“Slept all right?” he asks.
“Well enough,” I say shortly. “Had a nightmare—”
“Yeah, we heard,” Mom says. She clears her throat. “And you’re sure you don’t want to talk to—”
“I called Saint. We talked,” I say firmly. Mom doesn’t approve of Saint as my version of therapy. But she’s the only person who understands, fully, and she’s not here. She’s never coming back.
“I’m never going back to America, Adina. Never again,” Saint promised in the dark last night. She’d called me from Beijing. It was noon for her, midnight for me. We call at least twice a day, because someone always needs to be awake to save the other from a nightmare.
“But what about Princeton?” I whispered into the phone.
“I can’t, Adina. Not now. Not ever. I think I will go to the Sorbonne. But you will come visit me?” she asked. I’d thought she’d just want to forget about me, but she’d been forceful when she’d said that she didn’t. She never wants to forget about me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget her.
“Yeah,” I agreed softly. If I can ever afford it.
It’s easy to slip in and out of memories now, and I dig my fingers into my thighs to take me back into the now. My parents are patient, watching me find my words. They probably think I’m having another flashback. My mom is probably hoping that I’ll actually share the details of them with her, let her in.
Instead, I say, “Toni is going to rebraid my hair. It looks bad.”
“You said it, not me,” Dad tries to joke.
Mom raises an eyebrow at me, mouth twitching as she and Dad go to unload groceries in the kitchen. “You’ve been watching this bacon, Toni?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Toni says as I turn my attention to the mail. It’s easier to shuffle through trashy catalogs and weird pizza flyers than to think about how the majority of the Remington Family is being buried in their overpriced mausoleum at their personal family cemetery.
I toss them all to the side, one by one, and then hesitate.
Because there’s a letter. A white envelope with my address and my name painstakingly written in calligraphy, but no stamp. It was hand delivered.
Just like the letter that started this mess.
“What is it?” Toni asks, taking a sip of her coffee as she tries to slide the bacon onto a platter along with the quickly cooling eggs.
“I think… the Remingtons sent me a letter.”
“What?” Mom asks, voice loud and edging on righteous anger. “Let me see that.”
Toni jerks away from the stove. She finishes dumping the bacon haphazardly, and turns off the fire, then slides into the chair next to me, placing a hesitant hand on my shoulder.
“You don’t have to open that,” Toni says gently, reaching for the letter.
“Don’t touch my shit,” I warn, not raising my voice, but making every word heavy with a promise.
Toni falls back immediately, wounded. She’s just worried. I know that. But I can’t help the habits I picked up while I was there. Everything I said had to be a warning, everything had to have retribution attached.
“Language,” Mom warns.
“Sorry,” I mutter, turning the letter over in my hands. It weighs nothing, but it still feels heavy in my hands. I tear it open quickly before I can think about it more, and several newspaper clippings fall out.
The first week after, there was nothing. And then, when word of the dead Remingtons got out, the whispers started. What is the Finish? Who started the Finish? What happens during the Finish? What happened to the girls? I faced the questions myself, the one time that the police came to question me. They absolved me halfway through, after some call from whoever was in charge. I thought that would be the end of it—Lenox police were always in the Remingtons’ pocket, and they wouldn’t want that known.
But then the gossip and questions grew louder and more specific.
It happened so fast. The day after my interview, the world spun with the whispers of what the Remingtons had done to girls every year that a Remington boy turned eighteen. That they took girls and ruined them and broke them, until the one who was the most broken, but still alive, was ready to be dressed in white.
I expected it was the Alderidges. Esme was dead and they were still being investigated for embezzlement. They had nothing more to lose by accusing the Remingtons, and everything to gain. With the Remingtons on the chopping block, eyes would turn away from them. Maybe they’d even sue, get some of their money back.
But now I know it wasn’t the Alderidges at all.
“？‘Sole-Surviving Remington Son Speaks Out: A Generational Tragedy,’？” I read, unable to help my mockery. “？‘The Edgewater Horror. Remington Family Expected to Be Sued for Damages Due to Deaths of Girls.’ ‘The Finish of an American Family: The Remingtons Get Their Due.’？”
And then I start to laugh quietly as I look at the last clipping.
“What is all that?” Dad asks.
“These are headlines for what happened. The truth is really coming out. The police were called, but they would’ve been quiet if they’d been told to be. Graham snitched.”
Graham, who talked the talk but did nothing for so long, driven to do something now that they’re all gone and he has nothing left to lose except the money he supposedly never wanted. I wonder if he would have still done it if any of them had lived.
I read the rest of the first article until I hit the last bit of news: “He turned himself in. He’s been expelled from Yale and he’s being charged as an accessory because everyone else is dead. Criminal and civil, because the other girls’ parents are suing. Any of the money that he doesn’t have to give to the families because of damages, he’s pledged to give it away.”
Six billion dollars of wealth redistributed. After this, he and his mother won’t ever be able to afford the upkeep of the Remington Estate. They won’t be able to pay for the maids or the butlers or the groundskeepers. Barely even the fucking water bill. And that bit about Yale is rich with irony.
“Graham? That’s… that boy’s older brother. Always skipping class,” Mom says severely. She can’t say Pierce’s name. I throw it around freely, always with an added “fucking” as a prefix. Fucking Pierce.
“A menace of a young man,” Dad adds. “He… admitted to all of it?”
“Are we really talking about Graham Remington?” Toni asks, because she knows Graham, the disappointing son, the pothead son.
But I know him differently.
The boy who taught me and helped me survive. The boy who kissed me. The boy I kissed. The boy whom I saved. The kind one. The coward. The one who had made me feel sane in an insane world. The only one whom I had trusted at all and who still chose his brother in the end.
“Yeah, Graham Remington,” I murmur softly, sliding the clipping away delicately, promising myself to read them again later. I pull out the last two pieces of paper, clipped together… and promptly choke.
To Adina the Unfinished,
You’re right. I was a coward. And I didn’t know you. Not at all. But, one day, I would like to. Here’s my number, if you’re ever ready. （If I’m not in prison.） And if you’re not, especially if you’re not, know that I am always on your side.