I see it now, as clear as crystal: a young Mr. Jefferson, so charismatic and charming. So wild and free. A musician, a poet, a man with money—the temptation, I’m sure, was always there. Despite how strange it all feels, how at odds with the person I thought I knew, I let myself reach out and touch it and it feels surprisingly solid, like I’ve somehow known this part of him was there all along. I imagine him traveling, untethered, the way he was before settling down on the coast. I imagine him finishing a gig and meeting a woman, letting the lust take over and cloud it all. A single lapse in judgment, a fatal mistake, a weekend away from his wife that left a girl pregnant and threatened to disrupt his entire life. So he did what people with money always do: he bought her silence, her shame. A house somewhere in the country that would keep her satiated and sustained and far, far away.
I think of him the night after Eliza’s funeral: the two of us on the porch together, rocking slowly in the dark. The smell of stale whiskey on his breath and his jet-black hair glinting in the night. I remember turning to him, his face heavy with emotion, with exhaustion, with all those unanswered questions he kept torturing himself with: “Was anything bothering her? Did she have any enemies? Anyone who might want to see her get hurt?” Something had clearly been troubling him that night, weighing on his conscience, but I assumed he was simply trying to process, to grieve. Trying to make sense out of something so senseless.
Trying, like I had been, to find someone else to blame.
Now, I can’t help but wonder if he knew that Lucy had found him. If he knew she had been coming around, watching his family, seeing that their life was so different than the one she had with her mother back home. I wonder if he suspected that it was her who broke in that night and that’s why he refused to call the police, made up those excuses, probably so afraid of his secret slipping out, ruining his perfect family. His perfect life. Because that’s what they were, the Jeffersons: they were perfect. It was the way they ate dinner together, windows open and old music leaking out. It was the genuine laughter, the overwhelming love, Mr. Jefferson tossing Eliza’s mom off the dock and bringing out his telescope when the sky was clear and the stars were out. I always thought that if I could just get close to them, it might rub off on me, too. That I could be one of them, part of their family instead of my own—but Lucy, she must have felt that longing to such an extreme, knowing what she could have had, should have had, but was given instead.
I think of the two of us on that beach now, New Year’s Eve, the bottle between us as we stared at the sky. The distant pop of the fireworks as we whispered our secret wishes, our deepest desires, like if we muttered them out loud, they might just come true. “I guess I was curious,” she said, another little honesty she waved in front of me, knowing I would never see it for what it truly was. She wasn’t just curious about Levi, wandering into his house on Christmas. Sitting on his bed, taking his head in her hands. Wondering what his lips might feel like on hers.
It’s all so clear now, so painfully obvious.
“When you’re friends with Lucy, she makes you feel special.”
I think of her walking around Eliza’s house, blue eyes drilling into the family photos on the hall, so proudly displayed. The ache in her chest knowing that she was something dirty, secret, banished away like a bad habit. Making her way into Eliza’s bedroom, eyeing her planner. Flipping through the pages just like I had, learning all the little things she had rendered important enough to note: her best friend’s birthday, her first day at Rutledge. Move-in day at Hines Hall.
“Like she chose you for a reason.”
It’s why she showed up in the courtyard that morning, lingering in the background until she saw me pulling my cart with that neon 9 taped to the back; why she approached Sloane and Nicole on the grass, two girls living on the same floor as me, just down the hall. Why she stepped into my dorm that day and grabbed my arm, invited me in.
Lucy didn’t want to live her own life anymore. She wanted to live Eliza’s.
CHAPTER 60
AFTER
It’s strange: standing on the sidewalk, less than a year since the first time I found myself planted in this very spot with my bags by my side. Looking up at this house and imagining all the things that could happen: the friends I could make, the person I could become. Wondering how it would all play out. I had no idea, back then, the things I would be capable of. The way Lucy would bend me and break me; the way three strangers would slowly turn into friends, then family, the bond between us turning from liquid to solid. Curdling in the heat until it was thicker than blood.