back through months of chats. “Here.” She stabs her finger at a conversation from December—two messages from Zoe Spanos dated 12/10 and 12/28.
For a moment, the room is completely silent while the detectives pore over the notes from a dead girl. Anna barely breathes.
After her phone is taken away, the messages thoroughly dissected, then logged into evidence, after AD Massey has returned to his rolling chair and Detective Holloway is seated again at Anna’s side, only then does Anna draw in a full, deep breath.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” the detective asks.
For a moment, Anna is silent. Then, she turns to look the older woman in the eye. “We both loved that Tennyson poem. Do you know it? ‘The Lady of Shalott?’ ”
At the edge of the frame, you can see AD Massey slowly stand. His senior partner gives him a glance. Hold on.
“Tell me about the poem, Anna,” she says.
“She lives in this castle on an island, near Camelot. And she’s cursed to sit at a loom and weave only what she sees in this mirror, which is kind of a reflected window to the world around her.” She pauses. “I’m not explaining this right.”
“Um, so the lady watches this newlywed couple in the mirror, and wants what they have. They’re real; all she has is a shadow of real life. And then she sees Sir Lancelot, and she turns and looks directly out the window, which triggers the curse. She’s doomed, but she leaves her castle and finds a boat and sets sail to Camelot, even though she knows she’ll die before she gets there. The boat becomes her grave.”
For so long you might think it’s a mistake, the only sound on the recording is the scritch-scritch of AD Massey’s uniform pants rubbing together at the seams as he shifts uncomfortably from side to side.
“And so you found a boat for Zoe?” Detective Holloway asks. Her voice is a song now, the jagged edge smoothed away entirely.
“Maybe I thought it’s what she would have wanted. Maybe I was trying to make things right.”
“Make things right?” The detective repeats Anna’s words back to her.
“In some small way. After what I’d done. It was an accident, but … I killed Zoe Spanos.”
2 THEN
June
Two months earlier … Bridgehampton LIRR station, Long Island, NY
I DON’T KNOW why I expect the station to be right on the ocean. Train doors sliding open to the thin cry of seagulls. The mist of salt air. Sand kicked up by the sea breeze to nip at my skin. Welcome.
It’s nothing like that. When I step onto the platform at Bridgehampton, train doors closing behind me, my flip-flops land on a dirty strip of concrete. In front of me is a matchbox of a station. Through the windows, I can see a couple benches, a single ticket machine. Along the length of the platform, a green-painted railing stretches for yards in both directions, overlooking not the ocean, but a parking lot.
I adjust my shades across the bridge of my nose and squint into the low-hanging sun. All around me, passengers stream down the ramp to the parking lot, clamber into waiting cars and taxis and shuttles. It’s Monday. I can’t even imagine what this place looks like on a Friday, the tourists and “summer people” here to claim the weekend, make the Hamptons their own.
I’m not here to summer. I’m here to work. I’ve only met Emilia and Paisley Bellamy once, and suddenly I’m not sure I’ll recognize them. There are stylish mothers with their equally stylish kids everywhere, mixed in with the couples, the businesspeople, the groups of girlfriends. I look for Paisley’s fine blond hair, the delicate slope of her nose and chin. Her mother’s chestnut bob, tennis player’s physique. First day on the job, and I’m already floundering, the familiar dread of arriving to class on time but unprepared settling in my stomach like a stone.
From somewhere in the depths of my backpack, I can hear my phone buzz. I’m already regretting this respectable sundress, its lack of pockets. I’ve been told I will need to “dress for dinner,” but I hope my regular summer uniform of cutoffs and tank tops will be permissible around town. Otherwise I’m going to be recycling the same four dresses until I get my first paycheck.
I roll my unwieldy purple suitcase across the platform and prop it against the railing, shrug my backpack around to the front to dig