Jasmine McKenna:We’ve all poured over the footage. Every second—like the answer might hide within it.
Kayla Alexander:Harper loved Joel more than anything else. He was the easiest way to get to hurt her. But only one person has ever disliked Harper.
Nadine Heywood:I last saw Harper at the awards, as she glared up at me while I made my winning speech. She and Joel must have snuck out early, but they seemed perfectly normal to me. She was fireincarnate, determined to win and to scorch anyone who stood in her path—normally me, occasionally in Alexander McQueen. And Joel was his usual pompous self, ushering her along like everyone was there for him even though it was her with the nomination.
Caleb Krause:I’m hardly unbiased. He was the husband and I was the ex-fiancé. He glowered at me the entire evening. When I won, I thought he was going to get out of his seat and swing for me. So yeah, I knew he was jealous. But so jealous he’d destroy his own marriage?
Stephanie Cameron:To be honest, I never liked Joel all that much. He loved Harper the same way he loved his car and his watch—like she was just another symbol of his success. I’m sure that when he abandoned her, that image was the only thing on his mind—not Harper, and not the world he was leaving behind.
February 2003
JOEL INGRAM WAS DEAD, OF COURSE.
I hadn’t really doubted it. It crossed my mind—as I pulled Harper into my room and shut the door firmly behind her, that maybe this was all some plot for revenge, to humiliate me after my win.
She was shaken, and clearly scared, and let me haul her across the threshold with such ease that I didn’t care. If this was a ruse, fine. I’d have rather been wrong than to have left her like that. I would have rather choked on my own humiliation than close the door in her face. (What did my humiliation matter anyway, when she’d pried it from me so often? It was nothing to her tears. To the potential of herneed.)
“What happened?” I asked—because if I did not truly consider it false, I also did not consider that the blood might be hers.
She just stared ahead.
“What room are you in?” I demanded.
She still didn’t answer.
“Harper,” I barked, and she jolted so suddenly she stumbled back, cowering at the sound. I reached a hand out to steady her, guilt twisting in my gut. I couldn’t handle her vulnerability, it upturned everything, to the point that I softened my voice and asked again: “What room are you in?”
“Three … Three eleven.”
“Okay, good.”
I held my hand out for the key, but she didn’t move, so I had to prise it from her fingers myself. There was a moment, as our palms brushed, where she clutched at me, nails digging tight.
(She needed me. She’d built a world without me, but she’d come running. Stripped back to raw fear, to incessant panic, and here she was, clinging to me. I didn’t know what to do with that—with her—other than, of course,anything she needed of me.)
She let go, stumbling back, dazed.
I looked down at the blood coating my hand, her fingerprints swept across me. My mouth was dry. This was evident incrimination. But it was Harper, and where her name was said, mine echoed beneath. We resounded within each other, were already stained—and perhaps there were moments to turn around, to stop this, but I was in this from the moment I pulled her across the threshold, and there was no thought there. Just instinct. Harper and everything about her—us—was impulse.
So I ripped the plug from the still-filling bath and let it drain before guiding Harper to the bathroom. She moved without hesitation, wherever I guided her, and I curled my fingers between hers as she climbed, still in that elegant green dress, into the bath.
When the water hit her, she didn’t even flinch. But I noticed it wasn’t just the shower trailing water down her face—tears beaded at the corner of her eyes and whatever shock she was in was evidently beginning to fade.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “Just stay here and get clean.”
(“I didn’t know where else to go,” that was the thought ringing in my head. Harper who hadeverything,when it came down to it, only had me.)
I grabbed a towel and stopped to pull my own clothes on as hurriedly as I could—tossing the robe onto the bed and switching into a set of gym wear. As expected, a smear of blood streaked the door where Harper had knocked, and I quickly wiped it off before starting along the hall and down the stairs to the third floor.
And then I stood outside 311, took a breath, and reached for the handle.
Conveniently, Joel had fallen across the bed.
I wasn’t in shock, not like Harper. But I think her need for help had thrust me into some sort of agentic state, where everything I felt and thought was pushed aside until later, and there was only the cold path of what needed to be done. Of whatsheneeded to be done.
It wasn’t quite a hero complex, if that’s what you imagine. I did not think I was saving her, even if just from the consequences of her own actions. A man was dead, his corpse before me, the iron tang of his blood searing the air.
A man was dead, but a girl was crying in my shower, and that seemed the bigger tragedy.
