“She’s with Magnus Foley. Her foot went through the windshield—”
“Mon Dieu . . .”
“I walked back alone.”
Mme. Hamidou sits down on Kersti’s bed. She’s very pale. “Are they waiting for the police? Does she have to go to the hospital?”
“I doubt it.”
“Was he drinking?”
Kersti doesn’t answer.
“Les idiots,” she mutters, shaking her head. “Are you okay?”
“I guess.”
Hamidou shuts the door and Kersti lies down, her head sinking slowly into the feather pillow. She’s mad at herself, not just for getting into Magnus’s car, but also for allowing herself to be their third wheel. Did they have to make out in front of her at Ouchy? Were they punishing her for having tagged along, even though they begged her to come?
She tosses and turns late into the night, ruminating over what happened, her chest burning with self-righteousness. And yet no matter how angry she is, her feelings inevitably wind up circling back to jealousy. She deplores this about herself. It makes her feel weak and petty. What kind of person is she? After almost getting killed tonight, her biggest grievance is that she wasn’t the one chosen by Magnus, and her most significant lingering emotion is envy.
But there it is. She still occasionally lulls herself to sleep at night replaying her first and only date with Magnus, picking apart their conversations, analyzing his every gesture, reliving how she’d felt when he was inside her. She sometimes argues the case in her head as though she’s a lawyer. Your honor, when you look objectively at all the evidence leading up to and including the night in question, there is no way Magnus Foley could have been faking it! Therefore, we must conclude that he had real feelings for the plaintiff. . . .
Kersti feels something warm under the duvet.
“Kerst?” It’s Cressida, cuddling up to her, folding herself into a spoon position against her back. Kersti can smell cigarette and alcohol on her breath. It’s sour and uncharacteristically repellent.
Cressida flings an arm over Kersti’s waist and presses her face into the space between her shoulder blades. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, her words muffled by Kersti’s T-shirt.
Kersti says nothing. She pretends to sleep.
“I know I get out of control when I drink,” Cressida goes on. “My parents put me in a bad mood tonight and I drank too much and I was reckless. I wanted to punish them—”
“Well, you punished me instead,” Kersti says, sitting up. “You almost got us both killed.”
“I’m sorry, Kuusky. I’m going to stop drinking for a while.”
“And I hate it when you and Magnus make out in front of me,” Kersti adds, unable to hold back. “It’s so rude. What do you think? I’m fucking invisible?”
“I’m sorry. I know I’m a terrible friend. But I love you, I really do. I love you so much.”
Kersti sighs and lies back down. Cressida slips right back into the spoon position and within seconds, she’s snoring softly in Kersti’s ear.
Chapter 17
NEW YORK—October 2015
In a dark booth at Le Singe Vert in Chelsea, Magnus orders a bottle of Sancerre, hands the wine menu back to the waiter, and turns his full attention to Kersti. “I looked up your books on Amazon,” he tells her. “I’m impressed.”
“The first one is kind of embarrassing—”
“Don’t do that,” he stops her. “I know all about the awards—”
“Nominations.”
The waiter sets down two wineglasses and returns a moment later with their bottle. He opens it, pours a splash into Magnus’s glass, and waits. Magnus sniffs it and has a sip. “Fine,” he says, dismissing the waiter. “So, are you working on a new novel?”
“I’m always working on a novel,” she says. “This one isn’t really going anywhere, though.”
Magnus is suddenly full of questions. How long has she been married, where did they meet, does she dedicate her books to him. He doesn’t mention anything about his own marriage. She doesn’t ask.
Finally, he puts his glass down, fixes that clear blue gaze on her, and says, “So why are you here, Kuusk?”
“I told you,” she says, her tone slightly defensive. “I want to ask you some questions about the night Cressida fell.”
“Now?”
“I know it was a long time ago,” she says. “But I’ve always wondered. I guess Lille reaching out to me kind of propelled me out of my inertia.”
“What do you want to know?”
“People don’t just fall off balconies, Magnus. No matter how drunk they are. The railing was too high, for one thing.”
“She might have been sitting on it,” Magnus says. “And toppled backwards.”
“I guess,” Kersti concedes, deciding not to mention the suicide note just yet. “You said you weren’t the last person to see her that night. Who was?”
He’s swishing the wine around his glass, fidgeting with his hands. Tapping his fork like a drumstick, buttering bread and not eating it. Same old nervous Magnus. “You know who it was,” he says. “After she ‘dumped’ me, she went to his place.”
“So you knew?”
“She told me she was in love with someone else and that we were over. I knew who it was.” Kersti can feel the vibration of his knee bouncing under the table, like a subway passing below them. “I’d heard the rumors.”
“Then what?”
“She left my apartment to go meet him.”
“She told you that’s where she was going?”
“Not in so many words. But I knew.”
“How did you take it?” she asks him. “What did you do?”
“What could I do?” he says, and the way his face collapses as he remembers makes him alluringly vulnerable, reminding Kersti that the memory of Cressida—the perfect enduring mythology of her—cannot be diminished by time, neither for him nor for her, as she’d hoped it would be.
“So you just let her go?”
“Let her?” He laughs. “When did Cressida ever not do what she wanted? I had no choice but to let her go.”
She watches him carefully—the bouncing knee, the chewed nails, the way he’s staring morosely into his wine rather than squarely at her—and she doesn’t believe him.
“Did you follow her?” she asks him quietly. “After she left your place?”
He lets out a noise—something between a sigh and a grunt, possibly even a laugh.
“You mean did I chase after her?”
“You must have been pissed off—”
“No. I mean, yes. I was pissed off. No I didn’t chase after her.”
“You went to the Lycée to wait for her.”
Magnus reaches for the bottle of wine in the ice bucket and refills his glass, not even noticing that Kersti’s is also empty. “I did go to Huber House,” he says.
“Why?”
He places his hand lightly on top of hers, startling her. She shivers, withdraws it quickly.
“You don’t think I pushed her, do you, Kuusk?”