this internal battle where I don’t want to tell anybody, but I think I’ll go crazy if I do that.”
Tessa carried over a steaming mug. “Just tell me what happened. We’re gonna figure it out.”
I leaned my head back and groaned. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“You said on the phone you were there? Start there.”
But I didn’t start there. I recounted Sarah’s casual admission that she’d questioned Edie’s cause of death, then launched into my call with Kevin, his reveal about a mysterious ER visit and a prescient conversation with Edie earlier that month, right before she died—his conviction that she wasn’t suicidal.
“Okay, that would definitely freak me out,” she said when I paused to rub my face. “But Sarah also course-corrected once she got a little perspective, right? She can’t have been that convinced if she dropped it afterward.”
“That’s true. Everything she mentioned on Monday was really flimsy. I can see why she kinda grew out of it.”
“What was she basing it on?”
I tugged at the teabag’s string. “Like, she mentioned how the gun was in Edie’s right hand, but she was a lefty like you. How she was found in her bra and underwear, that kind of thing.”
Tessa scrunched her nose. “I see why it all feels…alarming when you look at it through a new lens. But, Lindsay, you know that’s not much. And the two people behind this theory were Sarah, who’s rescinded it, and Kevin, who maybe felt motivated to not believe it was suicide since the gun was his.”
Jarring, the way the names popped out of her mouth. Like hearing your cousin call your father “Uncle Mike.”
“You mean so that he’d feel less responsible?”
“Right, exactly. How would you feel if your friend used your gun to kill herself? Maybe it was easier to pin it on some big, bad, anonymous monster, you know?” She picked at a hangnail. “All the adults in the situation, the detectives and her parents and everyone, concluded it was suicide, right?”
“I know, I know.” I pulled in a deep breath. “But there’s another thing. The reason I actually started poking around again is that…well, I think I told you Sarah remembered something differently from the night that Edie died. I have a memory of being up at this concert with her and Alex while Edie…while it happened, and Sarah was like, ‘No, you weren’t there, you’d already gone home.’ ”
“Whoa.”
“I know, it was really weird, she was adamant about it. But of course I was there, I remember it. I was drunk, but not wasted or anything. So I just kinda thought I’d…you know, prove her wrong. Obviously this was an important night to me.”
“But you said on the phone you think you…I couldn’t really understand you.”
I pulled my laptop off the coffee table and cued up the last few seconds of the video. “Watch this.”
When it ended, she continued to frown in confusion.
“This is the night,” I told her, pointing. “And based on the time stamp, this is right around when Edie died. And look, I walk into her apartment. My fucking frenemy is about to die and I just waltz into the room.”
It was so absurd, said aloud, that I almost cackled. Tessa frowned and watched the end of the video again.
“You’re sure that’s you?” she said.
“The person walking into the apartment? Yes, I’m sure.”
“But you’re not sure she’s in there.”
“Tessa, the timing works out perfectly. And I’d just seen all my other friends.”
“Where?”
She hadn’t viewed the first few minutes of the video yet. I blushed, knowing she was about to hear Alex and myself slandering the dead, but I hastily rewound it anyway. She watched, her eyes narrowed.
“Whoa, I didn’t realize you and Alex had such strong feelings about Edie.”
“I don’t remember either of us saying that. I don’t even remember being that pissed. In normal, sober life. But they’d broken up and were still living in the same apartment, and Edie and I weren’t on great terms, and…I’m kind of a mean drunk,” I finished lamely.
“I’ve seen it.” She said it without thinking and the moment froze up, all awkward.
I cleared my throat. “So it pretty much had to be Edie in there.”
“What about Kevin?”
“He had a show that night. In Greenpoint.”
“And there’s no one else who could’ve been in the apartment? Seems like enough time passed that any one of those friends could’ve walked in…”
“I know, but the timing, it’s right before Edie…” We exchanged exasperated looks.