Addison borrowed a shimmery silver-white Viktor & Rolf slip dress. She looked unearthly. Once she was cleaned up, with her hair swept off her head, the white of the dress made the streaks of paint on her hands and legs look as if they were supposed to be there. She really sparkled.
“You’re glowing,” I said.
That’s when she told me she’d spent the entire day with Lincoln Reed.
ZACH FRATEPIETRO: I wanted to come to her party because it made sense for me to attend. It was my mother’s house! And if Addison was there, too, so what? We were all grown-ups. As long as she didn’t have any plates to hurl across the room, right? Sure, I had a natural curiosity about seeing her. I always did.
As I was getting dressed, my mother had the nerve to call me. “Zachary, I am instructing you as your mother: do not attend this event. Addison Stone is in no state of mind to see you.”
“Sure, Carine.”
“I mean it.”
“I mean it, too.”
My mother was very concerned about Addison, and she wanted to have a look at her. She was also angling to purchase Bridge Kiss once it was complete. So that night, contrary to reports that I was there, and even though I’d been known in the past to ignore my mother’s warnings, I stayed away. Took some of my buddies out for dinner, and we all were having a great evening. Until Alex called.
MARIE-CLAIRE BROYARD: Briarcliff is Carine’s house on the Hudson. It’s hideously splendid. Or maybe it’s splendidly hideous? First of all, it’s still got all the wretched original chimneys and creepy turrets, and a pond surrounded by weeping willows. A vampire palace. My eyes are never used to being dazzled and horrified by it.
Addison had never been there, not even when she was dating Zach. She was fidgety in the car, and she kept checking her phone.
“Lincoln might come,” she told me one point. But she said nothing was certain.
I was surprised about all of it. Surprised they’d spent the day together, surprised they’d made a date for that evening. I’d thought Lincoln and Addison were over. But I didn’t say anything. I could tell she was hopeful about a reconciliation. She was like a little Fabergé egg perched next to me in the car.
We were a bit late. The sun was just starting to fade. So there were already plenty of other guests, and caterers passing out the champagne and hors d’oeuvres, and there was a jazz trio on the lawn, and my instinct was, “Oh, everything looks perfect, Addison will get over her jitters, she’ll forget about Lincoln. If he shows up to this or not, it won’t matter.”
We walked through the courtyard and inside through this gilded entranceway. And bang, there it was. Like a hostess to greet us. Addison was right beside me, so the painting was also the first thing that she saw. I could feel her, close on my side, just completely freeze up.
CARINE FRATEPIETRO: Yes, I obtained the last piece of art that Addison Stone completed. Bloody Sophie is a portrait of the actress Sophie Kiminski. It’s a gorgeous piece of art. At the time, the buyer had wished to remain anonymous. But let me put the rumors to bed. It’s mine. I bought it.
I would have been a fool not to.
MAUREEN STONE: The very last time I ever spoke with my daughter—the night she died—she phoned me from that party. I was at my sister’s house in Princeton. As soon as I saw Addison’s number come up, well, I had to excuse myself from the table.
Later I learned that Addison had been compulsively talking on the phone to everyone, it seemed—Charlie, me, her friends, her doctors. She couldn’t stop. It was apparently an indicator of her psychosis, but nobody knew that she was talking with so many other people, so nobody was really putting the pieces together. I just thought she was lonely. On the phone, I simply couldn’t make sense of what Addison was saying.
“Addison, slow down!” I kept saying. “Whatever is the matter?”
All I could gather was it had to do with a painting.
Then Jennifer came into the study. So I kept passing the phone to her, and then she would try to soothe Addison, and then she’d pass the phone back to me, but we couldn’t make heads or tails of what was really wrong. It was frustrating.
And Jennifer kept whispering, “Tell her you will talk when she’s calm.” And eventually I did say that. Of course I wish I hadn’t taken Jennifer’s advice. Not that I’m blaming my sister, I’m not. Addison was always dramatic.
You cannot fathom my regret, that such a strange and bothersome call from Addison would, in fact, be the last time I’d hear her voice.
LINCOLN REED: We’d been together all that day of the 28th. That morning, I’d flown in and come right over from JFK to her place. Too many people had texted me and emailed me, wanting me to look in on her. It was the first thing I did. Just sent a note I was coming over, and I came over.
“Your apartment looks like a raided terrorist cell,” I told her.
She’d been hard at work for I don’t know how long. She told me Marie-Claire was coming over later and dragging her off to this party. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay in and work.”
“So stay in and work.”
“I’m the guest of honor. I think everyone wants to check up on me, actually. I’ve been so buried in Bridge Kiss. I probably need some release. So why don’t you come?”
“Why don’t I drop my stuff, take a nap, swing by here later, and then after the party we go to Sag Harbor?”
Call it my rescue instinct. We both wanted to be together. At the same time, I didn’t want to be in her world. I wanted to get away with her. Out of the city, out of the scene, even though I knew it would be a struggle for her to detach from the work, which was hypnotic and beautiful.
“Bridge Kiss is us, right?” I asked her. “It’s got something to do with our first kiss at the top of the Manhattan Bridge? Right?”
She got shy. “I don’t know. It’s art. It’s that and three hundred million other things.”
There are people—Marie-Claire, Erikson, Lucy—who always assure me that she was different around me. Her best self, they always say. But that’s not enough for me. I should have seen her better. I should have been my best self. I stayed a while, ordered us some avocado sandwiches and fruit salads, then watched while she ate. And I promised her I’d go to the party.
“Listen, Lincoln, I’m getting through tonight on reserves,” she said. “I’m burning out. I need you. All I’m holding onto is that I get to escape with you at the end.”