Page 91 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Oh, everyone was nice enough, but Maggie heard her name in whispers; she read their thoughts in stares. She wasn’t Maggie Chase, bestselling author at that point. She was the woman who’d been dumped by her husband and passed over by her publisher. She was the person whose whole life had fallen apart and paved the way for Ethan Wyatt, and no one in that ballroom knew whether to pity her or avoid her because that kind of bad luck might be contagious.
So she got another drink at thebar, then looked pointedly across the crowded party, smiling big and walking fast, the personification ofOh, there you are!andIsn’t this fun?When a woman from her panel waved for her to join their group, Maggie was overjoyed to look down and realize that her phone was actually ringing, so she mimedI’ve got to take this!and headed for the doors.
It was either someone concerned about her car warranty or the attorney who was going to take all the money Colin hadn’t claimed yet, but Maggie didn’t care as she brought the phone to her ear and pushed her way outside.
“Maggie?” The screen had said UNKNOWN CALLER, but Maggie knew that voice. She knew it better than she knew her own. “Hello? Mags, are you there?”
Emily sounded nervous, which didn’t make sense. Emily had been born pretty and wealthy and fun. Emily would have known the names of everybody at that party. She would have made eight funny videos for four different people and already be organizing an after-party at a great karaoke place nearby. Emily wasnevernervous. But Maggie always was. It was good to know at least one of them was capable of changing.
“I bought a prepaid cell phone,” Emily explained. “I knew you wouldn’t pick up if you saw my number.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“I know. It’s just...” Emily trailed off, like she was waiting for a click or a curse, but Maggie just stood in that empty courtyard outside that busy restaurant, phone against her ear, frozen.
People filled the busy sidewalk, rushing out to dinner or off to drinks. They crawled into cars and laughed with friends, and the desert turned cool with the fall of night while Maggie shivered, wishing she’d worn a heavier jacket, pretending she was only shaking from the chill.
“Maggie?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you. Please contact my lawyer with any—”
“I’m pregnant.” The silence was louder then, violent and pulsing in her ears. Even after Maggieclosed her eyes, she could still see the strings of patio lights spinning behind her eyelids. “I know we’re supposed to do the lawyer thing, but... I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”
“Who would I hear it from, Em?” Her voice didn’t break at least. “You were my only friend, remember?”
“That’s not true.” Emily had the audacity to laugh, but it wasn’t mocking. It wasdon’t be silly. Which was almost worse. “Everyone adores you. You just don’t see it, but that’s okay.”It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay.“I saw it enough for both of us.”
Maggie wanted her to say something selfish and greedy and cruel. She wanted her first best friend to be Female Colin and not the girl who had “lost” a laptop, a cell phone, and two winter coats their sophomore year and then suddenly found them once she had replacements andOhwell, Maggie, do you want the old ones?because she knew Maggie would never take a handout.
Maggie’s throat burned and her eyes were wet, and she would have given anything for her friend to be a lie. To be dead. To be anything but the voice on the phone, breaking her all over again.
Emily was still talking. About baby names? Baby classes? How lovely the guest room in Maggie’s house would be for a nursery? Maggie didn’t care until she heard a deeper voice in the background. Colin.
She’d know it anywhere, that accusatory tone. None of this was her fault, but when he told this story later it would be. It would be all her fault, and...
Maggie looked down at the active call and then she threw her phone in a trash can because she’d honestly forgotten that you can just hang up.
She forgot. And then she remembered.
It was fully dark by that point, those strings of multicolored lights shading everything in red and green. It might have been March in Arizona, but it felt like Christmas in upstate New York. She was homeless and alone with absolutely no place to go and no one to worry if she got there.
She was alone. And tears wererunning down her face while the phone she really couldn’t afford to replace sank deeper in a glob of guacamole.
She was still standing there, trying to decide how to dig it out when a strip of bright light sliced across the patio.
She was practically standing on her head, reaching to the very bottom of the trash can when she heard the words—
“What happened?”
Maggie knew that voice. Maggieloathedthat voice. He must have been drinking because it was pitched lower—darker—than usual. Or maybe he just didn’t bother with his Mr. Charming act for her.
A foot scraped against the ground and she grabbed the phone and pushed herself upright because Ethan Freaking Wyatt was there, watching her dig in the garbage and cry. Ethan Freaking Wyatt was walking toward her so slowly that she barely registered the movement. She just knew that one moment he was on the other side of the patio, lost in shadows, and the next he was right there with his stupid leather jacket inches away from her stupid tearstained face.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
She tried to hear the taunt in the words, the joke, the punch line. She tried to hear the Ethan she knew, but the words were as cold as the wind and his face... it was darker than the shadows. And Maggie felt herself crumbling, breaking into a million pieces and turning to dust. The wind blew across the patio. She was going to fly away.
“Tell me.” The words were soft.
