Laura sighs. “I agreed with him. At first. And then I didn’t. I knew from the beginning what I was getting, so to try and play the part of the wronged spouse is hypocritical of me.”
“So what changed?” Graye asks.
Laura gives a dry chuckle. “Him. Me. Our expectations. Our marriage. What didn’t change is a better question.” Laura sighs again. “I guess I got tired of being alone.”
Graye reaches over and squeezes Laura’s hand. Loneliness is as familiar to her as her own reflection.
Laura looks up with misty eyes. “I’d like to think he’ll rise to the occasion, but deep down I know that’s wishful thinking.”
Laura sits up straighter and takes a deep breath. She dabs at her eyes and gives Graye a lopsided smile.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she says with a wry twist of her lips. “Anything else.”
“All right.”
Laura’s face brightens slightly. “The upside to feeling so crappy lately is I’ve had lots of time to lounge in bed reading. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I started that manuscript you recommended.”
Every cell in Graye’s body reacts at once, electrified, as if she’s risen from a hundred-year sleep.
Another guest arrives at that precise moment to sign in, which is both a blessing and a curse. Graye has time to compose herself, but she also has to endure the small talk and introductions with a smile.
Once the guest is finally done and on her way, Graye forces herself to pause for what she can only hope is a reasonable amount of time before she brings the subject up again.
“So . . . you were saying?” she prompts. Casual. Calm. Collected. Those words play in her head and she struggles to listen.
“What?”
Graye bites back a scream of frustration.
“The manuscript? The Orphan’s Ashes?”
“Oh yes!” Laura says. “I’m only about halfway done, but I have to say, I’m really impressed with your taste.”
Graye is barely breathing.
“You . . .” Deep breath. “You like it then?”
Can Laura hear the thread of desperation that runs so wide through the question?
Calm. Casual. Collected.
Hold it together.
“Like it?” Laura says. “Are you kidding?”
Graye’s befuddled brain doesn’t know if she’s supposed to answer or not.
“I absolutely love it,” Laura continues.
Oh God. Oh God. She loves it. Graye is suddenly dizzy, disoriented.
“It’s got such a compelling voice,” Laura goes on, oblivious to Graye’s spinning thoughts. “A little rough around the edges maybe, but the sense of menace, it’s so subtle and powerful. And the unreliable narrator—while a bit overdone in the last few years, it feels like a fresh take.”
It’s so much to absorb. Too much. Laura’s words march around in Graye’s mind like soldiers in an army band, clanging about as they each play a different tune.
Compelling—Rough—Menace—Powerful—Fresh.
It’s everything Graye could have hoped for. Everything, and so much more.
“The fairy tale sections especially. The story within the story? So intriguing. I don’t know where she’s going with the rest of it,” Laura went on, “but honestly, I think Fiona Boyd has the potential to be a big new voice in fiction.”
A shadow looms over them.
Graye’s emotions are shredded. For once, she’s grateful for an interruption, but when she looks up and sees Hugo Caron standing there, tall, distinguished, and even more handsome in person than in his photo, she’s overwhelmed with a sensation she has trouble naming.
“Hugo,” Laura says with a gasp. “You made it!”
“Laura.” He gives her a slow smile. “You’re looking smashing, as usual.”
And then Graye knows. Impending doom. As if someone or something is positioning them as players in a game where the rules are a mystery and the stakes are growing higher and higher.
Laura’s face lights up as she greets her friend. Her lover.
“Graye,” Laura says, “would you excuse me?”
It’s all too good to be true, and dangerously precarious. First Nick, showing up in her life after all this time, and now this? Will Hugo Caron be the thing that tips the delicate balance?
Laura has risen from her seat and joined Hugo. She slips her arm into his and speaks quietly, words Graye doesn’t catch, and the two of them walk together out of the ballroom to a secluded corner of the hotel lobby.
Graye stands and moves as casually as she can manage to the entryway of the ballroom and watches them discreetly over the top of a checklist she picked up from the welcome table. They pay her no mind.
Graye tries to focus. She’s just received the greatest of gifts, confirmation her story resonates with the person whose opinion matters the most.
She should be over the moon, and she is, but the higher she soars, the more acutely aware she becomes of the distance to the hard, rocky ground beneath and the looming presence of Nick below, waiting. Watching.
If she falls now, it could break her.
Graye studies the pair, but a tall potted plant partially blocks her view. They’re deep in conversation, and from the look of concern on Hugo’s face, the discussion is intense.
Graye busies herself pretending to study the clipboard in her hand and tries not to stare at the two of them. The evening will begin soon, regardless of Laura’s personal life, and Graye can do nothing except help ensure the event runs smoothly and seamlessly.
She wonders for a moment how Laura, a woman who can juggle such minute details with ease, has landed herself in such a mess.
Graye tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and keeps her eyes downcast as Laura walks with Hugo to the elevator. The two of them share a hug, and Graye watches beneath hooded eyes.
Laura is swiping at her eyes when she joins Graye again.
“An old friend,” she says by way of explanation. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you.”
Laura’s pallor has worsened, if that’s possible, and her features are taut. Graye waves away the apology.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Laura nods with a stiff smile. “I’ll be fine. Just not feeling myself.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Graye asks.
Laura lets out a sigh of relief. “There is, actually, since you offered. I wrote some notes for a welcome speech on a few cards, then ran off and left them on my desk. I could wing it, but—”
“I’ll take care of it,” Graye says. The other woman doesn’t look capable of making it through the party on her own two feet, much less winging anything.
“Thank you. And while you’re there, would you mind grabbing some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet? This headache is going to be the death of me.”
“Absolutely.”
Graye isn’t about to let anything be the death of her friend. Not now. She has too much to lose.
21
GRAYE
It’s a short walk from the hotel next door to the West home.
The floral-printed shirtwaist dress she ordered online just for tonight flows around her knees in the breeze. It isn’t as fancy as Laura’s, but Graye rather likes it. Especially with her pillbox hat.
Unfortunately, pillbox hats aren’t designed to stand up to island winds, and Graye reaches up with a gasp as the pins she used to secure it give way. It tumbles, rolling happily between the houses, then onward toward the beach.
She races after it as it rolls across the sand, but someone else gets there first.
The smile of gratitude dies on her lips when she recognizes the man clutching the little blue hat.
“I told you to leave me alone,” Graye hisses. Her pleasure at the near-perfect day and excitement about the coming weekend drain away in an instant. Dread seeps in like grains of sand pouring into her shoes.
“What do you want from me, Nick?” she demands.
He ho
lds the hat out to her, but stays rooted in place, a wolf waiting for the chance to pounce on his Red Riding Hood. She forces herself to close the distance between them despite the warning bells clanging in her head.
She snatches the hat from his outstretched hand.
“Why are you back?”
“I’ve tried to forget you, Grace,” he says. Another person might call his tone gentle, but Graye knows what this man is capable of. She isn’t fooled. “But that’s been more difficult than I expected.”
“You’re nothing to me,” she says. “Grace is nothing. The past is gone. I have a new life now, a future.”
He shakes his head as if he pities her. “It’s not that simple, Grace. I know what your family did to you.”
“I don’t have a family anymore!” Her voice is rising, but he’s unmoved.
“It’s a dangerous game, to play with people’s lives. Not everyone has the stomach for it.”
He slides his hands into his pockets and stares at her long and hard. Her cheeks warm. She feels exposed beneath his gaze.
“What do you want?”
He considers his reply before he speaks again. “I want you to be honest with me.”
He’s lying. He’s always been a liar. She hasn’t forgotten.
“And you think I owe you that? You think I owe you anything after what you did?”
His face changes, his mask of politeness slipping just a notch.
“You should be careful, Grace,” he says quietly. “Every act has consequences, even if they take a lifetime to catch up with you.”
Graye’s heart is thumping, but she can’t back down now. She’s done nothing wrong. Not when she was a girl, and not now. Whatever he believes he’s owed, he’s mistaken.
“Are you threatening me? All I need to do is walk into a police station and file a complaint, Nick. You shouldn’t be anywhere near me, and you know it.”
An empty threat he sees through right away. “And you’re going to do that? Expose yourself to the world? Give up this life as Graye Templeton?”
The press, who’d searched for little Gracie Thacker relentlessly, would find her, and they wouldn’t hesitate to pounce. Her life, her future, would be ruined more quickly than if she’d doused it in gasoline and flicked a match.
“You’ve settled in. You’re making something. Something good, you hope. You don’t want to jeopardize that, do you?” he says, his voice like velvet, concealing the razor-sharp edges of his words.
“Your boss seems like a nice woman. Laura, right? Beautiful name. A tire can be repaired, Gracie. A life? Not so much.”
The threat lands heavily between them, all pretense swept away.
“You stay away from her!” Graye screams. “Stay away from us both!”
Graye backs away in horror, desperate to put as much distance between her and this man as possible. It can never be enough. There’s nowhere left to hide.
“Stay away!” she cries. Out of options, Graye turns and runs. She doesn’t look back to see if he’s following her. She doesn’t need to. He’s always been there.
No matter how fast she runs, he always will be.
Dr. West may not be the absolute last person Graye wants to face at this moment, but he’s close.
Her shoulder jostles his as she passes him on her way into Laura’s office. She doesn’t bother to apologize.
“Did the lady of the manor forget something?” David asks. “She sent her maidservant to retrieve it?”
He’s dressed haphazardly, his shirt untucked and his tie hanging loose.
Graye ignores him and heads to the desk where Laura said she left her notes.
She doesn’t have time for this.
Her damn hands are shaking again as she swipes the notecards from the surface of the desk. Several flutter to the floor. She kneels to collect them as David darkens the doorway at her back.
“She could have called me,” he says, indignant at the perceived slight. “I would have brought them to her.”
Graye rises to her feet and stares at his mulish face.
“Am I supposed to respond to that?” she asks. Her patience is at a breaking point.
“I’m sorry,” David says, raising his palms as if to ward her off, though she hasn’t moved. “Is that too much to ask? Or do you just repeat what you’ve been told? Independent thought above your pay grade?”
Graye crosses her arms. “Does that make you feel good?” she asks. “Do you feel like a big man now that you’ve put the underling assistant in her place?”
David’s eyes widen slightly, and she sees his throat work as he tries to swallow. There might even be remorse there, if she cares to examine it.
Instead, she walks toward him, closing the distance until she faces him eye to eye.
“Does that make up for the pathetic waste of your life?” she asks, wielding her words with precision. She cocks her head to one side and studies him. “Your marriage and your career are circling the drain. The only question is which will go first. I suppose it’s understandable to lash out, and I’m an easy whipping boy.”
Graye turns sideways and squeezes past him with his shocked expression and his clenched jaw. God forbid he step out of her way.
Graye moves down the hallway to the bathroom.
“It’s easier that way, isn’t it?” she calls over her shoulder.
Graye should stop, but her frustration at yet another man in her path—unmoving, unbending, unrepentant in his ignorance, unrelenting in his confidence that he’s earned the right by virtue of his existence—it’s enough for one day. Enough already.
“Excuse me?” David whispers. He’s followed her to yet another open doorway and stands there gaping like a fool. Worse, a fool who believes he’s a king. A fool who mistakes the bells that jangle from his jester’s cap for applause each time he opens his mouth.
She turns away and begins rummaging through the medicine cabinet.
“I said, it’s easier that way, isn’t it? Easier to take it out on me? Who am I, after all? Because to put all that contempt where it belongs—squarely on your own shoulders—you’d have to be a better man than you are.”
Graye finds the ibuprofen, but her hands still aren’t steady and several other bottles fall to the sink and floor below with a clatter.
Gripping the bottle of pills in one hand and Laura’s notecards in the other, Graye walks up to David again.
His nostrils flare, and he has a wild, wounded look in his eyes.
“Did I hurt your feelings?” she asks calmly.
David’s breath is ragged, and she can smell the booze he had for lunch. His hands clench into fists at his sides. She wonders dispassionately if he’s going to hit her.
“Get out of my way,” she says slowly.
Surprisingly, he does, stepping back suddenly as if he’s only just realized how close he’s been standing to a contagious disease. She brushes past him, unable to hide a curl of her lip and unwilling to try.
Graye hurries back toward the hotel, head down, her mouth a grim slash across her face. Her thoughts are consumed by worries over Nick and his threats, leaving her jumpy and wired.
If she had the mental real estate to spare on thoughts of Dr. West, she would assume he began pouring his rage down his throat using the closest alcohol at hand after she slammed the door behind her.
She’d have been right.
What she wouldn’t have imagined was the way he took his drink of choice into the bathroom she’d just left. The way he gripped the bottle by the neck like a lifeline as he slowly slid his back down the wall.
His legs splayed out as he took a swig, then set the bottle on the tile floor with a comical amount of care.
Graye couldn’t know the despair that smoldered beneath the veneer of a lost man who’s turned to alcohol out of nothing but cowardice and knows it.
David picked up one of the pill bottles that had fallen onto the floor and felt the weight of it in his hand. So light, yet so heavy.
Gra
ye couldn’t know because even David couldn’t have said whom he loathed more in that moment—his wife, his wife’s bitch of an assistant, or himself.
22
LAURA
Laura rinses her mouth with water from the sink in the hotel restroom.
The doctor she visited on the mainland had warned her that so-called “morning sickness” was a misnomer. That each pregnancy was different and nausea could hit at any time during the day. For the particularly unlucky, it could be an all-day affair, though it didn’t often last past the first trimester.
Laura sighs and forces herself not to dwell on the negative aspects of a situation she’s consciously chosen.
She had other choices. Choices she walked right to the edge of.
For the first ten years of their marriage, Laura hadn’t questioned David’s assertion that he didn’t want kids. She hadn’t wanted kids either. They were young. They were busy building careers, basking in each other’s early successes. They were drunk on each other.
Naively, she’d believed them so in sync that the vague possibility she might one day want children didn’t bother her. She assumed David would be in step if that day ever came. It was a foolish assumption to make.
Her twenties were gone in a blink, and she found herself reconsidering once her thirties had taken hold. Laura once broached the subject after meeting a friend’s new baby, wondering aloud over dinner what a child of her and David’s might look like.
His fork stilled halfway to his mouth, his eyes suddenly dark and wary. He placed the fork carefully on his plate with a clink.
“Like a mistake,” he said softly. “A big one.”
He stood and walked away without another word, leaving her speechless and alone. She’d been too shocked by the coldness of his reaction to broach the subject again.
On the surface, things went back to normal, but Laura suspects that was when the first crack appeared beneath their feet. The birth control pills she swallowed each night took on new gravity, and other people’s children an unattainable lure.
Which is why Laura doesn’t know with any certainty how accidental it truly was when she became pregnant ten months later. What she knows, with great certainty, is the fierceness of David’s anger when he found out.
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