The Ex by Freida McFadden(35)

“You need a key copied, Miss?” the man at the counter asks me. He’s as old as my father, with thinning hair on his scalp and glasses perched so far down the bridge of his nose, they look like a light breeze might send them flying.

“Uh…” I look down at the set of keys. Am I really going to do this? “Yes.”

I guess I am.

“Which one?”

I frown at the keys. Which one is her home key? Is there a label on it?

“Or do you want the whole set copied?” he asks me.

“Yes, the whole set,” I agree. “How long will it take?”

“Oh, I bet I can get it done in two minutes flat.” He flashes yellowing teeth at me. “You want to time me?”

“That’s okay.” I slide the keys across the counter. “I’m sure you can do it.”

My heart is pounding in my chest as he runs the keys through the cutter. He’s very fast, but it almost feels like he’s moving in slow-motion. He’s on the third key when the door to the entrance jingles, and I look up.

A police officer has just entered the store.

If my heart was pounding before, now it’s thumping erratically. Oh God, he knows I’ve stolen the keys. He’s going to arrest me. Joel is going to think I’m a psychopath.

The officer looks at me with dark, penetrating eyes and adjusts the cap on his head. I squirm. I must look so guilty. He must be able to take one look at me and know I’ve committed a crime. I’m committing a crime. I’m in the middle of committing it right now. Right in front of a police officer!

“Excuse me, miss,” the officer says to me.

Oh God. I’m going to jail. He’s going to snap handcuffs on me and haul me off to prison. What is my mother going to say about this in the yearly Christmas letter?

“Yes?” I squeak.

Is there any possibility I could just return the keys and wholeheartedly apologize?

“I think you dropped your hat back there,” the officer says.

My eyes fall on the dark red hat lying on the ground right by the entrance to the store. It is, in fact, my hat. “Oh…”

“Here, let me get that for you…”

The officer rushes out to pick up my hat from the ground while I nearly drop dead of a heart attack. I thank him, and then he disappears into the store.

My hands won’t stop shaking as I take the fresh set of keys from the clerk. He’s put them on a ring for me and everything. I can’t believe how easy this was. I have stolen and copied an entire set of keys. I will casually drop the originals back into Olive’s bag, and she will be none the wiser.

And now I have a set of her keys.





Chapter 21: The New Girl


It’s only a week before the end of October when Cassie is sitting at the front desk in Bookland and receives an email from Lydia:



We’re having a party at our apartment next weekend. Costumes are mandatory.



Cassie frowns at the email. She’s gotten many party invitations over the years, but this doesn’t feel like a party invitation. It feels more like when her parents threw a party when she was a kid and she was expected to be there. Like costumes, the party seems to be mandatory.

“What’s wrong?” Zoe asks her, looking up from her latest novel. This one has a picture of a shirtless man on it. Why do so many covers have shirtless men on them? Sometimes Cassie wants to scream at Zoe’s book: Put some clothes on, for God’s sake!

“I got invited to a Halloween party,” Cassie says.

“Wow, how horrible. Sucks to be you.”

Cassie rolls her eyes. “It’s being thrown by that obnoxious wife of Joel’s friend—the one I told you about. And I think I’m required to go.”

She holds up her phone so Zoe can read the email. Zoe throws her head back and laughs so hard, Cassie can see a silver filling in the back of her mouth. Zoe always says she wants to get a gold or silver tooth someday.

“She sounds lovely,” Zoe says. “What does Joel say about the party?”

Cassie winces. “They’re his closest friends. I’m assuming he wants to go…”

Zoe folds a page in her book and puts it down on the counter. “Well, it’s not so bad. At least you get to dress up. That’s fun.”

“I can’t afford a costume right now.”

“Don’t be silly. Just go as a sexy cat. I’ve got a leotard you can borrow.”

“I can’t go as a sexy cat!”

“Why not?”

Cassie doesn’t have the energy to explain that when you go to a party with people ten years older than you, it doesn’t look good to put on your sexiest, sluttiest outfit. “I just can’t.”

“So what do you want to dress as?”

Cassie chews on her lip as she mentally reviews some of the costumes she’s worn over years. A sexy pumpkin. A sexy policewoman. Sexy Wonder Woman. She’s been a sexy cat twice.

None of these costumes would be appropriate for Lydia’s party. She needs to dress much classier than that. But what?

After agonizing about it for several minutes, she finally types a reply:

Any costume suggestions for me?

Cassie waits for a couple of minutes before Lydia’s reply pops up on the screen: