Heather and I had laughed about it in the car on the way home, about the “assignment” and how dumb we were for paying three hundred dollars an hour to have someone tell us to write in a journal, and that no wonder we had money problems. We’d howled over it; it was the first time we’d laughed together—really laughed—in months. I didn’t tell her a week later when I bought a navy Moleskine at the pharmacy, fueled by Dr. Kendrick’s advice. I didn’t tell her that I started writing in it, that the words rushed out of me like tap water, ready at the turn of a knob.

It’s so ironic it might be funny if it weren’t utterly horrifying, the sight of my impersonation on the laptop screen, at the open “BM Diary” document in front of me. I read through the whole thing, and by the end I feel warped, as though I’m not in my body but floating far up above. There’s a long skinny hallway and a door I can’t unlock, a door that’s laughing, pointing, and I’ve been here before, many times, powerless and trapped in my own mind. It’s what addiction does to you. It’s what Skye’s OCD does to her. It’s the battle we both endure, and I’ve never met someone who gets it the way she does, who sees me as lucidly, as compassionately, as she does. Or did. If I lose her, which I will, I’ll never forgive myself. This I know.

I blink my way back into my body, willing myself to comprehend what I’ve just read. Awareness of the impending damage oozes its way into my consciousness, a pooling sickness in my gut with implications far worse than what I can fully grasp—for losing and destroying Skye, for the fate of Garrett, Hopie, and Mags, for the inevitability of the legal repercussions that lie ahead. Most wrenching of all is the realization that none of this has anything to do with Andy Raymond or the guys from Langs Valley.

I realize what I already know. What I’ve known since the very first page of the document. I know who wrote these letters.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Heather

Dear Dr. K,

In July 1991, Burke and I moved to New York.

Oh, New York. There’s really no place like it, Dr. K, which you obviously know because you live there now. I’m sure you and the wife take full advantage of your backyard—museums, Saturdays in Central Park, Michelin-star dinners, Broadway shows. I’ve seen your Cartier watch—God knows you have the resources.

When Burke and I first arrived in New York, it felt like a miracle. It was by far the happiest I’d been in the horrible year since Libby Fontaine let my little brother drown in Chazy Lake. Senior year I tried to keep up my grades as best I could, but my being so depressed made it hard. For much of the year I felt depleted, as if the drive and stamina I’d had before had died in the lake with Gus. Despite Burke’s efforts to help me out of the muck, my fall semester average still dropped from a 3.9 to a 3.0.

I didn’t retake my SATs—my scores from the previous spring were strong enough—but with my new GPA the college counselor said it was going to be nearly impossible to get any kind of scholarship to Barnard, which had been my first choice. Burke encouraged me to apply anyway, but the application was complicated and daunting, and besides, Barnard was Libby’s alma mater. I realized I wanted nothing to do with it.

Sticking to our plan, Burke and I applied to schools exclusively in New York City. I got a partial scholarship to NYU and a full ride to Fordham University, so even though NYU was much higher ranked, I enrolled at Fordham. Burke’s transcript was a nightmare; the only redeeming quality was that his GPA showed a steady improvement from a 1.7 freshman year to a 3.0 senior year. I helped him write a personal essay on visiting his father in prison as a child, and he received a partial scholarship to CUNY Medgar Evers College.

Burke had stepped up senior year—he’d stayed off booze and drugs—and I was proud of him by the time we arrived in Manhattan. More than that, I believed in him. I knew he was smarter than anyone in Langs Valley had ever given him credit for, and it filled my heart with pride to know that he had started to believe it, too.

We lifted each other up, Dr. K. That’s what love does, and we loved each other fiercely. We were more than the other young couples drifting hand in hand around the city—much more. Burke and I were each other’s family.

We found a cheap studio apartment in the East Village, nearly equidistant from Fordham in the Bronx and Medgar Evers in Brooklyn. I know the East Village is trendy nowadays, but back then the area was seedy. Still, it was all we could afford off campus with our housing stipend, and Burke and I had made a firm commitment to live together in spite of our commutes. Plus, being from Langs Valley, we’d seen our fair share of shit, and we were scrappier than average eighteen-year-olds. The apartment was three hundred square feet with a single window overlooking an alley, but we made it home. We found a cheap mattress and some dishes at a tag sale, and a paint-chipped dresser on the sidewalk marked FREE. We tacked my favorite photograph of Gus to the wall above the dresser—the one where he’s sitting in the meadow next to our old house with his little knees tucked into his chest, blowing on a dandelion.

That first summer in New York was hot—a kind of heat we’d never experienced living in the mountains. We couldn’t afford an air-conditioning unit, but we got a fan that we blasted on full speed while we slept.

We weren’t always comfortable, but we were happy. For the first time since Gus died, I felt as if the weight on my shoulders had lightened, and I stood a little taller when I walked. They say you can’t run away from your problems, that your problems will chase you wherever you go, but if my problems followed me to New York, I think the city swallowed them right up. Its utter size and magnitude were more than I could comprehend; walking the streets or riding the subway uptown, I was floored by the sheer number of human beings that filled every inch of space. And everyone had problems. People were sick and homeless and fighting and crying—it was impossible to feel isolated by your own issues in a city that so publicly cursed the world. I loved it.

Burke got a job at the movie theater near Union Square, and I started waitressing at a Greek restaurant near our apartment. We both enjoyed going to work because of the air-conditioning. Some nights the restaurant manager let me bring home leftovers, which Burke and I would eat on our bed with the fan on full blast while we dreamed about the future.

We were going to keep studying hard and get perfect grades. Burke would get into business school at Columbia, and after graduation I would get a good job to tide us over while Burke finished his MBA. I didn’t have a specific career in mind yet, but I’d declared a major in economics and a minor in English, figuring this combination would open a variety of doors. After Burke finished grad school, we’d get married and have a beautiful wedding somewhere classy, like the Botanical Gardens or the Waldorf, paid for with Burke’s signing bonus from whatever top investment bank swept him up.

Once we had plenty of money saved, we’d have a baby—of this I was certain. I wanted children, from a deep place inside me. I wanted to hold them and protect them and give them the world. We’d move to a big white house in Connecticut; not in Libby’s town, but somewhere like it. Burke would be making bucketloads by then; we’d have so much money we’d never need to worry about anything. We’d be able to give our children everything they needed and more. All we had to do was stick with the plan, and with each other.

The one piece of the plan I didn’t share with Burke was that I still wasn’t all that interested in having a career, as he assumed I was. I aimed to work for a couple of years, certainly—perhaps in advertising or PR—but mostly I wanted to not need to work. I yearned for financial freedom, and days that belonged to me; I’d spend them raising our babies and decorating the house and planning vacations and reading glossy magazines in the bathtub with a glass of good wine. This was the true goal, to live the way Libby did. To be the kind of mother she was to her children.

But I couldn’t exactly admit to Burke that my real aspiration was to luxuriate in the wealth he provided—not yet. It would happen naturally down the line, but in the meantime, I needed to keep Burke focused. For him to succeed he had to believe that we were in the trenches together; he had to continue to find inspiration in our shared plan.

So we’d fall asleep like that, whispering dreams in the dark heat. We’d wake up in the mornings, our limbs tangled and sticky with sweat, but grateful to be where we were. We’d made it out of Langs Valley, and we were never going back. For the time being, that was enough.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Skye

OCTOBER 2019

Andie and I get to my building at a quarter past six. I feel like I’ve been gone for months, even though it’s barely been twenty-four hours since I was here confronting Burke. I give Andie my keys and she goes up to the apartment first, to make sure he’s not there. I wait in the cab on West Eleventh, the meter still running. Outside a light rain has begun to fall, streaking the windows.