The Shadow Writer

by Maxwell, Eliza

  “In my experience, once they’re angry, you may as well let them go. If they come back, they come back. No need to waste your breath.”

  If Cecelia Ainsley understands that comments like that one have sustained her reputation, she doesn’t appear bothered. And while it’s hardly Laura’s style, there is an inescapable truth to her words.

  Graye just needs some space. She can give her that, at least. The guilt sticks around, but Laura tries to set it aside for now.

  “Ms. Ainsley.” Laura turns to the woman at her side. “You were magnificent.”

  The award-winning author dips her head in recognition of the truth of those words.

  “I usually am, dear,” she says. “I admit, I wasn’t sure your little farce was going to be particularly dignified, but I’m quite enjoying myself.”

  “I really can’t thank you enough,” Laura says as the two women turn and walk into the crowded room. Long lines of tables set for dinner sparkle in candlelight. “It’s an honor to have you here. Beyond what I could have hoped. Especially considering everything.”

  Cecelia raises her brow. “Whom you choose to be married to is your business, Laura. I decided a long time ago that love must be an evolutionary adaptation.”

  Laura hadn’t been referring to David, though clearly Ms. Ainsley’s opinion of her husband hasn’t changed since she wrote the scathing piece about his last novel.

  “It’s nature’s way of allowing even mediocre men to find a mate,” Cecelia continues.

  Laura isn’t sure if the woman is serious or simply playing up the persona she’s created.

  “Doesn’t that contradict Darwin’s theory?” she can’t help asking. “Survival of the fittest shouldn’t leave much room for mediocrity.”

  Cecelia’s eyes are dancing, and Laura has a rush of satisfaction that her renowned guest is enjoying herself so thoroughly.

  “Oh child. How naive you are.” Cecelia grins with a touch of malice. “If procreation were reserved only for extraordinary men, the species would have died a slow, sputtering death centuries ago.”

  Laughter bubbles up. “I can’t argue with that,” Laura admits. “But no, I meant the situation with my assistant, Graye. She was going to interview for you, and it was unprofessional of me to steal her away.”

  Cecelia glances at Laura with a truly withering stare. Perhaps her reputation isn’t only for show after all.

  “I assume you’re speaking of the assistant who just slapped you? Whatever makes you believe I’d hire someone like that?”

  “That’s not a regular . . . I mean, she wouldn’t normally—” Laura breaks off, realizing how ridiculous she sounds.

  “I should hope not. Husbands are bad enough. It’s quite another to put up with nonsense in an employee.”

  “She’s actually quite good at her job,” Laura hears herself say, though she’s not certain if she’s defending Graye or her own judgment in hiring her.

  “I’m sure I don’t care in the least,” Cecelia says, holding up a hand to stop her. They’ve arrived at the table of honor where Laura has seated Ms. Ainsley. “If I have a motto, it’s this: ‘Not my monkeys, not my zoo.’”

  If Laura expects something more profound from the author, she’s destined for disappointment. Cecelia Ainsley pulls out her chair and takes a seat. Several of the other guests notice and stop at the table to praise her performance.

  Laura recognizes when she’s been dismissed.

  She turns and studies the crowd. Everything is going well. Everything except the alienation of her assistant, of course. She considers texting Graye but decides to give her more time.

  Mai Linh steps into her line of sight and hands her a glass of white wine.

  “Congratulations,” she says, her voice a low whisper. “That was quite impressive.”

  Laura smiles. “I thought you’d enjoy that.” She glances over her shoulder, noting how close they are to Cecelia’s chair. But the older woman is holding court and couldn’t care less what gossip is being passed behind her.

  Laura gestures with her chin anyway, and they step away from the table.

  “How in the world did you get her to agree—”

  A disturbance near the back of the room pulls their attention in that direction. A woman named Veronica, a blogger with thousands of social media followers, is sobbing into her hands while several people attempt to comfort her.

  It doesn’t appear to be working. Her sobs only grow louder.

  “What the . . . ?” Linh mutters, squinting to see better.

  Laura puts one hand on Linh’s arm and holds the other up, palm facing outward, the universal signal to just wait a minute.

  Linh gives Laura a quizzical glance, but her mouth soon turns into a silent O of understanding, and she turns back to the scene with anticipatory glee.

  “She can’t be dead!” says the distraught woman who’s caught the attention of the crowd. “I’ve come all this way to meet her.”

  “And who are you, deary?” asks someone from the crowd.

  “I’m her daughter, given up for adoption nearly twenty-five years ago!” Veronica declares. She holds the back of her palm to her forehead with an impressively campy amount of showmanship.

  There are a few gasps and a round of surprised laughter. Linh glances at Laura, who holds up a finger. There’s more, that finger says.

  “You can’t be the baroness’s daughter,” rings out a voice from across the room, and heads swivel in that direction.

  Veronica stands up straighter, recovering quickly from her exaggerated swoon.

  “Well, I’d like to know why not?” she demands, hands on her hips.

  “Because I’m her daughter, that’s why! And I can prove it.” Daughter number two, a romance author named Rose, holds a folded sheet of paper high in the air as she steps forward through the crowd to confront the woman. “I’ve got a letter from the baroness, begging for my forgiveness and inviting me here to claim my birthright.”

  “That’s impossible,” Veronica scoffs as she opens her bag and pulls out a sheet of paper of her own. “I’m the one with the letter, you gold-digging imposter!”

  The two women face each other down as the crowd looks on, absorbing the scripted drama playing out in front of them.

  Several of the people around Cecelia Ainsley’s table turn to her, as if looking for an explanation.

  “Well, don’t expect me to sort it out for you,” she says loudly as she leans back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m dead, remember?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Rose asks, full of mock offense.

  “I most certainly am! And you’re not going to get away with it.”

  Taking two steps toward her nemesis, Veronica is still waving her letter in one hand, effectively distracting onlookers from the small black pistol she holds in the other.

  It’s not a real gun, of course. It’s a cap gun that Laura sent herself with the character packet she’d mailed months ago. But when the little toy lets out a distinctive pop, pop and Rose jerks backward, once, twice, someone in the stunned crowd lets out a little scream of fright.

  Playing her moment for all it’s worth, Rose clutches her chest and crumples gently.

  The toy gun clatters from Veronica’s hand to the floor. “Are you okay?” she asks in a loud whisper.

  Rose opens her eyes and says, “Shh! You’re spoiling my death scene,” then gives her a wink and squeezes her eyes shut once again.

  Laughter erupts from the group, and Rose’s head lolls on the floor for just a moment before she leaps from the ground and takes a deep bow.

  “Bravo, my dear!” Cecelia says, clapping loudly. “Now come join me for dinner at the table of the deceased.”

  The mood in the room is festive as Veronica is led out by the arm, loudly proclaiming, “Get your hands off me! Do you know who I am? I’m the true daughter of Baroness Lyttleton!”

  “You really do have a flair for the melodramatic,” Linh says at Laura
’s side. “Are you going to tell me who had the honor of pushing the old bat from the roof?”

  “Not a chance.” Laura laughs.

  “Come on, just a hint.”

  “No, but I’ll walk you to your seat. Dinner will start soon and you don’t want to miss it. Grilled salmon with a side of poison for a chosen few.”

  “Sounds delicious,” Linh says, grinning and rubbing her hands together.

  “Be nice, or I’ll have you eating at the death table with Cecelia,” Laura warns.

  Graye still weighs on Laura’s mind, and after she leaves Linh at the seat with her place card, she scans the room, hoping to spot the girl. She’s nowhere in sight.

  Laura checks her watch. She has a few minutes to spare before the next round of dinner theatrics is slated to begin. She wonders where Graye would have gone to compose herself.

  Waitstaff begin bringing out the first course, and the group buzzes with gossip and anticipation. Silverware clinks and glasses are raised as Laura makes her way toward the door, planning to step out and track down Graye. She stops here and there to smile and check in with her guests along the way.

  She’s made it halfway across the room when she spots Graye along the far wall.

  Her assistant looks up and meets Laura’s eyes. She gives a tremulous smile, raising Laura’s hopes that she’s been forgiven for her thoughtlessness. Laura sends the girl a small wave.

  “Would you excuse me?” she says to the two men beside her as she heads in Graye’s direction.

  With her focus on her assistant, Laura doesn’t immediately realize there’s a problem. Her back is turned to the big double doors, so she doesn’t witness her husband stumble into the room. David’s entrance doesn’t go entirely unnoticed, though. She glances around to see what’s causing the stir and stops midstride.

  He’s left the jacket of his tuxedo behind. The black bow tie hangs loose from the collar of his stark white, halfway untucked dress shirt.

  With the neck of a bottle gripped in his hand and an unsteady gait, he looks like he’s come from an after-prom party for the middle-aged and washed up.

  Laura’s breath catches in her throat before it all leaves her at once.

  With an unwanted burst of clarity, she’s nearly blinded with a new perspective. Like the shift when an optical illusion changes before your eyes, becoming a zebra instead of the butterfly you thought it was, the two images flicker back and forth in her mind for a moment, superimposed upon each other, before the old image fades, replaced with a zebra she can’t unsee.

  David’s state isn’t shocking—it’s hardly the first time she’s seen him like this. But he’s always been careful with his public image. It’s one thing to destroy your liver in the privacy of your home. Another entirely to put your vices on such blatant display in a gathering of your peers.

  He stops to speak to an author he recognizes, leaning too close as he grips the back of her chair and talks loudly into her horrified face.

  “Olivia, my dear! I hope my wife . . . is treating you with all the deference your impressive reputation deserves.”

  His words are slurred, and the woman pulls back as he waves the bottle high in the air.

  “Share a drink with me, Olivia,” he says, leaning over to pour some of his liquor into her glass of wine, splashing it across the tablecloth as he does. “A toast to my wife. My incomparable, always welcoming wife.”

  Olivia, to her credit, recovers quickly. “Why don’t you sit down, David,” she coaxes in a calm voice.

  Conversations gradually hush as David gains the undivided attention of the room. It’s clear to most that this isn’t part of the planned entertainment. Olivia remains gracious and attempts to salvage the man’s tattered dignity. It’s more than he deserves.

  Paralyzed by an overwhelming surge of embarrassment for him, Laura can only watch as things go from awkward to worse.

  “Everybody!” David says, swinging his bottle around and addressing the room. “Raise a glass to my wife! And if you’re one of the lucky ones . . . I’m talking to you, there, Hugo, buddy . . . to whom she’s . . . extra welcoming, well then, why don’t you raise two.”

  Hugo Caron’s face is a chiseled stone as he watches David West light a match to his marriage and possibly his waning career. Hugo rises, but the woman at his side places a hand on his arm, shaking her head.

  Laura’s feet come unstuck from their place on the floor, and she rushes toward her husband.

  “David, that’s enough.” Her voice is a plea he won’t heed.

  “Enough?” he asks, swinging wildly around and attempting to focus on her face. “That’s enough, my lovely wife tells me,” he declares, laughing as if everyone is in on the joke with him.

  “Do you know the definition of enough, dear?” he asks. “Do any of you? Come on, a room full of writers, surely you do. I’ll tell you, Laura.”

  He turns back to her and slings an arm along with too much of his weight across her shoulders.

  “‘To the required degree or extent,’” he says carefully. “‘Adequately.’ Do you feel I’ve adequately addressed the situation?”

  “I’ll take you home, David.”

  “You didn’t answer the question. Do. You. Feel?” The index finger of the hand holding the liquor bottle comes up and touches her nose, punctuating each of the last three words. Drops of alcohol spill across her cheek. “That I’ve adequately addressed . . . the fact that my wife . . . has been fucking . . . another man . . . ?”

  Gasps and whispers of outrage begin circulating around the room, and Laura’s cheeks burn. Not for herself, but for the asinine display David has placed them in the center of.

  Alcoholism is a disease. Laura knows this. She’s not looking at the man she married. Not all of him, at least. But the ugliness that hides beneath the surface, the rocky, jagged edges of him that drinking exposes, have become impossible to navigate.

  From the corner of her eye, Laura sees Hugo jump again from his seat, unwilling to be dissuaded this time. The woman next to him doesn’t even try.

  “Oh, and look,” David says, turning to watch the man come to her side. “There he is, your knight in shining armor, stepping up to defend your honor.”

  David smiles to the stunned crowd. He’s lost the goodwill of his audience, if he ever had it, but he doesn’t care.

  “Isn’t that impressive, folks. Just look at him. Give him a hand, everybody.” David brings his hands together in a slow clap, not an easy thing while holding a bottle of vodka. Somehow, he manages.

  “David, you need to leave,” Hugo says. “Now.”

  Hugo is calm, but there’s anger banked just behind his eyes, fueled by righteous indignation on Laura’s behalf.

  “Wait, did I hear you correctly?” David drops his arm from around Laura’s shoulders and lurches toward Hugo, who sidesteps him easily. “I need to leave? I need to leave?”

  Laura can’t forgive this. She’ll never forgive this.

  “David—”

  He doesn’t hear her, doesn’t register she’s spoken. She steps in front of him, placing both hands on his chest, attempting to turn his attention back onto her, away from Hugo. This can’t end well.

  “David, stop. Please.”

  Graye, her face filled with concern, has materialized at their side. David pushes Laura out of his way. In typical Graye fashion, she’s in just the right place to catch Laura before she stumbles into one of the tables. The two women hold on to each other for support as they watch David tumble farther and farther from grace.

  “Tell me something, Caron. Were you sleeping with her before or after she launched your career? Was it a thank-you fuck or a bribe?”

  “It’s time to go, West,” Hugo says. He takes David by the arm that holds the bottle and pulls him toward the door.

  Laura quickly moves to follow.

  “Get your goddamn hands off me!” David attempts to pull out of his grasp, but Hugo holds tight.

  They’re moving together
toward the exit, whether David wants to or not, when he resorts to jerking his arm upward, letting loose the bottle he has, up until now, held tightly in his grip.

  The heavy glass container rises in the air. It has little momentum, but it’s uncapped and doesn’t need much to splash an acrid spray of liquor into Hugo’s face before it crashes to the floor, breaking into shards of wet glass. Hugo loosens his hold on David and runs a sleeve across his eyes to wipe the stinging liquid away.

  David stumbles, but even in his wasted state recognizes the only opportunity he’s likely to get. In a move that looks as if it were choreographed for a surreal Laurel and Hardy sketch, David pulls back an arm, his hand balled into a tight fist. He nearly falls over backward, but rights himself and manages to shift all his weight forward, putting everything he has into landing the sucker punch.

  As he does, Hugo bends at the waist, hands still wiping at his eyes. He can’t see David lunging toward him, but the crowd around them does. Shouts of warning and the scrape of chairs fill the room even before David’s body connects with the other man.

  His fist swings comically wild as he tumbles over Hugo’s back.

  It might have been a fitting end for David’s shameful behavior, to end up sprawled across the floor at the feet of people who once respected him. Few would have pitied him, not after the performance he’d subjected them to.

  Showing his ass, Laura’s mother would have called it.

  But the little sympathy he could have gained by a dose of divine justice goes up in a puff as he flips over Hugo’s back and slams directly into Laura, knocking them both to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Laura absorbs the force of her husband’s body. She dimly registers the screams of outrage enveloping her, Graye’s the loudest of all, in the moment before her head hits the hardwood floor with a crack.

  Then her world goes dark.

  30

  GRAYE

  Graye makes her way to the front of the ballroom, past the guests milling about. The first course sits cold and forgotten on the tables.

  Snippets of conversation pepper her ears.

  “. . . absolutely excruciating.”