Zara spends Christmas Eve wandering around. She takes the subway, packed with last-minute shoppers and holiday travelers with bulky bags, but when Eli’s stop comes, she can’t get herself to move toward the door.
Zara made her choice when Eli walked out of the Aurelia. There’s nothing she can do to change that now.
She pockets Eli’s Christmas present: two tickets to Hamilton.
Zara spent a ridiculous amount of her Aurelia money on them, but she’s never really had money to spend before and this is the best thing she could imagine. Sitting in the dark with Eli. Whispering together before the curtain goes up. Remembering why they do this — why they love this. Now it seems so stupid and hopeful. The date on the tickets is April 16.
She drifts back to Kestrel’s apartment. The little potted tree twinkles on the coffee table. There’s a black-and-white movie on in the background — Miracle on 34th Street — but Kestrel isn’t watching. She’s looking out the window. The moon is a lidless eye, and Kestrel has gotten into a staring competition.
“You’re back late,” she says without turning around. “Did you make up with your girlfriend?”
The question hits Zara like a dropped counterweight. No one has ever called Eli that — not outside Zara’s own head. And now it’s gone: the girl, the word, the possibilities that went with it.
Zara never should have believed that they could make it through this show together. Eli was right, to stay away from her for so long. To keep her distance. Her silence.
“Who called her that?” Zara asks.
“You mean besides everyone? The entire crew saw you two holding hands. Not. Very. Discreet.”
“Well, she’s gone,” Zara says, stubbing the toes of one boot against the heel of the other so she can kick it off. Her toes slip, and even that tiny failure floods her with anger. “I don’t think she’ll ever talk to me again. Eli’s like that. All or nothing.”
“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think?” The irony of Kestrel being the one to say it makes Zara laugh so hard that she has to pretend she was coughing.
Kestrel twists to reveal that she’s curled up around a dusty bottle of Scotch. She offers it to Zara with a flourish. “My gift to you.”
Zara considers the bottle. She considers the last few days of her life. She takes a tentative sip. “Tastes like hellfire.” It’s a very Eli way to think of it, which is comforting and painful all at once. She doesn’t want to stop thinking Eli thoughts. She doesn’t want to go back to the Aurelia without her.
Zara could have walked away and hoped that Leopold would spare their careers. That he wouldn’t hurt them in even worse ways. But she couldn’t take that chance.
She takes another — longer — swig. It chokes her. She remembers how hot her throat was, screaming in Leopold’s office.
“Good, right?” Kestrel says. “Mama left it in the liquor cabinet. And she did not sufficiently hide the key.” Zara pulls herself into a tight shape on the couch. At least Kestrel knows that Zara’s heart is broken — she doesn’t have to pretend. To hide. She’s done so much of that, and now the sobs come out of her in jagged slices. She wonders if anything could make the burn in her chest go away. The Scotch just makes it burn harder.
Kestrel waits until she’s done. She stares at the moon, patiently.
“If it makes you feel better, you can ask me whatever you want about Barrett. I’d like for him to be strung up, preferably by his nether regions. I’ll tell you anything.” She stretches her fingers wide, a plea for Zara to give back the Scotch. “I took a Xanax, a real one this time. I am so very relaxed and ready to talk.”
“You’re not supposed to mix those,” Zara says, stuffing the bottle between the couch cushions. She’s suddenly furious with Kestrel, the full force of her emotions swinging around to land on her roommate. “That’s how Enna died. You know that, right?”
Kestrel waves a hand back and forth, like Zara’s words are annoying smoke that got in her eyes. “Ask me stuff.”
Zara knows that she should start with Barrett’s connection to Leopold, how much he knew about Roscoe and Enna, but a different question slips to the head of the line.
Zara can understand wading through this much pain for someone like Eli. But . . . Barrett? “Why him?”
For a minute Zara thinks that Kestrel won’t answer. When the words come, they’re messy and true, the opposite of the precise, grand way Kestrel talks onstage. “He knew I wanted Echo. I was trying to act so indifferent about it, so fine, but he could tell. He said that he and I were more alike than I could ever guess. Ambitious. Overlooked.” Kestrel runs one long, thin finger down a streak of moonlight on her leg. “Barrett came to the city thinking Leopold would give him a job. That was all he wanted. A chance to prove himself. When Leopold said no, Barrett threatened to tell everyone the truth.”
“About Barrett being his son?” Zara asks. The only thing keeping her upright now is the idea of Leopold being punished.
Paying for everything he’s done.
Kestrel shrugs. “Lots of people have illegitimate children. No one would be so very shocked by Leopold Henneman’s bastard.” The word sounds like an antique — something that should be kept in prop storage and dusted off for period pieces.
“All right,” Zara says. “So what’s the secret?”
Kestrel leans forward, as if whatever she knows is weighty and wants to tip itself out. “There is no Leopold Henneman. He invented himself out of thin air and fake European ancestors. His mother was a nurse. His father was a drunk.” Kestrel’s eyes glitter with a kind of hard glee. “Here’s the best part: he’s from Indiana.”
Zara should feel the same bitter delight as Kestrel, but all she’s left with is a frantic desire to tell Eli.
What would Eli say next? “You know that’s blackmail, right? Barrett was blackmailing Leopold.”
Kestrel’s response is half whine, half slur. “The way Barrett said it, it sounded so reeeeeasonable.”
Zara decides to move on. “So what happened?”
“Leopold stuck him in props and kept him there,” Kestrel says. “Barrett has loathed his father ever since.”
Zara’s thoughts come full circle, back to the deaths. “Maybe Barrett trashed my room, stole your pills, did everything Leopold told him, because he thought Leopold would finally give him a better job. That’s what he wanted, right? What the blackmail was all about? Did Barrett say anything about a promotion?”
Kestrel nods, biting her lip until it glistens in the moonlight. “He said things were about to get better for him. He made it sound like I would be there with him as long as . . .” She sighs, like she can finally hear how silly the words sound. “As long as we kept it secret for a while.”
Zara winces. She wishes she’d never asked Eli to keep their relationship a secret — but what choice did they have? Maybe they should have waited until Echo and Ariston was over. It seems so obvious now, but when she was staring into Eli’s eyes in the shine of a lantern under the stage, the thought never even occurred to her.
She wants to crawl into bed, nurse her heartache and her brand-new Scotch headache, and forget. She wants all this to disappear, the way the snow does at the end of the winter. Dirty and gritty and built-up and then — gone. But her life isn’t going to work that way.
Zara needs to wash it clean. Otherwise what happened to Zara and Eli, what happened to Toby and Michael, what happened to Carl and Enna, what happened to Meg, will just keep happening.
Leopold killed two people. He might kill another one on opening night. Zara can’t let this go. Not yet.
“I need to ask you something,” Zara says.
Kestrel speaks with her eyes closed. “I fell asleep.”
“It involves getting back at Barrett.”
The corners of Kestrel’s lips hook upward slightly. “I’m listening.”
Zara has an idea — a way to connect Enna’s scribbled words to Leopold. She should have thought of this sooner. Not just what the words meant, but who they pointed to. “The production of Hamlet that Enna was in,” Zara says. “The one where she played Gertrude. I need to know who at the Aurelia was involved with that play.”
Kestrel is quiet for so long that Zara thinks she might have actually fallen asleep. And then, as softly as the snow that has just decided to start falling, Kestrel whispers, “Leopold. He directed it.”