the sink and held both hands under scalding-hot water. It seeped under the bottom of her cast, and the damp gauze began to itch. She clawed at it savagely, stopping only when the burning pain kicked in.
Afterward, Florence sat at the kitchen table and stared at the phone. What was there to do but wait for Massey to call back? Until then, she was caught in a bizarre limbo. She wasn’t Florence and she wasn’t Helen. She was no one.
There was a certain freedom in it, actually. Without a self, she couldn’t be held accountable.
She picked up the phone again and called Nick. He answered almost immediately.
“What’s up?”
“Are you still at the beach?”
“Yeah, but I could be done.”
“Come over.”
Oblivion beckoned.
40.
Florence lay on the couch with her head in Nick’s lap. Her frame of vision was occupied by a corner of the coffee table with a baggie of weed and a dented can of pizza-flavored Pringles on it. It was ten o’clock. Amira had laid out a dinner of roasted vegetables and grilled lamb a few hours ago, and they had attacked it like animals. They were now draped around the living room, stuffed and listless. Nick hummed tunelessly. A girl she’d never met was straddling Liam on the couch opposite them. Meg tapped at her phone.
Florence forced herself to sit up. Nick used the opportunity to lean forward and start rolling a cigarette on the table. Florence walked outside to the back terrace. She shivered. The air had been cooler ever since the storm. She lay down on one of the lounge chairs and looked up at the sky.
Massey hadn’t called back that afternoon, but Greta had, more than once. Florence had asked Amira to say she was out. She didn’t know what to tell Greta. Even if she had been sober enough to make sense, she wasn’t prepared to explain Helen’s death or her own thwarted attempt to steal Helen’s identity or the dead body that had just been found at the house on Crestbill Road. She hoped Greta would never find out about her week as Maud Dixon; it seemed horribly embarrassing now, and she still wanted Greta to help her get published one day.
She went into the kitchen and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge. She drank half of it in a single gulp. The effects of everything she’d drunk and smoked were finally wearing off.
She walked back through the foyer, where Meg was holding open the front door.
“Hey, Helen, let me introduce you to someone,” Meg said when she noticed Florence. “This is Florence. She just got here.”
Meg pulled the door open another few inches. From behind it, a blond woman stepped into the light. She was wearing a cherry-red dress and smiling broadly. She stuck out her hand in Florence’s direction. “Hello,” she said. “You must be Helen.”
Florence stood stock-still. There are some emotions, like rage and lust, that seem to speed up time. But shock creates a moment of stasis, a pocket of time outside the passing seconds, during which the mind has to veer off the neural pathway it has just been traveling down in order to start hacking away at a new one. She said nothing. She could only stare.
Standing in front of her was Helen Wilcox, who had died in a car crash a week ago.
41.
Florence and I just met this afternoon,” Meg said to Florence. Then she went into her familiar routine, saying to Helen, while gesturing toward Florence, “Helen is a writer.”
“Oh, are you?” said Helen, raising her eyebrows. “How fascinating!”
Florence found herself nodding dumbly.
“I always wanted to be a writer but I don’t have the imagination. You just make up characters from nothing? A whole life? It seems impossible!” Helen laughed lightly.
Florence finally found her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Helen wrinkled her forehead in concern. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Meg said it would be okay if I came by, but the last thing I’d want to do is impose.”
Meg gave Florence a bewildered look. “Of course you can stay,” she said emphatically to Helen. “The more the merrier.”
“Come with me to the kitchen,” Florence said. “I’ll make you a drink.”
“That’s alright. I don’t drink.”
“Then I’ll get you a water.” She put her hand on Helen’s upper arm as if to pull her.
Helen shot Meg a questioning look. Meg, in turn, asked Florence, “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Helen was enjoying this, she realized.
“Let’s all just go into the living room, okay?” Meg said, leading Helen by the arm. Florence trailed behind them like a dog on a leash.
Meg introduced Helen—as Florence—to the group grandly. It was the same way she’d introduced Florence just days before. Florence looked over at Nick to see if he’d notice the name and remember that it was the same one Amy had called her by, but he just nodded and said, “Sup.”