I handed him a box of tissues. “Matthew, listen to me. None of this is your fault. Yes, there’s something to be said about sleeping with a teacher’s assistant, but you can’t help who you fall in love with. That doesn’t mean Rosie died because of you.”
“I told her to meet me in Whitechapel,” he said, voice thick with phlegm. “I told her to run off on her own. If I’d stayed with her, she might still be alive.”
“Or the Ripper would have killed both of you.”
He curled in on himself and let go, sobbing with such profound release that I wondered if he had not allowed himself to cry until this very moment. I rubbed his back in slow circles. I wasn’t much older than him when I’d lost my mother. I knew what such a loss could do to a person at that age.
I knelt beside his chair. “Matthew, look at me. I’m doing everything I can to catch the Ripper, but to do that, I need her file.”
He blotted his face with a handful of tissues and drew the file out from under his sweater. “Take it. I don’t know why I bothered.”
“Stealing it? Why did you?”
His eyes were red and runny. “No one would tell me what happened to her exactly because I’m not family. I thought if I found out, it might help me find closure. Get over her, you know?”
“I know.” I pushed his purple hair away from his face. “The best thing you can do for yourself is to take it easy. Go back to school and focus on your studies. Make a life for yourself.”
“Am I supposed to forget about Rosie?”
“No,” I said firmly. “You don’t have to forget her. Hold her in your heart and remind yourself that she would have wanted you to be happy. She would have wanted you to succeed and find peace. Can you do that?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to find the Ripper,” I promised him. “And when I do, I’ll make sure you’re the first one to know.”
12
September passed like a slow, torturous trek through a muddy jungle. With each step, my boots sank deeper into the muck, and it took all the more effort to pull them free. Every day seemed rainier than the last. The world turned gray, and so did my mood. This was the London the great poets and writers warned you about, as dull and taciturn as Fitzwilliam Darcy before Elizabeth Bennet came along. The sun rarely made an appearance, and when it did, it struggled to shine. The cloud-filtered light was no more effective than fluorescents above a cramped cubicle.
Evelyn had pulled through her second surgery, but the outcome wasn’t pretty. According to Doctor Evans, the ligaments in her shoulder were torn completely. They had to do some pretty heavy work to repair them as well as the nerves Evelyn had damaged in her quest to rescue me from the drunken bar guy. Her shoulder was a patchwork of bruises and stitches, but the depression that set in when Evelyn realized she would have to start her recovery all over again became her tallest hurdle.
She did her best to hide it, making conversation as best she could. If I didn’t know her so well, I might have fallen for her false interest and shallow smiles. When she forgot to keep her mask in place, her discontent grew obvious. Only seldom did she move. Before, she had kept up with her regular exercise routine as much as possible, doing one-armed push-ups and pull-ups, squats, and even running around the block to keep the rest of her body in good health while her shoulder healed. Now, she didn’t bother with exercise at all, preferring to spend most of her time in the big leather armchair. She didn’t read or watch TV but gazed off into the distance, seemingly at nothing at all.
More than once, I caught her standing as close to the windows as possible, staring straight down as if she wished to press through the glass by the process of osmosis and plummet to the street below. In those times, I gently led her away from the view and suggested one outing or another. She placated me, accompanying me to Covent Garden once and to a musical on West End another time. If I was so inclined, I could pretend that everything was fine, but I worried for my friend, especially on each morning she had to return to Alba.
“I can’t,” she told Alba during a particularly difficult session. Sweat coated her face, so when tears leaked over her eyelashes, you almost couldn’t tell she was crying too. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“One more,” Alba said firmly. She held Evelyn’s arm, supporting almost her entire weight, as Evelyn fought to finish the exercise. “You can do this. Come on, Evelyn.”
Evelyn turned purple with effort. Her cheeks puffed up as she tried to bring her arm up again.
“You can do it,” I urged.
“Shut up,” she growled. “Shut up and go away.”
Hurt pulsed through me, especially when Alba caught my eye and subtly nodded toward the waiting room. Willing myself not to cry, I left Alba to finish with Evelyn and went to wait outside.
The streets of Whitechapel had calmed in the few weeks that had passed since Rosie Brigham’s murder. Without news of additional deaths, most people believed the danger had passed. I wasn’t so certain. The end of September crept
