The Collective(63)

“Not the driver.” She says it as though she can read his mind.

Jake clears his throat. “Did it happen . . . the way they said it did?”

He says it to Olivia, not me, and so thankfully I don’t have to answer.

She gives him a terse nod and big eyes—more couples’ shorthand for, I’m fine. Let me finish this conversation. I’ll fill you in later.

Jake squeezes his wife’s shoulder. “Take good care of her,” he says to me. Which makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter. He loves her very much.

Once he’s safely out of the room, I ask Olivia what she means by acting strange, and she says, “I heard them arguing.”

“They didn’t ever argue?”

“No, I mean . . . Really shouting at each other. Which wasn’t like them at all. They came here for dinner a few weeks ago, and we could hear them outside the door.”

“Could you tell what it was about?”

“I heard Natalie say, ‘I never should have told you.’ And then Ed said, ‘Why the fuck would you expect me to understand?’” She closes her eyes. “Ed never swears.” She pours herself more wine and takes a swallow. “Swore. Ed never swore. Anyway . . . there was something going on with them. And I felt like . . . I don’t know. If I had only thought to ask Ed what was going on. Or if I’d called him about it later and asked if he wanted to talk . . .”

She starts to cry. I hand her a Kleenex from my purse. She takes it quickly, pressing it against her eyes. “I can’t . . .”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. . . .”

She blows her nose, then opens one of the cupboards—a built-in trash can—and tosses the Kleenex in, these actions taking all of her concentration, as though she’s fighting to do each of them without collapsing. “When I first heard about what happened to Natalie,” she says, “before I learned that she’d done it when he was at work, and so he couldn’t have . . .”

“You thought your brother killed his wife?”

She nods. “I thought maybe the fight was because she told him she was having an affair. I thought maybe she was leaving him, and she was all he had. Because . . . I know people say this all the time. But Natalie was not the type of person to hang herself. She was trying to get help. She was in therapy—some kind of support group, I think? She didn’t tell me very many details about it. But she called me on Claire’s birthday and told me she finally felt a sense of hope. And then one month later, practically to the day . . .”

I can’t speak.

“She’s gone. And then Ed . . .”

Olivia wipes her face, then goes to the refrigerator for more wine. “I guess you don’t really know what anybody is capable of doing,” she says. “Even people you love.”

“Especially people you love.”

She takes another pull off the Solo cup. I wait till she stops. “When was Claire’s birthday?”

“December nineteenth.”

“1219,” I whisper, my mind racing back three weeks, to when I believed the Kaya chat was nothing more than role-play.

Olivia says, “Excuse me?”

“That’s my birthday too.”

To be a member of this group is to take an oath of secrecy, 0001 wrote to 1219. If you tell a soul, Kaya will dissolve. It will lose its magic. Telling one non-member ruins everything for us all.

And all 1219 had wanted to do was tell her husband.

I put both hands on Olivia’s shoulders. Make myself look into those foggy eyes. How long after 1219’s chat room comment had Natalie argued with Ed outside Olivia’s door? How long after that argument was I assigned to surveil him? Natalie was 1219. She told her husband. They both paid the price. “It was beyond your control,” I tell Olivia. The absolute truth. “There is nothing you could have done.”

In my thoughts, the scene unfolds again, each moment like pages in a flip book: Ed Duval stopping in the middle of the crosswalk. His name on my lips. The gleam in those eyes. The same eyes as Olivia’s. You’re one of them. The screech of tires . . .

“Walking in front of a truck,” Olivia says. “I wish I knew what he was thinking.”

No, you don’t. I take a sip of wine, desperate to change the subject. “Jake seems like a nice guy.”

“He is.”

“You have kids?”

Her eyes brighten a little. “My boy is sixteen, and my two girls are in college.”

“Be with them. Go to dinner at your favorite restaurant. FaceTime your daughters. Plan a family vacation. Take a drive. Grab on to every moment you have with them and don’t let go.”

“It’s so hard now, though.”

“Nothing’s guaranteed, Olivia. Trust me. I know.”

“I miss my brother,” she says quietly.

“Of course you do.”

She gives me a tight hug that takes me by surprise. When she releases me, I feel the warmth of her tears on the collar of my silk blouse. “Thank you,” she says. “I think I just needed to get that out.”

My stomach churns. You were part of this. YOU are part of US. We killed your brother. We killed your sister-in-law.

A question is on my mind—the question I’ve come here intending to ask. But now I’m not sure the answer matters. “People change. Kids grow up. Life tosses them around and wears them down and sometimes they learn from it and don’t need to be punished any more than they’ve already punished themselves.”