CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
Wednesday, December 19
Dr. Shields’s latest gift feels more dangerous to me than flirting with a married man or revealing painful secrets or being trapped in a drug addict’s apartment.
It was bad enough when my own life was tangled up with Dr. Shields and her experiments. But now she’s linking herself to my family. They probably feel like they’ve won the lottery with this trip. I keep hearing Becky squeal: “We’re going to the ocean!”
As Ricky said when he grabbed my phone and stood over me in his kitchen, Nothing’s ever free in life.
I’m unable to stop seeing the image of Dr. Shields and Thomas kissing outside the restaurant as I walk home after following her. I imagine them at a romantic table for two while the sommelier uncorks a bottle of red wine. I picture Thomas nodding his approval as he tastes it. Then perhaps he cups both of her hands in his to warm them. I would give anything to know what they are saying to each other.
Am I the topic of their conversation? I wonder. Do they lie to each other, just as they are lying to me?
When I reach my apartment building, I yank the security door closed so hard behind me that it jars my shoulder in the socket. I wince and rub it, then continue to the stairs.
I wind my way around to the fourth-floor landing, then step into the hallway. Halfway down, about three doors from my apartment, something small and soft-looking rests on the carpet. For a second I think it’s a mouse. Then I realize it’s a woman’s gray glove.
Hers, I think as I freeze. The color, the fabric; I recognize her style instantly.
I swear I can smell her distinctive perfume. Why is she back at my apartment?
But as I draw closer, I realize I’m wrong. The leather is thick and cheap; it’s the kind of glove someone would buy from a street vendor. It must belong to one of my neighbors. I leave it for them to retrieve.
When I reach my apartment and open the door, I hesitate in the entryway. I look around. Everything appears exactly as I left it, and Leo runs to greet me as usual. Still, I engage both of my locks instead of waiting until bedtime, like I usually do.
My nightstand lamp is always on for Leo when I know I’ll be home after dark. Now I also flick on the brighter overhead light, then I turn on the one in the bathroom. I hesitate, then jerk back the shower curtain. I’d just feel better being able to see into every corner of my studio.
As I walk toward the kitchen, I brush by the chair where I drape clothes when I’m feeling too lazy to hang them in the closet.
Dr. Shields’s wrap is there, peeking out from beneath the sweater I wore yesterday. I avert my eyes and continue on to the cabinet, where I grab a glass and fill it with water. I drink it down in three thirsty gulps, then I dig out a legal pad from the bottom of my junk drawer.
I take it to my bed and sit cross-legged on top of my comforter. The notes written on the page are a series of numbers that I briefly recall as an attempt to figure out a budget. I can’t believe that merely six weeks ago, I was worrying about how to pay Antonia for Becky’s occupational therapy, and hoping my BeautyBuzz appointments would align so I wouldn’t have to lug my makeup case too far. In hindsight, my life was so quiet; my problems, so ordinary. Then came that impulsive moment when I grabbed Taylor’s phone off her chair and replayed Ben’s message. Those ten seconds changed my life.
I need to be the opposite of impulsive now.
I tear off the top sheet and draw a line straight down the middle of the new page with Dr. Shields’s name atop one column and Thomas’s name atop the other. Then I sit cross-legged on my bed and write down everything I know about both of them.
Dr. Lydia Shields: 37, West Village town house, NYU adjunct professor. Psychiatrist, with an office in Midtown. Researcher, published author. Designer clothes, expensive tastes. Former assistant named Ben Quick. Married to Thomas. I underline that last detail four times.
I add question marks after other possibilities. Influential father? Client folders? Story behind Subject 5?
I stare at the scant cluster of information on the page. Is that truly everything I know about the woman who holds so many of my secrets?
I move on to Thomas. I grab my laptop and try googling him, but although I get several hits for Thomas Shields, they are all the wrong men.
Perhaps Dr. Shields kept her maiden name.
I remember a few things from our encounter at the bar: Rides a motorcycle. Knows all the words to the Beatles song “Come Together.” Drinks draft IPA beer. And then some details from our time in my apartment: Likes dogs. In good shape. Scar on shoulder from surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.
I think for a moment, then add: Reads The New York Times at Ted’s Diner. Goes to the gym. Wears glasses. Married to Dr. Shields. I underline that last detail four times, too.
I continue: Late thirties? Occupation? Where does he live?
I know even less about Thomas than I do about Dr. Shields.
There are only two other people I’ve heard about who are connected to them. The first, Ben, doesn’t want to talk to me any more than he already has.
The second can’t talk to me.
Subject 5. Who was she?
I peel myself off my bed and begin to pace the ten steps back and forth across my studio, trying to remember everything Thomas said in the Conservatory.
She was young and lonely. Lydia gave her gifts. She wasn’t close to her father. This is where she killed herself.
I hurry back to my bed and reach for my laptop again. The two-paragraph article in the New York Post I find by googling “West Village Conservatory” and “suicide” and “June” reveals that Thomas told the truth about one thing at least: A young woman died in the Conservatory. Her body was found later that same night by a couple out for a stroll in the moonlight. At first they thought she was sleeping.
The article also gives me her full name: Katherine April Voss.
I close my eyes and silently repeat it to myself.
She was only twenty-three, and she went by her middle name. The article holds few other details, aside from listing the lineage of her parents and much older step-siblings.
But it has given me enough to begin tracing the trajectory of her life, and where and how it intersected with Dr. Shields’s.
I rub my forehead as I contemplate my next step. A dull throbbing has formed between my temples, maybe because I haven’t eaten much today, but my stomach is too knotted to tolerate food now.
As desperate as I am for information, I don’t want to reach out to April’s grieving parents yet. But there are other threads I can pursue. Like most twenty-somethings, April established an active social media presence.
Within a minute, I find her Instagram account. It’s open for anyone to follow.
I pause before viewing the images, just as I did when I first began to investigate Dr. Shields online.
I have no idea what I’ll see. I feel as if I’m crossing a threshold from which I won’t be able to return.
I tap on her name. Tiny square photos fill my screen.
I enlarge the most recent one, the last photograph April ever posted, as I make the decision to work backward in time.
It is dated June 2. Six days before she died.
The sight of her smiling face makes me flinch, even though it looks like the kind of picture I might take with Lizzie, two girlfriends clinking margarita glasses and having a good time. It seems so ordinary, given what happened less than a week later. The caption April wrote reads: With @Fab24—BFFs! A dozen people commented, stuff like luv this and sooo pretty.
I stare at April’s features. This is the girl behind the number assigned by Dr. Shields. She had long, straight dark hair and pale skin. She was thin; very thin. Her brown eyes appear too large and round for her narrow face.
I write down Fab24/best friend on a fresh sheet of the notepad under April’s name.
I scroll through the photos one by one, scrutinizing each for clues to record: A background location. The name of a restaurant on a printed napkin. The people who make repeated appearances.
By the time I’ve reviewed the fifteenth picture, I know that April also wore silver hoop earrings and owned a black leather jacket. She loved cookies and dogs, just like I do.
I return to the photo of April and Fab24. I know it’s not my imagination. April looks happy, genuinely happy. And then I spot it—the fringe of a taupe wrap on the chair behind her.
My head jerks up at the sound of footsteps in the hallway.
They seem to be heading toward my apartment.
I wait for a knock, but it doesn’t come.
Instead, there’s a rustling sound.
I unfold my legs and ease off my bed. I creep across the floor, hoping the whisper of my socks against the wood isn’t audible.
My door contains a peephole. As I move to position my eye behind it, I’m gripped by the fear that all I’ll see is Dr. Shields’s piercing blue eye filling the other side of the thin glass.
I can’t do it. My breathing sounds so ragged I’m certain she can hear it through the door.
My adrenaline surges as I press my ear to the door. Nothing.
If she’s there, I know she won’t leave until I do what she wants. I imagine she can see straight through into my apartment, just like she was able to watch me through the computer all those months ago. I have to look. I force myself to turn my head and bring my eye nearer to the peephole. My chest tightens as I gaze through it.
No one is there.
The absence of anyone feels almost as jarring as a presence would be. I step back, gasping. Am I losing my mind? Dr. Shields and Thomas are at dinner together. I saw them. That much is true.
Leo’s high, staccato bark pulls me out of my thoughts. He’s staring at me with a quizzical expression.
“Shh,” I whisper to him.
I tiptoe over to the window. I pull down the slat of a blind with my fingertips and peek out. My eyes scan the street: There are a few women getting into a taxi, and a man out walking his dog. Nothing appears amiss.
I ease out my fingers and scoop up Leo, bringing him to bed with me.
He’ll need a walk soon. I’ve never been afraid of taking him out at night. But now I don’t like the thought of descending the stairs, with blind turns at every corner, and making my way down a street that, by then, may or may not be empty.
Dr. Shields knows exactly where I live. She’s been here before. She knew how to get to my family. Maybe she knows even more about me than I ever imagined.
Ben is right. I need to get my file.
I continue looking through April’s photos, enlarging one so I can make out the lettering on a street name. Then I come to a picture taken in early May, of a guy asleep in bed with a floral comforter rumpled around his bare torso. A boyfriend? I wonder.
His face is mostly obscured because of the angle of the photo; I can just see a sliver of it.
My gaze roams over the nightstand next to him. It holds a few books—I jot down their titles—a bracelet, and a half-full water glass.
And one other thing. A pair of glasses.
My body is collapsing; it’s as though I’ve stepped off the precipice into thin air and now I can’t stop my plummet.
My hand trembles as I enlarge the photo.
The glasses are tortoiseshell.
I zoom in on the sleeping man, the one April presumably photographed in her bed.
It’s not possible. I want to grab Leo and run, but to where? My parents would never understand. Lizzie already left town for the holidays. And Noah . . . I barely know him. I can’t involve him in this.
I thrust away my computer, but I can’t stop seeing the straight line of his nose, and the hair falling over his forehead.
The man in the photo is Thomas.