The bottom drawer is locked. Ruth rattles it but it won’t open. It makes her feel angry. Who is he locking it against? The baby’stoo little, they can’t afford a cleaning lady, so it can only be her. She fetches a screwdriver and wedges it into the gap between the top of the drawer and the desktop. She doesn’t know what she’s doing and feels a sense of triumph when she’s able to prise the lock open without much effort.
There’s a single piece of paper inside it. She pulls it out and studies it. It’s an obituary.
Her heart skips a beat when she reads the name: Alexandra MacKay, known as Lexi. The young woman who wrote to Toby and made accusations against him.
Born in 1997 and died just over a month ago. The text is brief, a short description of Lexi’s life, mentioning her loving family, parents, siblings, friends, her hopes, dreams, and short time at university. The cause of death is not specific, but the wording suggests suicide.
She feels shocked. What does this mean? Why has Toby kept it?
Perhaps Google can tell her more. She finds Lexi’s Facebook page, which still exists. It’s full of lovely tributes that bring tears to her eyes. And among them is a line from Toby:
I’m so sorry. Lexi was a talented student and a pleasure to teach.
Ruth feels as if the contents of her stomach have curdled. She makes more general searches for “Alexandra MacKay” and “Lexi MacKay.” Some of what she reads she’s seen before, when she first looked up Lexi, after intercepting her note to Toby. But there’s new material: testimonials from Lexi’s friends. Ruth finds them profoundly sad. She learns what Lexi’s interests were, what kind of a little girl she was.
Lexi’s parents have been especially vocal. “Our daughter was not a suicide risk,” her mother writes. “She was a happy, sunny person who knew how to share problems and had a strong support network. Her death is inexplicable to us. We demand further investigation.”
Ruth feels a jolt when she reads that. Lexi’s brother, Jake, has also given an interview in which he castigated the university for their lack of oversight of his sister’s mental health. “We did not see this coming,” he tells the interviewer. “There were no red flags. To her family, Lexi appeared as she always had done until she began to withdraw from us during her last months. We strongly suspect that during this time, Lexi may have got involved with parties who glorified mental health issues and persuasively contributed to her decision to take her own life.”
Ruth checks the date on which Lexi died: 9 August 2019. This summer. Just months after she wrote to Toby.
And how much of a support network did she have if she was writing to Toby the way she did? Making accusations? What was it Toby said about Lexi when Ruth confronted him with the letter? That she was “troubled”?
She drinks again. Her stomach heaves but she keeps the vodka down. It feels as if a fog has spread through her brain.
Was Toby’s pursuit of this young woman what drove her to her death? Did he tell her she was troubled to her face? Did he gaslight her, and twist her young mind from functional to paranoid to protect himself? He’s smart enough and powerful enough to do it.
And it ended in her death?
It feels extreme but on the other hand anything seems possible right now.
Ruth drinks again.
And not just possible, she thinks, probable.
She looks at an image of Lexi’s face on-screen. It’s easy to imagine her dead. Ruth thinks of John Elliott. What did he look like, up on the peak near the barn? She thinks of the cadavers she saw in medical school. Horrible.
But Lexi was probably beautiful, even in death.
Ruth looks at the pictures on the wall opposite Toby’s bookshelves. There are many of them, pinned closely together. Mostlyworks by the impressionists, and no shortage of images of Degas’s work. She stands to look at them better. There they are, the nubile young women, the ballerinas, the women bathing. Degas was a voyeur, she thinks, just like Lexi said in her note to Toby.
There are also works by Manet and others. Nudes, everywhere. And in the middle of them, a color print of the famous Pre-Raphaelite image of Ophelia by John Millais. Ophelia, dead in the water, flowers in her hair. Death glorified, beautified, romanticized.
Does Toby love this image as much as the others?
And she can’t help thinking, was Lexi’s suicide something that he encouraged?
But that’s crazy. She feels as if she’s losing her mind.
She drinks again.
If she said this to Toby, he would say what he always does: Ruth, this is all in your head.
And he might be right.
But is it in her head? Or not?
If he could pursue a younger, vulnerable woman with the intensity she accused him of, could he drive her to suicide, too?
