Jane sucks in a breath. Cassandra’s grip tightens around the handle of her purse.
Another chime. The sisters can feel tension rising not just in themselves, but in each other.
“I’m so sorry, but we have to rush off,” Jane tells Oliver.
“I’m afraid I’m coming down with something.” Cassandra puts a hand to her stomach. All the color has drained from her face, supporting her fib.
“Poor girl, go get some rest.” Oliver blows them kisses.
This time, they manage to depart without any interruptions.
They pull out their phones and read the new texts from Valerie:
At 49th Street. Just saw Shay crossing street.
Where are you two??
Then: Out of cab. I’m right behind her now.
Jane phones their driver and instructs him to pick them up as quickly as possible.
Cassandra types to Valerie: We’re in Chelsea, coming as fast as we can.
“Come on!” Jane says, pacing the sidewalk and craning her head to see if the driver is approaching. But traffic is clogged—it’s still the tail end of rush hour—and the Town Car isn’t in view.
Has Shay been playing them, with her shy manner and quiet life?
She could destroy everything the sisters have built.
The final text lands.
Jane grips her sister’s arm as Cassandra whispers, “No.”
Shay just walked into a police station.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHAY
Loneliness is spreading to more and more people, almost like a virus. These days, roughly 40 percent of Americans report feeling isolated on a regular basis—double the approximate 20 percent in the 1980s. One survey found Gen Zers (those born 2001–now) to be the most lonely, followed by millennials (those born 1980–2000—my generation).
—Data Book, page 15
I’VE NEVER BEEN INSIDE a police station before, but television prepared me for the Seventeenth Precinct: Two rough-looking benches line the hallway walls, the floor is composed of scuffed linoleum squares, and a uniformed officer eyes me from behind a glass partition.
He continues to regard me steadily as I approach, but waits for me to speak first. “I’m Shay Miller. I spoke to Detective Williams earlier today and she asked me to drop this off.”
I reach into my purse for the letter-size white envelope that contains Amanda’s necklace. I wrote DETECTIVE WILLIAMS on the outside so it won’t get lost a second time.
I’m about to slide it through the opening at the bottom of the glass when the officer says, “Hold on,” and reaches for the phone. He turns slightly, and I can’t hear any of the conversation.
He hangs up and swivels to face me again. “Detective Williams will be out soon.”
“Oh.” From my conversation with her earlier, I assumed I’d just be dropping it off so she could return it to Amanda’s family. But maybe she wants to collect it in person.
I look behind me, at the long, scarred wooden benches. They’re bolted to the ground.
I stand there for another second, then walk over and sit on the edge of the closest bench, still holding the envelope. I can feel the metal chain and the intricate charm through the thin paper.
Before I called Detective Williams, I stared at the necklace for a long time. It still looked to me like a blazing sun, with rays firing out in all directions. The gold is strong but delicate. It seems expensive, and I thought Amanda’s family might want it back as a memento.
I’d noticed one other thing: The chain was broken.
Maybe that’s why it had fallen off Amanda’s neck in the subway. But other possibilities had occurred to me on the walk to the police station: Someone could have ripped it off her neck. Or she could have yanked it away herself.
“Shay?” I look up and see Detective Williams striding through the security door. She’s got unlined dark skin and a close-cropped Afro. She’s wearing a crisp blue pantsuit—similar to the gray one she had on when I first met her—and the same impassive expression she wore when she questioned me on the subway platform after Amanda’s suicide.
“Come with me, please,” she says in her soft voice.
My brow furrows. What else can she need from me?
I follow her down a hallway lined with a few small, spare rooms—probably places where suspects are questioned—and into an open area filled with desks and chairs. It smells like french fries, and I spot a McDonald’s bag on the desk of an officer who’s simultaneously eating dinner and filling out paperwork.
“Have a seat.” She gestures to a chair. Her words could make it an invitation, but her tone straddles the edge of an order.
She walks around to the other side of the desk and sits down. She pulls her chair in closer, her movements slow and deliberate.
When she reaches for a notebook and pen in her top drawer, then fixes me with her inscrutable dark brown eyes, my mouth turns dry.
I can’t shake the sense that I’m in trouble.
The detective can’t suspect I had something to do with Amanda’s death. Can she?
She turns to the first blank page of the notebook. “Tell me again how you came to realize the necklace belonged to Amanda Evinger.”
“I saw this picture at her memorial ser—” The realization hits me: Detective Williams must be wondering why I went to a memorial for a woman I never met.
I haven’t done anything illegal, I think frantically. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I’m holding a broken necklace that was on Amanda, and I was beside her when she leaped to her death. When I reached out to try to grab her, could someone have thought I was pushing her?
My breathing is so ragged I worry it’ll seem like evidence of my guilt. Detective Williams is waiting. Not saying a word. Just looking at me with those impenetrable eyes.
“I know it sounds strange,” I blurt. “I just felt this—this connection to her because I was there right before she…” I can barely choke out the words. “That’s all it was. I went to pay my respects.”
The detective writes something down in her notebook. I’m desperate to see it, but I can’t read her tiny, squiggly letters—especially upside down. It seems to take her forever.
She lifts her head again. I can’t tell if she believes a word I’ve said. “How did you know about the memorial service?”
Inwardly I cringe. I’m digging myself into a deeper hole. My upper lip and brow are sweaty. My heart is pounding so hard I feel as if Detective Williams must be able to see it pulsing through my shirt—as if it’s another piece of evidence in the case she might be compiling. I doubt innocent people panic like this.
“Do I need a lawyer?” My voice is shaking.
She frowns. “Why would you think that?”
I push my glasses up higher on my nose and swallow hard. “Look, I just—I found her address after you gave me her name. I was wondering about her, and she lived near me. So I took a flower and left it on her doorstep. That’s where I saw the notice about the memorial service.”
I wonder if the detective already knows about the yellow zinnia I left, and the way I lied at the service about how I knew Amanda.
Detective Williams looks at me for a long, steady moment. “Anything else you want to tell me? Are you still hanging around her apartment?”