“Not really. Which is all I can legally say about it.”
There’s very little Jeff’s allowed to tell me about his cases. Client confidentiality rules extend even to spouses. Or, in my case, future ones. It’s another reason Jeff and I are a good fit. He can’t talk about his cases. I don’t want to talk about my past. We get to hopscotch over two of the conversational traps that usually ensnare couples. Yet for the first time in months, I feel like we’re close to being caught in one and struggling mightily to avoid it.
“We should sleep,” I say. “Don’t you have to be in court early tomorrow?”
“I do,” Jeff says, looking not at me but the ceiling. “And did you even stop to consider that’s why I can’t sleep?”
“I didn’t.” I drop onto my back again. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think you understand how big this case is.”
“It’s been on the news, Jeff. I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Now it’s Jeff’s turn to sit up, lean on his elbow, look at me. “If this goes well, it could mean big things for me. For us. Do you think I want to be a public defender forever?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“Of course not. Winning this case could be a huge stepping stone. Hopefully to one of the big firms, where I can start making real money and not live in an apartment paid for by my girlfriend’s victim fund.”
I’m too hurt to respond, although I can tell Jeff instantly regrets saying it. His eyes go dead for a second and his mouth twists in distress.
“Quinn, I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.” I slide out of bed, still naked, feeling exposed and vulnerable by that fact. I grab the first article of clothing I can get my hands on—Jeff’s threadbare terrycloth robe—and slip it on. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Jeff says. “I’m an asshole.”
“Get some sleep,” I tell him. “Tomorrow’s important.”
I pad into the living room, suddenly and irrevocably awake. My phone sits atop the coffee table, still turned off. I switch it on, the screen glowing ice blue in the darkness. I have twenty-three missed calls, eighteen texts and more than three-dozen emails. Virtually all of them are from reporters.
Word of Lisa’s death has gotten out. The press is officially on the hunt.
I scroll through my email inbox, which has gone neglected since the previous evening. Buried beneath the wall of reporter inquiries are earlier, more benign missives from fans of the website and various makers of baking tools eager for me to give their wares a test drive. One email address stands out from the flow of names and numbers, like a silver-scaled fish breaching the surface.
Lmilner75
My finger jumps off the screen. An involuntary recoil. I stare at the address until it sears itself onto my vision, the afterimage lingering when I blink.
I know of only one person who could have that address, and she’s been dead for more than a day. The realization forms a nervous tickle in my throat. I swallow hard before opening the email.
Quincy, I need to talk to you. It’s extremely important. Please, please don’t ignore this.
Beneath it is Lisa’s name and the same phone number written inside her book.
I read the email several times, the tickle in my throat transforming into a sensation that can only be described as fluttering. It feels like I’ve swallowed a hummingbird, its wings beating against my esophagus.
I check when the email was sent. Eleven p.m. Taking into account the several minutes it took for police to trace the 911 call and get to her house, it means that Lisa sent the email less than an hour before she killed herself.
I might have been the last person she ever tried to contact.
CHAPTER 5
Morning arrives gray and groggy. I awake to find Jeff already gone, off to meet his accused cop killer.
In the kitchen, a surprise awaits me: A vase filled not with flowers but baking tools. Wooden spoons and spatulas and a heavy-duty whisk with a handle as thick as my wrist. A red ribbon has been wrapped around the vase’s neck. Attached to it is a card.
I’m an idiot. And I’m sorry. You will always be my favorite sweet. Love, Jeff.
Next to the vase, the unfinished cupcakes resume staring at me. I ignore them as I take my morning Xanax with two swallows of grape soda. I then switch to coffee, mainlining it in the breakfast nook, trying to wake up.
My sleep was plagued with nightmares, a phase I thought had passed. In the first few years after Pine Cottage, I couldn’t go a night without having one. They were the usual therapy fodder—running through the woods, Janelle stumbling from the trees, Him. Lately, though, I go weeks, even months without having one.
Last night, my dreams were filled with reporters scratching at the windows and leaving bloody claw marks on the glass. Pale and thin, they moaned my name, waiting like vampires for me to invite them in. Instead of fangs, their teeth were pencils narrowed to icepick sharpness. Glistening chunks of sinew stuck to the tips.
Lisa made an appearance in one of the nightmares, looking exactly like the picture on her book jacket. The well-practiced form of her lips never wavered. Not even when she grabbed a pencil from one of the reporters and dragged its point across her wrists.
Her email was the first thing I thought of upon waking, of course. It spent the night sitting in my mind like a spring-loaded trap, waiting for the smallest bit of consciousness to set it off. It remains gripped to my brain as I down one cup of coffee, then another.
Foremost in my thoughts is the unshakeable idea that, other than her aborted 911 call, I truly had been the last person Lisa tried to contact. If that’s the case, why? Did she want me, of all people, to try to talk her off whatever mental ledge she had crawled onto? Did my failure to check my email make me in some way responsible for her death?
My first instinct is to call Coop and tell him about it. I have no doubt he’d drop everything and drive into Manhattan for the second day in a row just to assure me that nothing about this is my fault. But I’m not sure I want to see Coop on consecutive days. It would be the first time that happened since Pine Cottage and the morning after, and it’s not an experience I long to repeat.
I text him instead, trying to keep it casual.
Call me when you get a chance. No rush. Nothing important.
But my gut tells me it is important. Or at least it has the potential to be. If it wasn’t important, why did I wake up thinking about it? Why is my next thought to call Jeff just to hear his voice, even though I know he’s in court, his cell phone switched off and shoved into the depths of his briefcase?
I try not to think about it, although that proves to be impossible. According to my phone, I’ve missed a dozen more calls. My voicemail is a swamp of messages. I listen to only one of them—a surprise message from my mother, who called at an hour when she knew I’d still be asleep. The latest one of her constantly evolving attempts to avoid actual conversation.
“Quincy, it’s your mother,” her message begins, as if she doesn’t trust me to recognize her nasal monotone. “I was just woken up by a reporter calling to see if I had a comment about what happened to that Lisa Milner girl you were friends with. I told him he should talk to you. Thought you’d like to know.”
I see no point in calling her back. That’s the last thing my mother wants. It’s been that way ever since I returned to college after Pine Cottage. As a new widow, she wanted me to commute from home. When I didn’t, she said I was abandoning her.
Ultimately, though, it was me who got abandoned. By the time I finally graduated, she had remarried a retired dentist named Fred who came with three adult children from a previous marriage. Three happy, bland, toothy children. Not a Final Girl in the bunch. They became her family. I became a barely tolerated remnant of her past. A blemish on her otherwise spotless new life.