The Heiresses

by Shepard, Sara

  Aster stared at him. “Are you promoting me because of my partying?”

  Mason looked pained. “I’d rather not put it that way.”

  “I just . . . I didn’t expect it.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mason said.

  They stared at each other in silence. Aster hated it, but she missed her father. Missed having him cheer her on, believe in her, encourage her. “Aster, I’m your biggest fan,” he always used to say. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  But then she thought of him embracing Danielle, sleeping with her best friend and thinking he could hide it from her, and the tiny window inside her that had opened a crack slammed shut again.

  She cleared her throat. “I have a question.” Mason nodded, and Aster forged ahead. “Do you know if Steven Barnett had a serious girlfriend before he died?”

  Mason flinched. His fingers released the mouse. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I mean, Elizabeth’s my boss,” Aster said quickly. She stared at him pointedly, waiting for a reaction. “Anyway, she’s made reference to it,” Aster went on. “I was just wondering.”

  “I try not to listen to staff gossip,” Mason said brusquely. “Steven did a lot of things I didn’t approve of.”

  “But didn’t Papa Alfred pick him right out of business school? He always gave Steven so much credit for why the business was so successful.”

  “Yes, well.” Mason restacked the papers on the side of his desk. “Not all of us thought as highly of Steven as your grandfather did.”

  Aster didn’t dare push the subject further. But since the mood was already altered, she figured she might as well keep going. “Did Poppy steal jewelry?”

  Mason drew back angrily. “Where did you hear that?” he demanded. “Was it on that site?”

  “No. Is it true?”

  Mason’s fingers curled into a fist so tight that veins stuck out on the back of his hand. He breathed heavily for a few beats, his eyes downcast. “It’s been taken care of.”

  She frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means, stop asking about it.”

  “Why would Poppy do something like that? Does Foley know about this?”

  Mason shot up from his desk. Aster pressed her spine into the cushion and made a small yelp. “What did I just tell you?” he demanded.

  “I’m sorry.” Aster breathed shakily. “I just . . .”

  “I told you to stop asking about it!” Mason bellowed.

  “Okay,” Aster whispered, curling into herself.

  Mason’s nostrils flared. It looked as if he was going to say something else, but he was interrupted by the phone on his desk. “I need to take this,” he said, giving a little wave of his hand as if to say, You’re dismissed.

  Aster stood and hurried toward the door, slamming it hard behind her.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  ....................................

  18

  On Friday, Rowan paused outside Scarpetta in the Meatpacking District. It used to be one of Poppy’s favorites. Before Poppy married James, she and Rowanused to meet here after work and drink red wine that men at the bar would invariably buy them. “Let ’em pay,” Poppy always said, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. “It makes them feel needed—­and it’s a small price to pay to talk to someone as awesome as you are, Ro.” Now, just seeing the awning filled Rowan with nostalgia and sadness.

  But that emotion was swept away quickly as she felt someone’s gaze boring into her back. She turned, and two men, several years younger, turned their heads quickly, pretending they hadn’t been staring. The light changed, and they crossed the street. “Sex tape,” Rowan heard one of them say.

  She sighed. All of New York City now knew what she was like during sex. Deanna and the family’s personal lawyers had sent multiple threatening e-­mails to the Blessed and the Cursed, and the post had finally been taken down. But they still didn’t know who was running the fucking site—­or who was tipping it off.

  It was like a big X on her soul. Her brothers had called her about it, asking awkward, worried questions. Her mother, the feminist, had driven into the city to see Rowan. Over chickpea fries and quinoa salad at Peacefood Cafe, Leona had lectured Rowan about how she was thirty-­two years old now and should be a little more careful about her romantic entanglements—­not to mention that if she hadn’t been working for the family company, she could have been fired. Even James had been freaked out, though Rowan had assured him again and again that no one knew it was him. The whole situation was mortifying.

  Her phone rang, the volume so low Rowan almost didn’t hear it over the sounds of Fourteenth Street traffic. Rowan checked the screen and saw a 212 number. When she answered, a young woman’s voice said, “Rowan Saybrook? This is Shoshanna Aaron. I’m returning your call.”

  “Hi,” Rowan said emphatically, cupping her hands around the phone. “Thank you so much for speaking to me.”

  A bus passed, drowning out Rowan’s voice for a moment, but then she launched into the speech she’d rehearsed. “I won’t take up much of your time. I’m the legal counsel at Saybrook’s, and it’s come to my attention that you might have pertinent information about Poppy.”

  Papers rustled on the other end. “What do you mean?”

  Rowan pictured Poppy’s old assistant. Long, dark hair, olive skin, a pretty face, a diamond-­encrusted Chopard watch surely paid for by her father and not her assistant’s salary. She had fit in well in the jewelry culture, always traveling with a gaggle of girls to lunch or happy hour.

  “I spoke to Danielle Gilchrist recently, and she told me you noticed Poppy acting strangely before you left for DeBeers.”

  There was a long pause. “I’m really sorry about Poppy,” Shoshanna started. “I feel so guilty saying anything bad about her, you know?”

  “I know,” Rowan said quickly. “This isn’t going on the record, either. I’m just curious about what exactly happened.”

  “Well, she was acting weird,” Shoshanna said uneasily. “She asked me to get off a lot of calls. She scheduled appointments but didn’t describe who they were with or where she was going. It made it hard to explain to Mason and other executives why she couldn’t make meetings when I didn’t know where she actually was. But what really made me wonder was the suite she booked at the Mandarin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got a call from the hotel confirming Poppy’s reservation for one of their suites on a Wednesday. It wasn’t on her calendar, so I thought it was a mistake. I was telling them to cancel it when Poppy broke in on the other line. ‘Shoshanna, I’ve got it,’ she said, and then told the reservations person that she would use her private card.” Shoshanna coughed awkwardly. “Then I got off the line. But it seemed kind of . . . clear, you know?”

  Rowan shut her eyes. “But you never caught a name? Never . . . saw anyone?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that.” A phone rang on Shoshanna’s end. “Which means it might not be anything. I mean, I’m sure it’s not.” She swallowed audibly. “Poppy was a really good boss. I don’t want you to think I’d ever, I don’t know—­sell this information.”

  “Of course not,” Rowan said, though she hadn’t even considered that.

  She thanked Shoshanna, then hung up and walked into the restaurant in a daze. There it was, probably as close as she was going to get to proof that Poppy wasn’t who Rowan had understood her to be. But as painful as Shoshanna’s revelation was, it was also freeing. Staying away from James was being loyal to a ghost who hadn’t been loyal to James. Poppy had moved on and found love elsewhere, and now maybe James and Rowan could too.

  Corinne waved to her from a back table, and Rowan nodded and wove through the dining room to get to her. An iPad loaded with pictures sat in front of her cousin; Cor
inne was going through photographs for the slideshow at her wedding. When Corinne saw Rowan’s expression, she cocked her head. “Did something happen?”

  Rowan explained her conversation with Shoshanna. “So maybe Poppy and whoever the guy was had been meeting at a suite at the Mandarin,” she concluded.

  “Huh,” Corinne said softly, though she didn’t look like she quite believed it. “I wonder who it could be.”

  “No idea,” Rowan said.

  “Are you going to tell James?”

  “I already told him what Danielle said.” Rowan ran her finger along a groove on the wooden table. She’d finally mentioned her conversation with Danielle when she slept over at his place last night. “Well, that proves it, then,” he’d said thickly.

  James wanted to put it behind them; let sleeping dogs lie, he’d said. They had each other now. But Rowan couldn’t let it go. What if the affair had something to do with Poppy’s death?

  A waitress set down two glasses of Corinne and Rowan’s favorite malbec on the table, breaking Rowan from her thoughts. “So. How’s the picture selection coming?”

  “Eh,” Corinne said miserably, flipping through a few images.

  “What about this one?” Rowan pointed at a photograph of Corinne and Dixon a few years after they’d first met at Yale. They were at a Kentucky Derby party—­Corinne was wearing an oversize hat, and Dixon was drinking from a silver cup. “It’s really cute,” Rowan added.

  Corinne shook her head. “I look terrible in that one.”

  She scrolled through another perfectly good photo, nixing it too. Then another. Finally, she let out a long sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. Rowan thought about what Corinne had confessed at the beach estate.

  Rowan laid her hands on top of the iPad and gave her cousin a long, serious look. “Honey. What are you going to do?”

  Corinne heaved a sigh and then dropped her forehead to the table. The part in her hair was a stark line splitting her head in two. “I’m going to get married,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “Do you want to get married?”

  “Of course.”

  ­“People will forgive you if you don’t, you know.”

  Corinne looked up, her mouth twisting. “What do you think Poppy would do?”

  Rowan traced her finger around the top of the wineglass. “I honestly don’t know,” she said in a faraway voice. “I feel like she’s a stranger these days.”

  “I know.” Corinne swallowed hard. “First we lose Poppy . . . and then we lose who we thought Poppy was. I feel like I have to revise my whole history with her.” A tortured look crossed her face, but then she sighed and seemed to let it go. She glanced down at the iPad again and smiled sadly at something on the screen. “Aw.”

  Rowan looked down too. The next photo was of James. He stood alone on the patio at Meriweather, wearing a seersucker blazer. Rowan remembered that blazer—­shortly after he’d booked the house that summer, he’d arrived at her apartment in the city with a Brooks Brothers bag. “Do ­people really dress like this up there? Or am I going to look like a douche?”

  Rowan had snorted. “You’re asking me for style advice?”

  James snickered. “Good point, Saybrook. You’re as hopeless as I am.” But he’d shot her a twinkly-­eyed look as if to say, We’re in this together.

  She grabbed her phone from her purse and checked the screen. She’d sent James an I-­miss-­you text earlier, but he hadn’t responded. Skylar had a parent-­teacher conference tonight, and she wanted to hear how he was doing.

  “You know, I really am happy for you,” Corinne murmured softly.

  Rowan looked up and touched her cousin’s hand. “Thank you. But you don’t have to be. I know it’s strange.”

  Corinne shrugged. “In the grand scheme of things, after everything else we’ve learned, it’s nothing.” She touched the stem of her wineglass. “Have there been any more posts online?”

  Rowan shook her head. “No, but I still don’t understand who could have gotten the video off my computer,” she said worriedly.

  Corinne nodded. “Do you think it was someone at work?”

  “Maybe,” Rowan said. “But . . .” Then she trailed off, noticing something outside. A man had walked by who looked exactly like James. Same height, same build, same color of hair. Only Skylar’s school was way uptown. She must have been mistaken.

  But then she caught sight of him again in the windows along the west wall of the building. It was definitely James. His head was down, and he was typing something into his phone. On instinct Rowan looked at her own phone, anticipating a text, but one didn’t arrive.

  “What is it?” Corinne asked, noticing that Rowan had hitched forward to get a better view.

  James had stopped and was staring at something across the street. He took a few steps forward, past where the window reached, seemingly toward someone. A huge smile spread across his face. Rowan’s skin prickled. She recognized that signature tantalizing smile.

  She rose from the table, bumping her knee against the bottom. “Where are you going?” Corinne cried out.

  “I’ll be back in a sec,” Rowan called over her shoulder. She would just walk out the door and see who it was. For all she knew, it was Skylar; maybe she’d misunderstood where he was tonight.

  She brushed past the bar and stepped through the double doors onto the street, almost bumping into a quick-­moving businessman going the other direction. Her heels clicked on the sidewalk as she walked to the corner and peered up the street, but James was no longer there. Rowan hesitated, then strode a few paces up the street; maybe he’d disappeared around a corner. She scanned the shops on the avenue: a dingy deli, a Duane Reade drugstore, and one of those New York frame shops that sold the same five Monet prints.

  And then there he was, standing at the entrance of Dream Downtown. A dark-­haired woman in a sleeveless dress held his hand, and the two of them walked toward the revolving doors. Rowan’s stomach flipped. As the woman tilted her head toward him and brushed a piece of hair out of her face, Rowan realized she knew her too. It was Evan Pierce. Corinne’s wedding planner. Poppy’s friend.

  She was suddenly next to them without having known how she got there. Evan looked over first. “Oh!” she said pleasantly. “Hello, Rowan.”

  James stopped short at the sound of her name. He dropped Evan’s hand, but didn’t move away from her. “Rowan,” he said, his voice taut. “Shit.”

  They had stopped right in front of the revolving door; a stream of ­people had to squeeze around them to get into the building. But Rowan couldn’t move out of the way. “You’re not with Skylar” was the only thing she could think to say. She hated how weak her voice sounded.

  James stepped forward. “I know. But I can explain.”

  Rowan drew away from his touch. Evan crossed her arms over her chest, studying James quizzically. “Is everything all right?”

  But Rowan kept her gaze on James. “Okay, then. Explain.” Maybe they were here for a business meeting. Maybe Evan wanted to create a wedding-­planning app. Maybe . . .

  James’s eyes darted back and forth guiltily. He shifted his weight and ran his hand through his hair. Rowan’s heart sank. She recognized this look too. She’d lived through it countless times when James brought one girl to a party and left with another.

  But she’d never thought he would do it to her.

  “Jesus,” she spat, a hard shell forming around her. Then she wheeled around toward the street, suddenly desperate to escape.

  “Rowan!” James cried, darting after her. “Wait! Please!”

  Her walk turned to a run. She sped to the end of the street, her eyes blurring with shameful tears. Fucking idiot, a voice inside her chided. And she’d thought James had changed. It was sickening how blindsided she felt, when really, she should have seen this coming from miles away.


  “Rowan!” James’s voice receded down the street.

  She walked downtown, focusing on a forward point and nothing else. If she stopped walking, she thought, she might perish. If she stopped walking, she might start thinking about what had just happened. And she might crumble to sand.

  “Rowan!” James screamed, a half block away. “Rowan, come back here!”

  His words washed over her. She thought of a million horrible things she could say to him, but she couldn’t imagine even looking at him right then. So she picked up the pace, turning off the avenue and zigzagging down a side street. Two small blocks later, she realized James’s calls had ceased. She looked over her shoulder, and James was gone. She was filled partly with satisfaction and partly with loathing. He hadn’t even bothered to keep up with her.

  She turned a corner onto a street she didn’t recognize. Abandoned slaughterhouses loomed above her like old iron carcasses. Rowan heard traffic sounds, but her head was spinning so manically that she couldn’t tell which way Tenth Avenue was. Her heart started to thud. How was it that she had no idea where she was in her hometown?

  She ran, her heels twisting, her arms pumping. When she stepped off a curb, her ankle turned. She felt her body launch into the air and screamed. Her knee hit the brick street first, and then her elbow. White-­hot pain shot through her body, but she scrambled up as fast as she could. But then she felt a rush of wind to her left, and a horn honked in her ear. The headlights were bearing down on her as she turned her head. A thin pane of glass separated her and the driver; he stared at her with wide, angry eyes, trying to wave her out of the way.

  “Rowan!” someone screamed behind her, and she felt a force pulling her back.

  She stumbled up the curb again as the cab whipped past, the driver still laying on his horn. “Oh my God!” Corinne cried, spinning Rowan around and looking into her eyes. She pulled Rowan close and flung her arms around her.