Wendy Osterberg—the real Wendy Osterberg—died of an apparent suicide. According to her husband, Carl, from whom she was briefly separated but never actually divorced, it was sadly in character for Wendy to jump from the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge at three thirty in the morning. “She never was the same since our son died,” he explained. “But in those last few months, she really went off the deep end. One night, she had a lot to drink and started rambling about some plot to kill this kid we used to know years ago—a classmate of our son’s who was mean to him. Crazy, paranoid stuff. She was going to find the kid and warn him about the plot because two wrongs don’t make a right and it’s the worst sin to kill a child, even an evil one. . . . I couldn’t get her to calm down. Next day, she was fine, said she didn’t even remember saying any of it. . . .”
As he spoke, I remembered the woman I knew as Wendy, the spark of joy in her eyes as she told me what happened to the boy who had raped Tyler. He flung himself off a bridge six months ago. Imagine that.
“Imagine that,” I whisper.
I’m back in Mount Shady now, driving through the center of town, past Analog and the community center, past Brilliance Jewelry Store, where Matt used to buy most of my birthday presents, and the ice cream shop, Sprinkles, where we held Emily’s sixth-birthday party. It all looks fake to me—like an old-fashioned movie set, a plywood false front I could have pushed over years ago.
I reach Mountain, the street that leads up to my home, and as I turn on it, I think about how many different turns I could have made in life—staying in New York rather than moving here, especially. Mount Shady is a lovely town, but it’s also homogenous and boring, and boredom dulls your ability to make the right decisions. Boredom creeps up on you slowly, wraps its tendrils around you and tugs at you in such a subtle yet constant way, you’ll do anything to escape it. You’ll behave recklessly and stupidly. You’ll trust the wrong people, with disastrous results. Emily would still be alive if we’d stayed in New York. Matt and I would still be married—or at the very least, divorced for far less tragic reasons. I wouldn’t even know what the dark web is, let alone Ağlayan Kaya. And I wouldn’t be pulling into my driveway, grabbing my biggest spade out of the garden shed, roaring a mile up a mountain road, and parking at a trailhead on a freezing early February afternoon—all to dig up a gun I once tried to kill myself with, so I can protect myself from a group of murderers who have been stalking me for days.
And here, Matt and I moved to the country because we thought it would be safe.
I get out of my car quickly, running down the trail as fast as I can with the heavy spade in my hands, breathing hard, sweat pouring down my back, the cold air making my chest ache. Unicorn River is less than a mile in—a sweet, lazy hike for six-year-old Emily and me. But an exhausting obstacle course when I’m panicked and alone. By the time I get there, I’m feeling the cold and the strain of the run in my muscles, the stitch in my side a relentless, stabbing pain. I kneel next to the frozen stream and brace myself against the cold ground, breathing hard to ease the feeling, deep inhales and exhales, condensation billowing out of my mouth like smoke from a Belgian cigarette.
I bring the spade up, then plunge the sharp end of it into the icy earth. It barely makes a dent, and so I do it again and again, and it’s as though I’m back in that dream—that same doomed, awful feeling, the ground just about to bleed.
Once I finally make a dent, I settle into the rhythm of digging, growing warmer with the effort, the exercise calming me down.
At some point, I find myself thinking of Carl Osterberg again, how insane I must have seemed to him, insisting that his wife was alive. Yet still he let me into his house and gave me a glass of water and patiently explained the facts until I understood. He listened to the series of half-truths I told him, about this strange woman I’d met on a Bachelor Reddit who had stolen his wife’s name and life story and used it as her own. “She was probably someone who knew Wendy,” he had told me. “I think she was talking to some strange people online.”
If you only knew, I’d wanted to say. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want him to become another Edward Duval. I did tell him, though, that I lost a child five years ago, and that, for a long time, I thought about ending my life every day.
“What stopped you?” Carl had said.
I think it was the first time anyone had ever asked me that question, and I tried to answer him as honestly as I could. Therapy, I had said. Pills. And then I’d thought of Luke—how, after my arrest, he’d not only picked me up at the police station no questions asked but had the couch all made up for me and how, from the moment I called him from the station—as late as I did—I’d never doubted for a second he’d do either of those things. Because I would have done the same for him. Early on in his relationship with Nora, they got into a big fight over something stupid and she ran off to a friend’s place in rural Pennsylvania. Luke didn’t know how to drive at the time, and so I hopped in my car, picked him up in Brooklyn, then chauffeured him another three and a half hours to the friend’s house—all so that this sweet, theatrical soul could beg his girlfriend to take him back by re-creating the boom box scene from Say Anything. It worked. Plus, it was one of the best road trips I’ve ever taken. A year later I taught him how to drive, and believe it or not, that had been fun too.
“The love of a good friend,” I had told Carl. “That’s what’s helped me most.”
The tip of the shovel clinks into something metal. I put it aside and crouch down to lift it out of the hole, the dirty garbage bag, and inside, the shotgun, all the memories it comes with . . . I check the chamber to see if it’s still loaded, and it is. Protect me.
I didn’t really know how to shoot a gun when I bought this one, but I watched a YouTube tutorial and it seemed easy enough. It was. I pump the action, release the safety, aim it at a tree, and pull the trigger, the force nearly knocking me off my feet.
It is.
If those bitches come after me—and I know they will, soon—I’m going to defend myself.
Hopefully. I shoot again. I feel steadier now, but strange, as though I’ve lived this moment before and it isn’t good . . .
I’m so deep into these thoughts that I don’t hear footsteps. I don’t feel her gaze on me. I feel alone. Until I’m not.
“Psst.”
I look up and see the black coat, the glint of silver hair. Her hands in her coat pockets.
My stomach drops. “Penelope.” I don’t bother asking where she came from or why she’s here. I aim the gun at her.
“I wouldn’t do that,” she says.
My throat clenches. I think of Wendy Osterberg, the real one, sailing off the Kingston-Rhinebeck Bridge. I pump the action again.
But then “Barracuda” erupts out of the phone in my back pocket.
I ignore it. “The collective isn’t what I thought it was,” I tell her slowly, the song playing under me, like something out of a cheap movie. “I want out.”
Penelope’s shoulders are relaxed. There’s a half smile on her face. She looks remarkably unfrightened. My finger tightens against the trigger. “I said I want out.”
“I’d really answer that phone if I were you.”
My breath catches.
“Really.”
With my free hand, I slip my phone out of my back pocket. I hold it to my ear. “Luke?” Penelope’s smile widens.
“Cam. Thank God. Are you okay?”
The gun weighs against my shaking arm, my stare glued to Penelope. “Sure I am. Why?”
“You told me to come up.” He sounds tense, his voice shaky like I’ve never heard before, and I’m worried about him. About his heart. It makes it hard to focus on what’s happening right now, and I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t. . . . “You . . . you said it was an emergency.”
“Take a breath, Luke. Please.”
Penelope starts to laugh, and I want to pull the trigger.
“Your email. You told me to come right up. Were you high? You said it was life-and-death.”
My own heart is racing now. They hacked my email. “Where are you?”
“In your house. I drove up as soon as I could.”
“How did you—”
“Your friend from The Bachelor Reddit let me in.”
“What?”
“Wendy. You want to talk to her? She’s right here. She’s been trying to calm me down, but she was scared too.”
I open my mouth, but my voice is gone.
Luke says, “Are you there?”
I force myself to speak, to sound calm. “Sure, I’ll talk to Wendy.”
Penelope nods at me. “Good move,” she says quietly.
A voice pours into my ear, full of saccharine concern, that sick fuck. That fake Wendy Osterberg. “Are you okay, honey? I was so worried when I got your email. Thank God, you’re all right.”
“Don’t hurt him. Please don’t—”
“Yeah, Camille. Don’t worry. We’re right here waiting for you, and we care about you. Luke, honey. You okay? Hope you don’t mind, Camille. I gave him some of the orange juice in your refrigerator. His sugar drops when he gets panicky, but you already knew that about him, right?”
I can’t speak. I stare at Penelope. The pistol now clutched in her hand. I don’t drink orange juice. I don’t ever buy it.
“Hurry back, okay?” says the voice in my ear. “See you soon. Drive safely, please.”
She ends the call.
“Drop the gun,” Penelope says. “Or we will kill your friend.”
I do. She follows me out of Unicorn River and we hike back out together, her gun at my back.
THEY PUT MULTIPLE chips on my car. That’s the one, pointless thought that runs through my mind throughout the short drive home, and again as Penelope opens the door to my car and marches me into my house, the barrel of the gun now pressed between my shoulder blades. I suppose it’s because it’s easier than thinking of anything else. I wonder how many chips. And how much each of them cost.
Once we’re in the kitchen, Penelope shuts the door and locks it. “She’s here!” she calls out.
And then I hear another voice, Wendy’s voice, in the living room. “About time,” she says. She is on the couch next to Luke, who sits motionless, his head lolling against his chest.
“No . . .” I whisper.
She rolls her eyes. “He’s alive,” she says. “I only gave him enough orange juice to knock him out for a bit.”
Penelope laughs.
I stare at Wendy. She’s wearing baggy jeans. A sweater with candy canes all over it. Her eyes are granite behind her clear-framed glasses. “You’re Triple-Oh-One.”
“Yes,” she says. “But Penelope’s a close second. When we were on the Kimball thing, for instance, she was the one texting the burner.”
“I thought you were my friend.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why . . .”
“I wanted to see what you are capable of, Camille,” she says quietly. “I certainly found out.”
My eyes go to Luke, his breathing hard. Raspy. “He . . . he has a heart condition. The drug you gave him.”
“He’s fine. I’m a doctor.”
She stands up, and I see it glimmering in her hand. A long hunting knife.
“Don’t hurt him,” I tell her. “Please. I don’t want—”
“You don’t want your daughter’s heart to stop again? Is that what you were going to say?”
“No, I—”
“What do you think it meant, Camille, when you swore on Emily’s memory?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Did you think it was some pinkie swear? A sorority oath? Well, it wasn’t. I hate that shit. I like things that are tangible. Real. And Luke’s heart—which you told me all about during the night we weren’t supposed to be talking—well, that’s about as close to Emily’s memory as you’re going to get.”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry. Please don’t hurt him. I won’t ever go against the collective again. I swear.”
“I don’t believe you. But you know what? If I did, it wouldn’t matter.”
Penelope laughs again. “She doesn’t get it,” she says. “It’s so strange. She has no idea.”
Wendy looks at her. “I told you.”
Sweat pours down the back of my neck. It’s hard to breathe. “What are you talking about?”
Wendy sighs. “You murdered my daughter, Camille,” she says. “You’ve been a target from day one.
My mouth goes dry. “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Joan Lowell. Your therapist. She was my only living child.”
I’m frozen, unable to speak, my thoughts racing back to that night at Camp Acacia. Wendy’s face in the moonlight. The first and only time I noticed the resemblance.
“I saw that tape of you at the Brayburn Club,” she says, “that grief and rage, so similar to my own. The original plan had been to kill you, but in spite of all that, I had lost a daughter too. I knew your pain. I thought, Maybe, at the very least, I can help her first.”
My legs feel wobbly, my head light. I understand. I don’t want to, but I do.
“But you didn’t even appreciate my help. You didn’t get to feel the joy of Harris Blanchard’s death because, in spite of everything, you are still too self-absorbed to feel.”
“I . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”
“All that time with me when you thought I was Wendy. All those hours of spilling your guts out about Matt and Emily and Luke and your boring job. You told me about your fucking Playboy spread and yet not once, in that entire evening, did you ever mention my daughter.”
“I . . . I loved her.”
“Bullshit. You needed her. You called her at two in the morning and made her fall down the stairs and you were never punished,” says the woman, whose real name, I recall now, is Dianne. Friendless, joyless Dianne, Joan said. Ruined forever by the death of her child. . . . “You weren’t even questioned by the police,” Dianne says.
I stare at her, those wide-set eyes. Same as her daughter. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“They’re always sorry,” Penelope says. “When they know they’re about to go and they’re begging you to let them live, they say they’re sorry and they expect you to believe it.
“It’s insulting, really.” Penelope looks at me. “I mean, did you ever even attempt to apologize to Dianne?”
“No.” I’ve spent years feeling sorry for myself, drowning in guilt and self-pity and using it as a weapon against the one person who truly helped me. I caused her death—I’ve always known I did—and I never sought out her grieving mother. Never sent a note or flowers. Never owned up to destroying her life. I hid from her because it was easier to focus on the part of myself I have no control over—the victim part.
“I just wanted to talk to her,” I try. But that isn’t true. I wanted to rip her from sleep. I wanted to hurt her, the way she hurt me. . . .
You’ve got to stop calling me, Camille. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for me. You’ve gotten into my head, and I’m living with your hate, and your guilt and your rage and your bitterness, and it’s making me drink too much and lose sleep and you’re not getting any better. I can’t help you. No one will ever be able to help you, Camille. . . .
Her last words to me. Her last words to anyone.
Dianne says, “I’m going to give you one more chance to do something right.”
Gently, she lifts Luke’s head from his chest and rests it on the couch, his face pointed toward the ceiling. “This was actually Penelope’s idea, so I’ll let her explain.”
“It’s pretty simple,” she says. “You get to make a choice. Either we kill this young man, stopping your daughter’s heart. Or we kill you. If he dies, we’ll dispose of the body and wipe the emails from his server. You can go on with your life, free of the collective—as long as you never speak of it.”
“And if I die?”
“He lives.”
As Penelope speaks, Dianne stands above Luke and raises the knife over her head, the blade a few feet above his heart, my daughter’s heart. My best friend’s heart. “Basically,” Dianne says, “you can either live or save your daughter.” And then she lowers the knife.
It happens in a series of frames, the knife traveling through space, the glimmering blade nearing its target as I stand watching, unable to move. I’m aware of Penelope taking the gun from my back, of memories churning in my mind. Laughing with Luke at Applebee’s, watching the Academy Awards with him and Nora, getting drunk with him one night when he lost a part, telling him, You’re too good for them.
You’re too good.
“Stop!”
Dianne puts down the knife, and I feel the barrel of the gun at my back again. There’s nothing I can do. But maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen. Maybe there’s nothing I should do.
No one will ever be able to help you, Camille.
“Give her the juice,” Dianne says.
Penelope hands me a small bottle of orange juice, just a few sips taken out of it. The gun never leaves my back. “Drink all of it,” she says.
I watch Luke, sound asleep on the couch, the rise and fall of his chest. And I raise the bottle to my lips. There’s a chalkiness to the taste, but at least it’s cold. I drink it all, my thoughts slowing and fogging over before I’ve reached the end. The room starts to blur at the corners, and then that blur bleeds into the center and everything turns syrupy. Dianne moves closer to me, that blazing candy cane sweater of hers, the torture of it, all that red in my eyes. I feel nauseous. She puts an arm around me and I can’t fight, I can’t move. . . .
My tongue is thick, my feet useless as she drags me up the stairs. To bed? Is that where I’m going?
We reach the top, and I search her blurring face. Is there something there? A hint of mercy?
“Die like Joan,” Dianne says.
She shoves me hard, and there’s no time for anything, even surprise. I sail in space for a moment, and then my head smacks the floor. Something explodes within me. I’m in pieces. I’m dissolving. Nothing working together anymore.
I want to say Emily’s name, but I don’t have enough breath for that. I’m seeing her now, though, as a baby blinking up at me, her tiny hands grasping the light. I’m seeing my own mother when I was little, her soft fingers on my cheek. I’m kissing Matt for the first time, then dancing with my dad at my wedding, then weeping at Emily’s funeral, my heart ripped in two. I’m screaming at Joan over the phone. You never loved me. You never cared. And then, at last, this past month. From that subway ride on, every second plays out again in this one final gasp of time. It’s all too much—too loud, too pointless—when all I want is to be with Luke. Watch him breathe. Listen to his heart.