Colin had looked at her. And then he’d mouthed the name. Poppy.
Years ago, at an amusement park on the Cape, Poppy had talked Corinne into going on a ride called the Rotor, a barrel that spun and spun until, abruptly, the ground went out below your feet and the riders stuck to the sides by centrifugal force. That was how she’d felt, seeing Poppy’s body splayed across the sidewalk. It had been several days now, and every morning she expected to wake up and see an e-mail from Poppy, or a missed call. It has to be a mistake, she kept thinking, even as it became painfully clear that it was not.
“Rowan! Was there a business scandal?” another reporter shouted to Rowan, who was behind Corinne. “Trouble in her marriage?”
“Was she depressed about her parents’ death?” another reporter screamed.
“Did she leave a note?”
Corinne’s heart wrenched. Police had gone through Poppy’s office, and there it had been, typed in a Word document on her computer screen. “I just can’t handle it anymore,” it read. “I’m sorry. Good-bye.” Proof that Poppy, the most together-seeming of their cousins, had taken her own life.
As soon as everyone was inside the airy, high-ceilinged cathedral, away from the press, Corinne drifted to Rowan and gave her a huge hug. She looked deathly pale; Rowan hadn’t been to work all week, and now Corinne wondered if she was taking it harder than the rest of them. Aster stood next to her, her gaze on the floor.
Corinne touched her sister’s arm. “Hey,” she said gently, her voice breaking. Now their fight seemed so petty.
Aster looked up. Her lips parted. Corinne opened her arms, and Aster fell into them. “It’s so awful,” Aster sobbed in Corinne’s ear. “It makes no sense. She had everything.”
“I know,” Corinne whispered.
Variegated light streamed in through the stained glass windows inside the cathedral. Mourners in black stood in small clumps, some checking their phones, others dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs. A large birdbath-like structure bearing holy water was off to one side; several people dipped their fingers in and crossed themselves.
The Saybrook family wasn’t religious, but the cathedral’s high ceilings and cool, dark space always made Corinne feel calm and at peace. It was less flashy than St. Patrick’s, where Steven Barnett’s memorial had been five years before.
The memory of Corinne’s grandfather’s funeral here came back to her. It had been at the beginning of what was already proving to be a horrible summer—Dixon had announced that he was going to London to intern at FTSE Group, and, oh yeah, he was breaking up with her. Two weeks later, still completely unmoored, Corinne got the news that her grandfather had suddenly died. She’d just seen Alfred at Meriweather a few days before. He’d given her a pair of three-carat diamond teardrop earrings; when Corinne asked what the occasion was, he just smiled and kissed her cheek. “Simply because you’re my sweet girl.” She could still smell his cigar-and-soap-scented skin. She could still hear his gravelly voice. She could still smell the lime in his gin and tonic.
Her grandfather’s casket had been closed, so Corinne hadn’t been able to kiss him good-bye and tuck those earrings under his satin pillow. A picture of Corinne crying had appeared on the Blessed and the Cursed the following day. Someone had actually sent in an image from inside the church.
Now an usher handed Corinne a program and pointed her through a door. Corinne walked, zombielike, toward the front, her gaze flickering over the sea of mourners crowding the entrance. There were people from work, colleagues from other jewelry empires, models, actors, musicians, and designers. A fashion editor from Vogue stood along the wall, next to a serious-looking blond woman in a business suit.
Mourners rushed toward Corinne, offering words of sympathy. Winston and Sullivan, her teenage cousins from California, hugged her hard. Their mother, Aunt Grace, who almost never came to New York, approached next, hugging Rowan tight. Rowan’s brothers, Michael and Palmer, who’d flown in, pulled her in for bear hugs. “It’s such a tragedy,” said Beatrice, Poppy’s twenty-five-year-old second cousin on her mother’s side. Her words seemed especially hollow; Corinne wondered if it was because Poppy had passed her over for a promotion several months ago.