Never Have I Ever(40)

“How can you know how much . . . ?” I started. But it sputtered out. That wasn’t even the question. How did she know about the trust itself? For the first time since coming up from the dive, I was truly off balance. She seemed to like it, a creamy smile spreading across her face.

“I looked you up on Boyce Skelton’s laptop.”

I straightened up. I knew the name, but it was so far out of context, it took me a moment to place. “My lawyer?”

He was an attorney at the investment firm that managed my family’s money. Not one of the important ones. He handled people like me, who had small trusts and relatives that mattered. He’d come to my parents’ house for cocktails a few times, trailing his bosses, just after we moved to Boston. I was turned entirely inward that year, focused on the live, wild hunger that I’d let loose inside me as a punishment. It was new, but minute by minute I could feel my big body dwindling in its grip. Boyce blipped on my radar only because Mom had told me he was handling my college trust. He’d been a podgy young man with a receding hairline. We’d spoken on the phone a few times over the years. He’d done his damnedest to talk me out of liquidating half to pay Tig’s mortgage.

“Boyce Skelton lives in Boston,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I took a little trip up there,” Roux said.

I shook my head. “Why would he show you my file?” I asked. He wouldn’t. It could get him disbarred.

“I helped myself while he was in the shower. His place, because Luca was back at my hotel. It was not a PG-13 kind of night,” Roux said, and showed me all her teeth.

“You went to Boston to have sex with my lawyer. So you could sneak a look at my investment portfolio,” I repeated, stupidly.

Boyce must be in his fifties now; I could not imagine that puffy little yes-man, grayer and podgier, having sex with Roux. But I could, I realized, imagine Roux cold-bloodedly seducing him to see a file. I was still taking this as personal, as if it were about me. It wasn’t. She was a professional.

She flirted one shoulder up, dipping her chin in an acknowledgment that was half nod, half bow. Her pink tongue came out to touch her teeth, and she smiled a conspirator’s smile.

“Do you know he keeps his password on a Post-it note? Right in the laptop’s carry case. I looked you up, and I did the math. I’m good at math,” she said. “He’s a missionary kind of guy. A traditionalist. A lot of those Boston banking types are into truly freaky stuff, Amy, but not your Boyce, you’ll be relieved to know. I always think people feel better knowing their money is in the hands of a man who doesn’t need to lick boots.”

I glanced at Oliver. He was still deeply out. Even so, I wanted to grab the stroller, run him from the room. I didn’t want this conversation touching air he breathed.

She was making me feel this way on purpose, I realized, and something akin to admiration pinged small at my center. She didn’t mean these things. She only thought saying them would knock me off balance. Just like at book club, just like at my house, earlier.

“Why do you keep trying to shock me? You’re blackmailing me. I’m shocked enough,” I said. I made myself sound calm and cool. If she wanted me shocked, she would get the opposite. It wasn’t even hard. I’d lived wild in California, unhappy enough to do almost anything to stop myself from feeling. I mimicked her little shoulder flirt, her offhand tone. “I’m not some medieval nun who’s scared of lesbians and never saw a show on HBO.”

She let out a startled bark of laughter, and that ping of admiration at my center found an echo inside her. I could see it. She leaned back, as if reassessing me, and I didn’t like the way we were positioned in the room. She was lounging, at ease, while I stood there like some naughty child waiting to hear my punishment. I should sit, too. I felt it on instinct. But I didn’t. I was in the room with a predator, and I could not bring myself to move away from Oliver.

She said, “No, you’re right. That shit doesn’t work on you.”

“I can’t imagine it works on anyone,” I said, like a criticism.

“It would on Kanga. And Lisa Fenton,” Roux said, unaware that what I had just done, mimicking, had worked on her. She sounded ever so slightly defensive. “I’ve seen your husband, and he looks wound up, with the little spectacles and those knife-sharp creases in his khakis. It would work on him.”

She was right, but I didn’t acknowledge it. I had her off balance. I could feel it, and now I knew one more thing about Roux: She took pride in her work. She’d gone to Boston to screw exact amounts out of my lawyer, cased my neighborhood, interviewed my friends; it was no accident that Char had met her first. She’d manufactured a game to use on me like a tenderizer, softening me up so she could tear me open, cause words that I should never say to come spilling out. She was good at this, and proud of it, so I didn’t acknowledge it.

“You don’t really know them,” I said instead, dismissively.

Her smile got tight. “Fine. I’ll stop talking about rolling Boyce. I won’t even show you the pictures. Instead let’s discuss the statute of limitations for felonies connected to a death here in the lovely state of Florida. Oh, wait. There isn’t one.”

When I tapped, she hit back hard. The muscles in my abdomen tightened. I swallowed, swamped with sudden fear, as she’d intended. I pushed it down, away.