Reconstructing Amelia (27 page)

They were still standing in the foyer, which felt claustrophobic with an overweighted coatrack and a tall mirrored armoire. But Celeste—who’d dropped Kate’s arms just as suddenly as she’d grasped them—didn’t look like she had any intention of inviting them any farther inside.

“So you were saying, you came to speak to Dylan about Amelia?” Celeste’s voice was odd. Not an accent as much as overly precise diction. “I must say, such a exquisite girl. To be that bright and that beautiful. And with those unique eyes of hers? Just extraordinary. Truly. I told her that she should have been an actress. The camera would have loved her. And I would know, I’m an actress,” she said, with overplayed modesty. “Perhaps, you’ve seen me on
Law & Order SVU
. I’m a series regular. I play an attorney.”

“I don’t watch much TV,” Kate said, trying to process this stranger talking about her daughter as though the two had been good friends.

“Oh, I see, how unusual,” Celeste said, as though Kate had just confessed membership in some strange cult. She smiled forcefully once again. “Well, then, I guess you wouldn’t have seen me.”

“How did you know Amelia?” Kate asked, bracing to learn that Amelia had shared details of her sexual awakening with her girlfriend’s mother.

“She was a friend of Dylan’s, of course. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? But I wouldn’t say I knew her.” Celeste waved a hand. “I only met her once.”

“We think your daughter might have some information relevant to Amelia’s death,” Lew said, trying to steer the conversation back to the reason they were there.

Celeste put one hand to the back of her neck. “I thought— I didn’t realize there was anything to be investigating.”

“There are always more facts to confirm,” Lew said noncommittally. He was being careful, maybe because he suspected Dylan was more involved in what had happened than he had let on, even to Kate. “Is your daughter home, ma’am? I can promise it won’t take long.”

Celeste looked from Lew to Kate, then back to Lew, as if she were calculating the path of least resistance.

“Of course,” she said finally, with another fake smile. “I’ll go get her.”

When she came down the steps a minute later, Dylan was behind her. She was a beautiful girl, with a head of wild reddish curls like her mother’s and the kind of dramatic bone structure usually reserved for adults. She was tall and willowy, too, even in her ripped, boyish jeans and plain white T-shirt. And there she was: the girl who had broken Amelia’s heart.
Who gave you the right?
Kate thought.
When there’s no way you deserved her.
Kate was glad that she’d agreed to stay quiet. She couldn’t imagine the things she might say.

“Hi, Dylan, I’m Lieutenant Lew Thompson,” he said, then turned to Celeste as he motioned to the crowded living room. “Mind if we have a seat?”

“Please,” Celeste said with a grand gesture. “Make yourselves right at home.”

Dylan shuffled in behind them, setting herself down stiffly next to her mother on the edge of the hard tufted couch. She hadn’t made eye contact with anyone, and her body language was tight and closed. She was nervous, maybe, but it seemed to Kate like something more.

“Dylan, some of the things I have to ask you about may be sensitive,” Lew said. His manner was light, as though he was talking to a much younger girl. “Do you want to take a minute first and get your mom up to speed here about this Birds of a Feather group?”

Kate watched for worry to cloud Celeste’s face. Instead, she smiled easily.

“Oh, don’t worry. My daughter and I don’t have any secrets, Lieutenant,” Celeste said.

“As parents we’d all like to think that,” Lew began gently. “But in this particular situation—”

“I know about the pictures, if that’s what this is about,” Celeste said.

“You knew?” Kate asked in disbelief.

Celeste should have said something to the school, to the other parents, to somebody. For the sake of the other girls, if not her own. What kind of mother was she?

“I wouldn’t say I’m pleased Dylan participated, but I don’t believe in hovering. She has the right to make her own choices, which includes the right to make poor ones.”

Dylan leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder then, and Celeste wrapped an arm around her head. It might have been a sweet expression of mother-child affection, if it hadn’t been so disconcertingly childlike. As Celeste ran a hand over her daughter’s hair, it was as if she were comforting an overwhelmed toddler.

“In that case, we’ll just get down to it,” Lew said, his mouth pulled flat. “So you’re in this Birds of a Feather group, Dylan?”

Dylan looked to her mom, who nodded for her to continue.

“Yeah,” she said, numbly. “The Magpies—that’s what they’re called.”

Magpies. Maggie #1, Maggie #2. They were definitely aliases for the girls in the Birds of a Feather group.

“It’s some kind of club?” Lew asked.

Dylan nodded. She was staring at the floor and pulling her sleeves down over her hands and popping them back out over and over again.

“A secret club,” she said, without looking up. Now she was threading her fingers together and pulling them apart, over and over. “With secret invitations and secret rules and secret secrets.”

“The clubs have a long history at Grace Hall, long before even my days as a student there,” Celeste said smoothly. “I was a Grace Hall lifer, just like Dylan. The idea of the clubs is actually quite charming. You know . . . the camaraderie, the sisterhood. They were abolished because of an incident right before I came to the Upper School. A tragedy, no doubt, but an isolated one. It was a shame for all the students who came afterward, myself included, that they issued such a blanket prohibition.”

Kate saw Lew’s face visibly tighten. Celeste was getting under his skin. It was her preening, maybe, or her utter obliviousness to what had been at stake for the girls. It was hard to say what was bothering him the most. There were so many options.

“And Amelia was in this Magpie club, too?” Lew asked, forcing his attention back to Dylan.

“For a little while.”

“Long enough to get her pictures posted.”

Dylan shrugged. “I guess.”

“And what was the point of the pictures?”

“It was a game,” Dylan said. Her voice was mechanical. “The person with the most ‘likes’ wins.”

“A
game
?” Kate asked in disbelief. She just couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “What could you girls possibly have been . . .”

But getting outraged certainly wasn’t going to make Dylan be any more forthcoming. It would offend Celeste, too, who’d already made clear she thought the whole thing was good fun.

“Whose idea was this game?” Lew asked.

Dylan gripped the couch on either side of her, then began tapping her fingers in a quick, almost playful rhythm that was completely at odds with the somber conversation they were having.

Finally, Dylan shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

But it was obvious she was lying, covering up for someone.

“What would happen if someone refused to play?”

“I don’t know,” Dylan mumbled, staring at her shoes. Suddenly, her fingers froze. “No one ever said no.”

“Not even Amelia?” Lew asked.

Dylan shook her head, shifting around on the couch uneasily.

“You and Amelia were close, weren’t you?” Kate asked.

She shouldn’t be asking about their relationship. It was for Lew to do. They’d discussed it specifically. But it was too much with Dylan sitting right there, holding all the answers.

Dylan looked up at her mom, as if she was trying to tell her something with her eyes. Celeste put a hand over her daughter’s and squeezed.

“Dylan and Amelia did have a close friendship, if that’s what you’re asking, Kate,” Celeste said calmly.

“It was more than a friendship,” Kate said, willing herself to stay calm, too.

Celeste waved a hand with theatric flourish. “They’re teenagers. These things between them, they’re ephemeral, and the lines are much blurrier than they were in our day. Wouldn’t you agree?” Celeste waited for Kate to nod. She didn’t. “Personally, I don’t think teenagers understand what their relationships are half the time, much less why they end.”

A warning had risen up in Celeste’s eyes, too. She didn’t like where the conversation was headed, and she was fully prepared to push back and push back hard if necessary.

“I’ve read Amelia’s texts,” Kate said, forcing herself to stay seated, even though all she wanted was to jump up, grab Dylan, and shake her until she admitted what those girls had done to Amelia and why. “Honestly, there didn’t seem to be anything blurry about it. Amelia was in love with Dylan.”

Celeste smiled stiffly and crossed her arms.

“Perhaps we should back up for a minute,” she said. “Why exactly are you here, now, all these weeks later? We were told that Amelia had cheated and that it had led to her suicide. Impulsive suicide—that was what they called it. We were even given instructions about what to look out for in our own children.”

“Who told you that?” Kate asked.

“At the the school’s assembly for parents,” Celeste said.

“Assembly?”

“Right after Amelia . . . right after. Parents had questions. They wanted to understand. The school counselor was there and an outside expert, I think.” Celeste turned to look at Dylan, who’d sunk deeper into the couch, her hands returned to their tapping, this time even faster. “I’m sorry, but my daughter has— This kind of situation can be stressful for her.” She looked from Lew to Kate, seeming aggravated that what she’d given them so far hadn’t been enough. “If you must know, Dylan sometimes has difficulty processing social situations.” She squeezed her daughter’s hand. “It’s an extremely mild condition,
extremely
. Frankly, I think this discussion would be stressful for anyone. Regardless, you’ll need to finish up your questions,
now
.”

A condition? There were the ticks with her hands, the way Dylan hadn’t made eye contact with them, the distance that had taken over her face. Kate didn’t know exactly what condition Celeste was referring to, but a difficulty processing social situations could have explained why Amelia had found Dylan’s behavior confusing.

“Did Amelia know?” Kate asked, turning to Dylan for an answer. “About your condition?”

“Grace Hall doesn’t even know,” Celeste said, jumping in to answer on Dylan’s behalf. “Only a very select group of trusted family and friends do. We’ve never wanted Dylan labeled unnecessarily.”

“Zadie knows,” Dylan said robotically. “Zadie knows everything.”

The way she said it made the hair on Kate’s arms stand on end.

“As I said, we consider Dylan’s situation a private family matter.” Celeste rose abruptly. And it was clear that by
private
she meant
secret
. It was also clear that she regretted mentioning it. “We’ve tried to be as helpful as we can. I ask that you respect our privacy by not mentioning Dylan’s situation to anyone at Grace Hall. College applications are on the horizon. We wouldn’t want to confuse the issue.”

“Yeah, sure,” Kate said quietly.

She was still staring at Dylan. Couldn’t take her eyes off the girl. Kate had been so sure that Dylan was the villain. Now it was hard not to feel sorry for her, too. She didn’t know what it was like for Dylan to function within her limitations, much less what it was like for her to pretend—at her mother’s request—that she didn’t have them. Kate had felt the terrible weight of her own daughter’s secrets. And they were enough to break her heart.

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind,” Celeste said, motioning toward the door.

“One last thing,” Lew said as he stood. “Dylan, Amelia was asked to leave the club, wasn’t she?” He pulled out one of the “I hate you” notes from his back pocket and put it on the table. Dylan nodded as she looked down at the piece of paper but didn’t reach for it. “What was she kicked out for?”

There was a long silence. It filled the room, pressing out hard on the windowpanes.

“Because she liked me, and I liked her back,” she whispered finally, still staring down at the notes. When she looked up at Kate, there were tears in her eyes. “But Zadie invited Amelia into the club because of you.”

They walked in silence for a few blocks after they’d left Dylan’s house. Kate felt shell-shocked. It didn’t help that she had even more questions now. Celeste had whisked Dylan away before they could get her to explain how Kate could possibly have been the reason Amelia had been invited into the Magpies.

“Before I go,” Lew said when they reached Kate’s house. His hands were pushed deep in his pockets, eyes to the ground. “You’re going to need to tell me.”

“Tell you what?” Kate asked.

“What Dylan meant when she said that Zadie tapped Amelia because of you.” His voice was calm but serious.

“I honestly have no idea.” Kate felt guilty even though she had nothing to hide. But she knew how it looked. If she were Lew, she would have wondered, too. “I’ve never met that girl in my entire life. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

“But you did meet her mother,” Lew said. “She came by your house, didn’t she?”

“To ask about that suicide awareness benefit the PTA wants to do in Amelia’s honor. I did ask her not to do it, which apparently they’ve decided to ignore, because they’re going ahead with it. But I did mention that there had been some new developments.” Kate pressed a hand flat against her hollow stomach. God, why had she told Adele anything? “But that can’t have had anything to do with it. Amelia was invited into the Magpies months before I ever met her mother.”

“Then it’s something else,” Lew said. “But Dylan wasn’t making that part up. It was too far-fetched, not to mention unnecessary.”

Kate stared at the ground, racking her brain. “I just— I don’t know what it could be.”

Lew looked her straight in the eye for a minute, then nodded, like he’d come to some conclusion.

“Then we’ll just have to ask Zadie,” he said, starting to back away. “But tomorrow. You need some time off.”

“I don’t. I could—”

“You do,” Lew said firmly. “And don’t bother arguing. I’ve got five kids, remember? I’ve got a lot of practice sticking on no.”