by Riley Sager
“It’s recipes,” I say, calming. “My top secret stash.”
“Sorry,” Sam says as she lets go of the drawer handle.
“No one can see them,” I add.
“Sure. I get it.”
Sam raises both hands. Her jacket sleeve rides down her wrist, fully revealing the tattoo there. It’s a single word, etched in black.
SURVIVOR
The letters are capitalized. The font is bold. It’s both declaration and dare. Go on, it says. Just try to fuck with me.
• • •
An hour later, all the cupcakes from yesterday are decorated and two orange pumpkin loaves sit cooling atop the oven. Sam surveys the results with weary pride, a smudge of flour across her cheek like war paint.
“So now what?” she says.
I begin to arrange the cupcakes on chunky Fiestaware, their black icing popping against the pale green of the plates.
“Now we design a table setting for both desserts and photograph it for the website.”
“I meant about us,” Sam says. “We met. We talked. We baked. It was magical. So now what?”
“That depends on why you came here,” I say. “Is it really just because of what happened to Lisa?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You could have called. Or emailed.”
“I wanted to see you in person,” Sam says. “After learning what Lisa had done, I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“And how am I doing?”
“I can’t tell. Care to give me a hint?”
I busy myself with the cupcakes, trying out different arrangements as Sam stands behind me.
“Quincy?”
“I’m sad, okay?” I say, whirling around to face her. “Lisa’s suicide makes me sad.”
“I’m not.” Sam examines her hands as she says it, digging batter out from under her fingernails. “I’m pissed off. After all she survived, that’s how she died? It makes me mad.”
Although it’s exactly the same thing I had said to Jeff last night, irritation ripples over me. I turn back to the display. “Don’t be mad at Lisa.”
“I’m not,” Sam says. “I’m pissed off at myself. For never reaching out to her. Or to you. Maybe if I had, I—”
“Could have prevented it?” I say. “Join the club.”
Although my back is still turned to Sam, I know she’s staring again. This time a faint cold spot blunts the heat of her gaze. Curiosity, left unarticulated. I want nothing more than to tell her about the email Lisa sent me before she died. It would be a relief to talk about it, to let Sam shoulder some of the burden of my possibly misplaced guilt. But it’s partly guilt that has brought her to my door. I’m not about to add to it, especially if this visit is some unspoken rite of atonement.
“What happened to Lisa sucks,” she says. “I feel like shit knowing that I—we, actually—might have been able to help her. I don’t want the same thing happening to you.”
“I’m not suicidal,” I say.
“But I wouldn’t have known it if you were. If you ever need help or something, tell me. I’ll do the same for you. We need to look out for each other. So you can talk to me about what happened. You know, if you ever need to.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m happy.”
“Good.” The word rings hollow, as if she doesn’t believe me. “That’s good to hear.”
“Really, I am. The website’s going well. Jeff is fantastic.”
“Will I be allowed to meet this Jeff?”
It’s a nesting-doll question, concealing other, unspoken ones inside. If I crack open Will I meet Jeff? I’ll find Do you like me? Out of which pops Are we becoming friends? Inside that is the most compact, most important question. The heart of the matter: Are we the same?
“Of course,” I say, answering them all at once. “You have to stay for dinner.”
I finish the table setting, the cupcakes angled so their frosted spiders will fill the frame. For the background, I’ve chosen a swath of fabric with a bold ’50s pattern and vintage ceramic pumpkins picked up at a flea market.
“Cute,” Sam says, the wrinkling of her nose indicating it’s not a compliment.
“In the baking blog biz, cute sells.”
We stand shoulder to shoulder, studying the display. Despite all those minute adjustments, it’s still not right. There’s something missing. Some intangible spark I’ve neglected to include.
“It’s too perfect,” Sam announces.
“It’s not,” I say, when, of course, it is. The whole display is flat, lifeless. Everything is so pristine the cupcakes might as well be fake. They certainly look that way. Plastic frosting atop a foam base. “What would you do differently?”
Sam approaches the display with an index finger on her chin, lost in thought. She then goes to work, tearing through it like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. Some of the plates are cleared of cupcakes and hastily stacked. A ceramic pumpkin is knocked on its side and a napkin is crumpled and casually tossed, bouncing into the middle of the scene. Wrappers are torn from three cupcakes and dropped into the mix.
The once-pristine display is now chaotic. It resembles a table after a wildly entertaining dinner party, messy and satisfying and real.
It’s perfect.
I grab my camera and start taking pictures, zooming in on the disheveled cupcakes. Behind them sits an uneven stack of Fiestaware, some bearing globs of black icing dark against the green.
Sam grabs a cupcake and takes a gargantuan bite as crumbs drip and cherry filling oozes. “Take my picture.”
I hesitate, for reasons she can’t begin to understand.
“I don’t put pictures of people on the blog,” I say. “Only food.”
Nor do I take pictures of people, even ones not intended for my website. No Lisa-esque selfies for me. Not since Pine Cottage.
“Just this once,” Sam says, faking a pout. “For me?”
Hesitantly, I look into the camera’s viewfinder and suck in a breath. It’s like peering into a crystal ball and seeing not my future but my past. I see Janelle, standing in front of Pine Cottage, striking wacky poses with her too many suitcases. I didn’t notice the similarity earlier, but now it’s obvious. While Sam and Janelle don’t physically resemble each other, they share the same spirit. Vivid and unapologetic and startlingly alive.
“Something wrong?” Sam says.
“No.” I click the shutter, taking a single picture. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Sam hurries to my side, nudging me until I show her the photograph.
“I like it,” she says. “You definitely need to put it up on your blog.”
I tell her that I will, which pleases her, even though I plan to delete the picture the first chance I get.
Next, it’s time to arrange and photograph the pumpkin bread. I let Sam saw away at one of the loaves, the uneven slices unfolding off it like pages torn from a book. The ceramic pumpkins are replaced with vintage teacups I found a week earlier in the West Village. I fill them with coffee, varying the amounts in each. When a splash of coffee hits the table, I leave it there, letting it pool around the base of a teacup. Sam finishes things by lifting the cup and taking a long, slurping sip. Her lipstick leaves a mark on the brim. A ruby kiss, mysterious and seductive. She stands back to let me photograph it. I click away, taking more pictures than necessary, drawn to the chaos.
8.
Dinnertime arrives in a panicked whirl of preparation and last-minute details. I whip up linguini with the homemade puttanesca sauce Jeff’s mother taught me how to make. There’s salad, freshly baked breadsticks, wine from actual bottles, all perfectly laid out on the rough-hewn dining-room table we bought the previous summer in Red Hook.
Jeff comes home to find Rosemary Clooney standards drifting from the living-room stereo and me clad in the mid-’
50s party dress I felt compelled to change into, my face pink and gleaming. God knows what’s going through his mind. Definitely confusion. Perhaps worry that I’ve gone a little overboard, which I have. But I hope there’s pride in the mix too. At what I’ve accomplished. At the fact that after so many crowded, informal meals with his family, I finally have a guest.
Then Sam emerges from the dining room with her face scrubbed of flour and a fresh coat of lipstick, and I know exactly what Jeff is thinking. Concern mixed with suspicion tinged with surprise.
“Jeff, this is Sam,” I announce.
“Samantha Boyd?” Jeff says, more to me than to her.
Sam smiles and offers her hand. “I prefer Sam.”
“Sure. Hi, Sam.” The situation has jolted Jeff so much that he almost forgets to return Sam’s handshake. When he does, it’s weak. More hand than shake. “Quincy, can I talk to you for a sec?”
We go to the kitchen, where I quickly brief him on the afternoon’s events, finishing with, “I hope you don’t mind that I asked her to stay for dinner.”
“It’s certainly a surprise,” he says.
“Yes, it happened very suddenly.”
“You should have called me.”
“You would have tried to talk me out of it,” I say.
Jeff ignores the remark, mostly because he knows it’s true.
“I just think it’s very strange that she suddenly showed up like this. That’s not normal, Quinn.”
“You’re sounding a bit too suspicious, Mr. Lawyer.”
“I’d just feel better knowing more about why she’s here.”
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I say.
“Then why did you invite her to dinner?”
I want to tell him about that afternoon, how for a moment Sam was so much like Janelle that it took my breath away. But he wouldn’t understand. No one would.
“I kind of feel sorry for her,” I say. “After all that she’s been through, I think she just might need a friend.”
“Fine,” Jeff says. “If you’re cool with all this, then so am I.”
Yet the shadow of a scowl crossing his face tells me that he’s not entirely cool with it. Still, we go back to the dining room, where Sam politely pretends that we just weren’t talking about her. “Everything good?” she says.
I smile so wide my cheeks hurt. “Perfect. Let’s eat!”
During the meal, I play hostess, serving the food and pouring the wine, trying hard to ignore that Jeff is talking to Sam like she’s one of his clients—genial but probing. Jeff’s a conversational dentist that way. Extracting what needs to be removed.
“Quinn tells me you vanished for a few years,” he says.
“I like to think of it as laying low.”
“What was that like?”
“Peaceful. No one knowing who I was. No one knowing all the bad things that happened to me.”
“Sounds more like being a fugitive,” Jeff says.
“I guess,” Sam replies. “Only I didn’t do anything wrong, remember.”
“So why hide?”
“Why not?”
When Jeff can’t think of a good response, silence ensues, broken occasionally by the sound of cutlery scraping against plates. It makes me nervous, and before I know it, my wineglass is empty. I refill it before offering more to the others.
“Sam? Refill?”
She seems to intuit my nervousness and smiles to put me at ease. “Sure,” she says, gulping down the rest of the wine in her glass just so I can pour more into it.
I turn to Jeff. “More wine?”
“I’m good,” he tells me. To Sam, he says, “And where have you been living these days?”
“Here and there.”
The same answer she had given me. One that doesn’t satisfy Jeff. He lowers his fork to give Sam a cross-examination stare.
“Where, exactly?”
“No place you would have heard of,” Sam says.
“I’ve heard of all fifty states.” Jeff flashes a friendly smile. “I can even recite most of their capitals.”
“I think Sam wants to keep it a secret,” I say. “In case she wants to return there and live in anonymity.”
Across the table, Sam gives me a grateful nod. I’m looking out for her. Just like she said we should do. Even if, in this case at least, I’m just as curious as Jeff.
“I’m sure she’ll tell us eventually,” I add. “Right, Sam?”
“Maybe.” The hardness in Sam’s voice makes it clear there’ll be no maybe. Yet she tries to sandpaper her tone by adding a joke. “It depends on how good dessert is.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Jeff says. “What matters is that the two of you finally got the chance to connect. I know it means a lot to Quinn. She was really broken up about what happened with Lisa.”
“Me too,” Sam says. “As soon as I heard about it, I decided to come here and finally talk to her.”
Jeff tilts his head. With his shaggy hair and big, brown eyes he looks like a spaniel faced with a bone. Hungry and alert. “So you knew Quinn was in New York?”
“Over the years, I kept tabs on both her and Lisa.”
“Interesting. For what reason?”
“Curiosity, I suppose. I liked knowing they were doing okay. Or at least thinking they were.”
Jeff nods, looks down at his plate, pushes the linguini from one side to the other with his fork. Eventually, he says, “Is this your first time in Manhattan?”
“No. I’ve been here a few times before.”
“When was your last visit?”
“Decades ago,” Sam says. “When I was a kid.”
“So before all that stuff happened at that hotel?”
“Yeah.” Sam gazes at him from across the table, eyes narrowed, on the razor’s edge of a glare. “Before all that stuff. ”
Jeff pretends not to notice the sarcastic spin placed on that last word. “So it’s been a while, I guess.”
“It has.”
“And Quincy’s well-being is the only reason you came here?”
I reach out to pat Jeff’s hand. A silent signal that he’s out of bounds, taking things too far. He does the same thing to me when we’re visiting my mother and I get too argumentative about her views on, oh, everything.
“What other reason could there be?” Sam says.
“I suppose there could be plenty,” Jeff replies, my hand still heavy over his. “Maybe you’re seeking some publicity in the wake of Lisa’s death. Maybe you need money.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“I hope not. I hope you only came here to check in on Quinn.”
“I suppose that was always Lisa’s wish,” Sam says. “To have the three of us meet, you know? And help one another.”
The mood has irrevocably shifted. Suspicion hovers over the table, humid and sour. Impulsively, I raise my glass. It’s almost empty again, a thin circle of red swirling around its bottom.
“I think we should make a toast,” I announce. “To Lisa. Although the three of us never got the chance to meet, I think she’s here in spirit. I also think she’d be pleased to see at least two of us together at last.”
“To Lisa,” Sam says, playing along.
I slosh more wine into my glass. Then more into Sam’s, even though it’s still half-full. When our glasses clink over the table, it’s too hard, too loud, the crystal a hair’s breadth from cracking. A wave of Pinot Noir breaches the edge of my glass, splashing onto the salad and breadsticks below. The wine seeps into the bread, leaving behind splotches of red.
I let out a nervous giggle. Sam pops out one of her shotgun-blast laughs.
Jeff, not amused, gives me a look he sometimes whips out during awkward work functions. The Are-you-drunk? look. I’m not. Well, not yet. But I ca
n see why he thinks I am.
“So what do you do for a living, Sam?” he asks.
She shrugs. “A little of this, a little of that.”
“I see,” Jeff says.
“I’m between jobs at the moment.”
“I see,” Jeff says again.
I take another sip of wine.
“And you’re a lawyer?” Coming from Sam, it sounds like an accusation.
“I am,” Jeff says. “A public defender.”
“Interesting. Bet all types of people come your way.”
“They certainly do.”
Sam leans back in her chair, one arm crossed over her stomach. The other grips her wineglass, holding it close to her lips. Smiling over the rim, she says, “And are all your clients criminals?”
Jeff mirrors Sam’s stance. Reclined in his chair, clenching his wineglass. I watch the two of them face off, the half-eaten meal heavy and unsettled in the pit of my stomach.
“My clients are innocent until proven guilty,” Jeff says.
“But most of them are, right? Proven guilty?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“How does that make you feel? Knowing the guy sitting next to you in court in a borrowed suit did all those things he’s accused of?”
“Are you asking me if I feel guilty about it?”
“Do you?”
“No,” Jeff says. “I feel noble knowing that I’m one of the few people giving that guy in the borrowed suit the benefit of the doubt.”
“But what if he did something really bad?” Sam asks.
“How bad are we talking about?” Jeff says. “Murder?”
“Worse.”
I know where Sam’s going with this, and my stomach clenches even more. I put a hand over it, rubbing slightly.
“It doesn’t get much worse than murder,” Jeff says, also knowing what Sam’s up to and not caring. He’ll gladly follow her to the edge of an argument. I’ve seen it happen before.
“Have you represented a murderer?”
“I have,” Jeff says. “In fact, I’m doing so right now.”
