And the high, drawn-out scream when a body was pulled from the ocean. It came from me.
The police questioned us one by one, methodically forming a narrative. The local newspaper filled four pages with articles and sidebars and photographs of Maggie. A news station from Miami filmed footage of our sorority house and aired a special report about the dangers of pledge-week drinking. I was the social director; I was Maggie’s big sister. These details were reported. My name was printed. So was my photo.
In my mind, I always see skinny, freckled Maggie retreating into the ocean, trying to hide her body. I see her going out too far, losing her footing in the unsteady sand. A wave breaks over her head. Maybe she cries out, but her voice blends into the other shrieks. She gulps salt water. She spins around, disoriented, in the inky black. She can’t see. She can’t breathe. Another wave drags her under.
Maggie vanished. But maybe she wouldn’t have if I hadn’t disappeared first.
Emma will disappear, too, if she marries Richard. She will lose her friends. She will become estranged from her family. She will disconnect from herself, just as I did. And then it will get so much worse.
Save her, my mind chants.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
I walk through the employees’ door and take the elevator to the third floor. I find Lucille refolding sweaters. She’s been shorthanded because of me; she is doing my job.
“I really am sorry.” I reach for the pile of pewter cashmere. “I need this job, and I can explain what’s been going on. . . .”
She turns to me as my voice trails off. I try to read her expression as she appraises my appearance: confusion. Did she think I would simply pick up my check and leave? Her gaze halts at my hair, and I instinctively turn to the mirror alongside the sweaters. Of course she’s perplexed; she has only known me as a brunette.
“Vanessa, it’s I who am sorry, but I gave you several second chances.”
I’m going to beg some more, but then I see the floor is filled with customers. A few other saleswomen are watching us. Perhaps it was even one of them who told Lucille about the dresses.
It’s futile. I put down the sweaters.
Lucille retrieves my check and hands it to me. “Good luck, Vanessa.”
As I walk back to the elevator, I see the black-and-white intricately patterned gowns hanging in their rightful place on the rack. I hold my breath until I’ve safely passed them.
That dress had fit me like a glove, as if it were custom-made for my curves.
Richard and I had been married for several years by then. Sam and I were no longer speaking. Duke’s disappearance had never been resolved. My mother had also unexpectedly canceled her upcoming spring trip to visit us, saying she wanted to go on a group tour to New Mexico.
But instead of withdrawing from life, I’d begun to ease back into it.
I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol in nearly six months, and the puffiness had dissipated from my body like helium slowly leaking from a balloon. I’d begun to rise early each morning to jog through the broad streets and gentle hills in our neighborhood.
I had told Richard I was focusing on getting healthy again. I thought he believed me, that he simply accepted my new behavior as a positive shift. After all, he was the one who’d printed out the itemized bills the country club emailed to him every month before they charged his credit card. He’d begun to leave them on the kitchen table for me with the liquor charges highlighted. Turns out, I had never needed to bother with the Visine and breath mints; he’d known exactly how much I’d been drinking during those committee lunches.
But I was changing more than just my physical health. I’d also begun a new volunteer job. On Wednesdays, I commuted on the train with Richard, then caught a cab to the Lower East Side, where I read to kindergarteners at a Head Start program. I’d gotten to know the program’s organizers while delivering books for the club’s literacy program. I only worked with the children for a few hours each week, but it gave me purpose. Stepping back into the city was rejuvenating, too. I was feeling more like my old self than I had since my honeymoon.
“Open it,” he had said the night of the Alvin Ailey gala as I looked down at the glossy white box tied with a red bow.
I untied the silk, lifted the lid. Since marrying Richard, I’d grown to appreciate the textures and detailing that separated my old H&M staples from fine designer pieces. This dress was among the most elegant I’d ever seen. It also contained a secret. From a distance, it appeared to be a simple black-and-white pattern. But that was an illusion. Up close, every thread was deliberately placed, stitch upon stitch creating a floral wonderland.
“Wear it tonight,” Richard said. “You look gorgeous.”
He put on his tuxedo and I brushed aside his hand when he began to tie his bow.
“Let me.” I smiled. Some men in black tie look like boys on their way to the prom, with their slicked-back hair and glossy shoes. Others seem like pompous posers, the wannabe one percenters. But Richard owned it. I straightened the wings of his bow tie and kissed him, leaving a trace of pink glossing his bottom lip.
I can see us that night as if from above: Exiting our Town Car into the lightly falling snow and walking arm in arm into the gala. Finding our table card that said Mr. and Mrs. Thompson: Table 16 in flowing script. Posing for a photo, laughing. Accepting flutes of champagne from a passing server.
And, oh, that first sip—those golden bubbles crushing in my mouth, that warmth trickling down my throat. It tasted like exhilaration in a glass.
We had watched the dancers leap and soar, their sinewy arms and muscular legs whirling, their bodies twisting into impossible shapes, while drums frantically throbbed. I didn’t realize I was swaying back and forth and lightly clapping until I felt Richard’s hand give my shoulder a gentle squeeze. He was smiling at me, but I felt a flush of embarrassment. No one else was moving to the music.
When the performance ended, there were more cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres. Richard and I chatted with some of his colleagues, one of whom, a white-haired gentleman named Paul, sat on the board of the dance company and had bought a table for the dinner benefit. We were there as his guests.
Dancers mingled among us, their bodies rippling sculptures, looking like gods and goddesses who’d descended from the sky.
Usually at these types of social events, my face hurt from smiling by the end of the night. I always tried to look engaged and cheerful to compensate for my not having much to say, especially in the dull silence following the inevitable question, the one strangers always think is so harmless: “Do you have children?”
But Paul was different. When he asked what I’d been up to and I mentioned volunteering, he didn’t say, “How nice,” and seek out a more accomplished person. Instead he asked, “How did you get into that?” I found myself telling him about my years as a preschool teacher and my volunteer work with Head Start.
“My wife helped get the funding for a wonderful new charter school not too far from here,” he said. “You should think about getting involved with it.”
“I would love that. I miss teaching so much.”
Paul reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a business card. “Call me next week.” He leaned in a bit closer and whispered, “When I say my wife helped with their funding, I mean my wife told me to write them a big check. They owe us a favor.” His eyes crinkled at the corners and I grinned back. I knew he was one of the most successful men in the room and that he was still happily married to his high school sweetheart, a white-haired woman who was chatting with Richard.
“I’ll make introductions,” Paul continued. “I bet they can find a spot for you. If not now, maybe at the start of the school year.”