“I don’t know,” I lie, but I know who she is. It’s Ben’s new girlfriend, the one he told me about. It has to be. She looks vaguely familiar, though I can’t put my finger on why, but my hunch is confirmed as I watch Ben lean over and graze her lips.
I feel a squeeze in my chest—anger, jealousy—and clench my jaw as his hand snakes down her spine, resting on the small of her back.
“He’s got a type, huh?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, turning to look at Waylon. He stares back at me like I’m crazy.
“What doyoumean?” he asks. “Don’t tell me you don’t see it.”
I glance back in their direction. They’re walking away from us now, hand-in-hand, but I can still see glimpses of her profile—the slightly upturned nose; the wide smile and youthful glow—and I suddenly realize that Waylon is right.
“She looks like Allison,” I say, the realization hitting me hard.That’swhy she looks so familiar. I knew there was something. “Allison, but younger.”
The primary features are there, the ones that would catch your eye at a distance. She’s tall, slim. Bronzed skin and dark brown hair—but then my stomach drops with a vicious jolt, like an elevator with a snapped cable, barreling down.
I suddenly realize that Waylon isn’t talking about Allison, because he doesn’t know Allison. He’s never seen Allison.
I don’t know how I’ve never noticed it before.
“Allison?” he asks, as if reading my mind. “Isabelle, she looks likeyou.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
I didn’t want to go to Allison’s memorial. It felt wrong, like dancing on her grave. Like I was gloating, disrespecting the dead, reveling in the victory of some game she didn’t even know she was playing.
Ever since I had learned of her existence—that day at the office, those pictures of their perfect life displayed proudly on Ben’s desk like trophies—I had looked at her with a strange mixture of jealousy and resentment; of wonder and awe. I had wanted tobeher, and in order to be her, I had wanted her gone. But now that she was gone, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel about it.
The entire magazine was going, though, paying their respects, and I couldn’t think of a way to get out of it that wouldn’t either seem cold-hearted or crude.
“It’ll just be an hour,” Kasey had said as we walked up the sidewalk, yanking down the hem of her dress. It was too tight for the occasion, the kind of thing I would have worn to a bar, but I couldn’t blame her. Nobody ever seems to have the right outfit to commemorate death. “It’s not open casket, so it’s not like you have tolookat her or anything. Thank God.”
She was mistaking my nerves for some kind of inherent fear offunerals, but it wasn’t that. It was never that. It was this idea that I couldn’t seem to shake: that now that Allison was dead, sheknew. Allisonknewabout Ben and me. Our secret. As soon as we walked inside, I got that feeling again. The one my mother used to warn me about: eyes on my back, Allison’s eyes, trailing me around the house as if she were in the ceiling itself, watching.
We stood in the foyer, looking around, before spotting the bar table and making a beeline, grabbing two flutes of champagne. It felt like an odd thing to serve at a memorial, too celebratory and light, especially considering the circumstances. But I needed something to take the edge off. Something to help me breathe.
“Ben’s in there,” Kasey said, gesturing to the living room. “Accepting condolences.”
“Should we go in?”
“I guess,” she said, taking a sip of champagne, wincing. It looked cheap, an unnaturally fluorescent yellow. “Her family’s in there, too. I guess we should say something.”
“Allison’s family?”
I had expected it, obviously—of course her family would be at her memorial; this was their house, after all—but I wasn’t prepared for it. For the reality of facing them: her mother and her father, her siblings, her grandparents. Of looking them in the eye, trying to fake a lip quiver, maybe even squeeze out a tear. Of reciting the words I knew I was supposed to say—I’m so sorry for your loss—but knowing, deep down, that their loss was my gain.
“Yes, Allison’s family. Who else?”
I exhaled, took a long sip from my own flute, and licked my lips. “I think I’m just going to go outside for a second. Get some air.”
I remember pushing my way through the crowded dining room, throwing shy smiles at my coworkers. It was strange, seeing them there, dressed in black. Their demure expressions and ill-fitting clothes; the way they stood huddled together, shoulders tense, in packs of three. Itwas almost like I hadn’t even realized they existed outside of the walls of the office, even though we had socialized together so many times before. It reminded me of one time in Beaufort when I had run into the liquor store and bumped into my childhood pastor; he was clutching a handle of vodka at nine in the morning, skin sagging, and didn’t even bother to hide it. It made me realize that we like to organize the people in our lives into tidy little compartments, keeping them there to make ourselves feel safe, so seeing my coworkersthere, likethat—ripped from our emotionless cubicles and conference rooms, wiping snot on their shirtsleeves and their eyes red and raw—felt unnatural and wrong, driving home the realness of it all.
I opened the back door and stepped onto the porch, the cool breeze feeling good on my face. It was warm in there, stuffy. Too small a house for too many people. Then I walked over to the porch steps and sat down, placing the champagne on the ground, and put my head in my hands.
“Isabelle?”
I swung around, hand to my chest, realizing I wasn’t alone. Ben was standing just to the side of the house, hidden behind some bushes, although I recognized his voice as soon as I heard it.
“Ben,” I said, standing up. “What are you doing?”