“Obviously.” Logan coughs. “If you want to dig deeper, we could track down the staff at Bellamy Cross and Villa Theresa. We can’t talk to Mrs. Flowers. She died shortly after Cora left for New York. Cancer.”
I exhale. Do I need to know more? I’m sick enough. “Leave it be.”
“I’m sorry, brother.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” My fingers are frozen. The wind cuts through my sweater. I can’t think, it’s so cold. “I’ll call you back.”
“Don’t rush. Take time to think. Don’t do anything you might regret.”
Too late.
“We’ll talk later.” I hang up, but instead of ducking back into the house, I walk farther out to the low retaining wall separating the patio from the gardens. The trees are mostly bare except for a few brown leaves holding on by pure luck. Ice edges the bank of the river. The sky is slate gray.
I married a stranger.
I knew she was young, and it’s such a cliché, but she was so mature. So serious. We wanted the same things. She was alone with nothing, and I had everything she’d ever need. It was perfect.
She was so eager to learn, so happy to try anything I suggested. Whatever I introduced her to, she embraced.
She was perfect because she had a lifetime of practice making herself appealing in the hopes that someone would keep her. She picked up things so quickly because she’d spent her life adapting to new environments—stash house, foster home, psych ward.
I thought she was a gold digger, and in my head, I forgave her for it because life must’ve been hard for her growing up. I had no idea.
Our whole life together is built on bullshit.
The deception is a burning coal in my guts. Everything I believed is a lie. Every memory is suspect.
She played me. Every day, every night, she was pretending.
She betrayed me.
My blood pounds in my veins, and my head throbs, but not so hard that I can’t feel the irony bite.
I guess she got hers back.
Now I’m the one staring down the loss of everything I thought I had.
18
CORA
This isthe first time Adrian has let me leave his sight in days. I don’t like the feeling of being under observation—it’s giving me Bellamy Cross flashbacks—but I don’t hate spending so much time with him. He’s been giving me strange, consternated looks, but he’s also being really attentive in a way he’s never been before.
He’s always been solicitous. No woman could fault his manners. This is different, though. Like yesterday, he brought me a hot chocolate, which isn’t out of character, but then he watched me drink, and when I got marshmallow on my lip, he wiped it away with his thumb. It gave me shivers.
I didn’t think I’d get those kinds of shivers from him again.
Last night, he went down on me until I came. Usually, he gets too turned on and switches it up halfway through, but this time, he was single-minded. Afterward, he held me, fiddling with the ends of my hair. I woke up twice in the night, and he was still awake, still fiddling.
I know something bad is coming. I can smell it like a change in the weather. I crashed his car on purpose. He’s not going to just let it go. He’s probably making arrangementsto send me away to a facility that looks like a spa and sounds like a brand of douche. Serene Meadows. Natural Pathways.
That’s tomorrow’s problem, though. For now, I’m focusing on the girls and holiday spirit. Pearl and I are cozied up on the rubber stairs leading up to the puppet theater play area in the kid’s section of the library. We’re readingThe Polar Express. Winnie is wide awake, showing off her neck control by staring up at me and then down at Pearl and back again.
Martinez, half of today’s security detail, is sitting across the section in a very low sofa, flipping throughHow the Grinch Stole Christmaswith the leather diaper satchel at his feet. Johnson is around somewhere, probably keeping an eye onGolf Digestover at the magazine racks.
