The Last Housewife (22)

“That the cops are clearly withholding information,” Jamie added.

“I just wish I knew how it all fit together.”

We fell into silence. Jamie’s eyes roamed to my bed, which was large and white and perfectly made, the comforter turned down invitingly.

I felt a flush of heat.

“Shay.” His voice was deep when he turned and caught my eyes. My heart sped up. “Would you let me interview you for the podcast?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You’re an important witness.” His expression was earnest. “You knew Laurel so well. Maybe some helpful details will surface.”

I tensed. Jamie was asking me to do the exact thing I’d avoided. Open doors I’d locked.

“It might help her,” he said softly, and my heart squeezed.

You’re here to be brave, I reminded myself. Kick down the door, like Clem.

“Okay,” I whispered. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“Tell me where things went wrong, back in college.”

“You want the whole story?”

Jamie laid his phone on the couch between us and pressed a button. Red bars raced across the screen, searching for sound.

“Yes,” he said, and the bars jumped. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”





Chapter Seven


Transgressions Episode 705, interview transcript: Shay Deroy, Sept. 1, 2022 (unabridged)

SHAY DEROY: I’m not used to… It feels like there’s a physical block in my throat, keeping the words down.

JAMIE KNIGHT: Try starting with something that feels safe.

SHAY: I guess I’ll start with the fact that we were best friends. Maybe it was because we’d met under such hard circumstances. I think I told you what happened to Laurel at the start of freshman year…

JAMIE: You told me something happened to a friend of yours one weekend when you came to visit, but I didn’t know the friend was Laurel. I never forgot what you said, though. How mad it made me. And scared.

SHAY: Why scared?

JAMIE: For you. The things you had to face that I never had to worry about.

SHAY: Well, I’m going to tell your listeners what happened, because too many people wanted us to shut up back then, and now Laurel’s dead, without ever getting justice. She was raped, freshman year, at a party. The guy’s name was Andrew Sch—

JAMIE: Don’t say it, for libel purposes. Sorry.

SHAY: Oh. Okay. Well, he never paid for what he did. He went on to have two more great years at college. Probably raped more girls, too. Andrew, if you’re out there, fuck you with all my heart.

(Silence.)

Sorry. I guess that wasn’t a safe subject after all.

JAMIE: You were saying going through that experience made you, Laurel, and Clem really close.

SHAY: We were like sisters. I can’t remember being apart for anything, except for class sometimes. Even then, we tried to take the same ones. I’ve never been that close to anyone, even you and Clara growing up.

It was funny, because the three of us were so different. I doubt I would’ve been friends with them if we hadn’t been thrust together. Clem was a radical. Loudmouthed, sometimes abrasive, but so confident, and so knowledgeable about politics and history. She was kind of a genius. If you got her drunk, she could go a full hour without taking a breath about the demise of labor unions and the mistakes of the counterculture movement, like she was a host on The Young Turks. You could tell it was stuff she’d just taught herself. She was the perfect Whitney student in every way. Ironic, because she came from a huge family in the Midwest, like, seven siblings or something, and they were all religious conservatives. Her parents did not understand her. I used to picture her as this alien creature they adopted. From the stories she told, it seemed like her dad was even a little afraid of her. Which was kind of fair. Clem could be intense. But if you dug down, she was the most loyal friend.

Laurel was the opposite. Just as kind, but deathly shy and soft-spoken. She liked being behind the scenes as much as Clem liked being in the spotlight. You already know Laurel loved working in the theater. She was the epitome of a theater kid, and also an amazing seamstress, which sounds old-fashioned but was kind of cool, actually. She even used to make us clothes. Every holiday and birthday, Clem and I would get a Laurel original. She’d make us these wild things—shirts with fairy wings attached, long, droopy hats, like she was daring us to wear them. You should’ve seen the look on her face when we did. Incredulous, like a kid.

But the most important thing to know about Laurel, I think, is that even when she was happy, she was sad. It was a constant undercurrent. It wasn’t just because of what happened freshman year. It was her dad. They’d been really close until he died in a car accident on his way to pick her up from band practice when she was fifteen. His death sent her mom into a tailspin, and Laurel felt like she had to take care of her. It’s weird to say, but I think going away to college was a reprieve, because she didn’t have to be the adult anymore.

I remember this one time, she brought us backstage after hours. She wanted to show us the costumes she was working on for an adaptation of A Doll’s House. You remember that play.

JAMIE: Ibsen. We had to read it in high school. I hated it.

SHAY: Well, we were the only people in the theater, and we brought beer, so we were being silly. We got the idea to try on Laurel’s costumes. I dressed up in this three-piece suit—one of the characters was a rich man—