This Place of Wonder (71)

“How does she feel about you?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see my boss come into the room, and I stand up. “How do you think she feels? Sorry, I have to get back to work.”



Dinner is slow, and as the newbie, I’m the first to be cut. It has taken all that I’ve got to keep a professional face up during service, so I’m not disappointed.

The good news is that my tips are excellent and I have some money in my pocket as I head out, trying to decide what to do with myself. It’s not quite seven thirty, and I don’t really want to return to Belle l’été yet. For one thing, I’m reeling from the bombshells the detectives dropped on me, and for another, I really need that room and I don’t want to get on Maya’s nerves.

Instead of wallowing, I head back to the library to do more research. It’s already closed, so I carry my laptop to one of the patio restaurants along State Street. The Sunday crowds are remarkably thin, and I doubt anybody is going to care if I nurse a beer for a couple of hours. I had a good meal at work but order some tapas to go with it, Marcona almonds and little roasted peppers and olives. Augustus would have ordered the pulpo, octopus, but I can’t bring myself to eat something that’s smart enough to free itself from an aquarium, which I saw in a video somewhere.

Girls walk by in tiny dresses and tinier shorts, and boys follow in groups. It’s warm and clouds are gathering over the ocean, but no one has said a word about it raining. Even if it does, I’m sheltered beneath a canvas roof and will be fine.

When the server delivers my plate, I fire up the laptop. The man next to me is talking quietly and repetitively to himself, but he’s easy enough to ignore.

Did someone kill Augustus? It seems so wildly unlikely. Even his enemies loved him in some way. Only Maya managed to keep up her walls against him, and she’s off the hook.

Still. Poisoned? The possibility rolls around in my gut.

On the computer, I call up the raft of images of him I find on Google. So many of them. So many with Meadow.

A visual of Augustus kissing Meadow’s shoulder blasts across my vision. It feels like my ribs are breaking, collapsing around my heart, and I press both palms to the middle of my chest. I was jealous of Meadow, honestly, but it never really crossed my mind that he’d actually cheat on me. We were so together, so enmeshed.

So in love.

The sense of betrayal is painful, a burning rock in the pit of my stomach, but I also feel a keen sense of embarrassment. Did I think I was the only person he’d never cheat on, even though it was always his signature?

Honestly, yes. I was about as young as he could go—or so I thought. The bartender was even younger. Maybe not even twenty-five, which if I read it on Twitter would seem creepy and disgusting, but seems perfectly natural for Augustus. People who don’t know him probably think he’s a predator. You can’t think that if you know him. After all, I flung myself on the altar of his attention within twenty minutes of our meeting.

Tears blur my ability to read the screen in front of me, and I can’t remember what I was going to look up, anyway. Instead, I type in his name, Augustus Beauvais, and click on images. They show up, so many.

Did you know he was sleeping with Meadow?

If it had been only that revelation, I might not feel this way, partly because I did already suspect, and partly because she holds—held—a powerful position in his life. They had a remarkable connection, and maybe I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had just been Meadow.

But the bartender! She was so young she couldn’t really walk very well in high heels, and her collarbones and wrists showed beneath the white shirt of the uniform. She had great tits and long glossy hair and a sharp intelligence that was learning itself. I recognized myself in her the first time we met, but it never crossed my mind, not for a single second, that Augustus would fuck her.

I click through the photos, tears flowing down the back of my throat. The thing is, we weren’t having that much sex those last couple of months. He was tired. He didn’t feel well. He dragged home from Ojai or the restaurant and collapsed into bed, his hand over my belly as I read. I tried not to mind, tried to tell myself that he was worried about Maya and he had a lot of business trouble, and it wasn’t personal.

Turns out, it was personal. He wasn’t fucking me, but he had plenty of fucks to give Meadow and the bartender, whose name I can’t remember.

It’s humiliating. It stings in exactly the same place as those times I had to leave a foster home for some specious reason—but usually because I ran afoul of one of the other kids. It stings the same way losing an internship to another privileged white boy stung and sent me on my way here.

It stings because I knew better. I know better.

The only person I can count on is myself. It’s me who will drag me out of this hand-to-mouth life and into the one I want.

And Meadow Beauvais is my ticket—I can just feel it.





Chapter Thirty-Two


Meadow


Rory glumly watches them play with Barbies. “It’s like they don’t get it at all. I thought they’d be so upset.”

I rub her shoulder, aching for her. “They’ll understand more over time, but it just doesn’t make sense to them now. What’s death? What does that even mean?” I brush her hair away from her face, tuck a lock behind her ear. “Why don’t you sit down and let me make some dinner?”