The Villa(65)

That would be fatal.

It’s stormy tonight, the first really proper storm we’ve had up here, and while we’ve got every lamp in the room on, we’ve also lit the candles again. It should feel cozy, tucked away in here while the rain falls outside, but it’s anything but.

I sit up now, putting my phone down. “Can I ask you something?”

Chess closes her laptop, eyebrows raised. “Anything, Em.”

“If you make ‘Don’t Be an Emma’ shirts, do I get a cut?”

To Chess’s credit, she doesn’t pretend not to know what I’m talking about, or deflect it with some witty banter.

She just sighs and crosses her arms, her bangle bracelets clacking together under a cardigan that appears to be made of scarves.

“Was this an evening the score kind of thing? I read yours, so you read mine?”

“Kind of,” I admit, and one corner of her mouth kicks up.

“For what it’s worth, I wrote that the night after we had that fight. When you told me you didn’t want to write with me. My feelings were hurt, and I was feeling cunty, so I wrote that. I was going to delete it.”

“But do you think it?” I press, and Chess tips her head back, sucking a breath in through her nose.

“Sometimes?” she admits. “Yeah, Em, sometimes I do think you let yourself give up too easily. So what if Matt left? So what if you don’t like writing about murder at the fucking cakewalk or whatever anymore? It shouldn’t derail your whole life. Your sense of self.”

“It’s about a lot more—” I start, but then Chess shifts on the couch, putting her feet up on the coffee table, and the light catches that anklet I’d noticed the other night.

Then, the lights had been dim, and I’d just caught the barest glimpse of it. Now, the chandelier is on, the hem of Chess’s pants is looser, and I can see the jewelry clearly.

But then again, I’ve seen it before.

A delicate gold chain, a tiny charm, a curling M, not unlike the M carved in the glass upstairs, but not M for Mari this time.

M for Matt.

Chess sees the moment I understand and stands up. “Emmy,” she says, and now I know what people mean when they say they see red because it’s like there’s nothing in my vision but bright, bright crimson, and my heart is in my ears, my throat, my stomach.

I don’t think.

I lunge at her.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN





Chess dodges me faster than I would’ve thought.

All that Pilates must pay off in unexpected ways.

But if she has agility on her side, I have blind rage on mine, and when she goes for the door, I catch her by all those floaty fucking layers, yanking hard, and she stumbles, crashing back into me.

“You’re insane!” she shrieks, batting at me, and honestly, I do feel insane right now.

I think of Mari, bringing that statue down on Pierce’s head, and I understand how she did it. How you can love someone, but be so angry at them that only their blood on your hands will quiet the screaming inside you.

We fall to the floor, my elbow cracking the coffee table, and I hear both our wineglasses topple over, red liquid spilling into the carpet, but Chess manages to pull away from me, shedding one or three of those layers in the process.

She reaches for her phone, but I get to it before she does, throwing it as hard as I can against the wall, and then Chess whirls on me, her eyes wide.

We both sit there on the floor, panting, and then she lurches to her feet, her heel coming down hard on the hem of her palazzo pants. “If you will chill the fuck out for five seconds, I’ll explain,” she says, and I almost laugh because there isn’t an explanation for this, but of course Chess would think there was. Of course, the great Chess Chandler can talk herself out of anything.

“When?” I bark, and she flutters her hands.

“Right now, if you’ll sit down and—”

“No, when did it start?”

I’m already racing back through the last few years, trying to find the moment. There was that visit Chess made to us two years ago. There was the trip we took to see her in Charleston, then the week in Kiawah. But other than that, she and Matt hardly ever saw each other. How the fuck did this happen?

“There was no start, Em, Jesus. It wasn’t an affair, it was a one-time thing. That week you two came to Kiawah. When I took him golfing.”

After I’d gotten sick. Four months before Matt had walked out. Chess had just learned that Nigel was engaged and she was devastated. She called me, begging me to visit. She’d known about the baby stuff, but the rest of it—the doctors, the brain fog, the nights curled up on the floor of the bathroom—I’d kept a secret. The time never seemed right to tell her, and there was something about it that felt embarrassing.

Weak.

If I’d known what was wrong, if I’d had a clear diagnosis to share, it would’ve been easier. But “I can’t think straight and I throw up for no real reason” felt too pathetic to say out loud—not to mention, impossible to explain—so I’d never mentioned it.

Instead, I’d agreed to come because she needed me, and then Matt had just assumed he was invited, too, and I hadn’t been able to figure out how to tell him no.

It had been fine, though. Chess’s house was big and airy, and I’d started feeling better the moment I arrived. Matt had seemed better, too—lighter, less stressed—and when he’d asked Chess to take him golfing, I hadn’t thought twice about it. I’d spent that afternoon sitting by Chess’s pool, working a little on the ninth Petal book, content and happy, thinking how nice it was that my best friend and my husband could easily spend time together without me.