“Okay,” I say, wondering what it could possibly be. “I have a Zoom meeting between nine and ten but I’m free in the morning after that.”
“I’ll be there at ten.”
I give him the address and apartment number, and he ends the call with not much more than a grunt. When I drop my phone on the table, I notice I’m holding my breath. If he’s not reaching out so he can yell at me, it might mean Sam has doubts about the suicide theory, too.
Please, I pray,let that be what he wants to discuss.
SAM ARRIVES AT FIVE PAST TEN THE NEXT MORNING, AND AFTERbuzzing him in from the lobby, I take a quick look in the mirror on the foyer wall. I managed to get about three hours of sleep last night, and though I applied a full face of makeup for my nine o’clock Zoom, it’s done little to disguise my fatigue and grief.
Fortunately, my client, a twenty-seven-year-old manager in the packaged foods business, seemed thoroughly focused on the suggestions I offered for projecting confidence and speaking more succinctly in meetings, without long-winded introductions to her ideas, and she didn’t appear to notice what a sad sack I am at the moment.
Opening the door to Sam’s knock, I discover that he looks as bad as I do. His dark brown eyes are bloodshot, his skin seems even paler than normal, and his longish brown hair is dull and lank, as if he’s washed it with a bar of soap instead of shampoo.
“Do you want to come in?” I ask, a stupid question considering I’ve been expecting him, but his presence has already unnerved me. He steps into the foyer, dressed in black jeans and a wrinkled moss-green T-shirt, and then follows me into the living room, glancing around distractedly. At around six three, he’s a couple of inches taller than Jamie was and seems to tower over my five-foot-six frame. “Can I get you something?” I ask.
At first there’s no reply. I sense he’s reluctant to be beholden to me in any way.
“Do you have any coffee?” he asks finally. “I barely slept last night.”
“Yes, just give me a minute.”
As I use my machine to fill two mugs, I steal glances at Sam through the kitchen doorway. He’s now standing by one of the living room windows, staring out at the rooftops and the overcast August sky. When my mother came east last year to help me shop for a wedding dress and ended up meeting Sam briefly, she noted how mismatched he and Jamie seemed as friends.
I knew what she meant, of course. Sam, an economics professor here in the city, is erudite, reserved, almost brooding at times, a real contrast to Jamie’s affable, outgoing personality. Though Sam can turn on the charm when called for at dinner parties and events, he mostly listens and observes, his gaze unbearably intense at times. From what I can tell, he has never once suffered from the need to please.
Sam’s parents have a house—more like an estate—in Litchfield County, and he and Jamie met as boys at a tennis and swim club there, to which they continued to belong as adults. According to Jamie, they connected instantly and bonded over a shared love of the outdoors and an appreciation of each other’s wry sense of humor—and probably also due to that indefinable chemistry that helps forge enduring friendships. Like Jamie, Sam still spends his summer weekends in the area, at a cottage on his parents’ property that they turned over to him.
By the time I reenter the living room, Sam is sitting in one of the two small armchairs, leaning forward with his hands clasped together. Though he’s perfectly motionless, I can feel his nervous tension and Isee it, too, in his eyes. What I’m not picking up on, oddly enough, is any blatant hostility.
I hand him a mug of coffee, and by the time I take a seat on the couch across from him, he seems to have drained half of it.
I can’t bear waiting any longer. “You said you had something to tell me,” I say.
“Yes—about Jamie’s suicide.”
My heart sinks. So he’s not dubious, then.
“Who told you that’s how he died?”
“Drew. It’s not official yet, but everything seems to be pointing that way.”
“Did they end up finding a note?” I ask, the words catching in my throat.
“No. The police went by his rental house yesterday, and so did Drew, but didn’t discover one. Drew and Liam are packing up the house today and they’ll look more closely, but it doesn’t appear Jamie left any kind of note.”
“But how can people think—?”
“Look, Kiki, I didn’t come to debate the matter. As much as the truth hurts, I’m trying not to kid myself.”
“Then what did you want to tell me?” I say, puzzled. I’m looking in his general direction as I speak but not right at him, which feels too awkward.
Sam takes another swig of coffee and sets the mug back down. “I’m going to be blunt, because I don’t know any other way to put it. I know you’re probably beating yourself up, thinking that you might have caused his death. But I don’t believe Jamie took his life because of you.”
I pull back in surprise. Back in March I’d heard from people that Sam was livid with me on Jamie’s behalf, and it’s hard to believe he wants to let me off the hook now.
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“We talked a lot about the breakup. He was devastated at first—I mean, it really knocked the wind out of him—but he was definitely on the mend recently. And he knew that he’d dodged a bullet, that if you’d gone ahead with the marriage despite serious misgivings, you two would have ended up splitting up sooner or later.”
