Friends Like These(2)

Thus far the details of the accident, or whatever it is, are scarce. There’s a passenger dead and the driver is missing, injured presumably, given the blood on the open driver’s door. But the vehicle is deep in the woods, too far away from the point of impact. Suggests something other than an accident.

So while the patrolmen and the search teams comb the woods, looking for the missing driver, I’ve come here in the wee hours of Sunday morning. To this house where their friends are. Old friends from college, I’ve been told. Weekenders. That they’re weekenders would be obvious from the house, a high-end remodel— spires and turrets and a wraparound porch, all gleaming. Even the driveway’s smooth, round gravel looks pricey. They’re up from the city— Brooklyn, Manhattan, doesn’t matter. The weekend hipsters are all the same— millennials with an excess of money, liberal politics, and particular tastes. Locals hate them, but, man, do they love the money they spend.

Weekenders being involved complicates the investigation, especially if whatever happened turns out to be more than your average car wreck. We do have our share of crime these days, most of it starting or ending in opioids; they’re everywhere in the Catskills. And if somebody up for the weekend from Manhattan is dead, the New York Times will be all over it. Boss sure as hell doesn’t want that.

As I open the car door, it starts to rain. Drops, heavy and big as marbles, pelt the windshield. Shit. Rain’s not good if we need to resort to dogs.

I square my shoulders as I make my way up the driveway. It’s hard to establish authority on a scene when you’re a woman, harder still when you look like “a cheerleader with a gun”— some DWI actually said that to me once. But I’ve got excellent instincts, and I’m not afraid to sink my teeth in until I knock against bone. That’s what the lieutenant used to say. That was before he blew his head off in his driveway while his wife slept inside— opioids don’t discriminate.

Next month, Chief Seldon decides who takes over the detective bureau. As far as I’m concerned, that person should be me. I’ve got the highest clearance rate. But Seldon’s got his doubts. When you’re a woman, anything questionable in your past— even things that weren’t your fault— and unstable gets written onto you like a tattoo.

I take one last breath before I open the front door. I’ve got this, whatever it is. I know I do. Just so long as I keep myself in the here and now.





MAEVE


FRIDAY, 7:05 P.M.

Through the car window the trees were finally coming into focus, first the branches and then the individual leaves, already burnt orange at their edges. For nearly two hours, the woods had been nothing more than brown and green streaks as the three of us hurtled past, headed upstate on the twisty Taconic.

I’d been thinking of the first time I drove that way to Vassar. How nervous I’d felt— nervous and alive. College was a new beginning, a chance finally to be anybody I wanted to be. And I’d seized it, hadn’t I? I’d learned so much about myself, not to mention getting a world-class education. But most important, I’d made this incredible group of friends. Where would any of us be now without one another? A complicated question always, hindsight and history being what they are. But complicated for us especially. What was never complicated, though, was our love. We were fiercely devoted to each other from the very start.

That was probably because none of us had great relationships with our real families. I was the only actual orphan, though. Orphan by choice— I was honest about that. I’d cut my parents out of my life because they were emotionally and physically abusive— I’d shared a few of the more shocking details. But my friends never judged. They accepted me completely, even though the estrangement had left me desperate for financial aid and constantly short on cash.

But right now we weren’t headed back to Vassar’s campus, despite the familiar switchbacks of the Taconic. We were going an unfortunate additional fifty miles north, deep into the Catskill Mountains. Jonathan had bought a weekend house in Kaaterskill, of all places. Not somewhere I would have ever chosen to go. But there was absolutely no opting out of this weekend. It was all hands on deck for Keith.

So here I was, ready to do what I was best at: looking on the bright side. And the bright side of this weekend was that we were going to get Keith help. That I might also have the chance to pump Jonathan for a little information about Bates would just be a side benefit.

Jonathan had introduced us. He’d met Bates back at Horace Mann, which meant that I had Jonathan to thank for both my boyfriend and my very, very good job in public relations at the Cheung Charitable Foundation, an offshoot of his father’s hedge fund.

I think my friends were convinced that I was with Bates because of his money. That I was trying to claw back the life of luxury I’d lost when I severed ties with my parents. But Bates had given up Goldman Sachs to work at the Robin Hood foundation. He volunteered at the Boys & Girls Club. I’d even signed up myself, thanks to him. Being with Bates had already made me a better person, and he hadn’t judged me for the stories I told him about the brutality of my childhood. Because he was a kind, nonjudgmental person. For the first time in my life, I thought maybe I could really be myself with someone. I wasn’t all the way there yet, but I was working on it.

I pressed the button in the center console to slide the passenger window down and breathed in the Hudson Valley air, which smelled of distant fireplaces and dried leaves.