An Anonymous Girl (31 page)

What I need to do now is find out which one of them, Dr. Shields or Thomas, first drew April into their warped triangle.

Because I’m not entirely convinced her death was a suicide.

Friday, December 21

Thomas is waiting on the steps of the town house.

His first words defuse the suspicion that formed when no traffic was encountered between Deco Bar and my home.

“My plan was foiled,” he says wryly as he wraps me in an embrace. It’s not dissimilar to the physical greeting you just received from your friend in the navy coat, Jessica.

“Oh?”

“I was hoping to get here first so I could run you a bath and open some champagne,” he says. “But my key didn’t work. Did you have the locks changed?”

It’s a stroke of luck that the new security measure coincides with the story created for Thomas during the cab ride back to the town house.

“I completely forgot to tell you! Here, come inside.”

He hangs his coat in the closet,
alongside the lighter ones you so cunningly noticed, before he is led into the study.

Instead of champagne, two snifters of brandy are poured from the bottle on the sidebar. A story like this calls for a bracing drink.

“You look distressed,” he says, taking a seat on the couch and patting the cushion beside him. “What is it, sweetheart?”

A soft sigh hints that it isn’t easy to begin.
“There’s this young woman who entered my study,” he is told. “It’s probably nothing . . .”

It’s better if he coaxes out the story; Thomas will believe he has a stake in it.

“What did she do?” he asks.

“Nothing yet. But last week, when I stepped out of the office for lunch, I saw her. She was standing across the street from my office. She just . . . watched me.”

A sip of brandy.
Thomas’s hand closing protectively over mine. The next few sentences are delivered with a slightly halting quality.

“There have been a few hang-ups on my phone as well. And then last Sunday, I saw her outside the town house. I have no idea how she obtained our home address.”

Thomas’s expression is attentive. Perhaps gears are beginning to spin in his head as he is led toward a conclusion
to a vexing puzzle. But he needs to hear more.

“For confidentiality, I can’t reveal much about her. But even during those initial survey questions, it was clear she had . . . issues.”

Thomas grimaces. “Issues? Like the other girl in your study?”

A nod provides the answer to his questions.

“That explains it,” he says. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I may have seen her, too. Does
she have dark curly hair?”

Now your appearances at the museum and diner have an explanation.

Downcast eyes camouflage the expression they contain: triumph.

Thomas likely imagines a swirl of other, troubling emotions that cannot be voiced due to professional rules of discretion. Actions always speak louder than words: Thomas’s sensible wife would not install a new lock without good
reason.

Thomas’s embrace feels like his voice did in the darkness on the first night we met. Finally, it feels like safety again.

“I’m going to keep her away from you,” Thomas says firmly.

“From us, don’t you mean? If she has followed you as well . . .”

“I think I should sleep here tonight. In fact, I insist. I can stay in the guest room if you’d prefer.”

His eyes contain hope.
My hand touches his cheek. Thomas’s skin is always so warm.

This moment feels suspended, infused with a crystalline quality.

My response is whispered. “No, I want you with me.”

You were the one who shaped tonight.
He’s a hundred percent devoted to you.

Jessica, everything is riding on your words.

Saturday, December 22

Is it ethical to pretend to have been friends with a dead girl in order to get information that could save you?

I sit across from Mrs. Voss in April’s childhood bedroom, which still has posters featuring inspirational sayings and collages of photos on the wall. A bookshelf is lined with novels, and there’s a dried corsage from a long-ago
dance hanging from a closet door handle. It’s almost as though the space has been preserved for April to walk in at any moment.

Mrs. Voss wears brown leather leggings and a winter-white sweater. The Voss family—Jodi is April’s mother and Mr. Voss’s much younger, second wife—lives in the penthouse of an apartment overlooking Central Park. April’s bedroom is bigger than my entire studio.

Mrs. Voss perches on the edge of April’s queen-size bed while I sit in the tufted light green chair by the desk across from her. As we talk, Mrs. Voss’s fingers never stop moving. She smooths imaginary creases in the comforter, straightens an old teddy bear, and rearranges throw pillows.

When I’d phoned this morning, I’d told her that I’d known April from when we’d both studied abroad in London
during our junior year of college. Mrs. Voss was eager to see me. To camouflage the fact that I was five years older than April, I’d turned to my makeup kit: a smooth, clear complexion, pink lips, and brown mascara on curled lashes helped peel a few years off my age. A high ponytail and jeans and my Converse sneakers completed the costume.

“It was so nice of you to come by,” Mrs. Voss says
for the second time while I sneak another look around the bedroom. I’m desperate to gather more clues about the girl I have so much in common with in some ways but couldn’t be more different from in others.

Then Mrs. Voss asks me a question: “Would you share a memory with me?”

“Let’s see, a memory . . .” I say. I feel perspiration prickle my forehead.

“Something I wouldn’t have known
about April?” she prompts.

Although I’ve never been to London, I remember April’s photos from that semester in her Instagram photos.

The lie slips off my tongue as smoothly as if it had been waiting there all along. Dr. Shields’s tests have taught me how to play a role, but that doesn’t erase the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “She kept trying to make the guards at Buckingham Palace
laugh.”

“She did? What did she do?” Mrs. Voss is nakedly eager for hidden details about her daughter. I guess because there will be no memories of April formed in the future, she wants to collect as many as she can from the past.

I glance at a framed poster in the corner of April’s room that has the following quote in a flowing cursive:
Sing like no one is listening . . . Love like you’ve
never been hurt . . . Dance like nobody’s watching.

I want to pick a detail that will make Mrs. Voss feel good. I rationalize that maybe if she can imagine her daughter in a happy moment, it’ll offset some of the immorality of what I’m doing.

“Oh, she did the funniest dance,” I say. “The guards didn’t even smile, but April swore she saw the corner of one of their mouth’s twitch. That’s
why it’s such a great memory . . . I couldn’t stop cracking up.”

“Really?” Mrs. Voss leans forward. “But she hated to dance! I wonder what got into her?”

“It was a dare.” I need to derail this avenue of conversation. I didn’t come here to share phony stories with a grieving mother.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral,” I say. “I’ve been living in California and I just got
back to town.”

“Here,” Mrs. Voss says. She gets off the bed and walks over to the desk behind me. “Would you like a program from the service? There are photos in it of April through the years. There are even some from her semester in London.”

I stare at the pale pink cover. There’s an embossed drawing of a dove over the name
Katherine April Voss
and then a quote written in italics:
And
in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
At the bottom are the dates of April’s birth and death.

“What a beautiful quote,” I murmur, not knowing if that’s the right thing to say.

But Mrs. Voss nods eagerly. “April came over a few months before she died and asked me if I’d ever heard it before.” Mrs. Voss eyes grow faraway and she smiles. “I told her, of course, that
it was from a Beatles song called ‘The End’—not that she’d know because they were well before her time. So we downloaded the song on her iPhone and played it together. We each put in an earbud to listen.”

Mrs. Voss wipes away a tear. “After she— Well, I remembered that day, and the quote seemed perfect.”

The Beatles,
I think, remembering how Thomas had sung along to “Come Together” in
the bar on the night we were together. He’s obviously a big fan, so he must have sung “The End” to April on the night they met and slept together. I can’t suppress a shudder; it’s another eerie similarity between me and Subject 5.

I tuck the program in my purse. How awful it would be for Mrs. Voss to know that the quote is intricately connected to the whole sinister web that ended in her daughter’s
death.

“Were you in touch with April much over the spring?” Mrs. Voss asks me. She’s back on the bed now; her thin fingers keep worrying the silky tassel on a throw pillow.

I shake my head. “Not really. I was in a bad relationship with this guy and I sort of lost touch with my friends.”

Take the bait,
I think.

“Oh, you girls.” Mrs. Voss shakes her head. “April didn’t have a lot
of luck with men, either. She was so sensitive. She was always getting hurt.”

I nod.

“I actually didn’t even know she was interested in anyone,” Mrs. Voss says. “But after . . . well, one of her friends told me she was . . .”

I hold my breath, hoping she’ll continue. But she just stares into space.

I furrow my brow, like something has just occurred to me.

“Actually, April aid
mention a guy she liked,” I say. “Wasn’t he a little older?”

Mrs. Voss nods. “I think so . . .” Her voice trails off. “The worst part is not knowing. I wake up every morning thinking:
Why
?”

I have to look away from her shattered eyes.

“She was always so emotional,” Mrs. Voss said. She picks up the teddy bear and hugs it to her chest. “It’s no secret she’d been in and out of therapy.”

She glances at me questioningly and I nod again, like April had shared this information with me.

“But she hadn’t tried to hurt herself in years. Not since high school. It seemed like she was getting better. She was looking for a new job . . . She must have been planning this, though, because the police said she had taken all that Vicodin. I don’t even know how she got the pills.” Mrs. Voss
drops her head into her hands and releases a small sob.

So the police did investigate, I think. Given that April had tried to hurt herself in the past, it probably was a suicide. It should make me feel safe, but something still isn’t adding up.

Mrs. Voss lifts her head. Her eyes are red-rimmed. “I know you hadn’t seen her in a while, but didn’t she sound happy to you?” she asks, sounding
desperate. I wonder if she has anyone else to talk to about April. Thomas had said April wasn’t close to her father, and probably April’s real friends have moved on with their lives.

“Yes, she did seem happy,” I whisper. The only way I can keep from bursting into tears and running out of the room is by telling myself that maybe the information I’ll get could help Mrs. Voss in her search for
answers, too.

“That’s why it surprised me that April was seeing a psychiatrist,” Mrs. Voss says. “She showed up at the funeral and introduced herself to us. She was stunningly beautiful, and so kind.”

My heart skips a beat.

There’s only one person this could be.

“Have you talked with her recently?” I ask. I make sure my voice remains soft and uniform.

Mrs. Voss nods. “I reached
out to her in the fall. It was April’s birthday, October 2. It was such a hard day. She would have been twenty-four.”

She sets the teddy bear back down. “We’d always do a mother-daughter spa day on her birthday. Last year she picked this awful light-blue nail polish shade that I told her looked like an Easter egg.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe we actually had a little argument about
that.”

“So did you see the psychiatrist that day?” I ask.

“We met in her office,” Mrs. Voss says. “Before, when April had gone to therapy, we always knew about it. We paid for it. So why was it different this time? I wanted to know what she and April talked about.”

“Did Dr. Shields tell you?” I ask.

I immediately realize my mistake in giving the therapist’s name. I flinch, waiting
for Mrs. Voss to notice.

How can I explain it? I can’t say April mentioned the name of her psychiatrist to me months ago and I’ve remembered all this time. Mrs. Voss will never believe it; minutes ago I told her I’d lost touch with April.

Mrs. Voss is going to know I’m an impostor. She’ll be furious, as she’ll have every right to be. What kind of sick person fakes a friendship with a dead
girl?

But Mrs. Voss doesn’t seem to catch my slip.

She shakes her head slowly. “I asked if I could see her notes from April’s sessions. I thought there could be something in there, something I didn’t know about that could help explain why April did it.”

I’m holding my breath. Dr. Shields is so scrupulous, her notes would detail the date when she first saw April. They could reveal whether
Thomas or Dr. Shields was the one who drew April in. If Dr. Shields initiated the contact, she’s probably even more dangerous than I thought.

“Did she share the notes?” I ask.

I’m pushing too hard; Mrs. Voss looks at me curiously. But she continues.

“No, she reached for my hand and told me again how sorry she was for my loss. She said my questions were natural, but that part of the
healing process was needing to accept that I might never have an answer. No matter how hard I pressed, she refused to let me see them. She said it would violate confidentiality mandates.”

I exhale a little too loudly. Of course Dr. Shields would safeguard her notes. But was it because she was protecting April’s secrets, or was she protecting herself—or her husband?