I stare at the computer, then back at the picture, wondering, for a second, if I typed in the wrong address. If my subconscious is playing tricks on me again, making me see people from my past like they’re right there in front of me, fleshy and solid and undeniably real. I was expecting to find Lucy’s mom, maybe. A person to pair with the stories I’ve heard. Another name I could google or a phone number to call, any morsel of information I could add to my pile—but finally, I’m beginning to grasp the truth, the answers coming to me one by one like the steady drip of a faucet, filling me up with a sense of sick understanding. All the things I thought I knew are suddenly different, warped, like staring at my own reflection in the water and barely recognizing the face that stares back.
I’ve been wrong about Eliza, about Lucy, about Levi.
About everything.
CHAPTER 59
I read the name on the screen again, blinking my eyes, head swimming with the implications of it all. These last nine months and the little crumbs Lucy has dropped like she was trying to get me to follow them all along. Like she was daring me to put it together, figure it out. Finger curling before running back into the dark, waiting patiently for me to find her at the end.
I think about her stepping into my dorm on that very first day, diamond necklace cinched tight around her neck. How she zeroed in on Eliza’s face on the mantel, jealousy radiating as she picked up the frame and asked me those questions.
The two of us on the roof, the stub of her cigarette glowing like an ember. That final drag before she flicked it from her fingers and sent it sailing into the night.
There’s a reason why Lucy and Eliza are so similar. There’s a reason why they share the same habits, the exact same tics. Why every time I look at Lucy, I see her. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t imagine it, my subconscious trying to replicate her completely. My guilt trying to scribble her back into existence, paper tearing beneath the weight of my frenzied mental strokes, so desperate to see her again. It didn’t matter how wrong it all was, how deformed, this Frankenstein version of her I had cobbled together and brought back to life. I wanted it so badly I ignored all the signs and I picture Eliza again, back in her bedroom, the two of us stomach-down on her bed. Her legs kicking in the air, dainty chin cupped in her palm. The way she rolled over to the side and glanced out the window, her voice a whisper only I could hear.
“I think he watches me,” she had said, twirling that diamond between her fingers before lifting it slowly, kissing it to her lips. “I think he’s out there right now.”
It was never Levi she saw, that silhouette in the distance, my body cold as I imagined him watching in the dark. He wasn’t the source of the cigarette we found beneath her window; he wasn’t the one who watched, night after night, a looming presence we could all feel. It was Lucy out there, observing quietly. Drinking in all the little things about Eliza that made her so rare: the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she made everyone around her love her so fiercely. Studying the way her fingers tugged twice at her hair, bit down on a pencil until her teeth left marks.
Played with that necklace clasped tight around her neck, a gift from her father she never took off.
Her father, Mr. Jefferson, whose name is still burned onto my laptop screen.
Mr. Jefferson, the one who owns Lucy’s house in Fairfield, North Carolina.
I lean back on my headboard, letting the truth settle over me. It was Lucy who broke into the Jeffersons’ that night, curtains fluttering as she wandered around the living room, up the stairs and into Eliza’s room. It was Lucy who touched all her things, the source of that foreign presence we could all feel. Who saw those pictures on the wall and plucked one from the center, taking it for herself.
That picture not of me, not of Eliza, but of Mr. Jefferson tucked tight between us.
Mr. Jefferson, Lucy’s father.
I think back again to that night on the roof, the way she stalled when I asked about her parents, her dad, like that bit of information was just a step too far.
“He gave me this,” she had said, diamonds glinting between her fingers. Pulling me close, her breath on my neck. “He said it reminded him of me because I was named after that song.”
The information is all here, all online, right in front of me and ripe for the picking: the deed, ownership history, property updates and tax bills. Mr. Jefferson bought the house in Fairfield back in 1999 and I do the math in my head, counting backward, just to be sure: twenty-three years ago. The same age as Lucy. Eliza’s parents have been together since high school—I’ve seen the pictures myself; the two of them at prom, so young at their wedding—but finally, I feel the pieces slide into place and everything from the past two years suddenly makes sense.