“Want to grab a drink at the Racquet Club?” she asks.
I want to say yes. I know I should. Dulling the edges with a drink would be easier than standing here, staring at Beau’s suit in my washing machine. Easier than the sharp feeling in my chest and the certainty that something isn’t right. I want to go to the club and spill all of this to Nora, but I don’t even know whatthisis. Figuring that part out first feels like the most important thing.
I can’t move. My feet feel cemented to the laundry room tile—a tile I chose when we bought the house, ceramic discs in a cool-toned blue meant to catch the sunlight streaming in from the lake. I recall how opulent it seemed at the time that even our laundry room had a lake view. But standing in front of the washing machine now, all I can feel is the water pooling beneath my feet.
When I finally lift my gaze, my eyes drift toward a window. Beau and our boat are nowhere to be seen. I turn my head back toward the waterlogged suit in my washing machine. An uneasy feeling creeps up the back of my neck.
“Este?” Nora says again.
“I can’t,” I hear myself say. And I think it’s the first time in our friendship that I’ve blown Nora off.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I have a headache. I’ll call you in a while.”
“I can bring wine over to your place if you change your mind.”
There’s something almost lonely in her voice, and it hits me: I’ve been a shitty friend for not asking how she’s taking the news. “Are you okay, Nora?”
“I mean, I’m sad. Gemma was so nice.”
“She was.”
The finality of the past tense hangs in the air a moment. But I can still see Gemma through the years in my mind.
“Why don’t you call me later if you need me?” Nora suggests in a rush and hangs up.
God. She’s probably retraumatized. I’m an asshole.
I promise myself I’m going to check on her in an hour.
But I can’t call her back now. I’m stuck between my own grief and something new. Something that feels insidious and wrong.
Why did Beau wash his suit?
I reach into the washing machine drum, feeling an urgency that edges toward panic. Last night, the blazer felt soft to the touch, but the expensive material has gone coarse and dry under a cycle of water and some plant-based powdered laundry detergent.
I pull out the jacket, wondering if reshaping it on a hanger will give it hope for survival. But the creases crushed into the once-smooth lapel aren’t a good sign. I shake it out, hoping to loosen the wrinkles. The fabric makes a snapping sound with every rough flap. On my third and final thwack, something falls out of one of Beau’s pockets and drops to the tile in a limp, wet heap. Draping the jacket over a hanger before I check the floor, I’m expecting a loose collar stay or errant golf ball marker. Maybe a loose button popped off the suit. But it’s none of those things.
It’s Beau’s pocket square from last night. But the blue and white floral silk I helped him choose is soaking wet and marred with red splotches.
Blood.
My cheeks flush hot, and I snatch the pocket square like it’s a lifeline. As if the answers to what happened last night might be woven into the fabric. I study it carefully, picturing the way Beau folded it last night before tucking it into his blazer pocket. I bought it for him a few years ago on some absentminded shopping day on Park Ave. It’s such an ordinary accessory in my memory. But it looks completely wrong now.
The room spins a little as my brain races to conjure some reasonable explanation for how Beau got blood on it. And why his suit is in the washing machine. I go back to the other pieces of his outfit from last night, scanning for any more stains. But there’s nothing. Then I remember how he seemed in bed this morning. Like he hadn’t slept and something was churning behind his eyes.
No. That’s ridiculous.
I pull out my phone.
I used to be so good in a crisis, and Ilovedsleuthing. When I worked for Simon, he would give me half of a name in passing conversation and ask me to find out where this vague, barely named person worked four years prior. Or he’d ask me to schedule a lunch for him “at that place,” and I wouldn’t even blink as he’d add something unhelpful, like “The one I like with the salad? Near that landmark I can’t recall?”
Back then, a quest to find certainty in a half-baked assembly of information was my idea of fun. My years as a curious kid, sitting with my parents in university libraries, had taught me the value of archived records and the Dewey decimal system. My love for cross-referencing categories and details until I could find precisely what I wanted deep amidst the dusty aisles of books that shaped my childhood on rainy New England weekends paid off mightily once I got to California.
Now, as I open Gemma’s Instagram page, I have to push my grief down. Somewhere in this grid of pictures and moments, there must be something that can explain what the hell happened last night.
I scroll past FitCheck selfies of Gemma dressed for work and an afternoon drive to the beach. Gemma liked snarky internet jokes. She documented decorating her new apartment—the one that’s bare now. She sometimes tried @livforpasta’s TikTok recipes and then took pictures of them—the wins and the fails. She lived alone with a ficus named Albert, flourishing near a sunny spot at her bedroom window.
