The phone rang, and I jolted awake in her bed, alone. Grabbed my cell, but it was the house line, echoing from the kitchen. I stumbled out of bed, hit the hall light, my eyes trying to focus on the clock, and grabbed the phone off the cradle mid-ring.
“Hello?” I said. I cleared my throat of sleep, saw the darkness through the windows, my reflection staring back.
Nobody answered. The line was dead air, but it wasn’t a hang-up. At first I thought, Davis Cobb—before I remembered he was in custody and he never called the house line. I could hear something. Something faint. Just the passing of air. Hair shifting over the receiver, a hand moving. A shallow breath.
“Hello?” I said again.
The line was still open. I caught sight of my reflection again in the glass doors. Knew this was what anyone outside could see. Me, in sweatpants and a thin T-shirt, holding a corded phone to my ear, speaking to no one. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I hit the lights before hanging up the phone, trailing my fingers along the wall, back to Emmy’s bed.
She could still come home. She could.
I closed my eyes, picturing the last time I’d seen her: It had been morning, and she’d been sitting in our yard, which was mostly dirt and rock and weeds. I’d seen her from behind, cross-legged, back slightly hunched, perfectly still, except for the breeze moving through her hair. The light had crested the mountains in the distance, and I couldn’t tell whether she had just gotten home or just woken up.
“Morning,” I’d called, but she hadn’t moved.
I’d already had my car keys out, and I circled around so she could see me coming. “Emmy? You okay?”
Her hair hung forward, and for a moment I thought she was sleeping. But then she stood and stepped toward the woods—and it was this that actually worried me. She wasn’t in shoes. Sleepwalking, I thought.
“Shh,” she said, but I didn’t know whom she was talking to. Her hand went to the chain she always wore around her neck, the black oval pendant in her grip as she slid it back and forth.
“Em,” I whispered. High. She’s fucking high. I flashed to late nights with dim lights and hazy air, Emmy’s eyes glazed over, the lazy smile, a thing I had then attributed to our age, the moment, the slow and unwelcome transition to adulthood she seemed to be pushing back against.
But then the moment was broken and she turned to face me, her movements typical and curious.
“Heading to work?” she asked.
I stepped closer. “What are you doing?”
She broke into a laugh as the wind blew a piece of hair across her face. “Don’t do this,” she said.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Worry. I see it in your face. It’s your default state.”
It was the same thing she’d said to me the day she was leaving for the Peace Corps, for two years by herself in an African country I’d barely heard of. It was the same thing she’d said even before that, any time she went out at night with a half-baked plan or none at all.
But it was impossible not to worry about Emmy. I always saw her as the start of a story—an adventure that could turn tragic. It was the way she moved on impulse, but also the way she’d go completely motionless out of nowhere.
I still maintain that I was right to worry back when we lived in that basement apartment. That something had happened to Emmy, as something had happened to me. The reason we were even here. And we circled around it, sometimes brushing up against it, but never facing it head-on.
“What were you looking at?” I’d asked.
“Owls. There’s a whole family of them,” she’d said. And I’d been in a rush, so I’d left it. I should’ve asked again.
I was in the habit of asking Emmy questions twice, to be sure I was getting the truth. Twice before I believed her.
Where were you? I’d ask the summer we were roommates in Boston. She’d stumble in as I was leaving for work, not unlike the setup now.
The Commons, near the pond, we lit firecrackers and hijacked a swan boat—you should’ve come.
Emmy, I’d say, stepping closer. And her face would fall, as if I’d caught her, cornered her, forced it from her. Where were you?
John Hickelman’s piece-of-shit apartment. He had mirrors on the ceiling. Kill me now, while I’m still drunk. Before I sober up and remember everything.
I used to think this was a sign: that I was destined for my job. The way I could step seamlessly into someone else’s world, into their head, with boundaries that didn’t quite exist—a blurring of what was acceptable and what was not. The edge that had gotten me the stories. The slip that had landed me here.
But back then I’d believed that people wanted to tell me the truth, that I had perfected the look and timing and word choice, that I would be a great success.
Ask them twice, and they were mine.
I WAS GOOD AT getting people to talk, so if a story involved teenagers, it was mine. I was a twenty-nine-year-old who looked twenty-two, who could slide into conversation, overhear without being side-eyed.
It was meant to be a piece on the lacking mental health services on a college campus. The angle of the story was supposed to be on the academic and social pressures, the things we had not prepared our children for, the dark corners we all might find ourselves in, from which there appeared to be no way out.
It was to be a personal-interest story as well. A tribute, in fact. Bringing these women to light, and to life, while showcasing the ways the system had failed them—hoping that it would not happen again. That was the change I was set to bring about.
I knew all the details before I arrived on campus—Kristy and Alecia, both the year prior, in the weeks before and after spring break, respectively; Camilla and Bridget following the next March, the tipping point. I had already worked out the setup, knew what readers wanted to hear, and saw how to frame it: There will typically be a rash of killings in a summer heat wave, the world feverish, no air-conditioning, and we lie stripped down in our apartments, sticking our heads in the refrigerator, dripping cold water onto our bare stomachs, the backs of our necks.
The things you do in that sort of heat.
Violent crime rises with the heat, but the winter is worse on the psyche.
The endless gray that never breaks, and the way you have to bundle yourself in layers and layers, eventually forgetting who you are underneath. It’s another person living inside another skin. You feel too big or too small.
But suicide season is the spring.
My theory: The world sheds its layers, life springs anew—but you do not. Or you do, and you don’t like what you find.
So this story, the suicide epidemic at the university, the human-interest piece with the guts of a train wreck—the horror, the allure—it was perfect for me.
It was even more perfect because the school once was mine as well. I had insight into the inner workings, the finer details. We went to school in the dark in the winter, navigating linked halls underground, never seeing daylight. The buzzing of the lights and the air of Matter Hall made a constant white noise, and voices faded while we retreated further into ourselves, as if there were something physical separating us.
I stopped so many students those first few days—everyone who made eye contact, even those who hadn’t—before moving on to the more personal connections, so I’d have something to present first. There were so many students who said they’d talk as long I didn’t mention their names. So, so many—until eventually, I could recall a statement and wonder if it was ever really spoken to me at all.
We talked about Bridget the most, because her death was the most recent, and because she had been the better known. Her acquaintances were all still shell-shocked, emotionally drained, repeating the We didn’t know, we didn’t know refrain that I had come to expect, and yet it left me unsettled.
What I will remember: the red creeping up my boss’s neck, his words dropped down to a whisper.
My God, Leah, what did you do?
The buzzing in my ears when it all went south, when I was called into his sterile, empty office, the echo of his warning: Libel. Culpable. Lawsuit. Arrest.
I knew, then, it was Noah who had turned me in to my boss. That his preemptive warning had not been just in regard to my reputation. After the fallout, I could imagine him whispering in Logan’s ear: She was going after him, that professor; she had no proof, and yet she framed it around him.
I was so sure. I still am.
I WAS ALONE WHEN the alarm went off on my phone the next morning for school. The sky was dark, the rain dripping down the gutters.
There was no Emmy, and no sign she’d been here.
I went through the cabinets in the bathroom we shared. Her toothbrush, drugstore-brand deodorant, comb, all lined up in a row on the plastic shelf of the medicine cabinet. She hadn’t planned to be gone for long.
I left her a new note beside the gnome: Emmy, call me as soon as you get in. And I left her my number, in case she’d forgotten it.
I THOUGHT ABOUT GOING in the side entrance again at school, mostly to avoid Mitch’s questions about the police interview, but I was probably pushing it after yesterday.
Because of the rain, there was a cluster of students already gathered in the lobby. Usually, they waited out front or in the parking lot, not venturing inside until the first bell. But now they were huddled in corners, the low hum even lower than usual. Down to whispers. And then I saw the reason.
Kyle Donovan, the detective from yesterday, was just inside the glass cage of the front office. He was talking to the secretary, but she nodded in my direction just before I passed the windows. He caught my eye, and I paused. I felt the students watching. I felt their eyes. I felt, worse than that, the story taking shape—and realized I was a part of it.
“Ms. Stevens,” he called, and I halted. His voice echoed in the quiet of the atrium. He started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. “Is there someplace we could talk privately?” he asked.
“How’s my classroom?” I asked. Because that had a time limit. Fifteen minutes until the first bell, when the students would start milling the halls. And I wanted an easy out. I didn’t know what he knew, what he’d learned. I knew how these investigations worked, how a cop might decide to call up some “old friend” in Boston just to run a name by you.
He held out his arm, as if to say, After you. Our steps echoed through the halls, and I tried to keep my movements steady and practiced as I fumbled for the classroom key and beckoned him inside.
The empty room always felt unfamiliar at first—stale and cold—until the lights went on and the students filled it up with their citrus shampoo, that teen cologne. I dropped my bags at my desk on the side of the room, stood in front of it, waiting. He looked around the room—there was nowhere he could sit other than at a student desk. He scooted on top of one, going for casual. Great. I leaned back against my own. Slipped one of my feet from my shoe, scratched an itch on the back of my other leg.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” I asked, heart racing.
“Kyle,” he said.
“Kyle,” I said. Kyle alone in my room looked different from Detective Donovan yesterday: He had a white scar on his forehead, near the hairline. Deep brown eyes. Hair that matched. He needed a shave. I wondered if he’d been home.
“I wanted to tell you in person,” he began, but he didn’t need to finish.
I looked at the clock. It had been over twenty-four hours. “You didn’t charge him,” I said.
“Not enough evidence to hold him on,” he said, and with the way he said it, I thought he might’ve been blaming me.
I dropped my foot back to the floor. “The woman—Bethany—she said it was him?” I asked.
He grimaced. “She hasn’t said much. She’s being kept in a coma for now. They’re trying to control the swelling.” He gestured to his skull. I pictured the blood in the grass.
Oh. “How about you, then,” I said, my voice lower, making him lean forward. “You’re sure it’s him?” I knew they’d need good cause to decide to bring him in and hold him. The element of surprise works only once. Davis Cobb would be on guard after this. He’d be sure to cover his tracks, if there were any remaining.
Kyle hopped off the desktop, took a step closer, kept his voice lower. “You know where his business is located?”
I shook my head.
“Backs to the gas station on State Street.” He spoke to me like he assumed I was familiar with the ins and outs of town, as if the names meant anything to me at all.
“Sorry, I haven’t lived here that long.”
“Ah. It’s one block in from the main road wrapping around the lake. We have several people who swear his car was there all night. Then there’s a witness who puts him down at the lake itself. Heard him arguing with a woman.”
“The witness isn’t enough?” I asked.
He looked out the window, at the rain streaking the glass, distorting everything. “His wife says they both took her car home, that he was there all night with her. And it was dark, so the witness isn’t that reliable. Would help if we knew where he was when he called you. If you’d listened to that message.”
“But I didn’t,” I said. It wouldn’t have proved anything, anyway. All I could ever hear, back when I listened, was an owl or the wind. Never glasses clinking in the background or a television. Just him, his mouth too close to the phone, his voice dropped low to a whisper, to avoid being heard. He could be anywhere—walking home, standing just outside his front door, anywhere. “Don’t his phone records help?” Even without my statement, that should be some sort of proof. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear he’d been making late-night calls to other women as well. There was a mold, and he fit it.
Kyle tipped his head to the ceiling. “No, he’s playing us. Happily turned his phone over to us as evidence. Nothing there. Which wasn’t surprising. Almost all cases like this, someone uses a prepaid phone. You can get them anywhere, buy them with cash. Fairly untraceable.” He paused. “He knows what he’s doing.” A warning, then. An appeal to something baser inside me.
Bringing him in to the station had been a Hail Mary, a hope to scare him into a confession, or that I would come forward to add to the case, with the threat now safely behind bars.
“You had to let him go, and you’re here to make me feel guilty, is that it?”
“I’m here because we had to let him go,” he said. “But I’m also here to tell you I’m going to have a few units swing by your place tonight. So if you see lights, it’s probably just them. Still, you should feel free to call my number if you see anything unusual.”
“You think I have reason to worry? That would be pretty dumb of him, don’t you think?”
“The court system is not exactly brimming over with people who’ve made good decisions,” he said.
The bell rang. “Thank you for letting me know,” I said.
“You can talk to me, Ms. Stevens.” His mannerisms reminded me vaguely of someone I knew—or maybe just a type of person—with the way he spoke and moved: contained, even-tempered, and self-assured. Someone who had been in the business long enough, had become accustomed to its ups and downs, and had learned to hold himself steady.
“Leah,” I said.
“Leah,” he said, and he tapped his forehead, like a gesture of a salute—as if we were on the same team.
I CHECKED MY PHONE repeatedly during class, and I listened for the gossip. But the students held their secrets closer today.
I faced the board, writing out an assignment that would hopefully keep them busy and quiet.
“Ms. Stevens.” I didn’t have to turn to know who was speaking. Could imagine her hand held in the air, back straight, fingers faintly waving. Izzy Marone.
“Yes,” I said, still facing the board.
“If we can’t feel safe at school, how can we be expected to concentrate?”
“You’re right, Izzy,” I said, turning around and brushing my hands on the sides of my pants. “This is relevant, and current, and important. So take out your journals, and write an opinion piece.” I walked toward her, leaned close, my hands on her desk. “Let those emotions guide you. Let’s shoot for some authenticity here.”
Her eyes went wide, but she held herself perfectly still. “Is this for a grade?” she asked.
I tapped her desk. “This is an exercise. A participation grade. Get to it.” This was what I had done the first week of school, when I felt myself sinking fast—just to hold their focus, just for some silence. Embarrassed that I had to bribe my own students to do the work. Promising free passes, free grades.
But this time was different. This time I wanted information.
By the end of the day, I hadn’t had a call from Emmy, but I did have a stack of seventy-five opinion pieces, all presumably about school safety, and the rumors, and Davis Cobb. This was how to start.
Truth and story—doesn’t matter which comes first, as long as you get where you need to be at the end.