You Are Not Alone(73)

We chat for a while about my date with Ted, then I ask about their plans for tonight. As Jane explains they’re going to a benefit for a battered-women’s shelter, Cassandra fills up our glasses, which are all empty again.

I lean my head back against the couch, feeling more relaxed than I have in months, listening to Jane talk about the charity auction.

“Our friend Beth is a defense attorney—you might have seen her at the memorial service—and she occasionally does pro bono work for the shelter. That’s how we got involved.”

Beth, I think. I was pretty sure I saw one of their friends at CrossFit. Could it have been her? But it takes too much effort to form the question.

My eyes are so heavy that it’s an effort to drag them back open after I blink. My legs and arms feel loose and weighty the way they do after a long run.

“Are you okay?’ Cassandra’s voice sounds so distant.

“Just a little sleepy,” I murmur.

Jane gives a big yawn, and it’s contagious: I do the same.

“You’ve had a long week. Here, why don’t you stretch out and take a little catnap before your date? We need to get going anyway.” Jane moves over and I uncurl my legs, resting my head on the arm of the couch.

My exhaustion is so overwhelming I’m not even embarrassed. Yes, a quick nap, I think. That’s all I need.

Jane is spreading the throw I keep on the back of my couch over me. “It’s kind of cold in here. This will keep you cozy.”

Thank you, I try to reply. But all I can do is sluggishly nod.

My mind starts to drift again. I hear Cassandra and Jane move about my apartment as they speak in whispers. They’re clearing away the platter and glasses and running water in the kitchen sink.

I’m blissfully cocooned. One of the sisters—I’m not sure which—rests a warm, soft hand on my forehead. It feels nice, almost maternal.

They loved Amanda. Maybe soon they will love me, too.

“Do you want me to turn off the lights and close the blinds?” Cassandra offers.

No, I think, Ted will be here in a little while. But I’m not sure if I actually say it. I must not have, though, because the room plunges into shadows. The only source of illumination is the sweet-smelling candle flickering on the coffee table.

My door softly opens and shuts. It’s so quiet now.

I jar awake, out of one of those strange half dreams where I feel myself falling.

A woman is standing over me.

I can’t see her face; she blends into the shadows, almost like a ghost.

Amanda? I try to cry out, but can only muster a croak. I blink a few times and she’s gone.

Did I hallucinate her again, like I did that day outside the subway?

Jane also said she can still picture Amanda walking in her polka-dot dress for the last time.

But Jane wasn’t there that day. It was just me and Amanda, listening to the rumble of the incoming train, I think hazily.

There’s a tickle in my brain. It keeps pulling me back to the surface of consciousness. It has something to do with Amanda on the day she died.

Adrenaline battles my deep fatigue as I try to recall the piece of information that’s eluding me. But my thoughts are too slow and clumsy to compete with the crushing exhaustion that grips me.

I hear a whispered voice: “Enjoy your rest while you can, Shay.”

The detail I’ve been searching for finally floats into my mind just before I descend into a deep, black hole of sleep: How could Jane know that Amanda was wearing a polka-dot dress when she died?





CHAPTER FIFTY



VALERIE


VALERIE STANDS WATCHING OVER SHAY.

Shay’s eyelids flutter, as if she senses a new presence in the apartment.

Valerie remains immobile, watching the candlelight flicker across Shay’s face.

She whispers, “Enjoy your rest while you can, Shay.”

Shay gives a soft sigh as her body surrenders to sleep.

The drug used on Shay—a double dose of the Ambien that Cassandra took from Shay’s medicine cabinet just a few days ago and ground up before adding to Shay’s glass of champagne—is certainly effective.

Cassandra and Jane are now in a taxi speeding away from the apartment, their books in hand, en route to the charity auction. Before they left, they washed and dried and put away the glasses and platter Shay so thoughtfully set out. Valerie passed them in the hallway after they buzzed her in; their eyes met but they didn’t speak a single word.

Valerie carries a nondescript brown paper bag with supplies of her own. She enters the tiny bathroom and bends down to peek beneath the sink.

She sees the manila envelope, exactly where Cassandra told her it would be. She pulls it out with her gloved hand and checks the contents.

Valerie stares down at James’s dried blood, remembering how he’d looked splayed on that bench in Central Park. It had taken so much work—countless hours of thought and planning and strategizing—to get James alone and vulnerable so that he could be punished.

Now Valerie wonders how Shay located the envelope containing evidence from the night James was finally punished, when Cassandra and Jane had carefully sifted through the contents of Amanda’s apartment immediately after her death, then again several days later.

Valerie feels a bit of grudging respect for Amanda, who must have found a cunning hiding place.