I want to be there for Ellie, but I don’t know how. I see her suffering. For the first few days, all she did was sleep. She slept so much that I had to come into the room and actually check that she was still breathing to make sure that she was okay. She was. She has always been a big sleeper, but I’ve never seen anything like this. And now, she seems better. She’s not sleeping anymore. She has showered. She washed her hair and changed her clothes. Even put on some makeup. But she’s still not better. Somewhere behind that facade, Ellie is lost. And I don’t know how to get her back.

I drive to the cemetery where they are going to have Caroline’s funeral. Her mom organized the whole thing and had her assistant call to invite Ellie. It’s about two hours away, near her parents’ summer house in the Hamptons. Neither of us says anything for close to an hour. Ellie, because she doesn’t want to, and me because I don’t even know where to begin. Some topics seem too stupid to even approach. Others are too painful.

“This was one of Caroline’s favorite places in the world,” Ellie says. “She even told me that she wished she grew up here.”

“The Hamptons?” I ask.

“Yep. She used to come here when she knew no one else would be here and just enjoy the place. Despite her big social life, she actually had a weakness for small town life. She often talked about how nice it would be to get a house and a small garden and chickens.”

I nod. I find this hard to believe, given the person that I met, but who the hell really knows anyone? Ellie would of course know her better than I ever could.

“I like the Hamptons, too,” I say, having nothing else to really add. I don’t know if I should ask her more about Caroline or just let her bring it up herself. Maybe all she wants to do right now is to forget. Not forget about Caroline, but forget that this horrible thing ever happened to her best friend.

---

The service is cordial and respectful. Since everyone there is pretty much white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant, very few people shed any tears or express their emotions out loud. Ellie is having a hard time keeping her feelings at bay, but she squeezes my hand really hard from time to time and I whisper that it’s all going to be okay.

“Thank you for coming, Ellie.” Caroline’s mom, Miriam, gives us both a quick hug. She’s an attractive woman in her early fifties with a slim waist and big black sunglasses that make her look a lot like Jackie Kennedy. We both give her our condolences and tell her what a wonderful service this was. There isn’t really much else to say in situations like these is there?

“What did the toxicology result say?” Ellie asks just as Miriam is about to walk away.

“Pardon me?”

Ellie repeats the question without batting an eye. I squeeze her arm, trying to convey that this might not be the most appropriate time for this conversation. But she doesn’t really pay attention.

Miriam takes a deep breath. “They said it was an accidental overdose,” she says. “She had a bunch of pills in her system. Oxy. Percocet. They said that she took a bit too much.”

Accidental overdoses are a dime a dozen, especially with our generation of people. They happen all the time. I know of at least three people from high school who died from them. But knowing this isn’t exactly going to make Ellie feel any better.

When Miriam walks away, Ellie walks away shaking her head.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, keenly aware of how odd this question sounds at a funeral.

“Something’s wrong. She didn’t die of an accidental overdose.”

“How do you know?”

Ellie shrugs and looks somewhere into the distance. “I don’t know. I just do. She was always very careful with any sort of medication. She knew of a few people who overdosed and she never even mixed aspirin with booze.”

“Well, she didn’t say that she had any alcohol in her system,” I say.

“I know. It just doesn’t seem right.”

“What are you saying, Ellie? That this wasn’t an accident?”

“No,” she says, shrugging. “I don’t know.”

On the drive home, I keep wondering what Ellie is thinking. If she doesn’t think that this was an accidental overdose, there are really only two possible explanations. One is that it was on-purpose. And an on-purpose overdose is a suicide. That word sends shivers through my body. I look over at Ellie. Is this what she’s thinking? That Caroline actually killed herself on purpose? I don’t know Caroline well. Actually, I don't really know her at all. Does she have a history of depression? Is this something that she thought about before? I have no idea. She definitely didn’t seem like a depressive. She was always excited and fun and ready to have a good time. But people are so much more complicated below the surface, aren’t they?

The other possible explanation is that someone else did this to her. Someone put those drugs in her system. And that’s what we would call murder. When Ellie found her, she was already cold. She did CPR, but she was dead for at least a few hours already. Whatever Ellie did for her was futile. Could someone else have been in their apartment before Ellie came home? Of course. Caroline had lots of friends. And she could’ve gone out and picked up some guy and brought him home. Perhaps it could’ve been a girl, but who the hell are we kidding? It’s almost always a guy. But who would do this to her and why? I don’t know Caroline well enough to even come close to coming up with some kind of motive. I want to ask Ellie about a million questions. When I look over, I see her leaning her head on the seat belt and aimlessly staring out of the window. Perhaps this isn’t the best time.

After saying hello to her doorman, we head toward the elevator.

“Excuse me? Ms. Rhodes?” he calls out. Ellie turns around.

“This came today by courier,” he says and hands her an envelope.

“Thank you,” she says.

She tosses the letter on the kitchen island and heads to her room. A few days ago, Miriam came by with three movers and packed up all of Caroline’s things. When Ellie saw what she was doing, she went to her room and stayed there until they left. Within a couple of hours, the whole room was stripped. They took everything. Down to the window treatments and the hooks that kept the paintings up on the walls. The place was left entirely barren. Miriam told me to tell Ellie that if she wants to live here for the rest of the lease, she’s more than happy to pay for Caroline’s part of the rent. She was just trying to be nice, but Ellie started to cry when I told her this bit. She hasn’t been inside Caroline’s room since then and hasn’t even opened the door once.

My mind is spinning. I decide that the best thing for me to do at this junction is to just flip on the television and watch something stupid. The stupider the better. Grabbing a bag of chips from the pantry, I glance at the letter. Ellie usually gets all of her mail through the post office. Why was this one delivered by courier? Oh, shit, I hope it’s not Blake’s lawyers serving her with a lawsuit. That’s the last thing she needs right now.

I pick up the envelope. When I read the return name and address, my heart skips a beat and all the blood drains from my face. It’s from Caroline.