The Last Housewife (70)

JAMIE: Maybe being angry was the only way you could feel in control.

SHAY: I told her none of them had loved her. Not Mr. Trevors or my dad.

(Silence.)

I know. It stunned her, too.

JAMIE: Please tell me your mom stopped seeing him.

SHAY: She did. And junior year, we started AP English, so I didn’t have to see him at school anymore. Only sometimes, in the halls, I’d turn the corner and there he was, ice-cold and haughty as ever. Staring, but not saying a word.

And before you ask: yes, I see the connection between what Mr. Trevors did to my mom and what Don did to me. Part of me wishes I could tell her I know what it’s like now. But the truth is, she didn’t choose to be hit. She stopped once it started. I’m the one who asked for it. I told her she was pathetic, and then I did something so much worse.

So that’s the rift. It’s all me. I’m the one who saw it coming with Mr. Trevors. I felt it with Don, too, after a while. I could’ve saved my mom when I was fifteen, and I could’ve saved Clem and Laurel in college. Instead, I left them to the wolves.

JAMIE: Shay, have you ever heard of repetition compulsion? It’s this theory that people who’ve experienced trauma have a strong desire to reenact it, over and over, to gain mastery over it. It seems counterintuitive, but the thinking is, if they can just get one more shot, this time they’ll get it right. They reach for the same pain over and over, retraumatizing themselves, all the while convinced they’re putting an end to it.

SHAY: You asked why I’m putting myself in danger. It’s because I owe them. Call it whatever you want, whatever theory, I don’t care. This time, I’m going to save someone.





Chapter Twenty-Five


From the outside, 145 Murray Street was a windowless warehouse in far west Manhattan, dark as a dungeon on a darker street. Inside, it was a coked-up, strobe-lit fantasia, ripped from the pages of a Wall Street kingpin memoir. The heavy metal door opened to a doorman, and beyond him, frenetic lights, angry, pounding music, a crush of bodies on the dance floor. But none of that distracted from the centerpiece, playing in larger-than-life dimensions over the back wall. The party buzzed, but I stood cold as ice, transfixed by the sight of the woman shivering on her knees, hands bound, pleading into the camera.

“Snuff film,” said a familiar voice. “Or at least a good fake. The city boys love ’em. They’re so creative. Like little Scorseses.”

I turned to find Nicole beside me, her eyes lined with thick, black shadow, body draped in a slinky black dress. A flagrant violation of the daughter’s dress code.

“Where have you been? You weren’t at the last party.”

Her eyes scanned the room, then she lowered her voice. “I’m with a Pater now. Exclusively. It’s very exciting.”

“Who?”

“I can’t say yet.” Her mouth softened into a smile. “But he’s high up. He’s my ticket to the Hilltop. I can feel it.” She smoothed her slinky dress. “He likes it when I break the rules so he can catch me.”

The strobe lights flashed again, illuminating her. There were small bruises in the unmistakable pattern of fingertips across her chest.

She followed my gaze. “He’s a tad rough,” she admitted. “I was laid up for a few days after our last session. That’s why I didn’t go to the Marquis’s.”

“You need to be careful,” I said. Maybe it wasn’t the right reaction; maybe I was supposed to congratulate her, a daughter who’d caught the attention of an important Pater. But a familiar heaviness seized me.

She pressed a hand to my face. “See? I told you. Such a sweetheart.”

I’m older than you, I wanted to say. Listen to me.

“Don’t worry. This is what I signed up for. Besides, it’ll be worth it in the end. And there are benefits.” She waggled her brows. “He’s paying for my apartment.”

Someone had paid Laurel’s rent, too. “I just have to know,” I said. “Give me a hint—” But Nicole’s eyes slid behind me, and she leaned close. “Incoming. City boys. They’re traders. Try not to roll your eyes.”

Three American Psycho wannabes in identical slim-cut suits and artfully arranged hair circled us. I could see why Nicole called them boys—they were younger than the average Paters, younger by far than the Marquis. But still, they were in their twenties. Old enough to know better.

All three of them regarded us with hungry eyes.

“Do you like it?” one asked me, pointing his drink in the direction of the wall, where the film played. I made the mistake of looking, caught the woman in the throes of screaming, and quickly glanced away.

He grinned at my reaction. “It’s from my personal collection. Do you even know how much the real shit costs? Almost impossible to get your hands on.”

So it was real. I suppressed a chill. “I don’t like it,” I said, studying him as best I could in the dark. Up close, he didn’t have the same gloss as the other two. His long hair was lank, and his skin was sallow and pockmarked.

“I know.” He winked. “Daughters never do.”

“Apologies for the Incel.” The man standing closest to Nicole, the one who was most clean-cut, with a boyish face, extended his hand. “We keep telling him to keep at least one of his perversions private, but he never listens. It’s why the old guard hates him.”