Friends Like These(60)

“Hey, let me worry about myself,” she snapped.

“What if we just took her home?” Maeve offered gently.

“To the city?” Jonathan sounded skeptical.

“No— Maeve means to her home,” I interjected. Maeve gave me a grateful look, and nodded as I went on. “It’s where she would have OD’d if she hadn’t been here. This could have happened wherever she was last night.”

“Do we even know where she lives?” Jonathan asked.

“She said something about that Farm place,” Keith said.

“That doesn’t exactly sound like a home,” Stephanie said.

We were all quiet again, looking at Crystal.

“She OD’d,” I said finally, shaking off the guilt that was starting to creep up on me. “This isn’t our fault. It isn’t anyone’s fault.”

“It’s never our fault, is it?” Stephanie raised her eyes to meet mine. “When are we going to stop pretending these are things that are just randomly happening to us. Our regret doesn’t do shit for anyone.”

Stephanie wasn’t wrong. The way we all blamed ourselves for what happened to Alice did sometimes strike me as perversely selfish. Like the penance was actually a way to let ourselves off the hook. For sure I’d only been thinking of myself when Alice turned up in my room that night, asking to borrow my car.

“I’ll explain when I get back,” she’d said. “I just— I want to see if I’m right first.”

I didn’t like the smell of it— the way Alice’s tiny body was vibrating as she stood there, her refusal to get into details. For days she’d been so upset about everything that had happened on the roof, and now suddenly she seemed almost excited? But then I remembered: if Alice was gone for the night, that would leave just Maeve and me to watch the movie the three of us had planned to see together. And so I’d said, “Yes, take my car. Take it for as long and as far as you want, Alice.” In the end, Maeve had wound up having to work the information desk in Main that night anyway, so our intimate movie night had never even happened.

“Thank you, Derrick,” Alice had said, the last words of hers I’d ever hear. “You’re the best.”

No matter how tightly I gripped the wheel as we drove toward the Farm, I could still feel the weight of Crystal’s body in my hands. Keith and I had carried her downstairs, wrapped in the sheets, while Jonathan pulled my car around the side of the house up to the back door. We drove in silence until we reached the crushed farmhouse. There was no choice but to get through this as fast as we could. The sooner it was over, the faster we could get back to the business of forgetting.

I rolled down a dirt road just past the main entrance to the Farm and pulled over behind the dilapidated barn, in a place where we could park out of sight then cut through the short stretch of woods to the building, which somehow looked even more menacing in the daylight.

“Maybe we should come back when it’s dark?” Jonathan suggested. “This doesn’t feel especially clandestine.”

“Let’s just hurry up and get this over with,” Maeve said. “We’re so conspicuous sitting here.”

I glanced Maeve’s way. She looked so worried as she chewed on her lip.

Keith started to get out before the car was even off. “I’ve got this. I’ll meet you guys back at the house.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, jumping out to follow him. “You’re not doing this alone, Keith.”

I walked around to the passenger side and handed my keys to Jonathan. “You guys drive back to the house, get your stuff together. We’ll walk back. Half hour, hour, something like that. And then we can head back to the city together.”

“Are you sure, Derrick?” Maeve asked, looking at me, I swear, like she was seeing me for the very first time.

“I’m sure.”





DETECTIVE JULIA SCUTT


SUNDAY, 1:09 P.M.

Dan is waiting for me outside the Falls when I pull up. He’s leaning against the building, talking on the phone, wearing a fresh shirt, light blue and long-sleeved, rolled up above his elbows. Seeing him there, waiting for me, I feel an unexpected pang of regret.

“They’ve got Hendrix,” Dan calls to me as I cross the street, still shaking off the feeling. “They’re bringing him down to the station.”

“Good,” I say, like I’d never doubted they would head him off.

Really I’d been bracing for the possibility I’d have to tell Seldon that I let Finch Hendrix sail out of Kaaterskill and back into the vast ocean of New York City. At least we’ve found him, even if the justification for holding him is thin.

“He’s pissed, though,” Dan goes on. “Apparently he’s screaming about some art exhibit, lost opportunity costs, damages. Lawyers.”

“Just keep him separate from the homeowners. Don’t want them matching notes.”

“I told them that downtown,” he says. “Cartright’s on it.”

“Cartright, great.” I roll my eyes. Dan shrugs. He likes Cartright. Dan likes everybody. “I ran into Lauren Avery at the Farm. You remember her?”

“No,” Dan says. “I don’t actually know everybody.” He pauses. “Or everything.”