Ramona knew that the world her friends inhabited wasn’t real. It was real for them, but it wasn’t the world that normal people lived in. Regular people didn’t have chefs and drivers and private SAT-prep coaches. Regular mothers didn’t have lines of credit at Tiffany. Regular dads didn’t trade in their wives every decade or so for a newer model, like a car.
Ramona also knew that she wasn’t rich the same way her friends were rich, with parents who had been raised rich, as had the parents’ parents. Ramona wouldn’t even be at Casden if her family didn’t have a friend who’d pulled strings to get her in.
Still, Ramona had always been grateful for what they had. Ramona’s mother made sure of that. She hadn’t come from wealth, that was for sure. She’d been raised in Chico, California, by Ramona’s grandmother, a single mother who waited tables for a living and who died before Ramona could meet her. Ramona’s grandfather had never been in the picture. When her mother met her father, she was working as a nanny.
Maybe it was because Ramona was appreciative of what she had that she tried so hard to stay grounded in the actual “real” world. In retrospect, Ramona realized that a shared yearning to know another world was what bound her and Julia together.
Julia and Ramona had been different in a lot of ways. Julia was long and lean and lithe, with flowing blond hair and classic good looks. She was the kind of girl who attracted men. She also had a recklessness and darkness about her that Ramona liked to think she had managed to avoid.
But Julia was the only friend from Ramona’s world who was happy to join in her hobby of talking to strangers everywhere they went. They both believed they could learn at least one interesting thing about human nature from any person they encountered. That was how they had gotten to know Casey, Brandon, and Vonda. Brandon had been the one holding the panhandling sign claiming they needed money for a bus ticket to Missouri.
“Do you really want to go back to Missouri?” Julia had asked.
Brandon had assumed Julia was messing with him and started in with the spoiled rich girl comments. But then Julia sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk next to them and said she just really wanted to know. They’d spent the next four hours sitting in that same spot. Just talking.
But nothing Ramona had learned from the world outside of hers had prepared her for what was happening now, in her real life. That privileged little bubble from which she’d been so eager to peer out was now being deflated, one slow leak at a time. Julia was dead. Brandon and Vonda had lied about a person who had been nothing but kind to them. And now she was terrified that something was going to happen to her mother.
“Mom!” Ramona was shouting now. “We have to call the police.”
Her mother was staring at her, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. Her lips were parted, but no sound was coming out. And at her feet, on the freshly polished hardwood beams, lay the package Nelson had handed them as they’d entered the lobby, stuffed from dinner at Fishtail, one of their favorite mother-daughter spots when Dad worked late.
The top had spilled to the side when her mother had dropped the box to the floor.
Maggots. Hundreds of them, rushing to escape from their temporary housing.
PART IV
Adrienne
Chapter Forty-Four
The next morning, Ellie and Rogan stood on the stoop of a nondescript brick apartment building on Anderson Avenue in High Bridge.
“Some kid from Casden Prep lived here?” Rogan asked.
Whereas Julia and Ramona grew up in the poshest townhouses and penthouses of Manhattan, Jason Moffit had been raised by his parents in this rent-controlled apartment in the South Bronx, just blocks from Yankee Stadium.
“According to that article in New York, he was a scholarship student. Casden takes them to ensure both class and racial diversity.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Jason supposedly had test scores off the charts. A total genius at chess. Parents who were devoted to his education. A real success story.”
“And the kid winds up a heroin OD in Central Park?”
“According to the suicide note, it was all too much pressure, trying to keep up with these kids who had everything. He went from being the smartest kid at JHS 151—getting shit from his peers for carrying his books home—to being the poor kid at Casden, getting shit for not being able to afford the restaurants and stores where these kids hang.”
“Damn,” Rogan said as he rang the buzzer marked Moffit. “Life can suck.”
Janet Moffit was waiting for them at the family’s open apartment door. They entered to find the space filled with moving boxes. Discolored rectangles marked the walls where pictures had once hung.
“Watch your step around these boxes. We still have the couch to sit on for now. You said this was about Jason? Should I call my husband? He’s working a shift down at Madison Square Garden—he’s a security guard there—but he can come home if there’s something important.”
“We just have a few questions,” Ellie said. “It’s our understanding you have a lawsuit against David Bolt?”
“Yes. Or, well, we did. I never thought we’d be the kind of people to sue someone, but, that’s correct, ma’am, we did indeed have a lawsuit.”
“ ‘Did,’ as in past tense?” Rogan asked. According to the newspaper article, the suit had only been filed in March.
“That’s right, but we reached a settlement. Wallace and I are still trying to figure out what to do with the money. We’re getting out of here obviously. Too many memories of our son.”
Rogan nodded sympathetically. “Where y’all heading?”
“A little further north, to Mount Vernon. It’ll be my first time having a yard. Wallace grew up down in Georgia, but Jason and I never knew anything but apartment living. It’ll be something to look forward to.”
Certainly not the most affluent New York suburb, Mount Vernon was nevertheless a big improvement over High Bridge. A security guard wouldn’t be able to swing a mortgage for a single-family house in that kind of town. The settlement must have been a good one.
“Had your son suffered from manic-depressive disorder for long?” Ellie asked.
“No, you see, that’s the thing. He never had anything like that, not as far as we knew. I mean, he had hard times, like kids do. But he wasn’t crazy. He didn’t have a mental disease.”
“So why was he in that study?”
She shook her head. Ellie assumed it was a question the woman might never be able to answer.
“And your lawyer was George Langston?”
“Yes, ma’am. He came to us right away. Said he’d worked defending drug companies his whole career and knew how they operated. He offered to represent us pro bono—without charge. His daughter, Ramona, goes to Casden. Jason always told us how nice she was to him. Even came up here once to see the park where he played chess on weekends.”
“Did Mr. Langston tell you that he personally knows the doctor you filed your lawsuit against?”
“We knew he worked for drug companies at his old law firm. Is that what you mean?”
“We think it’s more than a lawyer-client relationship with the drug industry generally, Mrs. Moffit. Your lawyer is very close friends with David Bolt, the doctor overseeing the research.”
“I don’t know anything about that. He said he knew the ins and outs of how these companies worked. That’s how he was able to negotiate a quick settlement for us.”
“Was that the basis of the lawsuit? That your son shouldn’t have even been taking this drug if he didn’t have a mental illness?”