“I have to tell you, Jessica, I am beginning to resent your accusations,” she says. “You completed your assignments, for which I paid you. You assured me that Thomas was faithful. So why would I be interfering in your life now?”
Is it possible? I put my head in my hands and try to replay the past few days, but everything is jumbled. Maybe Thomas is the one who has been lying to me. Maybe my own instincts were wrong. They’ve been off before; I trusted Gene French when I shouldn’t have. Maybe I’ve done the opposite now.
“Have you been sleeping, you poor thing?”
I lift my head. My eyes feel gritty and heavy. She knows I haven’t been, like she knew I haven’t been eating; she didn’t even need to ask.
“I’ll be right back,” Dr. Shields says. She slips oft the stool and disappears. Her footsteps are so light I can’t tell where she is in the house.
I’m completely depleted, but it’s the kind of tired where I know I won’t be able to sleep well tonight. My brain feels thick and sludgy, but my body is jittery.
When Dr. Shields returns she is holding something, but I can’t tell what it is. She walks into the kitchen again and pulls out a drawer. I hear a faint rattle, then I see she is transferring a small, oval white pill from a bottle into a Ziploc bag.
She seals the bag, then walks over to me.
“There is no doubt I’m to blame for your state,” she says softly. “Clearly, I’ve pushed you too hard with all of our intense conversations, and then the experiments. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in my personal life. That was unprofessional.”
Her words wind around me like one of her cashmere wraps: soft, comforting, and warm.
“You’re so strong, Jessica, but you’ve been under tremendous pressure. Your father’s layoff, the post-traumatic stress you’ve been feeling ever since that night with the theater director, all your financial worries . . . And of course, the guilt over your sister. It must be exhausting.”
She presses the bag into my hand. “The holidays can be such a lonely time. This will help you sleep tonight. I shouldn’t give you a pill without a prescription, but consider it a last gift.”
I look down at it and without even thinking, I say, “Thank you.”
It’s like she is writing my script, and I’m just reciting the lines now.
Dr. Shields reaches for my mostly full wineglass and dumps the contents in the sink. Then she scrapes the cheese and grapes into the trash can, even though the platter has barely been touched.
The emptied glass. The rind of cheese.
I stare at her as a bolt of energy races through my body.
She isn’t looking at me. She’s totally absorbed in tidying up, but if she saw my face she’d know something was terribly wrong.
The notes she wrote in April’s file swim through my mind: All traces of you were gone . . . Your wineglass was washed . . . Brie and grapes were tipped into the trash can . . .
It was as if you’d never been here at all. As if you no longer existed.
I look down at the clear Ziploc bag with the tiny pill in my hand.
An icy fear suffuses my body.
What did you do to her? I think.
I need to get out, now, before she realizes what I know.
“Jessica?”
Dr. Shields is looking directly at me. I hope she mistakes the emotion in my face for despair.
Her voice is low and soothing. “I just want you to know there is no shame in admitting when you can use a little help. Everyone needs an escape sometimes.”
I nod. My voice wavers when I speak. “You know, it might be nice to finally get some rest.”
I tuck the pill in my purse. Then I push my body off the stool and pick up my coat, forcing myself to move slowly so I don’t reveal my panic. Dr. Shields doesn’t seem to want to escort me out; she remains in the kitchen, running a sponge over the pristine granite. So I turn and walk toward the front hallway.
With every step, I feel a pricking sensation between my shoulder blades. I finally reach the door and pull it open, then step through and close it gently behind me.
The minute I get home, I pull out the plastic bag and look more closely at the small, oval pill. A number code is easily decipherable on the tablet, so I check it out on a pill identifier website. It’s Vicodin, the same prescription drug Mrs. Voss told me April overdosed on in the park.
I now have a pretty clear idea of who gave them to April, and why.
Dr. Shields must know that Thomas slept with April, otherwise she wouldn’t have put the pills in April’s hand. What I need to figure out is how Dr. Shields got April to swallow them.
I have to go back to the West Village Conservatory Gardens and find the bench near the frozen fountain. The spot April chose for her death must have some significance.
Does Dr. Shields also know that Thomas made up the affair with Lauren from the boutique? If I figured this out, then Dr. Shields, with her falconlike attention to detail, surely has.
How much longer until she discovers my unauthorized encounter with Thomas and all the lies I’ve told her?
And when she learns I’ve slept with her husband, what will she do to me?
CHAPTER
SIXTY-THREE
Monday, December 24
Are you getting the deep, dreamless rest you so desperately need, Jessica?
There won’t be any interruptions. You are utterly alone.
You no longer have work to distract you. And Lizzie is away. Perhaps you had intended to spend Christmas Eve with Noah, but he has retreated to Westchester to be with his family.
As for your family, they are unreachable. This morning the hotel concierge phoned and surprised them with a day-long trip on a sailboat. It is so difficult to get cell phone reception out on the ocean.
Even your new friend Thomas will be occupied.
But those who are surrounded by family and festive activities can feel isolated, too.
Cue the scene: Christmas Eve at the Shields family estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, ninety minutes outside of New York City.
In the grand living room, a fire blazes in the hearth. The delicate Limoges nativity figurines are arranged on the mantel. This year the mother’s decorator has chosen white lights and perfect pinecones to accent the tree.
It all looks so beautiful, doesn’t it?
The father has uncorked a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Smoked salmon with caviar on crostini are passed.
Stockings lay below the tree. Although there are only four people in the room, there are five stockings.
The extra one has been filled for Danielle, as it has been every year. The custom is to donate to a meaningful charity in her name and place the envelope bearing the check in the stocking. Usually the recipient is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, although Safe Ride and Students Against Destructive Decisions have also been chosen in the past.
Next week will mark the twentieth anniversary of Danielle’s death, so the check is a particularly large one.
She would have been thirty-six years old.
She died less than a mile away from this living room.
As the level of champagne in the mother’s second glass grows lower, her stories about the younger daughter, her favorite, grow more hyperbolic.
This is another holiday custom.
She winds up a rambling tale about Danielle’s summer as a counselor at the country club’s day camp.