Our Little Secret(53)

“Christ,” says Tate as he readjusts his shirt at each armpit.

Novak pulls out a third. “HP will come to his senses.” He throws that one down into the pile. “I could go on and on. But you know what? I won’t, because we already have more than we need.”

“My client won’t be talking further about this so-called exhibit. It’s obsolete. Seven years beyond its sell-by date. Unsubmittable.” Tate’s chin is set.

Novak snorts laughter, getting ready to gloat, when the door to the interview room bursts open and the thickset policeman sticks his head in, his face ablaze.

“Sir, we need to speak.”

Novak turns in his seat.

“You need to come.”

Novak jumps up, collects the papers and clamps the jar back under his elbow, ramming his shin into his chair as he hurries.

“Wait!” I call. “Did they find her? Where?”

With Tate a few steps behind him, Novak pauses at the door, his fingertips on the door handle. He turns to face me. “Angela? Why aren’t you asking if she’s alive?”





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24


It’s the waiting that’s the killer. I don’t just mean in here, in this sterile little cube they’ve had me in for days, and I don’t just mean for me. For everyone, it’s the waiting that’s the killer. Once you know what’s coming for you, it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else.

After I left HP that fateful Saturday night, I crept into my mother’s house while she was asleep in her bed. I lay on the couch in the dark, staring at the silhouettes of trees as they moved in shadow on the ceiling. My neck hurt where Saskia had knelt on it.

I couldn’t sleep. As the hours inched towards dawn, the feeling that I’d lost the most important piece of myself grew, until the panic was an oily sheen on my skin, slick and cold and unrelenting. When Mom found me at 7 a.m., I hadn’t rolled over once.

“Goodness, did you sneak in here under cover of dark?” She leaned over the back of the couch, her hair smoother and less gray than it should have been. “How unsociable, darling.”

She moved into the kitchen and began clanking coffee cups and pouring water. When the coffee sputtered to life, she returned.

“What’s the matter with you, Angela?”

I hadn’t been able to find any blankets in the night, and had resorted to the small starchy towel from the downstairs bathroom. It raked against my skin as I sat up.

“I had to leave the Parkers.”

“Well, you’d expected to leave today anyway.”

“I had to get out of there earlier than planned.” I couldn’t look at her. My stomach knotted inside me.

“Are you on bad terms?” She stared, hard and beady.

“Yes.”

“With both of them, or just with her?”

My forehead creased, a signal I was about to crumble, and my throat burned to cry. Instead I managed a shrug.

“Darling.” Mom came over to me, put a hand to my brow. “Whatever’s happened, I’m sure it was way past due and will be for the best in the end. You’ve put all your eggs in that miserable Parker basket, and there was only so long before the basket tipped.”

“I think I really lost HP.”

Mom handed me a coffee. The heat of the mug was scalding to touch.

“I doubt that’s true. Not really.” She bunched me along the couch and sat down. The white flesh of her knee protruded from a gap in her housecoat. “You and HP have always been close. It’s not like your father and me. When we fell out, it was like he’d dropped off the edge of the planet. And after years of marriage, no less. Believe me when I say you will get over this. And you’ll be better for it when you do.” She looked me over as she tucked the towel around me. “Perhaps I should tag along next weekend in Boston? In the meantime, we can be roomies this week! I can cook for two and we can drink gin together while we watch Dancing with the Stars. That’ll lift your spirits, won’t it, darling?”

Her words clattered off me like horseshoes thrown at an iron peg. I’d lost HP and I’d lost Olive. The couch was a pit and I was slipping in whole.

Later that morning I gave Freddy a call.

“They’ve banished me, Fred. I suppose it was only a matter of time.”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Are you all right? You sound down in the dumps.”

“Freddy, am I a bad person?”

“What? Why on earth are you asking that?”

“Saskia and HP think I’m—”

“Oh, pish-posh. Who cares what they think? Listen, I’ll see you for our mini break next Saturday. I’ve booked us a room at the Boston Hotel on Berkeley.”

I sniffed. “My mother wants to come.”

There was a long pause. “Really?”

I twirled the extension cord of the phone between my fingers. “She’s missed me these past weeks and Cove is depressing.”

He let out a small laugh. “Okay, fine, I’ll make it a suite. We’ll send her shopping on Saturday so that you and I will get some time.” I heard him rap his knuckles on his desk. “Now, don’t give HP or the Antipodean any more of your precious time. You are not a bad person, Angela Petitjean, you are gorgeous and underappreciated. It’s time to assert yourself. Draw the line.”