into my sneakers and run out to the road along with the rest of Linden Lane. I can smell smoke; I choke on it. It’s close, coming over the tree line. Coming from Windermere.
Three fire trucks crowd the street, along with an ambulance and two police cars. The neighbors are everywhere, milling. I look around for Caden, but I can’t find him.
“What’s happening?” I ask a woman I know I’ve seen before. It takes me a moment to place her as Mrs. Cooper, Claudia’s mom, without all her black eye makeup.
“The stable at Windermere,” she tells me. “Someone burned it to the ground.”
PART III: A Fire
Late last night when we were all in bed Old Lady Leary lit a lantern in the shed When the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said: There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight Fire, Fire, Fire!
—Traditional children’s song
18 NOW
September
Herron Mills, NY
“WE’RE RECORDING.”
“Thanks, I got it.”
“Just making sure.”
“Your last episode got a lot of play.” It’s not exactly a compliment, not exactly an accusation. Martina makes an active choice to ignore the subtext in Caden’s words and just press on. She’s waited a long time for this interview. Months. And she knows this is the only shot she’s going to get.
“Eighteen thousand downloads and counting,” she says. “People wanted to hear Anna speak.” Martina is glad Caden can’t see her cheek twitch. Most people wanted to hear Anna. Except for Aster, who’s still not talking to her, and presumably the entire Spanos family. This is her chance to redeem herself in her best friend’s eyes. Caden knows more than he’s been letting on, more than he told police. She knows he does. If she can get him to reveal something on the record that could move the investigation forward, Aster will have to forgive her.
On the other end of the line, Caden grunts. Martina tries to picture him in his dorm room at Yale. Or maybe he lives in a house off campus. She doesn’t really know much about his life, now that he’s gone again from Herron Mills, moving on into his junior year, his regular life falling back into place like none of this is happening. Or maybe that’s unfair. Maybe Caden is as fixated as she is, as hell-bent on learning the truth. But she doubts it.
For her part, Martina is closed inside her bedroom closet. It’s not the ideal setup, with Mami downstairs and liable to interrupt her at any time, but it’s Saturday, and recording at home was the easiest option. At least the sound quality inside the closet is pretty great.
“I agreed to speak with you about Anna Cicconi,” Caden says. “You had some questions?”
Caden has made it very explicit to Martina that he will discuss Anna and only Anna during this interview. Not Zoe. Still, after all this time, not Zoe. And even though Martina is desperate to ask about what was happening between Zoe and Caden last winter—all the things she and Anna uncovered over the summer, after the first four episodes of the podcast had already aired—Martina will respect Caden’s stipulations. At least until the end of the interview, after she’s already gotten the tape she came for. Anything else is just a bonus.
She knows Caden only—finally—agreed to this interview because of two things. One, the autopsy results have led to (as of yet unsubstantiated) talk of Anna’s legal team filing a motion to dismiss the charges against her. And Martina suspects that Caden is as conflicted about Anna’s possible involvement in Zoe’s death as she is. That, coupled with the fact that people are actually listening to Missing Zoe, spurred Caden to finally respond to her interview request. Episode Five aired on Tuesday; she doesn’t have a lot of time to get Episode Six together to meet her posting schedule. But whatever she can get from Caden today, even if it’s only a little, will entice people to press play.
“Let’s start with the fire. Can you tell us what happened early in the morning of Monday, July sixth?”
“Okay. Well, Mom and I had been in the city that weekend, visiting family friends. We’d only been home for a few hours.”
“Your friends on the Upper West Side? The same friends you were visiting the night Zoe disappeared?”
There’s a slight pause before Caden speaks. “I don’t know why that matters, but yes, the same friends. Doreen is a close friend of my mom’s from childhood. We visit them frequently.”