The Last Housewife (24)

(Rustling.)

JAMIE: Shay?

SHAY: She kept promising us we wouldn’t regret being kind.

(Silence.)

Excuse me—

JAMIE: Wait. Shay. I’m putting the pieces together. Was Rachel’s dad the man I saw in the city?

(Creaking. Sounds of movement.)

SHAY: I don’t… I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m sorry. I can’t—

End of transcript.

***

I sprang from the couch, panic washing through me. I didn’t want to remember him. I didn’t want to remember what we’d done, who I’d been. Why was I doing this to myself?

Jamie had inched closer throughout the interview, as if drawn in by my words; now, he leapt to his feet.

“Shay.” He stood behind me, and his hand found my shoulder.

Outside, night had fallen. Small lights near the shore revealed glimpses of the river, moving steadily in the dark.

“I’m sorry.” I kept my face turned because I didn’t want Jamie to see it. My eyes stung. For all I knew, I’d start crying in front of him. “I just—”

He moved around me until we faced each other, then took my hands. I still couldn’t look at his eyes, so I looked at his fingers: long and elegant. “Hey. Don’t worry. In your own time, okay?” His voice was so gentle.

He didn’t know yet that I didn’t deserve it.





Chapter Eight


The Hudson Mansion was far downriver, in a place with no lights. At night you could sense the surrounding trees by the quiet whisper of leaves moving in the wind, sense the river by the pinprick alertness of your body, alive to the presence of something deep and dangerous nearby. Twenty minutes of driving with nothing but velvet night through the windshield, and then the Mansion loomed ahead of us, sprawled atop a steep hill.

It was tall and turreted, stone-walled and beautiful. A place for people with money, that was clear. A lifetime without any had honed my ability to pick up on the tell: a cold, slippery unwelcome. There was something unsettling about the estate, too. Perhaps its domineering bulk.

I swallowed down unease as Jamie and I walked across the gravel parking lot. It was too quiet. The Mansion was a hotel and social club, it turned out, with a storied history of hosting old Hollywood stars and foreign dignitaries. Supposedly, it was home to Tongue-Cut Sparrow, though Jamie hadn’t been able to find any official record of it. All that, yet the hum coming from inside was so low it barely competed with the crickets.

“I don’t think this is the kind of thing where we can go to reception and ask them to point us to the Sparrow.” Jamie adjusted his jacket as we walked. He wore a dark suit tonight, perfectly tailored, and moved with a new gait—a careless elegance, like he belonged in any room. “I think we’re going to have to take a different tack.”

“Like what?” I hadn’t shared Jamie’s packing foresight, so I’d had to shop and wore a black dress and spiked heels I’d paid full price for at a boutique near campus.

Jamie spoke in a low voice as two doormen pulled open the Mansion’s thick doors, revealing an opulent stone-and-cream lobby. “We play the game. I’ll be a man with too much money and a dark appetite, and you’ll be a woman who’s hollow inside and willing to be eaten. Eventually, someone will point us in the right direction.”

I froze in the doorway, chill mixing with the faintest twinge of heat. Maybe I was more legible to Jamie than I’d realized.

But he only strode ahead, in the direction of the lobby bar. I hurried to catch up.

***

An hour later, we’d struck out. No one we’d talked to knew Tongue-Cut Sparrow, and covertly exploring on foot had turned up zero leads.

“Maybe it doesn’t exist,” Jamie said, leaning against the lobby wall and folding his arms, his well-fitted suit bunching over his shoulders. He ran a hand over his face; the movement opened the collar of his white shirt, revealing another inch of skin at his throat. “If it did, the bartender would’ve known. He’d direct people there all the time, right? Either he’s lying, or the Sparrow’s a rumor.”

“I don’t know.” I lowered myself into a chair. “Maybe they want the front of house to be on the up-and-up. Less conspicuous, if the Sparrow’s really supposed to be secret.” I scanned the room. “Maybe we need to find someone who’s so unimportant they’re invisible. Someone no one thinks to keep secrets from.”

My eyes lit on a young man dressed like a busboy, carrying a pitcher of water with lemon slices to a faraway table. He must have felt my attention, because he looked up and we locked eyes. He glanced down, shyly, then back up.

“Excuse me,” I said to Jamie.

When I got to the table, he was replacing the empty water pitcher with exaggerated slowness. I stepped next to him, felt his eyes slide in my direction, and picked up a glass.

He tipped the pitcher, pouring me water.

“Hello,” I said.

He swallowed. He looked no older than twenty. “Good evening, Ms.…”

“Abrams,” I lied.

“Is there something I can do for you?” My glass was full. The young man straightened the pitcher and held it to his chest, his nervousness plain.

If only it was always like this. If beauty was purely a power and not a target, a vulnerability that could draw the wolves and put you at their mercy.