The Lost Night (Page 26)

“It’s Ms.,” she said. “Ms. Iredale.”

“I’m sorry. That’s right. I’m…I’ve been thinking about putting together a little commemorative video of Edie to share with her friends,” I continued, cursing myself for wasting all that time on the bus not coming up with a better lie, “and I thought you might be interested in sharing some photos. And I have to tell you, I tried to find your number or email address and just wasn’t having any luck, but I saw your address online and was heading up to Riverdale this morning anyway, so…”

She peered at me. “You found my address but not my email?”

I shook my head, felt the rush of blood to my cheeks. “I’m sorry, that came out like a save-face kind of thing—to be honest, I had the idea when I was already on the bus here.”

“The commemorative video? Or coming to see me?”

“Oh, coming to see you, I mean. I’m doing the video either way. I found a few videos of all of us on my old Flip cam and thought it would be nice to edit together something I could share on Vimeo, so…”

I thought she’d interrupt me, but she just stared. I hung my closed umbrella off of the porch and shook raindrops from it gravely. They floated in a cloud before falling.

“Do you want to come inside and dry off?” Mrs. Iredale finally said.

“That would be great, if you don’t mind. My friend told me she’s running late, too, but I can get out of your hair in just a minute.”

She unlocked the door and held it open for me. She was almost a foot shorter than me and this felt wrong, oafish me wandering inside with a trail of wet footprints in my wake. I suddenly wondered why I hadn’t brought her a gift, some chocolates, flowers bound and wrapped in cellophane.

“Tell me your name again. Lizzie?” She pulled out a towel and handed it to me. She moved suddenly, jerkily.

“Lindsay,” I told her.

“Were you one of Edie’s roommates?”

“No, but I was really close with all of them—Sarah and Kevin and Alex.” I said their names deliberately as a drumbeat, watching for a reaction between each. I thought I saw one after Alex, a tiny pulse around her eyes, but I couldn’t be sure.

“So you were a later friend. I thought for a second you were one of her earlier roommates. In Calhoun Lofts, right?”

“Right. Calhoun.” I wasn’t keeping up, wasn’t saying the right things.

“I see.” She watched me scuff my shoes across the welcome mat, and, feeling childish, I bent and started to unlace them.

“Lindsay,” she repeated. “I do remember you. Edie liked you.”

Liked to control me, maybe. “Well, you know how wonderful she was. Thanks for letting me step inside for a second.” I lined my shoes up by the door. “I’ve been thinking about her a ton, and honestly, just seeing your face—seeing the resemblance, it helps. I know that sounds crazy.” I looked down at my hands. Suddenly I was twenty-three and obsequious to grown-ups again.

When I looked up, Mrs. Iredale was giving a tired but real smile. “Thanks for saying that.”

“She was just magnetic. From the very first time I met her, I remember being captivated by her. So much wit and sparkle and life.”

Mrs. Iredale was one of those people who stares blankly as you speak, waiting until the end to react. It creeped me out and tripped up my speech—like when you’re on the phone and hear your voice echoing back.

“How did you know her again?” she asked.

“I met her back in…let’s see, 2008. Through Sarah, actually, whom I knew from working in magazines.”

She looked around. “Would you like to sit down? I think I left the coffee on.”

“Sure.” I followed her into the kitchen. “So as I was saying, Sarah and I met randomly and, you know, quickly became friends.” She held up a carton of half-and-half and I nodded. Then she frowned like I’d made the wrong choice. “So Sarah had me over to their apartment one night. That was back when they lived with those other girls.”

“I liked them,” she interrupted, leading me into the living room. “We had them over for dinner a few times.”

So she’d clearly liked the old roommates better than the SAKE ones. Had she not approved of Edie moving in with Alex so quickly?

“Well, Edie and I just really hit it off. And we became friends and hung out all the time at my apartment near Calhoun or, you know, at their place. It was…it was such a good era, having that really close-knit little group of friends.”

Mrs. Iredale perched on a love seat and blinked at me, both hands wrapped around her mug. Her tempo unnerved me, the random things she would and wouldn’t respond to.

“Robert and I didn’t really get a chance to know that group,” she said finally.

“Well, we all became friends right after we graduated from college,” I said. “The rest of us had just moved to New York. Maybe Edie just wanted that…that sort of faux independence you think you’ve got when you’re in your twenties. I remember feeling so grown up.”

Mrs. Iredale cocked her head. “Looking back on it, I feel bad for you guys,” she said unexpectedly. “I mean, not you in particular. Your generation. Promised everything and then, you know. Toppling off a cliff.”

“You mean…?”

“The recession. Obviously it hit those of us with mortgages and retirement accounts harder. But…Edie graduated in May 2008, poor thing.” She made a gesture, her fingers winging upward, and I felt the hairs rise on my arms: exactly the same motion Edie made. I hadn’t seen it in ten years.

“You know, I think that’s the reason a lot of people back then—my age—would take on this really affected air, just this blanket disapproval of everything,” I said. “Like ‘Oh, this band sucks, and that book sucks, and mainstream society is lame, and capitalism is a joke.’ If you refuse to align yourself with anything, you don’t give anything any power.”

“Interesting.” From her terrible posture, she lowered her head and took a sip of coffee. “Edie was like you. Always quick to cobble together a narrative and fit everything into the bigger picture. When she was small, she’d make little books that told the story of her day before.” She laughed, a rich, musical sound. “Eventually they just kept showing her making her book about the day before. They got pretty boring. But she loved it, her little record-keeping. And then the second she could write, she was filling up diaries as fast as we could buy them.”

“That’s so cute!” I smiled at the thought: hundreds of scarlet-haired Edies coloring in yesterday’s coloring session, an endless hall of mirrors. “What was she like as a kid?”

“She was the shyest thing when she was little.” She slid her palm across the armrest, back and forth. “Then she turned ten or so and really came out of her shell.”

“Center of attention,” I said before I could stop myself.

She looked at me. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Did she develop…was she depressed when she was younger?” She blinked at me, and I hastily added: “I know you’re a psychiatrist, so I thought maybe—”

“We didn’t know,” she interrupted. “We should’ve been watching for it since it was in her family history, but we didn’t know until after.”

“Us neither.” I shifted in my seat. “You were pretty close with her, right? I know you came by Calhoun sometimes to see her.”

She stared hard at me, expressionless. “She was my daughter. I liked seeing her.”

I swallowed. “Well, did you talk to her about what was going on at Calhoun? Like, with Alex and everything?”

She picked up her mug and drank deeply, then set it down with a clink. “Lindsay, I know what you’re doing here.”

A cold spring of shock. I stared at her, my cup frozen in front of my throat.

“I’m not stupid,” she continued. “You’re not the first conspiracy theorist. But Edie killed herself. It wasn’t a freak accident. There wasn’t any foul play. Suicide.”

I brought the mug back down to my lap but couldn’t speak.

“She was depressed,” Mrs. Iredale continued, “and she hid it very well. But she was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and then she’d experimented for the first time with ecstasy, which is extremely problematic for someone with her delicate brain chemistry. I wish there hadn’t been a gun at her disposal, but if it hadn’t been that, it would have been another way. I saw her just hours before it happened. She didn’t seem well.”

It hung in the air for a moment. “Wait, what? You saw her?”

She shrugged. Then I caught it, a weird tic near her eye. “I came by to see her that night. Are you here to find out what we talked about, like that’s the missing piece?”

I didn’t answer. Everything was moving too fast. A coffee drip slid down the side of the mug and coated my fingers.

“I was there to deliver more bad news: that we were losing our home and could no longer help her out with her tuition. Not exactly the best revelations when you’re, as it turns out, fighting with your friends and going through a breakup and recovering from a medical emergency.”