I keep my mouth shut, knowing I’m supposed to be learning all this for the very first time. It’s hard not to call him out on it, though. Not to point out that the house he bought them was practically a trailer; that the bills he paid were a sorry substitute for real responsibility. That he was doing a good thing only for himself.
“Then Lucy showed up at the house one day and I knew,” he says, lowering his hands on the table, suddenly looking like a stranger himself instead of the man I always admired. The man who read my writing and danced with his wife in the kitchen; the man who sometimes felt like more of a father to me than my own. “I knew who she was immediately. She had her mother’s eyes. That bright blue color.”
“What did you do?” I ask, leaning forward, the curiosity in my voice authentic this time. Thinking of Lucy and me up on that roof; her fingers working at her necklace as she pulled me close like she was sharing a secret. She had danced around that moment so delicately before, with a ballerina’s sweeping finesse, and the memory of her voice raises the skin on my arms now, so close to finally knowing what’s real and what’s not.
“I turned her away,” Mr. Jefferson says, his voice devoid of any emotion. “I told her to leave. I had a family, Margot. A real family.”
Had, the use of past tense, sends a fresh wave of tears to my eyes as I remember the two of us together on Christmas, Mrs. Jefferson notably absent. I wonder when she found out about Lucy, if it was before or after her own daughter’s death. I wonder if she blames her husband for everything now. I wonder if that’s why she left.
“Eliza and her mother were just upstairs,” he continues, pulling my attention back. “I couldn’t risk her ruining that.”
I picture Lucy on the stoop, a bundle of nerves and his rejection knife-sharp as he slammed the door shut. I can still see her standing there, dazed and numb. Nowhere left to go so she just stayed and watched. Imagined what it might be like to be them.
“But apparently Eliza overheard us talking,” Mr. Jefferson says next and I snap my neck up, surprise radiating through my chest like a tremor. “I didn’t even know until the police told me. She never said anything.”
“The police—？” I ask, turning to Detective Frank, suddenly remembering what he said to me after he searched our house, the two of us sitting together in the yard.
“I know about Eliza. Levi’s old fling and your friend from before.”
I think about the way Eliza sat in the kitchen with that faraway stare; the way she opened her mouth so many times like she wanted to tell me something only to snap it shut, swallow it down. The way she and Levi were always whispering, silencing themselves when I got too close. How she kept alluding to going through something I wouldn’t understand.
“She knew,” I say, the shock still settling in. “She knew about Lucy and she told Levi instead of me.”
“Honey,” Mr. Jefferson says, reaching out to grab my hand. “Sometimes it’s just easier to talk to a stranger.”
I swallow, watching Detective Frank as he walks closer to the table. No wonder Eliza and Levi got so close so fast. No wonder she thought she loved him, the only person in the world who knew her secret, this heavy thing she just had to unload. It’s why she got so angry with me when I pushed her, challenged her, her bitter best friend who always assumed her life was perfect.
It’s why she couldn’t tell me, that ever-present fear of shattering the illusion.
“Levi went to his local PD over Christmas break and told them what he knew about Lucy,” Frank says to me now, his voice from the yard still echoing around me: “It seems like a pretty big coincidence. Your next-door neighbor, your two best friends.” “Apparently Eliza only knew Lucy’s first name, but Levi was starting to put it together. He remembered Eliza telling him once about someone breaking into her house.”
I sit in silence, remembering how angry I had been at Eliza for confronting Levi about the breakin; how he had insisted it wasn’t him. The way he looked at Lucy that first time in Penny Lanes like he somehow knew her, recognized her, jet-black hair like Mr. Jefferson’s and tics like Eliza’s that were too similar to ignore. The way he cocked his head on Christmas, eyeing us curiously from the door.
The two of them sitting on his bed, his body rigid as Lucy pulled him in for that kiss.
“Levi told the police in December that he thought Lucy might have been there the night Eliza fell,” Detective Frank continues. I look at Mr. Jefferson, his palm cupped tight across his mouth like he’s trying to keep a sob from escaping. “He was beginning to think Lucy might have pushed her.”