The Winters(54)

“I woke up the next morning like a pile of bricks were on my chest. I could smell burning through my window, though I didn’t connect it to Mum. Daddy was already sitting next to me, sitting in the same spot, like he never left. He looked terrible. He said, Hi, honey, voice all raggedy. I have to tell you something really sad about Mum, he said. And I knew. I knew he was going to tell me she was dead. I knew it. He said, Mum had a car accident out by the causeway. There was a big fire. She died in it. There are police downstairs. They might want to talk to you about what you remember about last night, he said. But the most important thing is I loved your mother very, very much. You know that, right? I said, Yes, Dad, I know that. And you know how much she loved you. Never forget that, he said. I won’t, Dad, I said. Because if the police don’t know how much we all love each other, he said, they might take me away from Asherley, and from you, and you’ll be all alone. We don’t want that, do we? Do you understand? And I said, Yes, I understand.”

This was the first time since I’d met Dani that she had showed any vulnerability; she was on the brink of real tears.

“But here’s the thing. The police didn’t ask me anything except for when did we eat dinner, what time I went to bed, that sort of thing. Nothing important. So I said nothing about that woman. They seemed more interested in talking to my father. Daddy whispered to one of the police, She’s only thirteen. I wasn’t a little girl and they were treating me like one.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I’m telling you all this because that’s why my dad won’t let anyone in the greenhouse. He feels guilty about what happened that night. With Mum. With that woman. I caught him a few times standing in the dark, inhaling the air. You can smell her in there.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then she shrugged, her demeanor shifting.

“Oh. I almost forgot. You texted me this morning, said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

I had completely forgotten about this morning’s events, now buried under the night Dani just recounted. “Oh, uh, yes. It was about . . . the picture you took of me last night, when I was . . . Could you please erase it from your phone? I don’t want your father to ever see it.” I thought I was being clever, focusing only on the photo she took, leaving out the part about her posting it, but she called my bluff.

She slapped her hand on the table. “I knew it! I bet Claire a hundred dollars that you lurk my Instagram. You’re a fucking lurker! Ha! That’s so creepy, I love it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“All right, Stepmommy, if you say so.”

The waiter suddenly appeared at our table. But when I looked up to ask for the bill, I was shocked to see Gus hovering over us.

Dani leapt up. “Oh shit!”

He nodded at me, looking embarrassed.

“Hello, Gus,” I said. “Actually, Dani, I thought I would drive you home. I’d prefer to, in fact. I feel like we have a lot more to talk about.”

She ignored me. “You were going to text me when you were circling the block,” she said to Gus. “Did you have to park?”

“I did text you,” he hissed back, and pointed to the dark sedan at the curb out the window. “Meet me out there. I don’t want to get towed.”

Max was right. Something was off about their relationship, and familiar. Too familiar. They were bickering like a tense couple.

“Sorry, I gotta run,” she said to me. “Can you put this on Daddy’s card without him knowing I ate with you? Oh, and he can’t know about Gus, or what I told you.” She slung her purse across her shoulder. “Okay?”

She spun around.

“Wait. Dani.”

“What?”

“Tell me what . . . what happened to that woman.”

She crinkled her nose. “What woman?”

“The one who came to the house that night?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I never saw her again.” Then she cocked her head at me thoughtfully. “Know what? I think you’re going to make a beautiful bride.”

Then she left. I watched her hop into the front seat with Gus. While I waited for the check, I looked at her Instagram feed. The photo was gone.

“Oh thank God,” I whispered, closing my eyes and placing my phone over my heart, grateful that she decided to just be mean to me, and not cruel.





TWENTY-ONE


Dani’s story played over and over in my mind during the ten-block walk back to the parking garage. All the way out of the city, through the suburbs, down the middle of Long Island, over the causeway, and into the forest, I went over the scenes she’d described, how Rebekah talked on the phone, paced and bit her nails, how she drove into town like a madwoman, how she fought with Max and got angry at a woman who came to Asherley, so angry she fled in a car and died.

Of course Max would feel guilty, if indeed that woman had been his lover. But she couldn’t have been. Max cheating on Rebekah was impossible to imagine. Maybe she was a lost stranger looking for directions. But I’d have to believe she got lost crossing the causeway, heading to a gated island. I thought then of the way Dani had relished my astonishment, leaned deeper into the story the more it distressed me, and a darker thought crossed my mind. Dani had made her up, had executed a deliberate misinformation campaign to mess with my affections before I married her father. To what end? Well, for starters, if I believed him capable of being unfaithful to Rebekah, what hope for fidelity did I have? He was away a lot, and he had plenty of opportunity. But then why would he want to marry? Why not just go on being a swinging bachelor? Max loved me, of this I was sure. One conversation with him would expose her game and dispel these doubts, even if it meant breaking my promise not to tell him Dani had ignored her curfew. I could leave out the Gus part, tell him she’d driven with me.