“Peri, come up to the house. We got the good stuff up there. Only for you, though,” Annabella Sanders said, putting a finger to her lips, her irises dilated, teeth grinding along with the music’s beat. She noticed Odilie, but didn’t seem to recognize her, eyeing her up and down, before grabbing Peri’s wrist and pulling her toward the brightly lit pathway that led to the house.

“I won’t be long,” Peri called back as if Odilie were an afterthought, giggling at something Annabella said as Caroline and the other girls followed their hostess. Soon their figures were only silhouettes, then one big coagulated lump of young women. And Odilie stood there, alone in the sand among a crowd of people, as if adrift in the wide, wide sea. When she touched her face, a strip of false lashes landed on the pad of her finger, its individual spikes splaying out like tiny knives.

8

VERA

Present day

Quinn wants to spend time with Page, get to know her so when we eventually spring Sam’s wild idea on her she’ll be more likely to accept it. I’m still reeling from Shirley’s revelation, the knowledge she imparted to me, that Odilie was at least somewhat aware of Tom’s infidelity.

I had mentioned it to Page as delicately as I could. She told me it was strange, thanked me for the information, said she would try to inquire about it further with Shirley. But as far as I know, she hasn’t yet.

The moment I got home that night, I’d scoured the internet for a quote from Shirley. The conceit so many of those media stories ran with, as Shirley said herself, was that Odilie was in the dark. That she died ignorant and naive about her husband’s transgressions, that I had cantered in, on a shadowy horse of the apocalypse, and caused this mayhem that Odilie had no hand in or knowledge of.

But no. Odilie had most likely known. And not only that, but possibly hadn’t cared? It didn’t make a difference, not really. She was still dead. But if she was forgiving of me before she died, maybe I could forgive myself. Maybe the public could forgive me.

I finally find it, on the third Google page, a line tossed into an early general news story about the case. “Odilie’s friend Shirley Cassat alleges that the affair wasn’t a secret, that in fact, the deceased woman had shared with her confidante some grievances about her husband’s mood upon her return from Michigan.” It’s buried in there, a throwaway line so crowded out by dozens of others that it makes my brain itch, like something about the lack of visibility isn’t quite right.

But pursuing that apparent obfuscation of the facts would be going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole.