Reconstructing Amelia

by Kimberly McCreight

  “Can we call Molina and ask?”

  “I already did.” Lew rearranged his knife and fork so that they lined up straight on either side of his plate. “At the moment, he’s apparently unreachable, out on a fishing boat somewhere in the Florida Keys. He’s not due back for another week.”

  “Did you say he’s going to be a security guard?” Kate asked, because that sounded like someone being demoted, not someone who’d have the money to take a big fishing trip.

  “Not like an eight-bucks-an-hour security guard at Best Buy or something. He’s working at Carmon Industries, corporate security. They hire cops, FBI, that kind of thing. From what I hear, it’s a plum deal, if you like that sort of thing.”

  “Doesn’t this all seem awfully convenient? The missing autopsy report, Molina’s leaving the police force right as I start asking questions.”

  “The timing’s off, no question.”

  “Off?” Kate asked. Now she was getting irritated. Was he seriously going to be as oblivious as Molina. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say, that it’s off?”

  Lew took one last sip of coffee and nodded. “For now.”

  “So we’re just going to sit here and wait for Molina to get back from vacation?” It came out even louder and angrier than Kate had intended.

  She could feel the waitress and a busboy turn in her direction. Kate didn’t care. She’d had enough. She’d been pushed off, quieted down, and disregarded once. She’d been made to accept something she did not believe. She wasn’t going to sit there and let it happen again.

  “No,” Lew said calmly. He stood and carefully flattened several dollars, placing them under the salt and pepper shakers. “We’re going to start again at ground zero, retrace Molina’s steps. Cut a new trail where we have to. You’re daughter is dead, and we’ve got the word ‘sorry’ written on a wall near where it happened by somebody other than her. We’ve got some questionable medical findings and an anonymous message that says she didn’t kill herself. That’s more than enough for me to reopen the investigation.”

  “Oh,” Kate said, feeling relieved and a little spooked that there had been some threshold they’d hurdled over without her even realizing there’d been one to cross. “Okay, good.”

  “So, we’ve got questions. Who do you think is going to have the answers?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, her voice cracking. “I honestly don’t.”

  “Sure you do,” Lew said, waving her out the door with him. “You know a lot more than you think.”

  It was Kate’s idea to go talk to Sylvia first. Molina had interviewed her last time. But it had always seemed to Kate that Sylvia should know something more. And Lew had agreed she was as good a place to start as any.

  Sylvia’s mom, Julia, swung open the door wearing narrow-legged pants that billowed out at the hips, a slim tank top, and red ballet flats. It was the kind of blatantly unflattering outfit Kate could never have pulled off. But on Julia it looked positively lovely. It helped that she was effortlessly beautiful, with a lean, toned figure and an exotic bone structure. With her hair back in a messy ponytail, she looked much younger than she could possibly be, given her children’s ages. Her older son was a sophomore at Stanford.

  “Oh hi,” Julia said, her slight Dutch accent more prominent than usual. She looked surprised and confused, her eyes moving from Kate to Lew and back again. Before Kate could explain why they were there, a little terrier came zooming around the edge of the door barking wildly. “Beeper, no!” Julia scolded the little dog, using a foot to slide him gently across the polished wood floor. “Sorry, let me just put the dog out back.”

  A few seconds later she returned from placing the dog outside on the deck off the kitchen.

  “Come in, come in,” Julia said, waving them inside. “What a nice surprise.”

  She was trying to sound pleased to see Kate, but it was obvious that she wasn’t. Kate didn’t blame her. Julia was the mother of a girl whose best friend had just committed suicide. She wanted to forget, not spend time with that dead child’s mother.

  “This is Lieutenant Thompson,” Kate said. “He’s been helping me look into what happened to Amelia.”

  Julia held out her hand, which Lew shook firmly. He seemed somewhat larger now, though not much.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Lieutenant,” Julia said, but she looked tense. “Does the police being involved again mean there’s been some new development?”

  “We’re just following up on initial interviews,” Lew said nonchalantly. “To confirm nothing was missed.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. Personally, I’ve never believed it was a suicide,” Julia said.

  “Why not?” Lew asked.

  “Amelia was like a surrogate daughter,” Julia said firmly. “She was always so grounded, in a way that I could only hope my own kids would be.” It wasn’t easy hearing Julia talk about Amelia this way, like she had her own claim to her. The worst part was that she did, given how much time Amelia had spent at their house, and with Julia a stay-at-home mom. “Call it a mother’s instinct. That’s not very scientific, I suppose, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate.”

  “Thank you for saying that,” Kate said, feeling a mix of relief and jealousy. “And for caring so much about Amelia. She thought about this as a second home.”

  Julia stared back at Kate, her eyes getting shiny. She looked for a moment as if she might say something else, but then she seemed to think the better of it.

  “We have a couple of questions for your daughter,” Lew said from behind them. “It won’t take long.”

  “Oh, I see,” Julia said, sounding surprised. Though it seemed unlikely that she could have thought they were there just to talk to her. “Um, okay. Come this way.”

  She turned and led them tentatively deeper into the brownstone, which was a happy mix of top-grade appliances and adolescent-related detritus. But the clutter was pleasant somehow, comforting.

  “Have a seat,” Julia said, when they were out in the living room, a bright space with a high ceiling and puffy white couches. An arrangement of orange tulips was on the heavy wooden coffee table. “I’ll just— I’ll go get Sylvia from upstairs,” Julia said, looking warily toward the steps. “I do have to warn you, she hasn’t been herself since what happened to Amelia. I think she feels responsible. Maybe that’s part of why I don’t believe it was a suicide. I don’t want her to feel guilty anymore.”

  Lew and Kate sat in silence for what felt like a long time, waiting for Julia to come back down the stairs. Finally, they creaked under the sound of heavy footsteps, and a moment later Julia emerged, smiling stiffly. Behind her was Sylvia, pale and gaunt in skinny jeans and a shapeless black T-shirt, so big that it easily could have been a dress. Her dark hair was in a ponytail like her mother’s, but much messier. Sylvia had always cared so much about the way she looked. It was part of what defined her. Now she looked just awful. It was heartbreaking.

  “Come on, honey,” Julia said, her voice warbled and high. “Have a seat on the couch here. Kate and the police officer need to ask you some questions.”

  Julia sat down herself and patted the couch next to her, then looked over at her daughter.

  Sylvia didn’t move.

  “Mom, stop talking to me like I’m some kind of head case.”

  Julia smiled at Kate, partly embarrassed and partly, it seemed, sad for everyone involved.

  “Sylvia, we just have a few questions about Amelia, then we can get right out of your hair,” Lew said calmly. “But you’re going to have to bear with us here because these are probably questions you’ve answered before.

  “Okay, I guess, whatever.” Sylvia rolled her eyes. “I mean, I don’t have a choice, right?”

  “No, I guess you don’t,” Lew said. “You and Amelia were best friends?”

  “Yeah. I mean, supposedly, since, like, kindergarten.”

  “Was Amelia depressed or upset about anything?” Lew asked.


  “We’re teenagers,” Sylvia said. “We’re all depressed.”

  Kate smiled. It was the kind of thing Amelia would have said.

  “But nothing out of the ordinary?” Lew pressed on, ignoring her sarcasm.

  “She was kind of wanting to know who her dad was lately, I guess,” Sylvia said. “She’d gotten some weird texts about it. Like a Who’s-your-daddy? kind of thing. I don’t know exactly because she wouldn’t show them to me. And I think the number was blocked. But she wasn’t upset, like, kill-yourself upset about it.” Sylvia’s eyes flicked in Kate’s direction, then at the ground. “But she said she didn’t believe anymore what you’d told her about her dad. She talked about finding out the truth on her own if she had to.”

  Texts about her dad? Now it made sense, Amelia’s sudden questions. But why hadn’t she told Kate? And who had sent them?

  “Do you know if she made any progress finding him?” Lew asked.

  Sylvia shook her head. “She said that she knew where her mom’s old journals were, that she was going to look through them.”

  “Did she?” Kate braced herself.

  “I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “She never talked about it again. I was going to ask her, but then, you know, everything happened.”

  “What about any intimate relationships?” Lew asked. “Like a boy perhaps?”

  “There definitely wasn’t any boy,” Sylvia said.

  “My neighbor saw Amelia going into our house in the middle of the day with some boy a few days before she died,” Kate said. “You didn’t know anything about that?”

  “Maybe it was that Ben kid,” Sylvia said. She seemed nervous suddenly. “Their whole thing was really weird. Amelia lied to me about it, too, so who knows?”

  “Yeah, I saw some text from a Ben,” Kate said, her stomach balling up as she remembered it again: lucky you. “Does he go to school with you?”

  “No, he applied to that same Dorks-R-Us summer thing at Princeton,” Sylvia said. She sounded disgusted, or maybe jealous. It was hard to tell with her. “They were always texting back and forth, and Amelia was always, like, ‘He’s gay and he lives up in Albany; he’s lonely.’ Except the whole thing seemed way creepy to me.”

  Lew was jotting down notes. “Amelia wrote to him?”

  “She said he got her e-mail from somebody at Princeton.” She shrugged. “Like I said, the whole thing was weird. He was even supposed to be coming here on the day she died. You know that, right? Amelia was always sketchy with the details about him. She was embarrassed, I think, which she totally should have been.”

  “So you don’t have any idea where we could find Ben, a phone number, last name, e-mail?” Lew asked. “Maybe a school name?”

  Sylvia shook her head. “But it’s got to be on her phone; she was, like, constantly texting with him.”

  “It is,” Kate said. “I saw it.”

  “Okay, good. Any disagreements, problems with anybody else?” Lew asked. “Maybe some girls she had a problem with?”

  “Nope.”

  “Sylvia, I found all these little notes in her room,” Kate said, still feeling like Sylvia was holding out. “They all said ‘I hate you.’ It looked like they were written by different people. Do you know what that could be about?”

  Sylvia made a face and shook her head. “Nobody writes, like, actual notes anymore. You sure they weren’t just Amelia’s? She was always working on one crazy project or another.”

  “That’s true.” Kate smiled, thinking of the time when Amelia was seven and she’d cut apart one of her two copies of The Giving Tree to make a mobile out of the phrases.

  But Sylvia had seemed weirdly unsurprised by the “I hate you” notes. Kate had been shocked. She would have thought that Sylvia would have been, too. Or at least would have been a lot more curious. Unless, of course, she already knew all about the notes.

  “What about this school newsletter?” Lew asked.

  “Yeah, gRaCeFully, that’s what it’s called,” Kate said. “Do you know who writes it, Sylvia?”

  Sylvia stared down at her hands, shaking her head.

  “What are they talking about?” Julia leaned into Sylvia, trying to make eye contact with her daughter. “Why do you look bothered suddenly?”

  “I’m not bothered, Mom.”

  “It’s this gossip blog or newsletter or something,” Kate said. “It was— The things in it were pretty harsh.”

  “Harsh?” Julia asked. “Why have I never heard about this before?”

  “Because it’s stupid,” Sylvia said. “And it’s only been around, like, a couple years.”

  Kate wished now that they hadn’t brought it up. It probably wasn’t that important, and she didn’t want Julia searching out gRaCeFULLY and seeing what had been written there about Sylvia. She wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

  “Who puts this gRaCeFULLY thing out?” Lew asked.

  Sylvia shrugged. “Somebody stupid who has nothing better to do.”

  “Was Amelia upset about things written about her there?” Lew asked. “Some of it was pretty personal.”

  “Wait a second,” Julia said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but a mean-spirited gossip blob about students is being posted up somewhere at the school?”

  “It’s a blog, Mom. Not a blob. It’s on a computer,” Sylvia huffed. “And I don’t see why we’re talking about this. Amelia offed herself. End of conversation.”

  “Sylvia!” Julia scolded. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but think about Kate’s feelings, for goodness’ sake! She’s just trying to make sure they understand exactly what happened to Amelia.”

  “She jumped off a roof.” Sylvia drew out the words viciously. “What else is there to know?”

  “Why,” Kate said, trying not to let Sylvia upset her. Sylvia was upset, too—Kate understood that. “I want to know why. I want to know what happened in Amelia’s life to put her in that place. Because I don’t believe it. I don’t think she would have done it.”

  “What about this paper the school says she cheated on?” Lew asked. “They say that’s why she jumped. She was upset about getting caught. Did Amelia talk to you about this paper, Sylvia?”

  “Pff,” Sylvia huffed. “Amelia was way too smart to ever have to cheat on anything. And if she was ever going to cheat on something, it definitely wouldn’t haven been an English paper. She could have taught that class.” Sylvia said. “She was upset about them saying she did it and whatever. But she knew she didn’t. The truth would have come out.”

  “So if it wasn’t boys or drugs and it wasn’t getting caught cheating,” Lew said, “then why do you think she would have done it?”

  “Because she was stupid,” Sylvia said angrily. She crossed her thin arms over her huge T-shirt so that it collapsed down over the tiny frame hidden inside. She turned back toward the steps. “And selfish, and I wish I’d never met her.”

  gRaCeFULLY

  OCTOBER 3RD

  * * *

  Because there are 176 definitions for the word loser on urbandictionary.com.

  Don’t Be a Statistic

  * * *

  Hey bitches!

  Oh, you silly, silly boys. Word is, a bunch of underclassmen were conned into sending photos of their “junk” to various Maggie pledges who were pretending to be secret admirers. Said junk photos were then texted out to all girls in their homerooms. Word of advice, fellas: if you get a text from a girl who says she wants to see your stuff, IT’S A LIE! No girl ever wants to get a picture of your wiener.

  Looks like our dear, unfortunately named Jessica DEALER is about to get booted for passing out pills to the bored and beautiful of Grace Hall. Three private schools in three months, Jessica? You know, your unfortunate last name does not have to be your destiny.

  Word is that the filthy rich (poorly credentialed) stepfather of one—how shall I put it?—academically challenged senior is on a campaign to get her into the Ivy League. And when I say campaign, I mean, hell hath no fury like a board
member with a big, fat checkbook and street connections. Word is, he’s planning on wiretapping the admissions office or, alternatively, breaking some kneecaps.

  The entire lacrosse team was thrown out of Kale’s Tavern this past weekend, not because they were underage and wasted but because one of those idiots PISSED ON THE FLOOR! Yo idiots, if someone is stupid enough to serve you, the least you can do is have the courtesy to locate the commode.

  Amelia

  OCTOBER 5, 11:34 PM

  AMELIA

  more weirdness

  BEN

  uh-oh, what happened?

  AMELIA

  she’s so up and down and weird. sometimes I feel like she doesn’t want to be friends with me

  BEN

  sorry but you girls are all crazy; did you finish up the Maggie to do’s

  AMELIA

  yes

  BEN

  even . . .

  AMELIA

  yes

  BEN

  I thought

  AMELIA

  I know, I said I wasn’t going to do it; but it’s not like I had any choice

  BEN

  uh-huh, sure

  AMELIA

  don’t judge. it’s mean

  BEN

  whatever; does the kid know the thing was a scam?

  AMELIA

  tomorrow

  BEN

  oh, man

  AMELIA

  I know, I suck; c/u g2g

  OCTOBER 5, 11:41 PM

  SYLVIA

  does my butt look better in my black James jeans or that vintage dress I got in the West Village?

  AMELIA

  trick question?

  SYLVIA

  haha

  AMELIA

  vintage

  SYLVIA

  I knew it! ty!!! Xoxo

  OCTOBER 5, 11:47 PM

  DYLAN

  I was just thinking about you

  AMELIA

  me too

  DYLAN

  good thoughts?

  AMELIA

  definitely

  DYLAN

  excellent; c/u 2morrow