“I mean, it could have waited until—whatever,” Holiday said impatiently. “Okay. Well. While I have you. You said there was a bunch of crushed-up oxy on the desk when you found Bri, right?”
“Yeah,” I recalled slowly. “Why?”
“I felt kind of bad about blowing you off at the diner the other night,” she explained. “So I called a friend at the medical examiner’s office—”
“Hang on,” I interrupted. “You have a friend at the medical examiner’s office?”
Holiday sighed, like she had suspected she’d need to explain this part but had hoped I’d know enough to just accept and move on. “We met in After Hours fandom,” she informed me, naming the boy band she’d been obsessed with since middle school. “She writes, like, the raunchiest fan fiction you’ve ever read in your life.”
“And she’s themedicalexaminer?”
“Did Isayshe was the medical examiner?” Holiday countered. “She just works there. She does IT or something. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Oh,I’mthe one being ridiculous.”
“The point is,” Holiday pressed on, “she told me that it’s regular procedure for them to do an autopsy on all drug overdose cases, even if the deaths aren’t being investigated as suspicious. And according to the records she pulled up for me, Bri’s official cause of deathisan overdose—but all they found in her system besides alcohol was Adderall and Molly.”
I frowned. “Not oxy?’
“Not oxy.”
“But if there was no oxy in her system—”
“Then what was the oxy doing on the desk?” she asked. “Yeah, I don’t know.”
I sat down hard on the landing, weirdly vindicated and a little afraid. “So the cops must be investigating, then.”
“I don’t actually think so,” Holiday admitted, her voice low and urgent. “She said it doesn’t look like the Cambridge PD has requested the autopsy report.” Then, before I could respond: “There’s one more thing. I did a little bit of research, and like, obviously I’malsonot the medical examiner, but from what I read, if they’re just running a basic toxicology panel to confirm there were drugs in her system, it’s possible they weren’t necessarily looking for another cause of death.”
I frowned. “Meaning—”
“Meaning it’s possible—probable, even—that Bri drank a lot, took a bunch of drugs, knocked over a lamp, passed out in Greer’s bed, and never woke up,” Holiday reminded me, “and that’s a tragedy. But it’salsopossible she drank a lot and took a bunch of drugs—”
“And then somebody smothered her with a pillow and leftdifferent drugs on the desk to point the cops in the wrong direction and nobody caught it?”
“Well,” Holiday pointed out, “notnobody.”
Downstairs in the chapel the service was wrapping up, a hundred voices rising and falling together as the pianist played a plinky rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Sunlight trickled through a window at the top of the staircase, a million motes of dust hovering in the air. “No,” I agreed slowly, rubbed a hand over my forehead as I stood on wobbly legs to face whatever was about to happen. “Not nobody.”
8
Saturday, 11/2/24–Monday, 11/4/24
My mom called first thing the following morning. “I’m downstairs,” she said brightly. “Outside your building. I thought I could take you to breakfast.”
“Oh! Um.” I sat up, looking around wildly. I wasn’tinmy building, was the first problem that presented itself. I was in Greer’s building. More specifically, I was in Greer’sbed—well, Bri’s bed, technically, which Greer had taken to sleeping in. “I, um. I have class?”
I realized a beat too late that it was Saturday, but my mom was already laughing, the sound of it warm and familiar on the other end of the phone. “I’m kidding, sweetheart,” she promised, “but your horrified voice is something that will stay with me long into the future, so thank you for that.”
“I’m nothorrified,” I protested, feeling a little ashamed of myself. “I just—”
“Don’t relish the idea of your mother showing up unannouncedoutside your college dorm?” she asked. “I suppose you can be forgiven.”
“Thank you.”
We talked for a little while, catching up on the hygiene kits she was putting together for her mutual aid group and the hike in the White Mountains she was doing with her dorky boyfriend Paul. She’d been calling more frequently since I’d told her about Bri, I’d noticed, making cheerful conversation while probing carefully around the edges of my life, looking for snags in the fabric. “How are you doing?” she asked me finally. “You doing okay?”
I glanced at Greer, still asleep with one elegant arm slung over her face. I thought of Holiday’s voice yesterday on the phone. I remembered the meeting I still hadn’t scheduled with Professor McMorrow, knowing even as I made a mental note to do it sometime this week that I probably wasn’t going to. “I am,” I promised quietly. “I’m doing okay.”
