Last to Die

“To you it is!” Teddy shot back. “You and your stupid club. Don’t you get it? For us, this is real life. It’s our lives.”

“Which is why you’re the ones who have to figure it out, the three of you,” said Julian. “You need to put your heads together. Find out what you have in common. Your families, your parents, where you went to school. It’s about finding that one link, that person who ties you together.”

“Person?” Will asked quietly. “You mean, the killer.”

Julian nodded. “It all gets down to that. There’s someone who’s passed through your lives, or your parents’ lives. Someone who might be searching for you right now.”

Claire looked at Will and remembered what he’d said to her: I feel like I’ve met you. She had no memory of him. She had no recollection of a lot of things, but that was because she’d been shot in the head. A lot of things could be blamed on that bullet, from her mediocre grades to her insomnia to her freakishly bad temper.

And now the old headache was back. She blamed the bullet for that, too.

She went to a boulder and sat down to massage her scalp, fingers worrying at the old defect in her skull. It was a permanent reminder of everything that she’d lost. At her feet, a skinny sapling had grown between the stones. Even granite can’t stop the inevitable, she thought. Someday the tree will break through, cracking and lifting that rock. Even if I snip this sapling, another will pop up.

The way killers do.

CLAIRE OPENED HER CLOSET and reached up for the battered cardboard box on the shelf. She had not taken it out since she’d arrived at Evensong, and could scarcely remember what was in it. Two years ago, she and Barbara Buckley had packed it with a few mementos from her parents’ London apartment. Since then, the box had traveled with her, from London to Ithaca and now here, but not once had she looked inside. She’d been afraid to see their faces again, afraid it would make her remember all that she had lost. She sat down on her bed and set the box beside her. Took a moment to brace herself before she lifted the cardboard flaps.

A porcelain unicorn lay on top. Izzy, she thought. I remember its name. It belonged to her mother, a silly little trinket that Isabel Ward had picked up in a flea market somewhere; she’d called it her good-luck charm. The luck ran out, Mom. For all of us.

Gingerly, Claire set the unicorn on her nightstand and reached into the box for the next items. A velvet drawstring bag with her mother’s jewelry. Her parents’ passports. A silk scarf that smelled faintly of perfume, something bright and lemony. Finally, at the bottom, two photo albums.

She took out the albums and set them on her lap. It was obvious which one was the most recent; it still had a few empty pages at the end. This volume she opened first, and she saw her own face smiling up from the first page of photographs. She was wearing a fluffy yellow dress and holding a balloon in front of the Disney World entrance. She didn’t remember the dress, nor did she remember going to Disney World. How old was she in this photo, three? Four? She was no good at judging kids’ ages. Had this photo not existed, she would not have known she’d ever set foot in the Magic Kingdom.

Another memory I’ve lost, she thought. She wanted to tear that page from the album, rip that lying photograph to pieces. If she didn’t remember it, then it might as well never have happened. This album was a book of lies, some other girl’s childhood, some other girl’s memories.

“Can I come in, Claire?” said Will, peeking through her open doorway. He seemed afraid to step in, and he hung back in the hall, his head ducked as though she might throw something at him.

“I don’t care,” she said. She meant it as an invitation, but when he backed away, she called out: “Hey, where are you going? Don’t you want to come in and check out my room?”

Only then did he enter, but he hesitated just inside the door and looked around nervously at the bookshelves, the desks, the dressers. He avoided looking at any of the beds, as if one of them might leap up and bite him.

“My roommates are packing for Quebec,” he said. “It sucks, that we can’t go with them tomorrow.”

“Like I’d want to be stuck on a bus for hours and hours? I’d rather stay here,” she said, even though that wasn’t really true; it did suck, being left behind. She turned a page in the album and saw another photo of herself, this time dressed in a cowboy hat, sitting on a depressed-looking pony.

“Is that you?” He laughed. “You’re really cute.”

Annoyed, she slapped the album shut. “I’m just doing research, like Julian asked us to.”

“I’m doing research, too.” He reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper. “I’m working on a time line of our lives. All the things that’ve happened to you and me and Teddy, and how they might relate. I’m trying to see if anything intersects between us. I still need to get Teddy’s exact dates, but I’ve got yours here. You want to check them?”

She took the sheet of paper and focused on the two event markers that represented her personal tragedies. The first was the date she and her parents were shot in London, an event so hazy in her memory that it might have happened to another girl, not her. But the second event was still fresh enough to make her stomach churn with guilt. She had stubbornly avoided thinking about it these past few weeks, but seeing that date on Will’s time line brought it back in a sickening rush of memories. How blithely she had slipped out of the Buckleys’ house that night. How tired and worried Bob and Barbara had looked when they’d fetched her in their car. They died because of me. Because I was a thoughtless jerk.

She thrust the time line back at Will. “Yeah. The dates are okay.”

He pointed to the photo albums. “Did you find anything?”

“Just pictures.”

“Can I see?”

She didn’t want to reveal any more embarrassing photos of herself, so she set aside the more recent album and opened her parents’ album instead. On the first page, she saw her father, Erskine, tall and handsome, wearing a suit and tie. “That’s my dad,” she said.

“That’s the Washington Monument behind him! I’ve been there. My dad took me to the Air and Space Museum when I was eight. It’s such a cool place.”

“Whoop-de-do.”

He looked at her. “Why do you do that, Claire?”

“Do what?”

“Put me down all the time?”

A denial reflexively bubbled to her lips; then she saw his face and realized what he’d said was true. She did put him down all the time. She sighed. “I don’t really mean to.”

“So it’s not because you think I deserve it? Like I’m disgusting or something?”

“No. It’s because I’m not thinking at all. It’s a stupid habit.”

He nodded. “I have stupid habits, too. Like how I’m always using the word like.”

“Just stop it, then.”

“Let’s agree we’ll both stop it. Okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.” She turned more pages in the album, saw more photos of her handsome dad posing in different settings. At a picnic with friends under the trees. Wearing a swimsuit on a beach with palm trees. She came to a photo of both her mom and dad, their arms entwined, standing in front of the Roman Colosseum.

“Look. That’s my mom,” she said softly, stroking a finger across the image. Suddenly the scent of the perfume on that scarf cut through the fog of lost memories, and she could smell her mother’s hair, feel her mother’s hands on her face.

“She looks like you,” said Will in wonder. “She’s really beautiful.”

They were both beautiful, thought Claire, gazing hungrily at her mother and father. They must have thought the whole world was at their feet when this picture was taken. They had striking good looks and a lifetime ahead of them. And they were living in Rome. Did they ever stop to think, did they ever imagine, how prematurely their future would end?

“This was taken nineteen years ago,” said Will, noting the date that Claire’s mom had written in the album.

“They were just married then. My dad worked at the embassy. He was a political secretary.”

“In Rome? Cool. Is that where you were born?”