“I wanted you to look me in the eyes and admit it,” Kersti says. “I wanted to hear you say that you’re sorry. And I wanted you to know that I know, we all know.”
“And that would give you what?” Hamidou says. “Peace of mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it?”
Kersti looks away.
“Maybe you should have thought more about taking care of yourself and your baby,” Angela says. “Instead of coming here to avenge Cressida. But she was good at that, wasn’t she? Getting people to think about her and do things for her. Now look where it got you.”
Angela is staring at her. Kersti can feel the fear twisting and tightening in her chest. She looks over at Hamidou, counting on her to still have some common sense left. “You have to know it’s over,” she says softly.
Hamidou lights another cigarette. She turns and looks out the window, not saying anything. Angela doesn’t budge. Kersti swallows nervously, fighting back tears. She doesn’t want them to know how scared she is.
“Your husband hasn’t answered your text,” Angela says, looking at Kersti’s cell phone in her hand. “Perhaps he fell asleep?”
It’s possible, Kersti thinks with a sinking heart. He’s still jet-lagged. He thinks she’s out with the girls reminiscing about old times.
“We might have time,” Angela says to Hamidou. They start speaking German again. Kersti makes out the words Algeria, Paris. “Wir haben Zeit.”
Kersti considers they could feasibly get away.
“Claudine,” Angela says. “Tell me what to do.”
Hamidou’s eyes lock with Kersti’s. She stubs out her cigarette and disappears into her bedroom without a word. Angela takes a step toward Kersti and Kersti backs away. All she can think about is Jay and their babies. What has she done? He warned her. He told her to stop playing detective and leave it to Deirdre, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept bulldozing her way through the lives of everyone who ever knew Cressida. Bulldozing and bullying, doing whatever it took to get what she wanted. Jäärapäine. And for what? Justice for Cressida? Insatiable curiosity? A great story for her next book? Personal vindication?
Yes, Kersti thinks. It was for all those things. Somewhere along the way, she got hijacked by the adventure, by what she kept discovering about herself.
“Cressida only cared about Cressida,” Angela says, stepping closer to her. Sounding almost childlike.
Did Cressida know she was in danger right before Angela pushed her? Did it unfold the way this moment is unfolding for Kersti?
“Angela, you’re a victim in this,” she says, trying to talk her off the ledge. “You were only a child when it started. You were hurt and confused. Nothing would happen to you now. It’s she who should be locked up—”
“I am not a victim,” Angela says. “I love her. She’s my life.”
Angela is towering over her now. Her eyes are bottomless pools of dark blue, implacable. Kersti eyes the door, but Angela’s body is a wall.
Kersti’s phone starts vibrating in Angela’s hand. They both look down at it. Angela frowns. “Claudine?” she calls out.
An antique grandfather clock is ticking loudly in the corner of the room, measuring each agonizing minute, second, millisecond. After a seemingly eternal moment, Hamidou’s voice from the bedroom beckons Angela.
Angela doesn’t move. Kersti stays equally still, not daring to show a fissure of weakness. She wants to grab Angela by the neck and shake her. Does she still think something can be done? That she can be saved?
Of course she does, Kersti realizes with a violent stab of dread. She lives in her own world, always has. She has no grasp on reality.
“Angela!” Hamidou calls again. “Komm hier!”
Angela’s expression is eerily blank. There’s nothing there. Not rage, not fear. Not even regret. Maybe she’s only capable of one authentic emotion: love for Hamidou. Perhaps nothing else has ever mattered to her.
With one last glance, Angela robotically hands Kersti her phone and evacuates her sentry position at the door. She disappears into the bedroom, where she’s been summoned, the victim of a lifelong brainwashing from which there is no possible return.
Kersti lets out a tremulous breath and checks the message from Jay.
Are you OK? In cab. On my way.
She doesn’t care anymore if they run, if they get away. She just wants to be safe in Jay’s arms. She wants to live. She lunges for the door and escapes the apartment.
The moment she steps outside, she sees the taxi pulling up to the curb. The door opens and Jay is rushing toward her. “What the hell?” he cries, pulling her into his arms and holding her. “What’s going on? What are you doing here? I’ve been worried out of my fucking mind—”
Inside the cab, she tells the driver, “Gendarmerie, Place de La Gare 1.”
As the driver is about to pull onto the road, they hear sirens. Kersti turns around to look out the window, certain the sirens are coming toward them. As they get louder and the ambulance and fire trucks turn the corner onto Béthusy, Kersti knows exactly what they’re going to find—Hamidou and Angela’s bodies on the concrete. Broken necks, twisted backs, pooling blood. Hostages in life and death. There’s a tragic symmetry to it all, she thinks.
The babies move inside her—that wonderful flutter that reassures her more now than ever before—and she rubs her belly, communicating silently to them. We’re safe.
Chapter 38
BOSTON—July 2016
Kersti follows Laylay down the hall, past Sloane’s room to the one that smells like French perfume and vanilla diffuser and moisturizer. Déjà vu.
“She’s grumpy today,” Laylay warns.
Kersti takes a tentative step inside the room. Cressida is staring up at the ceiling with uninhabited eyes.
“Hey, Cress.”
Cressida doesn’t move. Kersti approaches and sits down on the edge of the adjustable bed. Cressida is pale today. Her hair is tied back in a bun and she’s wearing mascara and plum-colored lipstick, but her cheeks don’t have their usual glow. She smells of Lubriderm.
Deirdre hasn’t told Cressida anything about what happened in Switzerland and she made it very clear that Kersti wasn’t to say anything, either. “There’s no point upsetting her now,” Deirdre said, her tone a command.
Kersti isn’t sure she agrees. Deirdre underestimates post-accident Cressida. Kersti suspects she knows and understands a lot more than Deirdre thinks and might possibly get some peace if she knew how things had ended in Lausanne.
“How are you?” Kersti asks Cressida.
Cressida blinks.
Kersti watches her for a long time, resisting the urge to tell her about Angela and Hamidou. Instead, she takes her hand, leans in very close, and whispers, “I’m so sorry.”
Cressida doesn’t react.
“I know,” Kersti adds, her voice full of compassion. “I know what happened to you.”
Cressida squeezes Kersti’s hand, hard. And then she turns her head away and stares out the picture window, leaving Kersti to wonder what’s going through her mind. Do Kersti’s words mean anything to her?
Maybe she’ll die soon, Kersti thinks, feeling guilty for even entertaining it. But what kind of life is this for someone like Cressida? Surely, she must want it to end. And when it matters, Cressida gets her way.
Her life has already been too long. She once told Kersti that life was short. How could she have known that back then? Kersti assumed with typical adolescent hubris that life would go on forever. In her ignorance, she believed time was a given, disposable and abundant. Cressida, on the other hand, had an eerie intuitiveness and seemed to understand on some level that she had to grab everything she could while she was still cresting with promise, beauty, youth, vitality; while she was still desirable and fertile. Kersti was far more lackadaisical and thought everything would endure—her angst, her opportunities.
But the Lycée was a moment in time, as evanescent as their splendi
d youth and as anointed as the chance meeting of sperm and egg to create life. A precious, perilous moment where events converged and unfolded in perfect, divine alignment, right up until the moment Cressida fell.
The day of your arrival is fast approaching and I’m feeling very contemplative. I find myself looking back over this year and I’m absolutely certain that some divine power, along with my newfound tenacity and single-mindedness, orchestrated every moment of this journey.
Here’s what I want you to know: you can’t live life by default. I suffered so much because I allowed myself to be the passenger in my own life. I didn’t think I deserved, or was allowed, to expect more. (And yet I see now that my decision to marry your father in the face of my family’s disapproval was the first glimpse of grit and doggedness I’d ever shown. I suppose I had it in me all along.)
I told you when I first started writing this letter that everything I did to bring you forth made perfect sense to me at the time. And it still does. I hope it will to you one day. I loved you long before you were ever conceived. I loved the idea of you, the possibility of you, the promise you held for me. And when I realized that this love might never get a chance to express itself—that it could possibly perish inside me—I woke up. I instinctively knew that passivity and self-doubt wouldn’t cut it anymore, and I finally began to act with resolve. I began to act, period.
Maybe I defied the universe, if that’s even possible. Or maybe I answered a call, acting on pure instinct, as Cressida would have done. I miss her more now than before I knew her story. I’ve decided to remember her as someone noble, impossibly strong, a survivor. She’s the reason you exist. Not just because we used her eggs but also because she showed me how to go after what I want. She taught me to stake my claim at all costs.
It took me a long time to muster the nerve, but you summoned me to fight, to do the inconceivable and be utterly dauntless about my ambition. The best part is, the harder I fought—not just for you, but also for the truth—the more I began to like myself.
I don’t care what anyone thinks about my choices. How freeing that is to say and to actually mean it! Yes, what we did was madness, but you were created from an irrational and outlandish love. How can that not be right?
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, a huge thank you to Billy Mernit, my Hollywood guru, mentor, writing instructor, and the man who helped bring this book to life. I credit you fully with the rebirth of my writing career, and for having re-ignited my passion and enthusiasm with your brilliant insights and your gift for understanding how to tell a damn good story. Every writer should have a Billy.
Thank you to my patient and tireless agent, Bev Slopen, who never gives up on me. You are my greatest champion and my best reality check, and I am so grateful that you took me under your wing when I showed up with my mom twenty years ago. We did it!
Thank you to Jennifer Barth, who changed everything when she welcomed me into the Harper Collins family. It’s been a thrill and an honor to work with you. Thank you for taking such good care of this book.
Thank you to Jessie and Luke for always entertaining me, making me laugh (and cry), filling my days with joy, and letting Mama write when she needs to write. I am truly blessed.
A most special thank you to my “live-in” editor and self-described “co-author” of the book, Miguel. Your red ‘X’s and scribbles on my pages—Embarrassing! Pathetic writing! Rewrite!—never fail to take my books to the next level. And on top of always being my first and most brutally honest reader, thank you for picking up the kids and driving them all over the city and letting me be The Writer. I love you.
Finally, thank you to my mother, Marsheh, whom I miss every single moment of every single day. I wish you were here to hold and read this book, to come to all my readings, to give me the support you always gave me and to still be my number one fan. You knew I was a writer even before I did, reading and celebrating every word I ever wrote from the time I was four years old. I am a writer because of you. And I have to believe that there’s a huge Indigo up there, and you still spend your days schma-ing through books, and you’ll see mine there and read it, and I’ll know.
About the Author
Joanna Goodman is the author of three previous novels. Originally from Montreal, Joanna now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children, and is the owner of the Canadian linen company Au Lit Fine Linens.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Joanna Goodman
Harmony
You Made Me Love You
Belle of the Bayou
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the finishing school. Copyright © 2017 by Joanna Goodman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Joanne O'Neill
Cover photographs: © Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images (woman); © Chris Pecoraro/Getty Images (background); © Africa Studio/Shutterstock (sky texture)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition APRIL 2017 ISBN: 978-0-06-246559-7
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-246558-0
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
The Finishing School Page 27
