Tangerine

We had come to the end.

Leaning down I gave one final push, the strain, the effort running through each and every part of my body, every sinewy muscle, as if it were required, necessary in absolution of my crime. I stood still, covered in dirt and grime, listening for the splash below, waiting to hear the heralding of the end.

There was nothing.

Afterward I stood on the edge of the cliff, looking out at the ocean below, trying to read my future. Alice would not be coming with me, I knew. We would not be traveling to Spain, would not be eating tapas or drinking wine under the setting sun. Paris, I realized dully, would never happen. I saw clearly, for perhaps the first time, that the life that I had envisioned for us would never come to pass. And what was more, I saw why—it was Alice. She was the one who had run away to Tangier, who had left me, alone and broken, in the cold streets of New York. It had been her choices, her decisions that had led us here. The only thing I had done, that I had ever done, was try to do what was best for us, to create the life that she had claimed to want. Only she hadn’t wanted it, not really. I thought back to her words the other night at the bar and the realization hit, full and hard, so that I heard the ringing, tasted the coppery, metallic tang of it—the truth—in my mouth. She had never wanted me.

I turned away from the ocean, from what I had done.

I was not one for last rites and I knew there was nothing to say that would be honest and good. The most I could muster, as I walked away from the breaking light of morning, was that he was with a woman he had loved, for better or for worse, and whatever that love had meant to him, he would be with her, Tangier, for the rest of time.

In that, John was the luckiest one among us.



Fifteen



Alice



I ARRIVED AT THE DOOR, OUT OF BREATH. THAT MORNING HAD been spent at the bank, trying to withdraw what money was left in the account that I had shared with John, before it was time to leave Tangier for good. I had been dismayed, at first, to find out just how much John had run through, the number causing me to start in confusion as I puzzled over what he had done with the allowance that Aunt Maude had wired each month. At first I had thought of Sabine, had wondered whether she had been another beneficiary who had profited from my parents’ trust. The idea had made me ill, but then I remembered the sight of her face—about what Lucy had claimed—before she had fallen, so young, so frightened, and I no longer worried about how much she may or may not have received.

I turned the key into the lock, moving quickly, wanting to make sure the flat was tidy before Aunt Maude arrived. I had received a telegram from her only the day before, and though I had planned to meet her at the dock, I had been met with a firm refusal, Maude insisting that I needn’t trouble myself, that a taxi would be suitable and she would meet me at the flat.

I only hoped that Lucy would be out.

We had fallen into a pattern, over the last several days. Lucy rose early, disappearing for most of the afternoon, returning only after I had already secured myself behind my locked bedroom door each night. I had worried, at first, wondering whether I should be wary, whether I should be concerned that she did not seek my company as she once had but rather seemed to run from it, anxious to pass the day away from me. It was strange and so unlike her, but I had decided, in the end, that my time would be better spent cleaning, packing, preparing myself for my aunt’s arrival and my ensuing exodus from Tangier. For the moment when I would no longer have to concern myself with Lucy Mason, ever again.

I stepped into the hallway and stopped. There were voices coming from the living room. A bit of laughter and then a rushed word or two, spoken in a tenor that I recognized as belonging to Aunt Maude. My stomach lurched as I moved quickly, wondering how on earth Lucy had known, wondering too what she had done, what she had said to make Aunt Maude laugh like that—a sound I could not remember hearing in all the years I had known her.

They sat together on the sofa, the two of them, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a tray of tea and biscuits before them.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

Aunt Maude looked up, startled. “Alice, there you are.” She stood, crossed the distance between us, and gave me a brief, perfunctory hug. “I was early, but Sophie was here to let me in.” She frowned at my expression, which was, I knew, frozen in fear, in terror—at finding Maude here, with her, and all the implications that hung around that one simple fact. “Alice, what’s happened? You’ve gone pale.” She began to step toward me, saying, “The police have told you, then?”

I looked at Lucy, sitting there, perched on the edge of the sofa. She was, I noticed, wearing that same black, belted dress she had first arrived in. Her disguise, I realized now. “That’s not Sophie Turner,” I replied, ignoring my aunt’s question.

Maude frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?” She turned around, toward Lucy. “Do you have any idea?”

Lucy’s face collapsed with concern. “I think perhaps it’s the stress of the situation. As I said on the telephone, she hasn’t been herself since John’s disappearance.”

“She’s lying,” I snapped, so that Maude turned to me in surprise. “Everything Lucy says is a lie, it always has been.”

“Alice,” Maude began, quietly, “I think you’re confused, dear. I think you’re mixing up what happened with John with what happened before, with Tom.”

“No, no, I’m not,” I said, shaking my head.

“Yes, dear,” she replied, her hands clutching at her throat, that same gesture of worry, the one trait that we shared, the one visible proof that the same blood ran through our veins. “You told me yourself about Sophie staying with you, only a few days ago. Don’t you remember?”

I shook my head, unable, in that moment, to find a way out of my own lies. And then I remembered her earlier words. “Have the police told me what?” I asked.

She stopped, confusion sweeping her features. “I assumed that was why you looked so upset. That you had just come from the police.”

“What’s happened?” I demanded.

Lucy stood. “Alice, the police were here earlier. I’ve told your aunt what they came to see you about—a group of fishermen found him, down by the port. John, I mean.” She paused, her face a picture of concern. “They’ve been looking for you.”

“For me?” I asked.

“Yes, Alice,” Maude replied. “They need you to identify him.”

I had been right, then. John was dead, just as Tom was dead.

I crossed the distance between us in only a few short steps, ignoring the shock on my aunt’s face, the amused surprise on Lucy’s own.

I grabbed at her handbag, tearing it away from her.

“Alice,” Maude cried, “what are you doing?”

I ignored her, rummaging through the bag, searching for what had to be there, knowing that not even she could have foreseen this. “Her passport,” I said, my hand grasping onto the small booklet at last. I tossed the handbag aside, watching Lucy flinch as it clattered onto the ground, a silver compact landing facedown, its powder crumbling, covering the tiled floor. “Here,” I said, thrusting the booklet toward my aunt. My hand faltered, though only for a moment, remembering as I did so the incidents at Bennington with the bracelet, with the photographs. I brushed away a stray piece of hair that clung, stubbornly, to the sweat on my forehead. It did not matter, I reminded myself. That was a different time, a different circumstance. Back then Lucy had planned it, plotted each and every step, so that there was nothing I could do but fall into the trap she had set for me. Now, she was acting only on instinct. She was reacting to my refusal to yield, the denial of which had caught her off guard, unaware. I could see it, written plainly across her face.

“Open it,” I commanded my aunt. “Open it and you’ll see she’s lying. You’ll see that she’s not Sophie Turner. That she’s someone else entirely.”

“And who is that?” Maude demanded.

“I’ve already told you,” I said, my voice pleading. “Lucy Mason.”

She let out a noise of frustration. “Oh, Alice.” She shook her head. “How are we back here again?”

“No,” I said, refusing to listen. “You’ll see, this time you’ll see that I’m right. Just open it.”

Aunt Maude sighed, holding the bundle between her fingers, as though she dreaded to open them, dreaded even to touch them. But why, I wanted to shout, why when they would prove her niece right, when they would cast suspicion and doubt onto the woman, the stranger sitting beside her, instead of on her flesh and blood?

“Auntie, please,” I whispered, hating her in that moment for forcing me to ask her to choose her own niece.

“Very well.” She sighed, opening the pages.