Her overlarge signature loops beneath the words.
Laura is surprised to find a lump lodged in her throat.
“I’d like that,” she hears herself say.
“Wonderful. I’m at the Waldorf. Meet me in the lobby at eight.”
“Fancy,” Laura says, lifting an eyebrow.
“I told you, kissing my rear.”
Laura laughs and says her goodbyes, then heads to the checkout desk with the hardback books she’s chosen hugged to her chest.
“That will be forty-seven fifty,” the clerk says.
Laura slides her credit card into the machine while the clerk begins to bag her books.
“I just finished this one,” the girl says, holding up the one on the bottom.
“Oh yeah?” Laura asks. “What did you think?”
“It was fantastic,” she says. “I couldn’t put it down.”
Laura smiles as the clerk slides her new copy of The Orphan’s Ashes, by Fiona Boyd, into the bag.
Cecelia waits until the wine is poured before she leans back in her chair and says, “Tell me a story, kid.”
Laura thanks the waiter, then looks back to her companion.
“What makes you think I have a story to tell, Ms. Ainsley?”
“Oh please, call me Cecelia. No one does.”
Laura smiles. The imperious woman is easier to like than she remembers.
“Cecelia, then.” Laura unfolds her napkin and places it in her lap.
“Don’t try to change the subject, dear. I’m a writer. I make a living peering under rocks. You have the satisfied bearing of someone with a delicious secret.”
The woman really is extraordinary, Laura muses. She doesn’t answer, but picks up her wine to take a sip instead. She imagines Cecelia Ainsley was probably burned at the stake in a former life.
“Besides, I’m old. I’ll be dead soon enough, so there’s no risk in entertaining me for an evening.”
Laura laughs into her wine, then wipes her mouth on her napkin.
“As tempting as the offer is, my secrets aren’t entirely mine to share,” she says.
The silver-haired doyenne shrugs. “Even better.” She leans forward to place her elbows on the table and pushes up her wrist full of silver bracelets. “I have an idea. Start with ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ or some such nonsense, then leave out the boring bits. We’ll call it dinner theater.”
Laura considers her. She’s surprised by the urge to do just that. She’s never before been tempted to tell a soul the truth about Fiona Boyd.
Her family and friends would never understand, and she doesn’t have the words to explain it to them. But they all agree on one thing: Laura seems to have finally moved past her bout of depression. They were worried, for a while.
Fiona Boyd’s publisher, too, is in the dark. Laura acts as a proxy for the author, an eccentric recluse who insists on remaining removed from the spotlight and ferociously guards her privacy.
Laura forwards all communication to Graye through official prison channels, just as the two of them had handled the months of edits and critiques for The Orphan’s Ashes.
Once it was ready, Laura hand-delivered the manuscript to an old friend of her father’s. It was a sensation in the office, of course, just as she’d believed it would be.
The knowledge of Fiona Boyd’s true identity could have sold the book on morbid curiosity alone, but neither she nor Graye wanted that. The Orphan’s Ashes would stand or fall on its own merit.
Laura had little doubt which it would be. She has an eye for spotting talent.
Advance reviews have been positive, and there was an impressive amount of buzz about the book, even before it officially launched a few days ago.
Grace’s voice will finally be heard.
And for Laura, a debt is settled.
It’s a difficult thing, perhaps the most difficult of things, to have looked eye to eye at the monster that lives inside of each of us. To embrace it, even for a time, willingly. Knowingly.
The morning of David’s death, Laura too had woken before the sun was fully up. Or, more accurately, she’d never found the comfort of sleep after the blood had stopped draining from her bruised and battered body.
She’d risen quietly from the bed, not wishing to disturb Rachel or Dr. Lawson, both of whom had finally dropped into sleep. She walked out of Dr. Lawson’s house, her wounded soul crying in pain, and she’d stared into the gray morning. In those moments, Laura had known a hatred that left her a stranger to herself.
She walked toward her grandmother’s house. Her house. Before David, it was a place that held no more painful memories for her than a skinned knee.
She watched her own feet as they took her forward, toward the man who’d done this to her. She heard nothing except the rush of blood and anger coursing through her veins.
She never saw Graye or Alex. Never heard a commotion that might have given her a clue that something had gone horribly, beautifully wrong in her world.
Laura opened the front door to her home expecting to find her husband passed out drunk, just as she’d expected to find him the night before.
To this day, Laura can’t say what she would have done if that had been the case. Her mind shies away from exploring that dark path.
Instead, she found David as he lay dying.
He looked up at her, pain and fear in his eyes, and he asked her for help.
Begged for it.
Logically, Laura understands it was too late for him. Even if she’d dialed 911 or put pressure on his wounds, David had only moments to live. There was nothing she could have done to change that.
But in those moments, his final moments, he looked to her for help and she stood by and watched him die.
For that, she owed Graye Templeton a debt.
One she hoped was now repaid.
Laura smiles and sips her wine. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Cecelia,” she says. “I live a quiet and uneventful life these days. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
59
GRAYE
Graye sits on a bunk anchored to the floor in a six-by-eight-foot room with bars in place of a door.
She carefully opens the package Laura has forwarded. It’s been opened already by the guards, of course, but that doesn’t bother her.
There is some paperwork from the publishing company that she sets aside to come back to later. Then a letter from Laura. The note is short. She congratulates Graye on her success and hard work. Nothing too personal, which is how their communications have been from the first letter, handwritten in Laura’s sloping cursive script.
But Graye understands. Their relationship has always been a complicated one. The complexities only grew deeper after Graye stabbed Laura’s husband.
She still dreams about Dr. West sometimes. She knows now he was her father. The lawyers made a big deal about it in court. Strangely, it hasn’t altered her perception of him much.
Sister Margaret, Graye’s only visitor, confirmed it right after she admitted she was really Graye’s mother.
She sometimes stares at Margaret’s face, looking for similarities she’s never seen before, but for the most part, her parents’ identities have had little effect on her.
The dreams come less often now, and that’s fine. She’s never sure how much of them is based on actual events and how much is a product of her imagination. But she no longer doubts she was the one who killed Dr. West.
The overwhelming feelings of panic at the idea that he’d done something to harm Laura are too real. Graye would have been gentle. Quick. She owed her friend as much. But the scene she found in the West home screamed of drunken brutality and unchecked anger. Typical of David West.
He was never supposed to do that. It wasn’t part of the plan.
Memories like these have swept away any lingering doubts that she might have once had. And of course, the sensation of the knife pushing through flesh. There’s that as well.
It’s diff
erent than, say, holding someone beneath the water of a bath or pushing a needle into a vein. Different even than a sudden shove from behind, or the squeeze of a trigger. A knife is more difficult than one might expect. It requires a level of persistence. A level of conviction that Dr. West didn’t believe she possessed.
But he’s dead now, so that hardly matters.
What matters, what was made crystal clear the moment Graye spotted Laura in the Rockaway Police Station, is that Graye’s plan was flawed. Oh, the original one was fine, when Laura could be counted on to champion the work of Fiona Boyd, but Graye was forced to make adjustments when Laura didn’t connect with the book the way Graye hoped she would.
But her adjustments were shortsighted. The problem wasn’t Laura. It never had been. The problem was Dr. West all along. Laura didn’t abandon her; she’d simply been distracted by her husband’s childish needs. By his demands on her time and energy.
Graye can’t believe what a huge mistake she almost made.
With David West out of the way, Laura is free. Free from distractions. Free from a loveless marriage. Free to concentrate on doing what she does best.
Recognizing talent.
Seeing Laura alive and well that morning brought everything into absolute focus. The fatal flaw in her reasoning. How closely they’d skirted disaster. Most importantly, how a stunningly perfect solution had fallen into their laps, despite Graye’s miscalculations.
The detectives didn’t understand her jubilation. How could they? They didn’t share Graye’s vision.
Graye sets Laura’s letter aside. She catches her breath at the sight of what lies beneath. Reverently, Graye picks up the hardbound copy of The Orphan’s Ashes. Tears cloud her vision as she holds her words, made real and heavy in her hands.
She was right. After everything, all the disappointments and setbacks, all the close calls and near disasters, it was a perfect solution.
The undeniable proof of that was in her hands.
Hugging the book tightly to her chest, Graye’s eyes fall onto the pages that remain.
Reviews for The Orphan’s Ashes, gathered from publications and online sites. Emails directly from readers, with their names and return addresses redacted.
Laura has printed everything—every word, every reaction, every piece of reader feedback she can gather—and she’s put it all into a manila envelope that contains nothing less than Graye’s entire world.
She reads it all, poring over the words, drinking them in. Then she reads it again.
With tears still streaming down her face, Graye pulls out her supply of notebook paper and her pencil. It’s down to nearly a nub. She’ll need to get a new one from the prison commissary soon.
Graye smiles widely, and her heart sings as she replies to the readers who’ve reached out to say her voice has touched their lives.
Laura will send her replies out into the world, as they’ve agreed.
And as she signs the name Fiona Boyd with a flourish at the bottom of the first letter, Graye spares a passing thought for the little girl she used to be, but only for a moment.
Gracie Thacker died a long time ago. Graye Templeton is gone now too, just a role she has to play sometimes, for the sake of the guards.
But none of that matters. Fiona Boyd is real.
And her voice will live forever.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book doesn’t happen on caffeine alone, but this one couldn’t have happened without it, so credit where it’s due.
In addition, thank you to the Lake Union team for your faith and support—Danielle, Chris, and the lovely Gabe.
Thank you to Faith Black Ross, for your insight and willingness to hold my hand through the editing process.
Thank you to Katie Shea Boutillier, agent extraordinaire.
To Miriam Juskowicz, for opening this door and graciously inviting me in, thank you always.
Thank you to my family and friends, for the inexhaustible supply of patience and stories.
And a massive thanks to the readers for sharing your time, your love of books, and your generous hearts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eliza Maxwell is the author of The Widow’s Watcher, The Unremembered Girl, The Grave Tender, and The Kinfolk. She writes fiction from her home in Texas, which she shares with her ever-patient husband, two impatient kids, a ridiculous English setter, and a bird named Sarah. An artist and writer, a dedicated introvert, and a British-cop-drama addict, she enjoys nothing more than sitting on the front porch with a good cup of coffee.
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