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“Summer, sweetheart . . .”
“Hadn’t you better go, Mom? You don’t want to miss your flight.”
Lucy Meyer looked at her watch. She did have to go. As much as she wanted Summer to come with her, she knew couldn’t live her daughte
r’s life for her.
“All right. I’ll go. But we need to talk more about this.”
“Sure,” Summer said dismissively.
“Your father already called the dean’s office at NYU. He persuaded them to grant you a compassionate study leave, but at some point they’re going to want to know when you’re coming back.”
“Of course. I’ll let you know. Bye, Mom.”
Summer watched her mother leave.
I’m never coming back. New York and college and my internship at the Post. They’re all part of another life. Meaningless and puerile. None of it matters without Michael.
Summer took the long way back to Michael’s flat, through the maze of alleyways that ran behind Exeter and Lincoln colleges down toward Magdalen and the river. Her mother’s visit had left her feeling anxious and unhappy, unable to enjoy the warmth of the late-summer sun on her back or the beauty of the spires that towered above her. The streets of Oxford were filled with smiling lovers in shorts and sunglasses, taking pictures of themselves amid the “dreaming spires” or kissing on the ancient bridges. As Summer walked, willow trees bathed their branches languidly in the Cherwell’s gently flowing waters. Children ate ice cream cones and skipped and cooled their toes in the water, as a family of swans glided regally by.
Everybody’s happy. Everybody’s living their lives as if nothing has happened. As if the world hasn’t stopped.
Summer looked at strangers with wonder and then with anger, an irrational resentment taking root in her heart. How dare life go on? How dare it? With Michael fighting for breath just a few miles away.
But another voice in her head, her mother’s, was equally insistent.
What happened to Michael was an accident.
It was nobody’s fault.
Just come home.
Was her mother right? Was Summer looking for meaning in what was really a simple act of fate, a motorcycle accident, an everyday cruelty that happened to millions of people all over the world? Maybe. But right now she needed to believe there was a reason Michael had crashed that day. There was something she needed to know, something she was supposed to find out. Whether Michael wanted her to or not. She would look at it like a job, like a story she’d been assigned to investigate.
All her investigative instincts told her to start with Michael’s mother, the steely, ruthless Alexia De Vere.
Back at the apartment, Summer kicked off her shoes and padded into Michael’s study. His computer was still on the desk, set to hibernate, as if he might walk back in at any moment and pick up where he left off. Next to it, messy stacks of paper spilled everywhere—receipts, lists, bills, most of them having to do with the Kingsmere party. More were stuffed into the various drawers, or piled on top of the printer, chair, and sofa that filled the small work space. Clearly, Michael hadn’t been a big believer in filing. Summer wondered idly how on earth he’d managed to run a successful business amid such chaos, and whether Tommy Lyon’s desk looked the same. Or perhaps Tommy was the sensible one, the one who held it all together while Michael shot off ideas and plans and concepts like fireworks from his brilliant, scattered mind?
I must call Tommy.
Sitting down in Michael’s chair, she was surprised to feel her heartbeat spike when she turned on his computer. Was it really only a couple of weeks ago that she’d taken the train up to Oxford, convinced she’d catch Michael cheating on her? He’d reassured her that night, made her believe in him again, believe in the two of them as a couple. But now, alone in his study as she was, doubts began to creep back in. Did Summer really want to go through Michael’s in-box, his photos, his Facebook contacts? What if she couldn’t handle what she found?
Password. The screen blinked at her demandingly.
Stupid of me. Of course, the computer’s password protected.
She typed in Michael’s pin number: his zodiac sign and date of birth. Obvious, but you never know. No joy. Next she tried various permutations of his family members’ names, adding her own name on a whim, but again, nothing. Oh well. I’ll have to get a professional to hack into it later. Unless maybe Tommy or Roxie knows.
Pushing the laptop to one side, Summer began to leaf through the nearest pile of papers. Not knowing what she was looking for, and with nothing better to do, she began to sort them methodically into piles. Invoices to the right, receipts to the left. She divided everything into business, personal, or junk, running to the kitchen for a trash bag to use for envelopes, flyers, and other rubbish. The work was consuming. By the time she looked up, it was already six P.M. and the sun was beginning its long, slow descent into the horizon, casting orange beams through the shutters and onto the study floor.
Summer stood up and stretched like a cat. She was just about to fix herself a drink when a box in the corner of the room caught her eye. Everything else in Michael’s home office was messy to the point of being deranged, but this box—crate really—had been carefully divided into color-coded sections, with newspaper and magazine clippings as well as photocopied letters stacked sensibly together. It had also been wedged between the bookcase and a large fire extinguisher, not hidden exactly, but definitely moved to a safe place, out of plain sight and where it wouldn’t be contaminated by the general mayhem.
Carefully, Summer pulled out the box and carried it into the kitchen. The clippings were organized by date. Almost all of them related to cases affected by Alexia’s sentencing reform laws.
Some of the stories were genuinely harrowing.
Daya Ginescu, a Romanian immigrant originally given four years for shoplifting but who’d seen her sentence increased to seven years, had not been allowed to be at her son’s bedside when he died of leukemia.
