surreptitiously collecting glasses and ferrying them to the kitchen to be tucked into the capacious dishwasher.
Meg kept circulating, watching, stopping only occasionally, like some restless voyager searching for home.
It must have been four a.m. when a scream again rent the air, parting the haze of candle smoke, potpourri, and the mild fug of sweating, tired revelers. Again, Meg reacted, galvanized, as though she had somehow known it was coming.
Again, she drew up short at the doorway to the dimly lit den, adrenaline making her feel suddenly sober. Anise was sitting as before in the center of the velvet sofa, surrounded by candles and Christmas lights, her anguish evident on her lovely face. Again, the tall, gorgeous young woman was draped across her lap, head dangling, blond hair streaming across her face, arms and legs hanging limply.
Meg stepped into the room. It was the same as before, but also completely different. She knew that this time it was Anise who had screamed, not her daughter. Anise howled again, more animal moan than scream.
This time the doll was really broken. A thread of red blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Anise shifted her grip, almost as if to offer the girl to Megan. The girl’s head lolled grotesquely and her hair spilled to one side.
Megan gasped, realizing that it was not Carrie who Anise held, but Carrie’s college friend Lulu. And Lulu was quite, quite dead.
Anise’s face, pale and ravaged by a terrible grief, told Megan, even without a word, that Anise thought the girl across her lap was her beloved daughter.
“Oh no, Anise. It’s not Carrie. See?” Meg knelt beside her, her impulse to curb Anise’s dreadful suffering blotting out everything, even the awfulness of Lulu’s death. “See?” She touched the girl’s head, sickeningly wobbly on her neck, brushing aside the razor-cut blond shag. Anise, evidently in shock and not far from fainting, slowly, slowly looked down. She slowly, slowly focused her gaze of bottomless pity and terror on the dead girl’s ghastly, waxen face.
Anise stood up abruptly, unceremoniously dumping Lulu’s corpse onto Megan. Meg toppled backward, panicked, scrambling to right herself and get out from under the dead girl, a primitive fear kicking in.
Strong hands helped Meg. Bess pulled her up and steadied her. Thom picked up the girl’s body and laid it tenderly on the sofa where Anise had been sitting. He took a minute to straighten the clothes, pulling down the short angora dress, putting the arms straight at her sides, tilting the head, lolling on the broken neck, so that the thread of blood did not mar the upholstery.
Thom then turned to Anise, but she was already moving, staggering out of the room, shouldering aside anyone in her way, looking for her daughter. Bess followed close behind her.
Meg registered all these details as pandemonium broke out around her. Guests, summoned by Anise’s howls but slowed by alcohol, appeared in the doorway, reacting to the tragedy. Megan heard weeping, at least one person vomiting, someone calling 911. She turned to Thom.
“Help me, Meg,” he said quietly. “We’ve got to get everyone out of this room.”
She nodded and together they started herding out the curious, nudging, even pushing, until the dimly lit room was empty of the living. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, looking in at the lovely room. Chintz sofas, comfy chairs, warm Aubusson carpet, silk shaded brass lamps, the traditionally decorated Christmas tree in one corner, the dead college girl on the couch.
It seemed like only moments until a rush of cold air from the foyer and gruff men’s voices heralded the arrival of the Lower Merion police.
The investigation was a blur, managing to be intrusive, hyper-real, boring, unfocused, and intense, all at once. Most of the time Meg felt as though she were underwater. Technicians took over the living room. The immediate family was sequestered downstairs in the family room. Guests were asked to wait in the dining room, guarded by two uniformed officers who coped with a barrage of requests to use forbidden cell phones, to go to the bathroom, to leave and come back in the morning.
One by one, they were each brought to the kitchen for an interview with the two detectives, who put their questions quietly and took notes. A steady stream of uniformed officers and technicians came and went, each leaning down to whisper information or request instructions from the seated detectives. Someone had made coffee.
Among the last to be interviewed, Meg told the detectives what she could. It was a party like many others, confused, eventful, inconsequential. Soon forgotten, except, of course, for the murder.
She was leaving the kitchen, gratefully clutching her mug of coffee, when an officer brought Henri in for his interview, his head down, disheveled, looking even more broodingly handsome than ever. Meg glanced at him, passing, then stopped. Henri had already begun to speak in his charmingly accented voice, roughened by alcohol and a hint of something else. Megan stood stunned to hear Henri confess.
“I did it, you know? I murdered that poor girl. I didn’t mean to, you know? But I did it. I’m sorry.
His anguish was genuine. Tears streamed from beneath his long lashes. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, then over his stubbled, cleft chin. “I’m sorry. You know? I didn’t mean it. It just happened, you know?”
Meg gaped at him. He was almost as broken as Lulu had been, a monster, a chimera assembled from parts of his former self. His life was over too, and he knew it.
“I wanted her, you know? Sex, it’s what the party is all about, no? Sex. She wanted it too, but then she changed her mind, pushed me away.” A trace of a smile crossed his face, a remnant of his old roguish charm. “Me. She pushed me away. I knew she wanted it, you know? I took her shoulders and shook her, hard, to make her see reason, you know? But she passed out. I was sure it was only that.” He drew himself up a little. “I make love to a lot of women, you know? But never when they are passed out. So I left the bedroom, my beautiful little
His voice broke, his shoulders shook, he dropped his head into his arms on the counter and wept. Meg’s mind reeled. She watched until, at a signal from a detective, an officer put his hand on her arm and led her out of the kitchen.
As she left the room, Meg heard the detective ask Henri how the body had ended up in the den. She knew without looking that Henri only shrugged.
After a long while, the guests were released, shocked, tired, bedraggled, and grief stricken, to make their way home. No one met anyone else’s eyes. An officer asked Meg if she wanted to return to Philadelphia at once, but Thom told them she had planned to stay overnight and was considered family. Meg smiled at him gratefully. She would stay.
Brought back through the living room, Meg stood at the entrance to the den and saw the body was gone. Most of the family was now gathered there, sitting on the sofa where the dead girl had lain. Carrie was hunched over, hugging herself, crying. Anise was sitting beside her daughter, looking stunned, reaching out to stroke her arm occasionally, reassuring herself that she was still there. Celia and her boyfriend, their spat evidently forgotten, cuddled in a large chair, her eyes puffy and red, his hand unsteady as he stroked her head.
Bess stood by the fireplace, a glass of champagne, incredibly, in her hand. She smiled at Meg and raised her glass a fraction of an inch, a vestigial toast between friends. In her look there was a trace of something more, a hint of a question, a challenge. Meg, her eyes clear, calmly nodded back. Friends. More. Sisters.
Michelle and her drunken husband had evidently gone home. Most of the police were gone as well. Henri, shattered, had been led out in handcuffs, his leather coat draped raffishly over his shoulders. Henri’s wife Paula, distraught and incoherent, had been bundled out by a female officer before Henri was led away.
Poor Paula. Poor Henri. Megan knew that Henri had not killed this girl. Henri, guilty of many unsavory things, had killed no one.
Oh, he believed he had. His confession had been genuine and it would be accepted as fact. He would receive his punishment, his marriage over, his life, and Paula’s, in ruins. But actually he hadn’t done it, Meg knew. Meg didn’t care. She knew it was callous of her, but she just didn’t.
Her heart was with her friends, the Daggers. The Daggers of Bryn Mawr. The beautiful blond Dagger sisters and their families. Her sisters. Her friends. Bess. Dear Bess, standing by the fireplace, drinking champagne, looking so
Meg had known it wasn’t Henri from the moment she heard his touching, sad, rambling, French-accented
