The awful feeling rises again. I swallow hard.
“This wasn’t the first time a student has come to me for help,” she says, sadly. “And I’m sorry to see that it’s cost another young woman her life.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Maya
May 2012
As the months passed, Ibecame better able to tuck away our secret in a dark confine of my mind. The air warmed, the trees outside Nassau Hall filled with leaves, and classes went on as usual.
—
Eventually, I toldNate about that weekend. Well, brushing around the edges of what I’d done, of course. It felt wrong, not telling him the full truth, but if I told him about the drugs and my role in what happened to Lila, what would he think of me then?
On those warm weekends in May, Nate and I escaped to New York City, wandering around the Met, talking for hours in Central Park, and walking through the city until our feet hurt. He took me to a jazz bar in Harlem, an Italian restaurant in the Bronx. We drank beer on the Lower East Side, leafed through paperbacks in the West Village, and browsed flea markets in Chelsea. I felt safe with him there.
Of course, when we came back to campus, the protective cloud would dissipate, and my memories would crowd in—the cabin, the snowstorm, the sheet pulled over Lila’s body—and I’d be sick with guilt once again. What had we done? What hadIdone? HadIkilled her by dispensing the drugs, or was my fear, my silence, allowing a guilty man to walk free?
Over the following months I grew obsessed with Professor DuPont. Knowing everything about him. Where he was, who he was with…maybe as a way to offload some of the shame. Though he’d stepped back from his involvement with Sterling after the Marsden scandal, he was still on campus—and being anywhere near him put me on edge, now that I knew his true nature.
My memory of Lila ran through everything: dewy spring mornings as I walked to class, afternoons curled by Nate’s side as he plucked out a few familiar chords on his guitar. Late at night, I’d whip around, convinced someone was standing there in the shadows. I’d see a flash of red hair disappear under an archway, hear the sound of her laugh floating through the halls, feel her watching me. For the rest of my time at Princeton and whenever I returned, she would be there. And so, too, would the guilt.
—
One day inMay, when junior year was coming to a close, I was reading on my bed when I was startled by an urgent knock on the door. Cecily sprang into my room. She had to step over boxes and open suitcases spread out over the small floor to make her way to the bed. I was still finishing packing for the summer break.
“I have a brilliant idea,” she said, a grin spread over her face.
I looked up from my book. “Oh god, what is it?”
“Let’s fly your sister out for the summer, instead of you going back to her. She can stay at my brother’s place. I just talked to his wife, Margaret. They have more than enough rooms.”
Last week, I’d told Cecily how Naomi’s situation had gotten worse. The neighbor had gotten more involved. Twice, when my aunt Ella was at work late, social services had come to the house, asking questions.
I had to do something. I couldn’t lose Naomi to the state. If they took her, she’d end up with a foster family with a bunch of kids she didn’t know. Odds were that she’d be bullied and neglected, and I couldn’t let that happen.
I even considered turning down Fuller’s internship offer at Goldman Sachs to live with Naomi in California instead, to try and get the social worker off Aunt Ella’s back.
But when I told Cecily, she’d said,But you worked so hard to get that internship. You can’t turn it down.She offered to lend me enoughmoney to help Naomi.It’s not a big deal,she’d insisted, but I’d been so flustered, I’d immediately said no.
“Wait,” I said to her now, “you want Naomi to live at your brother’s place? Just her and them? For the entire summer?” The idea was so unfathomable it hadn’t crossed my mind. Greenwich also didn’t seem like somewhere Naomi would feel comfortable.
“No, silly,” she said, hopping onto the bed, tucking one leg under her. “You and I would go too! You wouldn’t have to pay city rent while you work for Goldman, and you could be with your sister too.”
“I can’t—”
“I’ll pay for it. Her flight, her food. All of it,” she said, placing a hand on my knee. “Look, it’s just for the summer. My brother and his wife host me every year. They don’t have kids, and they like to have people in the house. The three of us would be a welcome addition and give them something to do other than play tennis and golf. Trust me. It’s perfect.”
—
I didn’t thinktoo deeply about it. Naomi desperately needed a better situation, and this made sense. So Naomi, who was eleven at the time, flew by herself cross-country.
I was asking a flight attendant when the flight was expected to arrive when Naomi walked out with a backpack almost as big as she was. When she saw me, a huge grin spread over her face. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. “You made it!” I said, squeezing her tight, wondering how I’d left her with Aunt Ella for so long, and promising never to leave her again.
—
That summer inGreenwich was the best summer of my life. Cecily stayed there too, and Daisy and Kai visited often.
