Friends Like These(71)

“Back in the city?” I asked.

“Keith said that Finch texted. He’s still in Kaaterskill.”

The way my conversation with Finch had ended that morning, the possible explanations for his sticking around all seemed very bad. He’d barged into my room without knocking. Luckily, I was already up and dressed, making the bed.

“What happened?” I asked, motioning to his cut lip. But before he could even answer, I gestured for him to keep his voice down. The last thing I needed was anyone catching us having some private conversation.

“Derrick. Told you he’s a psycho,” Finch whispered. He waved the phone in his hand toward the door. “Anyway, I’m taking off. Let’s go.”

He said it so matter-of-factly as he turned back for the door. Like it was a foregone conclusion.

“What are you talking about?” I’d asked.

“Grab your stuff.”

“You must be— no,” I’d said. “Absolutely not. Why would I do that?”

When Finch finally looked at me, there was that familiar, mischievous gleam in his eyes. “Come, or I’ll fire Keith. How about that?”

“You’re extorting me?”

He winked. “Let’s call it forceful courting.”

“Get out, Finch,” I said, and laughed, angrily. “I’m serious. Get the hell out of my room. Right now.”

“Sure thing.” Finch’s eyes went cold. “But Keith will regret this. I’m not joking about firing him.”

“Oh, please, you already fired him,” I said. “I know you did. I saw your new contract. So you can drop this, whatever you think you’re doing.”

He didn’t look surprised that I knew— like he’d already surmised as much. “Yeah, I fired Keith because he’s such a fucking drug addict that his money problems derailed my show at the Serpentine Gallery in London. You know what a show like that means?” He shook his head in disgust. “But I wonder what Keith will say when he finds out you knew all this time that I’d already fired him, and you didn’t tell him.”

“Go to hell, Finch.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, as he headed for the door. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. The choices you make, sometimes the fallout can be . . . far-reaching.”

A minute later I heard the front door downstairs bang shut behind him.

I looked up at the ceiling now and thought of Keith upstairs, still desperately trying to keep Finch happy. I’d made it so much worse by not telling Keith right away about Finch and me, and Finch and him. But I could still come clean now.

“There’s no point in Keith waiting on Finch,” I said, starting for the stairs. “I’ll go talk to him.”

“Okay, but if you can’t convince Keith to go . . .” Maeve hesitated. “Maybe the rest of us should, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” Jonathan asked. “Leave Keith here?”

“We’re not leaving Keith,” I said sharply.

Wait, did Maeve just want to get back to Bates? After all, what would Mr. Wonderful say if he learned about this mess? I wondered if Alice had also been right about Maeve all those years ago. “You’re underestimating Maeve,” she’d said to me not long before that night on the roof. “Trust me, she knows how to get what she wants.” But Alice had been trying to convince me that Maeve had some klepto problem, which frankly was so paranoid and ridiculous I’d dismissed the entire conversation as more Alice drama.

“Listen, I’m sure you want to get out of here and get back to the city, to Bates or whatever— ”

“Bates? What does Bates have to do with anything?” Maeve asked, and then her eyes filled with tears. Maybe I wasn’t being fair. I could see she was distraught. “I’m just . . . really worried, that’s all. About all of us.”

“The contractors still need to get paid anyway,” Jonathan said, tired but matter-of-fact. “We can’t go anywhere until that’s taken care of.”

“We’re all just stressed,” I said. “Let me first go talk to Keith.”

When I got upstairs, Keith’s door was open. He was sitting on the bed, eyes on his phone. Next to him on the bed was an empty picture frame. He looked up at me, then back down at his phone. I crossed the room and sat next to him on the bed. Picked up the frame.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“A picture frame,” he said lifelessly.

“Yeah, thanks, I can see that,” I said. “Why do you have it?”

“It’s from my apartment,” he said, and there was something unsettling about his tone— a mixture of sadness and resignation. “There was a picture of all of us in it. One from college. Alice gave it to me sophomore year.”

“Alice never gave me a picture,” I said, looking down at the empty frame.

“That’s because she loved me more,” he said. “Everybody does.”

Was it sweet that Keith had brought the photograph with him? Maybe, if our picture had still been in it. Or if it hadn’t been Alice who had given it to him. As it was, the empty frame was disturbing. Had Keith gotten rid of the picture? Wasn’t that a suicide warning sign? The drugs had always been Keith’s slow-motion way of killing himself; maybe he’d finally decided to take a short cut.