I had asked her whether she’d spoken to Shirley about Odilie’s potential knowledge of the affair, and she said she hadn’t, that she wanted to follow my own advice and ease her way in. I couldn’t blame her.

“As long as I can use her to exonerate myself, who cares if she’s eager.” Quinn doesn’t have a retort to that, but he’s silent again until we reach our stoop, his keys flashing out of his pocket.

“She has her own game plan, Vera. She’s smarter than she looks.” And he lets it drop as we enter the apartment, then makes a beeline for his bedroom, so I do the same for mine.

9

ODILIE

Ten years ago

Odilie walked home from the Sanderses’ party alone. She had waited for Peri, texted her, called out her name in the wind, as if Peri could hear it all the way up there in the house on the hill. Ricky Sanders had approached her. She noticed his knuckles, still hairy as ever, remembered spotting them long before other children their age had developed any kind of body hair.

“You! Do you know where she went?” He slopped beer on the sand, wetting Odilie’s bare toes. Odilie stared at him blankly, stepping back out of the light of the fire. He sighed in frustration. “Peri. Where did she go?”

Odilie was mute all of a sudden. What did this idiot want to do with Peri? He studied her for a moment, his eyes glassy with drink, roving. “Was it you? Did she want me to meet you?” Odilie stepped away, farther out onto the darkened part of the beach, Ricky backlit by the fire behind him. “Be careful. She’s a real mean son of a bitch,” she heard him call after her. And she ran down the beach into the night, until the noise of the revelers was masked by the sound of the waves and she could walk again, across the rocks, back toward her apartment, her face flushed with the effort, with shame.

Odilie cried, dampening her pillowcase. She scrolled through her phone, waiting for Peri to text back. She went to Facebook and Instagram and swiped through Peri’s photos. She traced Peri’s face on her small screen, her symmetrical features, her eyes so discerning and sharp, even in the pictures that were blurry, taken in clubs and bar bathrooms. Lying in her bed, Odilie mimicked Peri’s expressions in the dark, the way she worked for the camera, her bottom lip puffing out, her eyes never crinkled, always widened.

Fitting in with these people, regardless of her past, was easy for Peri because she was so beautiful. Because she was confident and unapologetic.

Odilie could never be that way.