You Are Not Alone(39)
She hurried out of the room before Gina could say anything more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CASSANDRA & JANE
TONIGHT WAS SUPPOSED TO be a triumph for the Moore sisters. It’s the Manhattan premiere of a film featuring one of their clients, an actor named Dean Bremmer, who is being compared to a young Denzel Washington.
However, instead of sipping champagne in their offices while getting their makeup done, the sisters spent the hour before the premiere strategizing.
Daphne called twice today, her anxious voice soaring into a higher octave, convinced a police officer in a cruiser was staking out her boutique. But when Valerie broke away from reconfirming RSVPs to the premiere to hurry to the West Village, the officer had already driven away. It was probably nothing, the sisters agree. The officer could have been doing any number of things, including simply taking a break.
Still, neither Cassandra nor Jane can eat dinner. “I’ll skip Dean’s premiere and stay by my phone,” Jane says.
Cassandra agrees that one of them has to be reachable at all times; too many land mines surround them.
After Cassandra leaves—her hair slicked into a high ponytail, since she canceled her appointment for a blowout, and the black stilettos she’d planned to change into forgotten beside her office sofa—Jane sits at her glass-and-chrome desk, trying to catch up on the paperwork that has piled up.
But it’s impossible to focus. Every time her phone vibrates with a text or email, she flinches.
Then a sharp sound cuts through the silence: The office phone is ringing, even though it’s after business hours. Jane checks caller ID: City Hospital.
Amanda’s former workplace.
Jane slips on her headset and immediately accepts the call.
It’s Gina, who was Amanda’s supervisor in the ER. As soon as Gina explains that Amanda’s mother gave her the PR firm’s number, Jane’s shoulders unclench.
“We finally cleaned out Amanda’s locker earlier this week,” Gina says. “It took her mom a few days to call me back. And she wanted me to ask if you and your sister could take Amanda’s things. It isn’t much—some clothes, an umbrella, and a few toiletries.”
“Of course.” Jane can imagine how the conversation played out: Amanda’s mother has been all too willing to abdicate responsibility to the sisters for everything from clearing out Amanda’s apartment to organizing and paying for the memorial service.
The sisters are more than willing to take responsibility for anything relating to Amanda.
“I can swing by tonight,” Jane offers.
“Oh, I’m just about to leave. Would sometime tomorrow be okay?”
“Sure.”
Gina was one of the few people outside of the group that Amanda sometimes texted—forwarding a cartoon joke about nurses, or coordinating details about a baby gift for a colleague. Gina couldn’t attend the memorial service because it conflicted with her shift.
This is an opportunity.
“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Jane says.
“Yeah, me, too.”
“I guess I feel like I should have picked up on something, but I didn’t notice anything different about her. Did you?”
Gina hesitates and Jane can hear the hospital’s noises through the phone: the static preceding a loudspeaker announcement, a distant siren, voices rising and falling. “She did seem a little … well, off isn’t quite the right word, but it’s the best I can come up with. I guess I started noticing it a couple weeks before she died.”
“Mmm…” Jane grabs a yellow notepad and a pen. She can’t transcribe the conversation on her computer because Gina might hear the clicking of the keys.
“And then, right before she died, she was acting really strangely. She made a few mistakes, which was unlike her. And on our last shift together, she raced out midway through. I never saw her after that.”
Jane’s body is rigid. “I wonder what was going on.”
“I really have no idea. It was all so out of character.” Gina exhales.
Jane does, too.
“It’s such a terrible loss. She was a wonderful nurse. It’s easy to get burned out, to put up a buffer between you and your patients so you don’t get your heart broken if they don’t make it. But Amanda didn’t do that.”
“I know. She really cared, especially about the underdogs of the world.” Jane puts down her pen and stands up. Her water glass is empty, so she heads to the small Deer Park cooler by the reception desk to fill it up.
“Just the other day, this woman showed up with flowers to thank Amanda for saving her life.”
“That’s sweet.” Jane presses the water tap. She’ll wrap up work soon—she’s too distracted to get much done—and uncork a bottle of wine at home, then check in with Daphne.
“Yeah, she seemed really affected by Amanda’s death.”
Jane freezes. Then she shuts off the tap, though her glass is only half full. She quickly returns to her desk, struggling to keep her voice casual: “Is that so?”
“Anyway, I should get going—”
“Sorry,” Jane interrupts, her pen poised over her page again. “The woman with the flowers—was she tall, with brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses?”