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SEVEN

Later in her apartment, computer on her lap, a bowl of popcorn balanced next to her on the sofa, Alex googles Francis Keen. How sad that her death is the first thing that comes up, pages upon pages of tabloid and news articles detailing the nightmarish circumstances of her murder. Most of them are highlighted, indicating she’s read them before. It is far from her first time googling the crime scene. She knows the contents. Francis goes alone to the house and after spending one day there is brutally executed with a knife.

She clicks on an article several pages in. It describes how an anonymous source close to Francis said that she had been stressed about work and had gone away to try to relax. In the middle of the article is an image of Francis Keen’s idyllic cedar-shingled beach house with its stacked-stone fence and sprawling English gardens. It would look like the setting of a fairy tale were it not cordoned off with crime tape and surrounded by emergency vehicles.

She reads the caption. The grisly scene where Francis Keen’s body was found by longtime editor Howard Demetri. She stops, startled. So Howard was the one who found Francis. She read it before, but now that she’s met with Howard, Alex can imagine it. The way she must have looked. How awful it must have been for him. Alex tries to clear the horror of it from her mind.

Now she types her new boss’s name into Google. Her search brings her to a series of photos of benefits and charity balls. Howard, tall and dignified with a swoop of salt-and-pepper hair and sophisticated glasses, a scattering of gray stubble across his square jaw. There he is on his way into the Met Gala, looking dapper. A woman stands beside him, her delicate hand clamped onto his arm. Alex remembers the wedding band Howard spun on his finger. She zooms in to read the caption. Howard Demetri attends the Met Gala with his wife, Regina Whitaker . She’d heard Howard’s name before but never his wife’s.

She is an impossibly glamorous woman, the kind who feels to Alex like she might be her own separate superior species, wearing a gown that looks to be made from row upon row of overlapping tabs of silver. They catch the light like beautiful fish scales. Her perfect lips are parted to reveal a set of flawless white teeth.

Alex broadens her search online to include Regina Whitaker and finds a tour of her and Howard’s West Village brownstone in Architectural Digest . In the first photo, Regina lounges sideways on a wide white sofa in a room so luxurious, so rich with dark woods and veined marbles, that it looks like a movie set. She scrolls through the photos of their home, absorbing the expensive antiques alongside minimal, modern art. All of it in perfect refined taste. Alex allows herself to imagine living there, the plush feel of the throw pillows, the perfect warm lighting in each room. Isn’t this what New York does to people? Make them long for things? She stops on a photo of Howard Demetri in his home office. He sits stiffly behind an expansive desk, an antique globe and a Pulitzer Prize medal side by side on a bookshelf behind him. Alex zooms in on the image. Howard’s fingers are clenched unnaturally in front of him, a small tight smile on his face telling her that, despite all of the trappings, the awards, and material success, Howard Demetri is not a happy person.

There’s a sharp yell from somewhere out on the street. Startled, Alex pushes her computer off her lap and stands. Her ears prick like a wild animal listening for danger. She hears it again. A man’s voice, low and angry, shouting something unintelligible. She moves to the living room window, carefully pulling aside the blackout curtains. Across the street the Bluebird Diner is already dark, closed for the night. A man stands in front of it on the corner. His back is to her, but her chest tightens. There is something familiar about his stance—the slightly bowed legs, the broad shoulders. He paces, his face turned away from her. What is he doing out there? He’s stopped yelling but continues to pace, a few yards up and down the block, saying something ferociously into the his cell phone.

He turns finally, the side of his face catching the streetlight. Alex realizes that she has never seen it before. She releases a breath as the man crosses the street, disappearing around the corner and into the night.

She goes back to her computer. Another result farther down the page catches her eye.

Meet the New Dear Constance

She clicks on the link. It takes her to a press release. A photo of her own face stares back at her.