“Thanks.”

“So have you considered the reunion tour?” Rose asked, setting her glass down on my coffee table and getting down to it.

I shook my head slightly, confused. I’d thought this meeting was about the movie premiere. Or Cassidy. “But without Cass—”

“I was reading stuff last night,” Merry began, then closed her mouth.

“I read about it too,” I said quietly.

The worst part about the tabloids is that they find things and publish them with little regard for how people might feel about the information. When I stumbled upon the method of Cassidy’s death, I wondered if her parents would want that out there. And something squeezing her beautiful throat—her soft, sweet vocal cords—was almost too much to bear. Was it symbolic?

Merry’s voice became firmer. “I don’t think she did it.”

I reached out a hand to gently touch her. “Mer . . .”

“It’s just not like Cassidy,” she repeated.

“How do you know, though? We hadn’t spoken to her in months. Years,” I said.

“Why would someone like Cass just decide, out of the blue, to kill herself? It doesn’t make any sense. I could maybe wrap my mind around it if it was fifteen years ago and she’d just left the group, broke the contract, lost endorsement deals, was a social pariah, but now? After all this time?”

“You don’t know what was going on in her personal life,” I argued. “Stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with us, or money, or other friends.”

“I just say there’s reasonable doubt, that’s all.”

“I don’t,” Rose interjected, crunching down on an ice cube. “We knew from the start that Cassidy wasn’t really ready for any kind of confrontational lifestyle. Do you remember the first time we met her? How she said she was never interested in being a real artist until a reality show competition? She buckled whenever she was told to do something. She was too sensitive. People like that don’t do well in this business.”

“But,” I said slowly, “she wasn’t in the business anymore.”

I’d known Rose for twenty years and knew she could spew some vitriol, but I didn’t know where this animosity had come from.

When Cassidy had soft-auditioned for Gloss—when Marsha brought Cass to L.A.—Rose could have been nicer. After we’d left the label’s building and gotten lunch, we chewed on our straws and mulled over Viv’s replacement. Rose had been critical of Cassidy’s meek demeanor, of her disinterest in pursuing the dream, of the brown color of her hair. But Marsha liked her, and it was undeniable that she made us sound better. “We’ll make her pull her weight,” I’d said, and the others had agreed. “Otherwise, we’ll toss her out,” Rose had said.

Cassidy had done what she was told to do. She’d signed her contract within twenty-four hours of our meeting and the label asked her to move out to L.A. immediately. Within a week, we were installed in the same three-bedroom apartment, with Cass and I doubling up in the shared room. She was on the quiet side and kept to herself around the rest of us. She tidied her portion of the living space, took great lengths to work out and keep to her diet, and made it to all of the appointments we were obligated to keep.

It had been nonstop preparation leading up to the album release. Big Disc emphasized Cassidy’s role in the group as a means to pump a little more publicity, flaunting the fact that yet another Sing It contestant had found success in her chosen profession. They wanted to time the album release with the second season of Sing It, America! as a cross-promotion, since they had a stake in both ventures. So all four of us were working, though not really being, alongside one another. Cassidy’s assimilation into Gloss was pushed to the backs of our minds. My immediate concern was to not fall asleep from the slowly creeping exhaustion that spread over my limbs and settled behind my eyes. Merry, who grew up with morning swim meets and fitting in cheerleading practice and seven hundred extracurricular activities, seemed to keep up fine, and Rose, with a determined grin that bared her teeth when she was especially tired, did better than Cassidy and me. We two were a little out of shape, a little more overwhelmed.

But even though Rose believed that Cassidy was a pushover, that didn’t automatically mean that Cass would voluntarily leave this world now. Meredith’s point of view was more appealing. I reconsidered. I turned to her.

“Well, who else would want Cassidy gone?”

“I made a list,” Merry said, pulling out her phone.

“Oh, please!” Rose sounded exasperated, but Merry went on.

“Maids, groundskeeper, anyone who worked on her house. Former stalkers—who could still be current stalkers—the roommate of the guy who probably never got over her . . .”

“This is ridiculous,” Rose interrupted. “It could have been a postal worker. Someone who got mad if she cut him off in traffic and then followed her home. Anybody. Why don’t we talk to the detective? The police know more than we do, anyway. Maybe you’ll listen to someone with authority about this and start to accept that, yes, Cassidy was a sad person.”

“I mean, after that boyfriend—it was probably hard,” Merry said.

I nodded in agreement. At least the world hadn’t been convinced that Kevin broke my arm. He’d broken only my trust.

“We should talk to them anyway,” I said. “The police, I mean. We might be able to give them more information if it was a stalker. All those piles of letters . . .”

The phone on the couch cushion next to Merry began to vibrate. “Hello?” She clapped two fingers over the speaker, a holdover from when phones actually had large mouthpieces. “It’s Em.” Eyes downcast, she focused back on the voice in her ear. “Uh-huh. Okay. I’ll write it down. Yeah, I’m with them now so I’ll just tell them . . .”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rose’s body jerk quickly, like something had surprised her. She slid her phone out of her purse and read whatever was on the screen, smiled a strange smile, and swiped her finger across the text to respond to it. If I didn’t know better, Rose had a lover she hadn’t told anyone about. I knew Rose’s modus operandi, and it was to splash her (and our) relationships far and wide, as quickly as possible, for maximum headline impact. She had been linked to a number of high-profile men, but as soon as they started talking about settling down and having a family, she found a way to get rid of them. I’d always wondered if Rose even liked the men she dated; every single one stank of a personality clash and a publicity stunt to me. If Rose was keeping someone under wraps, there had to be a good reason. Or she was waiting for an opportune moment.

She caught me looking and her smile changed from that tender indulgence to a self-righteous smirk. Sometimes, even after all we’ve been through, I had to wonder if I knew Rose at all.

Merry ended her call. “Cassidy’s funeral arrangements. Her parents want to hold the service in Houston. Once they release . . . the body . . . they’ll set the date. Probably next Wednesday. We’ll attend, right?”

Rose clucked her tongue softly. “As long as it’s not during the premiere. What shitty timing.”

“The premiere? Of course we’ll go to the funeral,” I said. Rose glared at me. “We had two minutes of screen time in that, versus three years with Cassidy.”