Big Summer(59)

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, hearing my voice crack. I wanted to ask him to come get me, I realized, like I was a little kid waiting to be picked up after school. Except he couldn’t come, because I couldn’t leave.

“Hang on.” I heard footsteps followed by the sound of a door, opening and closing. I imagined my father was leaving the living room, getting out of my mom’s earshot, probably heading to their bedroom. I could picture him, in his weekend clothes, a plaid shirt with a frayed collar that disqualified it from the workweek rotation, and a pair of the baggy pale-blue jeans that only middle-aged men ever seemed to wear.

“I didn’t want to ask this in front of your mother,” he said, “but are the police treating this like a suspicious death?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “The detective talked to me for a long time. He had all kinds of questions about Drue, and her parents, and her fiancé, and… and everything,” I concluded. “But I don’t even know how she died.”

There was a pause. “I saw Drue’s father once. So this would have been twelve or thirteen years ago.”

“Where was he?”

“In Midtown, near Central Park South. I was up early, by that place on Fifty-Seventh, you know, where they have the bialys.”

I knew the place he meant, and that it was different from the place that had the bagels, and the place with the whitefish salad.

“It must’ve been six o’clock in the morning. And I saw Robert Cavanaugh in an overcoat and a suit. All dressed up, with a woman in a fur coat.” My father paused. “It wasn’t Mrs. Cavanaugh.”

“Oh, boy,” I breathed. A summer friend, I thought. One of his extracurricular sweethearts, one who’d left Cape Cod or the Hamptons and made her way to the city. “Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so. And even if he had, I’m not sure he would have recognized me. Drue’s mother might have known me, but I think I maybe met her dad twice, the whole time the two of you were close.” My father’s voice was dry when he said, “Robert Cavanaugh wasn’t a parent-teacher conference, back-to-school night kind of parent. Not the kind of parent who was going to show up to put the books in boxes at the end of the book fair. I mostly knew him from the papers.”

“Drue said her parents hadn’t been happy for a long time. She told me that she knew in high school that her dad had been unfaithful, and that her parents couldn’t get divorced, because everyone would talk. And they didn’t have a prenup. They had a huge fight last night, at the party. Before…” I swallowed. “Before Drue died.”

“Be careful,” said my father. “And come home as soon as you can.”

“Thanks. I will. I love you, Dad.”

“I love you, too.”

Tears were rolling down my cheeks, dripping off my chin. I was thinking of Drue’s father, on the beach the night before, screaming in his daughter’s face, then turning his back. I pictured him walking around at six in the morning with another woman, bold as brass, as Nana might have said. I thought of my own parents, dancing in the kitchen, and it occurred to me for the first time ever that Drue might have believed that of the two of us, I was the lucky one. “I should go.”

“Go ahead,” said my father. “And please give our sympathies to the Cavanaughs.”

I promised that I would, and placed my next call. Darshi picked up her phone even faster than my mother had picked up hers.

“Daphne!” I could hear voices in the background. I imagined my friend at her conference, enjoying a cup of coffee and a croissant in some pleasant midlevel hotel where no one had died tragically the night before. “What happened? I saw the news alerts. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But…” I gulped. “Drue’s dead.”

“I know. It’s on all the news sites.”

“I was the one who found her.” I made myself breathe. “And, Darshi, I was with a guy last night, the one I texted you about, and he’s not here. I woke up this morning, and he wasn’t in the bathroom, or anywhere, he was gone, and he gave me a fake name, and I…”

“Daphne. Slow down. I can barely understand you! Just breathe. I’m going to go to my room. I’ll call you right back.”

I ended the call and sat, trying to get it together, waiting for my phone to buzz in my hand, trying not to remember Darshi’s warning: If she fucks you over again, I won’t hang around to pick up the pieces. Maybe my friend would make an exception if it was Drue’s death, and not Drue herself, that had done the fucking over. Name five things you can see, I told myself, and looked around my room. But all I could see was Drue’s body, stiff and lifeless, her hair swirling around her as she lay facedown in the water. When the phone rang, I shrieked, and jumped a foot off the bed. My heart thundered as I answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Okay, I’m ready. Start from the beginning,” Darshi said.

“Drue is dead. No one knows how it happened, and I can’t find my alibi. The guy I was with—whoever he was—he gave me a fake name. And do you remember our texts from last night?” I whispered, and paused in a manner that I hoped communicated You sent me texts with knife emojis. There was a beat of silence, then Darshi inhaled sharply.