The Lost Night (Page 59)
I scramble onto the bed and tumble off it behind her, shooting through the hallway and toward the front door. I hear her pounding up after me, and I’m a few feet from the door when she lands a tackle. My temple hits the hardwood floor and I see stars, millions of them, a dazzling image of the night sky.
She drops the knife with a clang and clasps both of my arms behind my back. A crash near my head as she pulls my lamp off the side table and then she’s wrapping the cord around my wrists, again and again and again. A pile of slick photos topples from the end table, too, fluttering through a few feet of air together, and one lands upside down, tipped up against the table leg: Edie and me, pale in the camera’s flash, on any one of a million anonymous nights.
This is it, then. I wonder what Tessa’s planning next: a bottle of force-fed whiskey, perhaps, followed by a few handfuls of antidepressants crammed down my throat. No, of course: a gunshot to the head, my fingerprints on the trigger, and a suicide note on my phone. I love you, I’m sorry, goodbye. Lucky for her, I never did delete any of the files that point to my obsessive research, my potential guilt—the case files, the Flip cam videos. The email from Edie. Her old diary, now trapped inside my phone.
Tessa climbs off me, and I take the opportunity to roll onto my back and sit up. She comes back with a gun in her hand—a decent one, I observe blandly, a Ruger 9mm. I look up at her and she meets my eye, staring as if across all ten years.
A bang at the door.
“Please help me!” I scream, before I can think. “She has a gun!”
Later I’ll realize that my instincts were ahead of me, that I’d noticed she hadn’t clicked off the safety yet. But I don’t know it yet, so she just looks at the door in alarm, and I tuck one foot under me and stand and heave into her with all my might, the lamp dragging across the floor behind me, and the banging continues and I scream, “Kick it in!” and we both fall into a jumble, Tessa and me, and I can’t use my arms to catch myself, and so her body breaks my fall.
* * *
The following hours and days I can barely remember, my brain hazing out like it’d just exhausted itself. 2009 all over again: sterile interrogation rooms, dazed calls and texts from other people in my life.
It’s explained to me over and over again until it sticks: When I followed the link from Damien’s email to the web-based audio app, I’d inadvertently uploaded the file into his account, where he’d found it that same morning. He called both Tessa and me, and then 911; he was on his way, but the cops beat him to my door. Jenna Teresa Hoppert was arrested on the spot and charged with all sorts of things, most notably Edie’s murder. I remember her stepping all over the fallen photos as two police officers led her out my front door.
* * *
I get three days off work, which feels simultaneously absurd and reasonable; I imagine my higher-ups deliberating over this, frowning and arguing over what feels right. The news vultures barely pick up the story, and I’m surprised, given that Edie was so young and beautiful and Tessa’s and my jobs are both at least in the top quartile of interesting. There’s a bombing in Dublin and no one cares about us washed-up hipsters, histrionic and grown. I’m relieved, I notice, taking stock of my emotions: grateful no one expects me to pant out the story like someone on a reality show. I feel a weird satisfaction in keeping it private, tucking it into the past where someday maybe it’ll grow soft and smoky and eventually dissipate.
Damien keeps me company whenever I ask him to, and we take turns comforting each other when a wave of horror comes crashing through. For the first time, I see him cry, and after a few times he stops trying to conceal his tears from me. The lead detective checks on me regularly, like a sweet old neighbor, and he’s reminded me a few times that I’ll need to testify at the trial. It won’t be for a few years, he says, which makes me feel sleepy and old, that this ordeal will stretch all stringy until I’m in my late thirties. Like I’m so adult now that three years is nothing. Do juveniles awaiting sentencing get the speedy public trials we’ve all been promised? Do they hurry things along for teenagers, for whom each month is a brave eternity?
Tessa never contacts me, but I know she’s growing bigger, rounder, through some incredible yet banal alchemy, and though I can’t explain why, I catch myself counting down the months until her due date. I don’t speak to Will, either, but I feel a balloon of sadness every time I think of him; I know what he saw in sweet, funny Tessa, and he didn’t deserve any of this. Damien talks to him sometimes, over email, I think, but I stop him the first time he tries to tell me how Tessa’s doing, where she’s being held, the legal calisthenics Will is performing on behalf of her and their unborn child. I have a feeling it’ll be a girl, and I can’t help thinking I’ll meet her someday, know her as my shape-shifting friend’s final iteration, giraffe-eyed and innocent and so sure of her goodness.
Word spreads quickly to Alex, Sarah, and Kevin, and one by one they reach out to say something kind, something supportive and nonjudgmental, never mind that I’ve been best friends with Edie’s killer for years now. Kevin suggests a reunion sometime in the fall, and he somehow makes it sound jubilant and not at all macabre, and for some reason I agree and am surprised to find myself looking forward to it.
A few weeks before the gathering, Alex asks me to meet him, insisting there’s something he needs to say; Damien persuades me to go and suggests I meet Alex at the restaurant across from his apartment in Chelsea, so he can keep an eye on things from his front window. I’m jittery on the walk from the subway, unsure I can look Alex in the eye without thinking about our faces sinking toward each other like magnets.
We hug hello and get seats at the bar, and I feel it on him, too, something high-strung and uncomfortable. For a few minutes, we make small talk. He tells me he and his wife just made a down payment on a house in Sleepy Hollow; I feign elation.
Then he leans in and asks it, and I have to admire the bluntness: how am I doing vis-à-vis my best friend turning out to be a psychopath, in so many words. It’s a question that feels complex and corrugated every time I dip inside for an answer.
“It feels like a breakup,” I tell him, “the kind where you trusted the person and they did something really bad, cheated on you or whatever. And then you look back and realize you were making a lot of excuses.” I rub my fingers along the condensation on my glass. “And if I were younger, ten years ago or whatever, I would be freaking out about it, I’d be so embarrassed and ashamed that I let this person into my life.”
He begins to protest, to come to my defense, but I cover him up: “I know, no, I’m saying that now that I’m older and wiser, I know not to be embarrassed, that that’s a stupid reaction. I mean, part of me can’t help feeling like there’s a whole scales-falling-from-my-eyes, should-have-known-better element at play.” I shrug. “But then most of me is like ‘Fuck that. You are 100 percent not at fault.’ It’s funny, it’s almost like all the dumb friend breakups and shitty guys from the last decade have prepared me for this. I’ve bounced back enough times to be like, ‘Yep, somehow gonna recover from this one, too.’ ”
“Totally. With your bullshit meter intact. Good for you. At the end of the day, thank god you’re safe.”
“Exactly.”
We’re quiet for a minute, then he looks up.
“So I actually asked you to meet with me because I wanted to apologize.”
It’s one of those peculiar movie moments; I’m a few inches above my body, watching him speak.
“Lindsay, it was not okay for me to be flirty or whatever, and it definitely wasn’t cool for me to kiss you. Jaclyn and I have been—it’s been a rough year, we were struggling with some fertility stuff, but that doesn’t excuse it at all. I took advantage of you when you were vulnerable and I’m ashamed and I really, really apologize.”
Christ. It strikes me how strange it feels, hearing a man deliver an unequivocal apology. He looks away and sucks on his straw, like he wants to say more but knows he should quit.
“Hey, thanks,” I say. “I really appreciate that. Obviously I’m not completely innocent there, but I appreciate it and totally…I forgive you, of course.” I feel like a bad actor stumbling through lines, but I press on. “Also, I’m really looking forward to the reunion and everything, but after that, I think it’s best if we’re not in touch anymore.” I swallow. “I’m just trying to focus my energy on, like, finding a healthy relationship, and you—it’s not your fault, but this sort of takes up emotional space for me.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m really sorry.”
“I know.” I gaze out the front window; two sparrows alight on a tree that blocks my view of Damien’s apartment. Then I look back at Alex, and we exchange a brave smile. “It’ll all be okay.”
“It will.” He plays with his napkin. “And I’ve got some other news.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Jaclyn’s pregnant.”
I squeal. “Congratulations! You’re gonna be a dad!” A little peal of sadness: Yes, I just told Alex it was over, but this makes it real.