Page 117 of All These Beautiful Strangers

2017

I could feel Dalton’s steady gaze on me in class, but I steadfastly ignored him, looking everywhere but in his direction.

I hadn’t spoken to Dalton since the incident outside the dining hall three days ago, but he had tried, on several occasions, to speak with me—notes in my mailbox (Charlie, I’m so sorry, can we talk?), a bouquet of roses delivered to my desk in homeroom. His favorite trick was trying to corner me after class in the hallway, so I had gotten in the habit of getting excused from class a few minutes early every day so that I could make a quick getaway.

Greyson was still around. He had gotten a hotel room in Falls Church and would come by campus in the evening to see me. I had told him everything—from what I knew about my father and Jake’s death and my mother’s disappearance, to what had happened with Dalton, and Greyson had insisted on staying, to make sure I was all right and to help me look into my mother’s case.

Greyson spent most of his day at the library in Falls Church doing research, so I was surprised when I returned to my room after my afternoon classes and found him there, sprawled out on Drew’s bed with some files.

“I found this today,” Greyson said, climbing off the bed and handing me a small stack of papers that had been stapled together. “It’s a copy of Jake’s autopsy report.”

“How’d you get that?” I asked, laying my bag on my desk and taking the report from him.

Greyson shrugged. “Public record.”

I skimmed the documents. The pathologist’s description of Jake’s body was difficult to read. Blanching and bloating of the epidermis . . . Water found in stomach . . . Aspirations of fluid in the air passages . . . Pink foam in mouth. The estimated time of death was listed as between eight p.m. and midnight on December 21, 1990. Under “Cause of Death,” he had listed: Pulmonary edema.

“Pulmonary edema?” I asked, looking up at Greyson.

“It means fluid in the lungs,” Greyson said. “Drowning.”

“So Margot was telling the truth,” I said.

“Looks like it,” Greyson said, pointing to a place on the next page. “And here, it states that there were no abrasions or bruising on Jake’s body consistent with a struggle—nothing to suggest that he was bound or forced into the water.”

“So, suicide,” I said.

“Yep,” Greyson said. “Couple that with the note my mom told us they found in Jake’s room and Jake’s death seems pretty cut-and-dry.”

My eyes scanned the report, searching for something, anything, that would point in another direction. “What about this? The tox screen results. Jake tested positive for alcohol, acetaminophen, and oxycodone,” I said.

Greyson nodded. “Relatively low levels according to my research, but yes, quite the illicit cocktail. According to the report, though, drowning was the official cause of death.”

“So Jake was drinking the night he died?” I asked.

“It appears so,” Greyson said.

“And taking drugs,” I said.

I blew out my breath and thought. Oxycodone and acetaminophen. Percocet? Students passed Percs around campus like candy. I’d never had a prescription, but even I had popped a few pills at a party once when Sheila Andrews had brought her leftover stash from her wisdom teeth extraction. It was what most kids considered a safe high—much less dangerous than taking heroin or other illegal narcotics.

“Maybe there’s something else here,” I said. “Something that was overlooked.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I was grasping at straws, looking for connections that didn’t exist. But there was something linking my mother’s disappearance and Jake and my father, and my gut told me it had to do with Jake’s death.

“There’s, uh, one other interesting thing that I came across today,” Greyson said. He scratched the back of his neck, like he was nervous to tell me.

“What?” I asked.

He went over to his bed and grabbed another piece of paper. When he handed it to me, I saw that it was a photocopy of an old newspaper clipping. It was an engagement notice. My father’s engagement notice. Only, it wasn’t to my mother. There was my father in the photograph, and next to him in the portrait was another face I recognized.

“My father was engaged to Margot?” I asked.

“Apparently,” Greyson said, shrugging. “I’m guessing he never mentioned that?”

“No,” I said. But then again, there’d been a lot he and my family had kept from me.