Big Summer(85)
Some small sound made me jump and drop the picture on the desk with a clatter. I turned to see Barbara Vincent standing in the doorway, holding a piece of paper in her hand. “My phone number. Will you take it?” Before I could answer, she said, “Emma loved her father. It broke her heart when he stopped coming around. Even if all she ever got were Drue’s crumbs, it would have been better than nothing.”
I nodded, even as I wondered if maybe Emma was the one who’d gotten the best that Robert Cavanaugh had to offer; if Drue was the one who’d gotten crumbs. Had Drue’s father ever taken her to the beach? Did Drue even have one happy memory, one recollection of a good day they’d had together, one mental snapshot of making her father smile?
Barbara Vincent took my arm and squeezed it, and pressed the slip of paper into my hand. “Please,” she said. “Please help find who did this. Don’t let them put my girl in jail.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t a detective, that I was just a babysitter and a not-very-influential influencer, that I had no idea how I could solve this crime. Somehow, what came out of my mouth was “I’ll do my best. I promise.”
Chapter Nineteen
My father sent my favorite smoked sable and bialys from Russ & Daughters. My mother sent her favorite earrings, clusters of rubies set in twists of gold wire. The Lathrop classmates who’d seen the pictures of Drue and me on the Cape sent condolences, texts and emails and direct messages over Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, offering sympathy and, in some cases, not so discreetly probing for details that hadn’t made the papers. And even though I’d insisted that I was fine, Leela Thakoon messengered over a black jersey jumpsuit. Try it with the wedges you wore with the Amelie dress, read the note she’d attached. I thought that she, along with my other clients, had to see the silver lining in the tragic turn of events. In the days since Drue’s death, the police had announced that she’d been poisoned. Emma Vincent had been released. And I’d added almost thirty thousand new followers across my platforms. Most of them were probably morbid lookie-loos, online vultures scouring my feed for more pictures of or inside information about Drue. But maybe a handful would be inspired to buy yoga mats or doggie treats. Everybody wins, I’d thought, and then I had started to cry.
On Tuesday morning I’d gotten up early to attend a ninety-minute yoga class, thinking I would need all the Zen I could get. At home, I’d done my hair and applied my makeup, making myself look at my entire face in the mirror, practicing kindness and positive self-talk. My eyes are a pretty color. I got a little bit of a tan on the Cape. At nine-thirty, I slipped on the jumpsuit and the wedges. At nine-forty-five, I called an Uber and rode in air-conditioned style for the thirty-block trip to the Lathrop School, where my friend’s life was being celebrated.
“Wedding?” the driver asked as he turned onto East Eighty-Third Street and saw the reporters and photographers on the sidewalk, arrayed on both sides of the marble steps. A pair of police officers kept the press and the gawkers out of the way as mourners proceeded up the staircase and into the school.
“Funeral,” I said, and slipped on my sunglasses, ducked my head, and walked as fast as I could toward the school’s front door.
“Is that the friend?” I heard a male voice yell. I didn’t look, but I imagined I could feel the air pressure change as all of that concentrated attention was suddenly focused on me.
“Daphne, any news?”
“What can you tell us about the fight the night before the wedding?”
“Daphne! Did Emma Vincent confess?”
Ignoring them, I put my hand on the door’s curved handle. The brass was heavy against my palm, warm from the morning sun. The feel of it sent me right back to my school days, and I braced for the sight of the blond wood cubbies and the green-and-white-tiled floors, the warm-chicken-soup smell of the hallway, the squeaky sound that I knew my shoes would make on the floor of the multipurpose room, which had, back in Lathrop’s religious days, been a chapel.
“Daphne, is it true that Stuart Lowe and Corina Bailey are back together?” a girl called, holding her phone aloft to film me. I kept my head down, my lips pressed together. None of them had asked me if I knew about the newly freed Emma Vincent’s relationship to the Cavanaugh family, so it seemed that the news hadn’t hit the Internet yet.
I opened the door and walked down the hall, hearing the familiar squeaks, smelling the familiar scents, feeling all the old ghosts rise; the ancient insecurities circling around my head, taunting me. You’re ugly. You’re fat. No one likes you. No one ever will. I could see Drue’s face, contorted in anger, could hear her saying We all just felt sorry for you. I walked past the classroom where my father had once taught, past the Senior Lounge, a nook under a staircase with two padded wooden benches. Once, during finals, I’d walked into the nook and found Drue holding her phone to her face. “Shh!” she’d hissed, and nodded at the bench, where Darshi had fallen asleep, leaning against the wall and snoring audibly, with her head slumped on her shoulder, her mouth wide open, and a strand of drool trickling from her chin to her cardigan.
“Drue,” I’d said, batting at Drue’s hand. Too late. With a giggle and a click, Darshi’s snoring and drooling had been posted on the Lathrop Class of 2010’s Facebook page, memorialized for eternity. As class prefect, Drue was one of only four students allowed to post to the page. Theoretically, she was supposed to keep us up-to-date on things like exams and homecoming rallies. In reality, Drue posted every embarrassing, cringe-inducing moment she could capture. Kids picking their noses, nip slips and fashion disasters, girls who’d been surprised by their periods or boys who’d been surprised with erections. Drue would post, and as soon as some administrator saw what had been posted, it would get taken down, but by then, all sixty-seven members of our class would have seen… if not the original post, then a screenshot.