The High Season(85)
“When you cleaned out your mother’s storage unit,” she said. “That was me in the passenger seat, remember?”
“So?” Had he forgotten, or he just didn’t care?
“Lark told me that you discovered a painting. A major find, she said.”
“Amazing, right?”
“Lark said you found the painting in the storage unit. Such a big surprise, she said. For me, too. I remember you throwing everything out.”
“Not…” She sensed him searching, his mind adjusting. “She had another unit I didn’t know about. They called me.”
“Same place?”
He nodded and pushed his sunglasses tight against the bridge of his nose.
“Funny,” she said.
“What.”
“That you didn’t know.”
“Not really,” he said, using the bored voice that meant he was about to lie. “My mother was a drunk. She didn’t exactly fill me in on what she was doing.”
“So there were two separate—”
Suddenly he grabbed both her elbows, hard, startling her. He smiled, as though they were playing. A man looked over and he dropped her arms.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he said.
Doe wasn’t afraid. They were right on Newtown Lane. “Remember what happened the last time you grabbed me like that?”
“Yeah. I almost got a scar. So I’m in the mood for payback. Are you hearing me, Dora?”
“I hear you,” Doe said. “Asshole.”
“At least now I know why you were so lousy in bed. A dyke.”
She leaned closer. “I’m the only person who really sees you. So why don’t you back off?”
“You’re out of your league, Beauty,” he said, and moved away with his great assurance, already lost in the happy crowd.
53
JEM’S PHONE
From: Jemma Dutton To: Dad
Didn’t you and A get invited to that big party at the Belfry From: Dad
To: Jemma Dutton Yup, why?
From: Jem
To: Dad
Well r u going From: Dad
To: Jem
No. Why?
From: Jem
To: Dad
I was thinking you could take me party of the summer etc From: Dad
To: Jem
Sorry sweetie Adeline doesn’t want to go.
From: Jem
To: Dad
But why
From: Dad
To: Jem
Plus I don’t think Mom would like it.
From: Jem
To: Dad
I would ask her if it’s ok From: Dad
To: Jem
A is not on great terms with Daniel Mantis.
From: Jem
To: Dad
But they’re good friends right? Saw it in Us Weekly From: Dad
To: Jem
Yeah right. C’mon sweetie you know what I’m saying.
From: Jem
To: Dad
I really really really want to go tho …
really really could you ask A please Daddy? I could Instagram it and Meret would see it and diet …
Autocorrect fail I mean die lol but diet too …
please
From: Dad
To: Jem
I’ll ask. This one is her call. Talk to your mom.
54
LUCAS DID NOT answer the texts or his phone. His car was not at the house. Asshole. Coward.
Ruthie had lived in Orient long enough to know who to ask. Information was traded and gossiped and shared, and it took her about fifteen minutes and a walk through town to learn that Daniel Mantis was the buyer of the painting and that was why it was at the Belfry.
Mantis was high-profile. He bought, sold, sent pieces to auction. He loved publicity. She would be reading about it in the Times next week.
She had to think, she thought frantically, but it was just a pulse, a beating throb of panic.
* * *
—
PANIC, CALAMITY, STRESS, didn’t matter, you still had to pack your suitcases and get out of the rental.
“How’s it going, Jemmie?” she asked outside the closed door. She knocked. Knocked again.
She gently eased the door open a crack, expecting the bark of Changing! or the more exasperated What?
She sensed the minefield from the door. Jem sat on her bed, earbuds in, texting, disarray around her, clothes tossed on the bed, the floor, drawers half open, sneakers scattered. She hadn’t seen Ruthie, hadn’t heard the door.
None of this was unusual, but. A tide of feeling swamped Ruthie. She felt as though she’d broken through the surface of the sea and blinked away the blur. She saw Jem, maybe for the first time that summer. She saw the tightness and the misery. She saw the long legs and the blue eyes and the hair, but she saw a lost little girl. She saw someone hurt and scrabbling for a handhold.
While she’d been scrabbling herself. Both of them reaching for handholds, when she should have been the one to say, Here. Reach here. Hold on.
All those silent dinners when she let Jem watch a video on her phone, earbuds in, while she sat eating, trying to force food down, thinking her burning thoughts, of the painting, of her house, of Mike and Adeline, of getting it all back, when the center of her life was right at the table with her.