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And then it was no longer private.
“Ifanyoneout there has information, big or small, email my producers.” Another pause, longer this time. “And if my friend from long ago ever hears this, the one who went dark…call me. Please. My number’s still the same.”
The next moment, Jamie’s voice was replaced by a cheerful woman recommending a brand of rosé guaranteed to slim your waistline. I clicked out of the episode.
Standing frozen in my bikini, surrounded by the gleaming white kitchen, I knew I was the wrong kind of picture. An aberration in this home, this monument I’d built to moving on. I could feel its displeasure. It wanted me calm and docile, and in my panic I was disobeying.
Don’t think like that, I told myself.Not everything is sinister. Not everyone has bad intentions.
But I fled the kitchen anyway, sprinting upstairs to the master bedroom, straight to my walk-in closet, shutting the door to make the space tight and secure. I ripped off my bathing suit and pulled on stretchy pants and a sweatshirt, wrapping myself in comfort, cover. These renegade thoughts were popping up more frequently, whenever Cal went away on his work trips. In his absence, my mind churned, twisting my life into a more disquieting picture. The house didn’t want medocile. That was ridiculous. I needed to stay calm and think.
My phone buzzed from where it lay on the floor, Cal’s face suddenly grinning up at me. I jumped, heart pounding. One hand pressed to my chest, I waited until the call died, then peered at the text flashing on the screen:You went to Houndstooth without me! Such a betrayal…
A stupid joke, so divorced from the news of Laurel’s death that I almost laughed at the sheer incongruity—except for the image that flashed in my head: Cal sitting in his hotel room, at his laptop, poring over our credit-card charges. Checking my spending like I was a child. Knowing where I’d gotten my coffee this morning, from hundreds of miles away.
But he was only being responsible. Keeping the life we shared in order was a form of intimacy, wasn’t it? Plenty of the Highland Park husbands managed their household finances. I forced myself to leave the closet, heading back downstairs, but the slap of my feet against the steps wasn’t enough to drown out Jamie’s voice, Laurel’s death, Clem’s memory. The ghosts had been unleashed, and now I couldn’t stop seeing my life through their eyes, couldn’t escape the suspicion that if they saw me here, in this cold, empty house, they’d shake me by the shoulders.
Cal and I had gotten married a year ago, and everything had been fine until I’d quit my job six months ago. Then the balance of power had shifted. Cal would refuse to admit there was even such a thing as a balance of power between us. According to him, that wasn’t how good marriages worked. And maybe he was right, maybe I was too sensitive because of how I’d grown up, watching my mom contort herself to keep men around, or too paranoid because of what happened in college. Because every timeIsaw two people, I saw a scale, tipping this way and that. And the scale had been tipped toward Cal for a long time. Oh, he would deny it, but nowheheld the purse strings; now every big decision was ultimately his. It had been six months of checked charges, of attending fancy Highland Park parties on his arm, of insipid gossip and aching loneliness, of staring at the blinking cursor on my laptop’s blank screen.
Six months, and here was the truth: I wasn’t a writer. I’d turned into a housewife.
What would Laurel have said to that? Dear god,Clem?
I looked up and caught my reflection in the window above the sink. Raised fingers to my cheeks. I was crying, gentle tears tracking down my face. I hadn’t even felt it start. I’d trained myself to do this, years ago. To cry effortlessly, elegantly, like a silent movie actress. But now that I was older, the tears had a habit of creeping up on me, arriving when I least expected. Maybe I’d performed for so long I wasn’t capable of recognizing my real feelings. Were there even such things, or was everyone always reacting in ways we understood we were supposed to? When did the performance ever end?
Mentally, I slapped myself, and bit my tongue as punishment. It ended when you were dead, for fuck’s sake. When your body was found hanging from a tree or a showerhead in the place you loved most, the place you used to sit for hours reading scripts, or where you were a star, your body flying strong and triumphant across the grass. It ended when you killed yourself, or when somebody killed you, and all your chances to wake and breathe and cry were stolen from you forever. When everyone who was supposed to love you brushed your death aside, and the only one who cared to look deeper was a stranger. A true-crime podcast host.
But I cared. That was the truth I couldn’t shake, the one that followed me no matter where I hid, staring back from every mirror, screen, and window. I’d sequestered myself in a safe, faraway place, and still the past had found me.
Now I had a choice.
I could almost see myself making the decision, as if I were floating outside my own body. I would not let Laurel and Clem disappear into the fog of forgotten people. I’d told Laurel I would protect her, and instead I’d run. I’d promised Clem I would stick by her, yet I’d chosen wrong when it counted. I’d failed too many women.
I would not leave this to Jamie Knight, even if he was more qualified. I would go back to New York, and I would find out what happened to Laurel. I would trace the contours of her life since I couldn’t hold her hands. I would pick up her memory and cradle it. I would whisper my apologies; I would kneel on my hands and my knees in the place where she’d died and I would repent. If it was true someone had hurt her—if someone had killed her—then I would find out who and I would protect her, years too late, the only way I could.
I clutched my phone and sprinted back upstairs, through the master bedroom to the walk-in closet, where my suitcase stood tucked and waiting in the corner.
Chapter Three
When I arrived in New York at eighteen, I understood for the first time that there are some places in this world withpresence. Watching the landscape change through the window on the train up from the city, I saw the gulf between where I was coming from—a strip-mall suburb in East Texas—and the Hudson Valley, where the wide, open sky didn’t just exist but confronted you. Where the dark Catskills rising in the distance made you feel small and the unrelenting river had a heartbeat, a voice that whispered you might be here now, but it had been here long before and would be long after.
Whitney was only a short train ride up from New York City, but that first time, it felt like entering a new world, one in which my life would truly begin. The day was full of firsts: my first plane ride, first train ride, hell, first time setting foot outside the great state of Texas. Unlike Heller, a Reagan-era boom town whose history was charted only by the slow evolution of fast-food signs, the towns that made up the Hudson Valley were suffused with a past so rich it was nearly tangible. The towns held the former homes or headquarters of George Washington and FDR, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, sites from the American Revolutionary War. And they thrummed with green beauty—so much that they’d given rise, I’d read, to the first true school of American painters. This, I’d thought, was where the kind of life that made history books happened.
Now, after eight years away, my awareness was finer-tuned. I understood what made the Hudson Valley beautiful, what kept the history pristine, towns quaint, land wild: money. Old money and new. Families with far-reaching Dutch heritages, New York City financiers and real estate tycoons, renowned artists, Hollywood actors—all of them had homes here, lives here. Often second lives, hidden chapters that could unfold in the dark, in a place fewer people were watching.
I drove my rental car down a residential street lined with trees and dappled with sunshine, stifling a yawn. Cross-country flights were exhausting. At this point, I couldn’t remember what I’d packed yesterday. I’d moved through my closet in a fugue state, pulling clothes off hangers and stuffing them in my suitcase. It had seemed critical to pack quickly, to purchase a seat on the next available flight and push myself out the door before Cal called or anything else intervened to change my mind.
Speaking of. I glanced at my phone, to the text I’d sent Cal and his response.
Me:Hey, decided to go to New York for a few days. Wanted to see if my old stomping grounds inspired me. See you when we’re both back.
Calvin:You should have told me! Could’ve had my assistant book your travel. Hope you solve your writer’s block. Call you later.
I’d bought myself a week, max, before Cal was back from his trip to some hedge fund they were looking to buy in Silicon Valley. Given the timeline, I’d have to work fast. I glanced at the bag from the airport gift shop that held my slapdash supplies: a laughably bright-purple notebook from the Lisa Frank line, all they’d had left; a slim packet of pens, thankfully normal; and a portable cell-phone charger. I assumed this was the full battery of things I’d need for an investigation. Jamie Knight would probably shake his head at me.
According to my phone, cutting through this neighborhood was the shortest route to the River Estate, a swanky hotel I’d only dreamed of staying in when I was an undergrad. But I had a whole new lifestyle now, thanks to Cal’s money.
Your money, I corrected, but only out of habit.
