You Are Not Alone Read online

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  From Greer:

  For Robert, who always encourages me to break down walls

  From Sarah:

  For Ben, Tammi, and Billy

  PART

  ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  SHAY

  Numbers never lie. Statistics, charts, percentages—they don’t contain hidden agendas or shades of gray. They’re pure and true. It isn’t until people start meddling with them, spinning and shaping them, that they become dishonest.

  —Data Book, page 1

  TWO WINEGLASSES ARE ON the coffee table, evidence of a romantic night. I clear them away, rinsing the ruby-colored stains pooling at the bottom of the goblets. The coffee is brewing, filling the galley kitchen with the aroma of the dark roast beans Sean introduced me to when I moved into his Murray Hill apartment eighteen months ago.

  I turn my head at the sound of a key in the lock, and a moment later he comes in, stepping out of his flip-flops. He’s humming, like he does when he’s happy. He’s been humming a lot lately.

  “Hi there,” I say as he sets down a shopping bag from Whole Foods with a bouquet of purple tulips peeking out of the top. “You’re up early.”

  His thick, gingery hair is sticking up a bit in the back, and I suppress the urge to reach out and run my fingers through it.

  “Thought I’d pick up breakfast.” He unpacks eggs and croissants and strawberries.

  As I reach for the carafe of coffee, Sean’s bedroom door opens.

  He quickly gathers the tulips as his girlfriend, Jody, walks into the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” she says, stretching. She’s wearing a pair of Sean’s boxers, which are almost covered by one of his big hoodies. Her curly hair is up in a high ponytail, and her toenails are painted bright pink.

  Sean gives her the tulips—and a kiss. I quickly turn away, busying myself opening the fridge and pouring almond milk into my travel mug.

  “Enjoy breakfast,” I say. “I’m heading out to get some work done.”

  “On a Sunday?” Jody crinkles her pert little nose.

  “I want to revise my résumé. I have an interview tomorrow.”

  I grab my tote bag containing my laptop off the bench by the front door. Beneath the bench, Jody’s sandals are nestled next to the flip-flops Sean just removed. I use my toe to nudge apart their shoes.

  Then I descend a flight of stairs and step outside into an already-muggy August morning.

  Not until I’m at the corner do I realize I left my travel mug on the kitchen counter. I decide to treat myself to an iced latte instead of going back to the apartment. These days, I spend as little time there as possible.

  Because numbers never lie. And two plus one equals … too many.

  * * *

  I pull open the heavy glass door to Starbucks, noticing it’s packed. Not surprising: Seventy-eight percent of American adults drink coffee every day, with slightly more women than men consuming it regularly. And New York is the fourth-most coffee-crazed city in the country.

  I can’t help myself; I often see the world through stats. It’s not just because as a market researcher I analyze data to help companies make decisions about the products they sell. I’ve been this way since I was a kid. I started keeping data books at age eleven, the way other kids kept diaries.

  Wow, you gained twelve pounds since your last visit, my pediatrician told me when I went in for a strep throat test the summer before middle school.

  Shay, you’re the tallest—can you stand in the back row? my fifth-grade teacher instructed me on class photo day.

  Neither said it with a negative tone, but those comments, along with others I often heard, made me aware that numbers affect the way people see you.

  I used to chart my height, my weight, and the number of goals I scored in each soccer game. I collected other data, too, like the categories of coins in my piggy bank, the number of library books I read every month, American Idol voting rankings, and how many gold, silver, and bronze medals the United States won in the Olympics. These days, I’ve come to mostly accept my body—I’ve turned my focus to my health and strength—and now, instead of what the scale shows, I record my 10K race times and the pounds I can deadlift.

  I glance around the coffee shop. A woman leans over her laptop, typing purposefully. A couple sits side by side, her leg draped over his, The New York Times splayed across their laps. A father and a young boy sporting matching Yankees caps wait at the counter for their order.

  Lately it seems like the stats are against me: I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m not dating anyone. When my boss called me into his office last month, I thought I was getting promoted. Instead, he told me I was being downsized. It’s like I’m caught in a slow spiral.

  I’m fighting as hard as I can to turn things around.

  First, a job. Then maybe I’ll join a dating site. There’s a void in my life Sean used to fill. Before he met Jody, we ordered in Chinese food at least once a week and binge-watched Netflix. He’s forever misplacing his keys; I instantly know from the way he calls “Shay?” when he needs help finding them. He waters the plant we named Fred, and I bring up the mail.

  Sean’s the first guy I really liked since I ended things with my college boyfriend. I began to fall for Sean months ago. I thought he felt the same.

  When the barista sets my latte on the counter, I scoop it up and push my way through the door.

  Even at a few minutes after nine A.M., the heat is thick and oppressive; it engulfs me as I head to the subway station on Thirty-third Street. When I feel my hair sticking to the back of my neck, I stop to dig an elastic band out of my bag so I can tie it up.

  That simple act costs me twenty-two seconds.

  As I descend the stained stairs into the tunnel, I see the train I just missed speeding away from the station. A few people who must’ve disembarked from it climb the steps opposite me. I reach the platform and feel the last of the train’s breeze in its wake. A fluorescent light above me flickers, and trash overflows from a garbage bin. Only one other person is waiting, about ten yards from me.

  Why didn’t he catch the train that just left?

  When someone conjures unease in you, there are usually good reasons behind it. A man with a goatee and backpack lingering on a deserted subway platform on a Sunday morning isn’t enough to make my pulse quicken.

  But the way he’s looking at me is.

  I watch him out of the corner of my eye, alert for any sudden movements, while my brain spins: The stairs are directly behind me. If he wants to harm me, I might be quick enough to run up them. But I could get stuck at the turnstile.

  I can’t identify any other escape route.

  The man takes a slow, deliberate step toward me.

  I whip my head around, hoping someone else is coming.

  That’s when I see we aren’t alone after all. A wom
an in a green dress with white polka dots stands farther down on the platform, in the opposite direction of the man. She’s partially camouflaged by the shadow of a large support beam.

  I move closer to her, still keeping the guy in my peripheral vision. But all he does is continue walking toward the stairs, eventually disappearing up them. I chide myself for overreacting; he probably mistakenly entered the downtown platform instead of the uptown one, which I’ve done before. Odds are, he was looking at the exit the whole time, not at me.

  I exhale slowly, then glance up at the green-hued LED display. The next train is due in a couple minutes. A few more people drift onto the platform.

  I can hear the distant rumbling of the wheels of the inbound train—it’s a familiar soundtrack to my daily life. I feel safe.

  The woman glances my way and I notice she’s about my height—five feet ten—and age, but her hair is shorter and lighter than mine. Her face is pleasant; she’s the kind of person I’d ask for directions if I were lost.

  I break eye contact with her and look down. Something is glinting against the dull concrete of the platform. It’s a piece of jewelry. At first I think it’s a bracelet, but when I bend over and scoop it up, I realize it’s a gold necklace with a dangling charm that looks like a blazing sun.

  I wonder if the woman dropped it. I’m about to ask her when the roar of the incoming train grows louder.

  She steps close to the edge of the platform.

  My mind screams a warning, Too close!

  In that instant, I realize she isn’t there to ride the subway.

  I stretch out my hand toward her and yell something—“No!” or “Don’t!”—but it’s too late.

  We lock eyes. The train appears in the mouth of the tunnel. Then she leaps.

  For a split second she seems frozen, suspended in the air, her arms thrown overhead like a dancer.

  The train shoots past, its wheels grinding frantically against the tracks, the high-pitched shriek louder than I’ve ever heard it.

  My stomach heaves and I bend over and throw up. My body begins to shake uncontrollably, reacting to the horror as my mind frantically tries to process it.

  Someone is yelling over and over, “Call 911!”

  The train stops. I force myself to look. There is no sign of the woman at all.

  One second she existed, and the next, she’d been erased. I stagger over to a bench by the wall and collapse.

  During everything that follows—while I give my statement to a police detective with an impassive face, am escorted past the crime-scene tape up to the street, and walk the seven blocks home—I can’t stop seeing the woman’s eyes right before she jumped. It wasn’t despair or fear or determination I saw in them.

  They were empty.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CASSANDRA & JANE

  AMANDA EVINGER WAS TWENTY-NINE. Single. Childless. She lived alone in a studio apartment in Murray Hill, not far from Grand Central Station. She worked as an emergency room nurse at City Hospital, an occupation so consuming and fast-paced it prevented her from forming close ties to her colleagues.

  She seemed like the perfect candidate, until she threw herself under the wheels of a subway train.

  Two nights after Amanda’s death, Cassandra and Jane Moore sit together on a couch in Cassandra’s Tribeca apartment, sharing a laptop computer.

  The clean lines of the living room furniture are upholstered in dove gray and cream, and accented with a few bright pillows. Floor-to-ceiling windows invite plenty of light and afford sweeping views of the Hudson River.

  The apartment is sleek and elegant, befitting its two occupants.

  At thirty-two, Cassandra is two years older than Jane. It’s easily apparent the women—with their long, glossy black hair, gold-flecked brown eyes, and creamy skin—are sisters. But Cassandra is composed of sleek muscles, while Jane is softer and curvier, with a high, sweet voice.

  Jane frowns as Cassandra scrolls through potential pictures. The only ones they possess of Amanda are recent—within the past few months: Amanda sitting cross-legged on a picnic blanket in Prospect Park; Amanda lifting a margarita in a toast at Jane’s birthday party; Amanda crossing the finish line of a charity walk for breast cancer research.

  In most of the photos, she’s surrounded by the same six smiling young women—the group the Moore sisters have methodically been assembling. The women have different occupations and hail from vastly diverse backgrounds, but they have more important, hidden qualities in common.

  “We need one of Amanda alone,” Jane says.

  “Hang on.” Cassandra pulls up a picture of Amanda holding a calico cat, sitting in a pool of sunlight spilling in through a nearby window.

  Jane leans forward and nods. “Good. Crop it a bit and no one will be able to tell where it was taken.”

  The sisters fall silent as they stare at the photo. Just a few weeks ago, Amanda was sprawled in the gray chair adjacent to this very couch, which was the spot she usually chose when she came over. She kicked off her shoes and stretched her long legs over the chair’s arm as she talked about the elderly hit-and-run victim she’d helped save with four hours of frantic treatment. His daughter brought in dozens of homemade cookies today and left us the sweetest card! Amanda had said, her words tumbling out with her usual exuberance. It’s times like this when I love my job.

  It seems impossible not only that Amanda is gone, but that she chose to end her life in such a spectacularly violent way.

  “I never saw this coming,” Cassandra finally says.

  “I guess we didn’t know Amanda as well as we thought,” Jane replies.

  For the sisters, Amanda’s suicide triggered frantic efforts to answer questions: Where had she gone in the days before she died? Who had she talked to? Had she left any evidence behind—like a note of explanation?

  They searched her apartment immediately, using their spare key to gain entrance. They retrieved Amanda’s laptop and asked one of the women in their close-knit group, an operational security consultant, to unlock it. She ran a dictionary attack, cycling through thousands of possible passwords until she cracked Amanda’s. Then the sisters examined Amanda’s communications. Unfortunately, Amanda’s phone was destroyed by the subway, so it couldn’t be scrutinized.

  Within two hours her building was put under surveillance. The first visitor to it, Amanda’s mother, who took the train in from Delaware, was invited to tea by one of Amanda’s grieving friends. No helpful information was gleaned, even though Amanda’s mother changed the venue to a bar and stretched the conversation over two hours, during which time she consumed four glasses of Chardonnay.

  The memorial service, which will take place on Thursday evening at a private club in Midtown, is a precautionary measure. It was Cassandra’s idea to hold the simple, nonreligious ceremony. Anyone connected to Amanda will likely show up.

  The sisters, who now have access to Amanda’s contacts, will invite everyone Amanda corresponded with during the past six months.

  Cassandra and Jane also plan to post printed invitations on the main door to Amanda’s apartment building, in the nurses’ break room at City Hospital, and in the locker room of the gym Amanda frequented.

  At the memorial service, a guest book will be used to gather names of the mourners.

  “We’ll get through this, right?” Jane asks Cassandra. Both sisters are exhausted; faint purple shadows have formed beneath their eyes, and Cassandra has lost a few pounds, making her cheekbones even more pronounced.

  “We always do,” Cassandra replies.

  “I’ll get us a glass of wine.” As Jane stands up, she gives Cassandra’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Cassandra nods her thanks as she fits the photograph of Amanda into the template of the memorial-service notice on her screen. She proofs it a final time, even though she knows every word by heart.

  Will it be enough? she wonders as she hits the print key.

  If Amanda revealed something she shouldn’t have to some
one—anyone—in the days before her death, will that individual feel compelled to come to her service?

  The phrasing below Amanda’s smiling photograph was debated by the sisters before this simple message was agreed upon as bait: Please Join Us. All Are Welcome.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHAY

  NYC Subway System Stats: More than 5 million daily riders. Open around the clock. 472 stations—the most of any subway system. Seventh busiest in the world. More than 665 miles of track. 43 suicides or attempted suicides last year.

  —Data Book, page 4

  I LET MYSELF INTO the apartment and look around. It seems impossible that I’ve been gone only two hours. The violet tulips are in a cobalt vase. The frying pan soaks in the sink. Sean’s and Jody’s shoes are missing from beneath the bench.

  I walk straight into the bathroom and strip off my red T-shirt and khaki shorts. As I stand under a stream of hot water in the shower, all I can think of is her. Her pleasant face and pretty polka-dot dress. And those empty eyes.

  I wonder how long it will take for someone to miss her. When her husband arrives home to a dark apartment? When she doesn’t show up for work?

  But maybe she wasn’t married. Perhaps she didn’t have colleagues she was close to. It might take a while for her absence to register.

  Just as it might take time for anyone to notice mine.

  As I lie in bed that night, I can’t stop replaying the scene, starting with the moment I edged toward the woman to get away from the guy with the goatee. I keep berating myself for not doing something differently. I should have reached out to grab her or yelled “Don’t!” sooner.

  When I spotted the woman with the pleasant face, I only thought about how she could save me. But I should have been the one to save her.

  My room feels like it’s closing in on me in the darkness.

  I reach over and flip on the nightstand lamp, blinking against the sudden sharpness. I have to sleep—my big interview at Global Metrics is at nine A.M., and if I don’t get this job, I’ll have to keep temping. I’m lucky to have a part-time gig in the research department of a white-shoe law firm, but the pay isn’t great, plus the health benefits I carried over from my old job expire in a few months.