Her eyes locked on his, daring him to continue.
They talked about the night Ginny was killed only twice: once on the drive back from New Orleans, when they decided what they would tell the police, and once just before Kathy came to Gainesville to collect her daughter a week after the funeral, when it was clear that Betsy wasn’t going to make it through the semester and she made arrangements to finish her classwork by correspondence. They loaded her milk crates and bags in the back of Kathy’s Buick Skylark. It was getting late and her mom wanted to get on the road to start the three-hour drive before dark. Gavin came out to the Embassy Suites, where Kathy was staying, to say goodbye. They were standing in the parking lot as the sun disappeared, leaning against his car.
The details of the night Ginny died were fuzzy for both of them. Betsy remembered riding a bike back to Ginny’s apartment, hearing a noise, running out of the apartment and into the street, freezing in his headlights, getting into his car, confessing that she thought someone was in the apartment. She remembered feeling ashamed, nervous to reveal her anxiety. In a twisted way, it felt like narcissism. Of all the women in Gainesville, the female half of the thirty-five thousand students on campus, she was the one to walk in on him and live to tell the tale? It felt delusional. Her most vivid recollection was that she did not want to call the police when she was high, or more specifically, she did not want the police to call her mother and tell her that her daughter smoked hash, hallucinated about a murderer, and made a bogus call to 911. Gavin was all too eager to let her off the hook.
“I should have stayed on the line, when I called nine-one-one. I should have woken up a neighbor, used their phone, stayed there, and waited for the police, Gavin,” she said, quietly, fighting tears in the hotel parking lot. “I’m such a coward. I’m such a selfish fucking coward.”
“No, Bets, no,” he said, pulling her closer to him. “You didn’t know. You weren’t thinking straight. I was fucked up. Mack was being such a psycho. You were scared to death.”
“You should just say it,” she said, lifting her shoulder to wipe her tears with the sleeve of her T-shirt. “You thought I was out of my mind.”
“We were both out of our minds. Jesus, everybody around here was,” he said. His voice lowered to a more serious whisper. “And what can we do about it now? You didn’t see anything. You didn’t get a look at him, or even hear his voice. Should you have told the cops when they were questioning you the other day? I don’t know, maybe. Maybe not. Do we call the cops now? That’s not going to change anything. Ginny will still be dead. And you will be in major fucking trouble.”
“Just me, then? I’m alone in this.”
“No, we.” He shook his head. “Of course. We will be in major fucking trouble. It’s ‘we’ now. We’re in this together.”
IT WAS THEIR secret. They drove it to New York with them like a third passenger asleep in the backseat, like an uninvited guest at the New Year’s party.
Gavin checked his watch.
“It’s a few minutes before midnight. You’re right, we should get some air.”
They shrugged on their coats and stumbled out onto the frozen street, over a smattering of smashed plastic bags full of dog shit, some dirty ice patches, shards of shattered glass, and the occasional used syringe to ring in the New Year in Tompkins Square Park. Even in that ugly coat, Betsy felt shiny and new by comparison, like the Easter Bunny, Ginny would say. She thought of Ginny at the Dish in her royal blue skirt, the night that Gavin hopped onto the stage. She thought of Caroline, who she’d been avoiding for months, who didn’t even know Betsy was in New York. For some reason, she wanted her to know.
“So how does our first New Year’s Eve together rate?” Gavin asked, desperate to change the subject. “Thumbs-up? Thumbs-down?”
“Our first New Year’s? I think it might be our first Monday, Gavin,” she said, rubbing her hands together for warmth.
“Wait, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Counting this past week, I think we’ve spent a total of twelve full days together,” she said. “And now we’re here. Doesn’t that seem a little impulsive?”
“And whose idea was that?”
“That’s not what I mean. I don’t regret it, I just . . .”