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Ellie’s jaw hit the floor, then she gathered herself. “That is the stupidest logic I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way. It was never my intention to disrespect you.”
“Really? Screwing another woman in my house is a show of respect? God, Greg. How long has this been going on?”
“A year.”
“Who the fuck is she?”
“She works for the Randalls.”
The face clicked then. “You’re fucking the Randalls’ nanny? What is she, all of nineteen? Oh, Greg. How tacky can you be?”
“She loves me! She treats me like a king. She isn’t too busy for me. You schedule our life, Ellie. From dinner to conversations to sex, it’s all on your calendar. We aren’t spontaneous anymore. You’ve suffocated me with—”
“Oh, shut up and leave. I don’t care about your speech. I want a divorce. And be prepared. I am going to ruin you.” Ellie pointed to the door, and Greg stared at her a moment, as if he were cooking up some really great insult, but changed his mind and left.
She thought about crying but decided that was going to get her exactly nowhere. Instead, she sent a note to one of her colleagues to ask for a good divorce lawyer. Her firm handled compliance litigation, nothing family related, and she wanted the best.
And then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a bottle of scotch. She poured a hefty glass, shot it down, choking and sputtering a bit—she wasn’t a hard-liquor drinker, kept this for when the partners showed up after hours. She poured another and sipped at it. It tasted like gasoline, but she didn’t care. It was going to bring oblivion, and that was all she craved at the moment.
A heartbeat. That’s all it took to go from the happiest woman in the world to the unhappiest.
She couldn’t believe it.
Tuesday
Chapter Seven
Halley
Halley wakes with a start. The cat is heavy on her hip, snoring. She has a migraine hangover, a strange echo of pain lingering in her temple that makes her head feel hollow. It takes her a second of dislocation to put it all together. She is home, in her childhood bedroom, in Marchburg. Her mother was murdered.
Murdered.
It’s so fantastical a thought her mind pushes it away.
She doesn’t have many memories of her mom. They’re more sensory details now. A soft voice reading a bedtime story. The way her arms felt around Halley’s little body, encompassing and warm. The scent of Chanel No. 5 brings back the winter she took Halley sledding and she tripped over an exposed root and fell down the hill, sliding on her back. They’d laughed and laughed. The funeral, rain making the back of her neck cold.
There are a few videotapes, moments she memorized as a little girl but put away as she got older because she could see how much pain it caused her dad. She doesn’t know where they are. Her dad made everything disappear except for the photograph of her on the mantel. Her mother is leaning forward, trying to take the camera from him, hereyes sparkling and her smile wide. Halley looks so much like her mother now it’s painful to look at the photo at all.
Halley knocked it off the mantel once playing Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, and the glass cracked. They tried to change the frame, but by then the photo paper was fused to the glass and began to peel apart, so they left it. The crack goes right through her chest. It’s like her heart was broken, too.
Her mother is dead, and her sister is missing.
Still alive,a stubborn little voice says. Missing, but there is no body.
Fifteen years, though. That’s a long time. She could be anywhere. She could be in a lake, or a field, or the woods. She could live three streets over and Halley wouldn’t know.
Her next thought is of her dad. Anger spikes through her. She hasn’t ever felt this way toward him. They are pals. Friends. He’s her best friend. He’s always been her favorite sounding board. Even after she married Theo, he was her first call when things went right—or wrong.Except yesterday. You didn’t call him to tell him the truth, now did you?
But now she knows he’s a different person than she thought. He’s a liar.
She rolls over and sees the time—visiting hours started an hour ago.
She jumps in the shower, winds her wet hair into a bun. There are plenty of groceries, but she’s still nauseated from the headache and cooking is too much trouble. She fills Ailuros’s bowl, then pours herself some cereal and peels a banana, scarfs them down while the coffee is brewing.
She decants the coffee into her favorite battered thermos, adds cream and sugar for extra energy, and jams on her sunglasses—her eyes are still sensitive to the light. She drives the Jeep to the hospital, her tote bag with the explosive details she’s learned on the seat next to her, a rattlesnake coiled and waiting to strike.
