Her thoughts slipped back to that first night once more. The boat had bobbed with their movements. Their sounds echoed across the bay. Corinne had never felt particularly passionate about sex before that night, but with Will above her, blanketed by a canopy of stars, something happened. Something that felt very different. An aligning of the planets, maybe. A big bang, creating a universe.
And that was the thing. They had, in fact, created something that night.
They’d created someone.
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11
Rowan sat at her desk at seven on Wednesday evening, staring blearily at a contract on her screen. It was still light outside, the evening hours stretching longer and longer as they moved further into May. A few phones rang in the bullpen of cubicles outside her office. Every so often, a paralegal or assistant swept by, but most people were packing up to leave.
She looked at her screen again, about to pull up a different document. But then the cursor began to drift toward the bottom right-hand corner of her monitor, though she hadn’t touched the mouse. Rowan straightened up and rolled her chair back a few inches. She watched as the little arrow slowly migrated to the Windows icon in the bottom-left corner.
“Hello?” she called out, though to whom she wasn’t sure. How had that happened?
There was a cough in the hall, then a small, shuffling set of footsteps. “H-hello?” Rowan called out, half standing. The office was suddenly too quiet, too empty. “Is someone there?”
Rowan jumped as Danielle Gilchrist poked her head in, her face flashing with worry. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Rowan smoothed down her hair. “I’m fine. What’s up?” She offered a wobbly smile at Danielle, taking in her long red hair and her modern-looking black-and-pink wool dress. She and Danielle worked together from time to time—as legal counsel, Rowan sometimes had to advise on hires and fires.
Danielle checked over her shoulder, then stepped into the room and shut the door. “Something has kind of been weighing on my mind.”
“Sit,” Rowan said, gesturing to the couch across from her desk.
Danielle perched on a cushion and folded her hands in her lap, a conflicted look on her face. A few moments passed before she spoke. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Poppy’s murder and who might want to hurt her . . . and I had a thought. Something I’m not sure the FBI knows about.”
A shock wave coursed through Rowan. “What do you mean?”
Danielle took a deep breath. “I used to be friends with Poppy’s assistant, Shoshanna. You remember her, right? She basically ran Poppy’s life? She was my hire. She came highly recommended.”
“Sure,” Rowan said. Plenty of times she’d walked into Poppy’s office when Shoshanna, a lanky girl with curly black hair, a long face, and a predilection for baby-doll dresses, was briefing Poppy about something or other. “She left the company a few months ago, right? For DeBeers?”
“That’s right. She got a great offer in the PR department, better than what we could match.” Danielle cleared her throat. “Before she left, though, she sort of let something slip about Poppy.”
Out the window, a searchlight beamed around the sky. Rowan stared for a moment, then glanced back at her computer screen. The cursor hadn’t moved again. “What did Shoshanna say?” she asked, turning back to Danielle.
“Maybe it’s nothing, but she mentioned some . . . discrepancies in Poppy’s schedule. Poppy started putting mysterious appointments in her calendar—vague things, like ‘meeting,’ without saying who it was with. And when Shoshanna asked—it was her job to know—Poppy said that she had everything covered. Shoshanna said she got kind of snippy about it.”
“Okay,” Rowan said, tapping the surface of her desk. None of that sounded so strange to her.
Danielle pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. “Or she would write things like ‘lunch with James,’ but then James would call during lunch, not knowing anything about a lunch. Shoshanna had to cover for her.”
Rowan sat back. That was strange. But Poppy could have had the date wrong, or James might have forgotten. There were lots of explanations. “Huh.”
“Shoshanna said she started taking these mysterious blocked calls too. And one time, Shoshanna tried to hop on the phone—she always did, to take notes for Poppy—and Poppy snapped at her to get off. She didn’t explain who the calls were from or what they were about. But I think Shoshanna drew some conclusions.” Danielle stuck her tongue in her cheek.
Rowan searched her face. The only sounds in the office were the little buzzes and clicks of Rowan’s hard drive. Her brain seemed to temporarily short out, going black. Finally she said, “You think Poppy was having an affair?”
Danielle pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. And maybe there’s another explanation.” She laid her hands in her lap.
Rowan considered the woman sitting across from her on the couch, for a second picturing the young girl who used to drive Edith around Meriweather in a golf cart. She’d been Aster’s friend, not Rowan’s, but Rowan had always found her entertaining. One summer, when they were all sitting on the beach together, they’d watched an older couple fighting as they walked along the water’s edge. The wind had snatched away the couple’s real words, but Danielle had adopted a high-pitched nasal whine for the woman, and a phlegmy rumble for the man.
“I told you not to wear that Speedo,” she’d said in a pinched voice.
“You worried about the competition?” she’d then rasped, holding her arms out at the same time as the old man.
Rowan knew the arguing couple—the Coopers were one of Meriweather’s few year-rounders—and Danielle had mimicked their voices perfectly. Danielle’s mother, Julia, had dashed by at that moment on her morning jog. “Be nice, Danielle,” she’d admonished, her bright red hair flying behind her.
“Have you told the FBI?” Rowan asked.
Danielle shook her head. “They haven’t contacted me. And instead of going to them directly, I thought I should let you know first. Especially since I don’t even know if it is anything. I hope that was the right thing to do.”
“Of course it was.” Rowan shifted in her chair. “You did what anyone in the family would do, and I appreciate it.” She shifted in her chair. “You don’t have any idea who was on the other line in those blocked calls?”
Danielle shook her head. “Shoshanna might, but she didn’t tell me.”
Rowan stared out the window. Lights twinkled in the building across the street. “I wonder if Foley looked into Poppy’s calendar. Maybe those appointments were a clue about who she might have been seeing,” she murmured, mostly to herself, hardly believing the words coming out of her mouth. She’d assumed James’s theory about Poppy’s affair was just that: a theory. A thought that justified his own infidelity with Rowan. But here was another person echoing James’s suspicions. The idea of Poppy having an affair still didn’t compute, though.
A knock sounded at the door, and James poked his head in. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”
“Oh, hi.” She blinked confusedly at him. “Um, no, of course not.”
“We were just finishing up.” Danielle stood and smoothed her pencil skirt. “Well, if you need anything, call me, okay?”
“I will,” Rowan said, and Danielle slipped out of the room.
Rowan turned to James. “So . . . what are you doing here?”
“I’m coming from work,” James explained. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his dark-wash jeans, looking suddenly sheepish. “The kids are with Megan. I thought you might still be here. I just . . . wanted to see how you were doing.”
Rowan blinked rapidly, feeling disoriented. “How did you get in?”
J
ames shrugged. “My wife was the president. They always let me in.”
Rowan nodded. Of course.
She rubbed her eyes. “God, I’m sorry. It’s just so quiet here. Kind of spooky.” She wondered if he’d heard the conversation she’d just had with Danielle. But he looked guileless, one corner of his mouth lifted up in a smile, revealing the dimple she hadn’t seen in so long.
She put her head in her hands and rubbed her scalp. Should she tell him what Danielle had said? Was the writing on the wall? Switched appointments, secret phone calls—that did seem to add up to an affair. Maybe the signs James sensed were really there. Rowan felt somehow offended, as though she was the one who’d been betrayed. Suddenly the woman she’d considered her closest friend felt as unknowable as a stranger at a bar.
Rowan’s anger was a hot prickle on the surface of her skin. She stared hard at a picture of her and Poppy that sat on her desk, wanting suddenly to turn it facedown. Tears filled her eyes, and she immediately regretted her thoughts. Her cousin, her best friend, had been murdered. She couldn’t be mad at her.
“Hey, everything okay?” James stepped forward and reached out as if to put a hand on her arm, then retreated, as though worried she’d brush him off.
“Yeah. It’s just been a long day,” she said, blinking back tears. “So how are the kids?”
“Briony’s feeling better.” James sat down on Rowan’s couch.
“And how are you?”
James stared at her for what felt like forever. “You want the truth?”
“Of course.”
He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Rowan squeezed the sides of her chair. Her mouth twitched, and she could feel her face growing red. James stood up, crossed the room, and walked to Rowan’s desk. He sat on the edge, still staring at her. Rowan was afraid to move, much less speak. She felt like two people: the Rowan who desperately missed her cousin, her best friend—and the Rowan who had slept with James . . . and who wanted to do it all over again.
Then his phone beeped. They jumped. “Do you need to get that?” Rowan asked.
James shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But what if it’s the nanny?”
He waved her away. “It’s not.”
“It could be important.”
A smile crept onto his face. He shook his head. “Saybrook, don’t you get it? No one is more important than you.”
Tingles washed down Rowan’s spine even as she protested. “James, we shouldn’t.”
He stepped closer and ran a hand through his hair. “Yes, we should.”
He pressed his lips to hers, and her whole body melted into him. James lifted her onto the desk, and one by one, he undid the buttons on her slate gray work shirt, exposing the lacy black bra beneath, kissing her everywhere. Within seconds her bra and shirt were off, his hands caressing her breasts.
“More,” Rowan moaned, wrapping her legs around him and unbuckling his pants. He pushed her skirt up to her waist and in one swift moment thrust inside her, his lips and hands exploring her entire body. He started off slow, but soon he was moving against her with urgency, and she matched his rhythm, never breaking eye contact. “More,” she told him again. “Please.”
But it was over too quickly, and before long, James was pulling on his pants and tying his shoelaces. “Come over tomorrow,” he whispered in her ear. He squeezed her hand once, gave her a lingering kiss, then slipped away.
He shut the door lightly, and Rowan stared around her office, her heart pounding fast in the sudden stillness.
A full minute went by before she noticed her computer. She must have accidentally launched the iMovie application; a small window showed the view from the top of Rowan’s monitor, where her webcam was. A time clock was still running, the camera still rolling. Rowan studied her image in the webcam, taking in her flushed skin, her mussed hair, her swollen lips. She hit stop with shaking, panicky fingers.
Then she rewound the video to the beginning. For a few moments, there was only heavy breathing, but then Rowan’s head dipped into the camera view. Then came a slice of her bare breast, her naked torso, her arched neck. A man straddled her from above, his face hidden. “More,” Rowan demanded breathlessly. “Please.”
Rowan’s cheeks blazed. She hit pause, embarrassed by her shameless display of passion. She moved the mouse to the top of the screen and with a decisive, horrified click, deleted the video forever.
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12
Aster clicked out of the final Excel column and sat back with a satisfied sigh, lacing her fingers behind her chair and arching her back to crack it. She couldn’t believe it. After over a week straight of data entry, she was finally done. It hadn’t been easy—Excel was miserable, but navigating Elizabeth was worse. Every interaction felt fraught with tension. Did she know about Aster and Steven? And how much?
She checked her watch: 6:00 on the dot. She would have just enough time to race home, throw some clothes into a bag, and make it to Teterboro in time to leave for Corinne’s bachelorette weekend. Normally the prospect of three solid days filled with Corinne-planned bridal activities would have made Aster roll her eyes, but right now she wanted nothing more than to be at Meriweather. She couldn’t wait to collapse in her canopy bed and sleep as late as she wanted.
She e-mailed the spreadsheet to Elizabeth, then stood up and started packing her things. “Aster!” she heard Elizabeth yell from her office. Aster quickly adjusted her blush-colored maxi dress—one of the few dresses she owned that fit Elizabeth’s strict knee-length regulation—and scrambled to her boss’s office, tripping over a pile of papers on the way.
“You’re leaving, I take it?” Elizabeth asked, not even bothering to look at her.
“Yes, and I’m out tomorrow,” Aster said, gritting her teeth. She’d asked for this time off her very first day, and it had been preapproved by HR. Elizabeth knew about this; she was just trying to goad Aster.
Elizabeth sighed melodramatically, as if Aster’s taking off work on a Friday was the most ridiculous request imaginable. “Well, don’t leave yet. I want to make our to-do list for Monday. Sit there while I look through my e-mail.”
Aster perched on the chair, holding her notebook and pen at the ready, as Elizabeth glowered at her computer screen. Every night they made a list of things Aster needed to do the next day: schedule pickups and deliveries, return calls, book travel for important guests. Aster had never booked travel in her life. The first time Elizabeth asked her to do it, she’d tried to text the airline from her phone. She’d learned a lot in the last few weeks, she thought with an unfamiliar sense of pride.
Aster’s gaze drifted to Elizabeth’s desk. There was an open Us Weekly near her phone, with a full-page story on the rapper Ko folded back. Another magazine showed a photo of Ko and a pretty girl. With a start, Aster realized it was Faun, with whom she’d apartment hunted. She and Ko were dating? Since when?
“Are you a big Ko fan?” Aster asked.
Elizabeth’s eyes flickered from the screen for a beat. “We’re trying to design an engagement ring for his flavor of the month.” She pointed at Faun’s picture in the magazine, her mouth a thin line. “They came in a few weeks ago and basically said, ‘Dazzle us.’ Those are the worst kind of clients, the ones who have no idea they want. They almost never end up buying what we design.”
There was another knock. Mitch appeared in the doorway. “You mind if I take a look at your computer for a second, Elizabeth?” he asked. “I have to run a quick scan. It’ll take one minute, I promise.”
“Fine,” Elizabeth snapped. “Aster, don’t leave yet.”
Mitch stepped into the room, shooting Aster a sympathetic smile. Aster smiled back
. So far, Mitch was the only good thing about this job. He checked in on her every day, sending her jokes and bringing her red Swedish fish—her favorite—to help her get through that bitch of a spreadsheet. He’d been the one to sit with her and patiently teach her Excel—and to recover the file when she accidentally deleted it. In Aster’s old life, she would have held a party in his honor by now.
Elizabeth typed away furiously on her phone, clearly in her own world. Aster stared at the picture of Faun and Ko in Interview. They were in front of a step-and-repeat at the Chateau Marmont, one of Aster’s favorite places in LA. “Faun comes from money too,” she said, thinking aloud. “Her mom patented some new kind of plastic surgery technique that made them a fortune. She only died a few years ago. Faun’s still devastated.”
Elizabeth’s head whipped up. “Where did you read that?”
“I didn’t read it. She told me. We hang out some.” Aster thought for a moment. “You know, her mom had one of the most insane jewelry collections I’ve ever seen. You should try to use that for Faun’s ring. Maybe you could make a vintage-inspired piece that echoes something from the collection? I bet you could find an old photo in Vogue or something.”
Mitch looked up from what he was doing, his head cocked. “That’s a great idea.”
Elizabeth made a swishing motion with her hands. “Stick to data entry, Aster. Leave the client management to the professionals.”
“All done here,” Mitch interrupted, standing back from the computer. He turned back toward the door, winking at Aster on the way out.
Aster glanced at her watch as Elizabeth logged back in to her e-mail, trying not to panic. Corinne would seriously freak out if she held up the plane. Or worse, she would just leave Aster behind, and Aster would have to take a bus to Meriweather.
“Aster.” Elizabeth’s voice was cold. “This spreadsheet isn’t complete.”
Aster sat up straight. “What?” she asked dumbly. She’d gone over every data point multiple times; there was no way she’d missed anything.
The Heiresses Page 12
