you.” Panic was fanning out inside me: Why had I told him, what had I done?
“Go ahead, Sherlock. I’m an open fucking book.”
Everything tightened. “Do you think she killed herself?”
“I dunno. I guess not if you killed her.”
“I’m serious.”
“I mean, she had some fucked-up stuff going on, but so did everyone else.”
“Like what?” Had he known about the miscarriage?
“Aw, you know. Secret love affair.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt her?”
“Nah. Edie was cool. I mean, unless you secretly hated her.”
I was growing dizzy; the room tilted like I’d just gotten off a roller coaster. “When were you guys actually hooking up?”
“Fuck if I remember.”
“Can you try? When did it start, what season was it?”
“Ohhh, fuck. Let’s see. I ran into her at a bar in my neighborhood, she was with…I think she lived with the girl. And we were sitting outside so it had to be summer. Actually…I think it was one of the first truly nice days, so maybe May?”
A roommate? Sarah?
“Was she Asian?”
“Edie?”
“The friend she was with.”
“No…I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t really remember what she looked like. I didn’t, like, hang out with her friends. Obviously.”
“And what happened?”
“Uhhhh, she recognized me, and we talked, and finally her roommate left and it was just us and we made out in the bar and then I took her back to my place. Which was sort of just a mattress on the floor in this shitty-ass railroad apartment in Bed-Stuy, so after that we just went to her parents’ apartment whenever they weren’t around.”
Right, as Alex had said. “And you knew she was seeing Alex?”
“I mean, yeah, but it sounded like it wasn’t going great. And it’s not like he and I were talking.”
“You’d fought?”
“Stupid thing over a guitar.”
Okay, so their stories matched. “When was that?”
“Hey, I know, let me just check my blog!” Sarcastically, with mock cheer.
“I know, I get it, it was a long time ago.” I sighed, felt a shudder in it, and decided to go with it. “I’m just trying to piece this together. Ten years too late.” I made sure he heard the wobble in my voice, added a loud sniffle for good measure. The silence bloomed between us and I tacked on another sniff and murmured, “Sorry.”
“Listen, babe,” he said. “It was a long time ago, so don’t hold me to anything. But I think Alex and I stopped hanging out, I don’t know, maybe February or March of that year? Winter sometime. And Edie and I started hooking up around May, and it lasted maybe a month or two before Alex…found out, so we stopped for a while. And then picked up again after they’d broken up, but didn’t, you know, tell him at the time, obviously.”
“Did you and Alex, like, have a stupid manly fistfight at some point or anything?”
“Nah. I just avoided him.”
For a moment, a scene stitched itself together in front of me, one that made sense: Edie and Lloyd canoodling in her apartment for some reason, Alex walking in on them, altercation, grabbing of a gun, Edie tries to intercept, shots fired. Then I remembered Lloyd had been up onstage snapping photos of a band.
“I don’t actually think I was involved. I was just trying to get you to open up.”
“Ha. Okay.”
A long silence.
“Are you gonna tell anyone?” I asked.
“Who would I tell?” Another swallowing sound. “I’m just a drunk piece of shit.”
I heaved a sigh, my stomach aching.
“Well, I gotta boogie,” he announced. “Good luck to you, kid.”
He hung up and I lay staring up at the ceiling, where a long crack snaked out of the doorframe, forked into two, and petered out just above my head.
* * *
I passed a few lonely nights eating dinner in front of the TV, willing Josh to text, Josh or Alex or Michael or someone, someone who’d want me to come out of my apartment and in doing so, to materialize again. At night I lay around my apartment and scared myself, imagining shapes hulking in the corners, wondering what was behind the shower curtain as I peed. Looking up into the mirror sharply, like I could catch the phantom lurking over my shoulder. Instead I just saw my own face, eyes pooled in blackness, cheeks sunken like a skull’s.
Early one morning, I awoke with a start, sweaty and twisted in my sheets and unclear if the heat had triggered a bad dream or vice versa. It took me a