I can hear the distant rumbling of the wheels of the inbound train—it’s a familiar soundtrack to my daily life. I feel safe.
The woman glances my way and I notice she’s about my height—five feet ten—and age, but her hair is shorter and lighter than mine. Her face is pleasant; she’s the kind of person I’d ask for directions if I were lost.
I break eye contact with her and look down. Something is glinting against the dull concrete of the platform. It’s a piece of jewelry. At first I think it’s a bracelet, but when I bend over and scoop it up, I realize it’s a gold necklace with a dangling charm that looks like a blazing sun.
I wonder if the woman dropped it. I’m about to ask her when the roar of the incoming train grows louder.
She steps close to the edge of the platform.
My mind screams a warning, Too close!
In that instant, I realize she isn’t there to ride the subway.
I stretch out my hand toward her and yell something—“No!” or “Don’t!”—but it’s too late.
We lock eyes. The train appears in the mouth of the tunnel. Then she leaps.
For a split second she seems frozen, suspended in the air, her arms thrown overhead like a dancer.
The train shoots past, its wheels grinding frantically against the tracks, the high-pitched shriek louder than I’ve ever heard it.
My stomach heaves and I bend over and throw up. My body begins to shake uncontrollably, reacting to the horror as my mind frantically tries to process.
Someone is yelling over and over, “Call 911!”
The train stops. I force myself to look. There is no sign of the woman at all.
One second she existed, and the next, she’d been erased. I stagger over to a bench by the wall and collapse.
During everything that follows—while I give my statement to a police detective with an impassive face, am escorted past the crime-scene tape up to the street, and walk the seven blocks home—I can’t stop seeing the woman’s eyes right before she jumped. It wasn’t despair or fear or determination I saw in them.
They were empty.
CHAPTER TWO
CASSANDRA & JANE
AMANDA EVINGER WAS TWENTY-NINE. Single. Childless. She lived alone in a studio apartment in Murray Hill, not far from Grand Central Station. She worked as an emergency room nurse at City Hospital, an occupation so consuming and fast-paced it prevented her from forming close ties to her colleagues.
She seemed like the perfect candidate, until she threw herself under the wheels of a subway train.
Two nights after Amanda’s death, Cassandra and Jane Moore sit together on a couch in Cassandra’s Tribeca apartment, sharing a laptop computer.
The clean lines of the living room furniture are upholstered in dove gray and cream, and accented with a few bright pillows. Floor-to-ceiling windows invite plenty of light and afford sweeping views of the Hudson River.
The apartment is sleek and elegant, befitting its two occupants.
At thirty-two, Cassandra is two years older than Jane. It’s easily apparent the women—with their long, glossy black hair, gold-flecked brown eyes, and creamy skin—are sisters. But Cassandra is composed of sleek muscles, while Jane is softer and curvier, with a high, sweet voice.
Jane frowns as Cassandra scrolls through potential pictures. The only ones they possess of Amanda are recent—within the past few months: Amanda sitting cross-legged on a picnic blanket in Prospect Park; Amanda lifting a margarita in a toast at Jane’s birthday party; Amanda crossing the finish line of a charity walk for breast cancer research.
In most of the photos, she’s surrounded by the same six smiling young women—the group the Moore sisters have methodically been assembling. The women have different occupations and hail from vastly diverse backgrounds; but they have more important, hidden qualities in common.
“We need one of Amanda alone,” Jane says.
“Hang on.” Cassandra pulls up a picture of Amanda holding a calico cat, sitting in a pool of sunlight spilling in through a nearby window.
Jane leans forward and nods. “Good. Crop it a bit and no one will be able to tell where it was taken.”
The sisters fall silent as they stare at the photo. Just a few weeks ago, Amanda was sprawled in the gray chair adjacent to this very couch, which was the spot she usually chose when she came over. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her long legs over the chair’s arm as she talked about the elderly hit-and-run victim she’d helped save with four hours of frantic treatment. His daughter brought in dozens of homemade cookies today and left us the sweetest card! Amanda had said, her words tumbling out with her usual exuberance. It’s times like this when I love my job.
It seems impossible not only that Amanda is gone, but that she chose to end her life in such a spectacularly violent way.
“I never saw this coming,” Cassandra finally says.
“I guess we didn’t know Amanda as well as we thought,” Jane replies.
For the sisters, Amanda’s suicide triggered frantic efforts to answer questions: Where had she gone in the days before she died? Who had she talked to? Had she left any evidence behind—like a note of explanation?
They searched her apartment immediately, using their spare key to gain entrance. They retrieved Amanda’s laptop and asked one of the women in their close-knit group, an operational security consultant, to unlock it. She ran a dictionary attack, cycling through thousands of possible passwords until she cracked Amanda’s. Then the sisters examined Amanda’s communications. Unfortunately, Amanda’s phone was destroyed by the subway, so it couldn’t be scrutinized.
Within two hours her building was put under surveillance. The first visitor to it, Amanda’s mother, who took the train in from Delaware, was invited to tea by one of Amanda’s grieving friends. No helpful information was gleaned, even though Amanda’s mother changed the venue to a bar and stretched the conversation over two hours, during which time she consumed four glasses of Chardonnay.
The memorial service, which will take place on Thursday evening at a private club in Midtown, is a precautionary measure. It was Cassandra’s idea to hold the simple, nonreligious ceremony. Anyone connected to Amanda will likely show up.
The sisters, who now have access to Amanda’s contacts, will invite everyone Amanda corresponded with during the past six months.
Cassandra and Jane also plan to post printed invitations on the main door to Amanda’s apartment building, in the nurses’ break room at City Hospital, and in the locker room of the gym Amanda frequented.
At the memorial service, a guest book will be used to gather names of the mourners.
“We’ll get through this, right?” Jane asks Cassandra. Both sisters are exhausted; faint purple shadows have formed beneath their eyes, and Cassandra has lost a few pounds, making her cheekbones even more pronounced.
“We always do,” Cassandra replies.
“I’ll get us a glass of wine.” As Jane stands up, she gives Cassandra’s shoulder a squeeze.
Cassandra nods her thanks as she fits the photograph of Amanda into the template of the memorial-service notice on her screen. She proofs it a final time, even though she knows every word by heart.
Will it be enough? she wonders as she hits the print key.
If Amanda revealed something she shouldn’t have to someone—anyone—in the days before her death, will that individual feel compelled to come to her service?