“It feels like he is after me personally. My family.”
“Well, if you fucked him, that sort of makes it personal, right?”
Hailey sighed. “Rebekah, I really need your help. My researcher can’t find a link between David and this company. But there’s a lot of money in its accounts, and I know in my gut it’s him. If I can prove it, I can show he was hiding assets, maybe that he is involved in criminal activity. I might be able to get you your kids back. You could have a real divorce and freedom from him.”
Rebekah stared Hailey down for an uncomfortably long time. “You know he won’t even let me see them on Thanksgiving? I think they’re in Tahoe or somewhere. He told me I could see the twins after I’m settled in the house in Short Hills. In fucking January.” Tears had worn paths through Rebekah’s foundation, revealing the raw skin underneath. “And so like a good girl I’ll finish packing things up and go where I’m told.”
“Is there any way you can get access to his computers? His papers? Or can you think of anyone who could help you?”
Rebekah’s laugh was different this time. “You sound as desperate as I do. Your money is gone. Just tell the other lawyers to forget about it, and maybe David will leave you alone. You do not want to take him on, trust me. He’ll ruin your goddamn life and enjoy doing it.”
“But will you at least try?”
“There’s no point,” said Rebekah, rising to go. “You don’t have a clue what you are up against, do you? The man is a control freak with a God complex and a billion dollars. It’s not a good combination.”
As she reached the door she turned back and called out: “Have a great Thanksgiving with your family.” It sounded almost menacing, but then again everything sounded like a threat to Hailey these days.
* * *
Though it was not a strategy they’d talked about directly—they weren’t talking about much of anything directly—Mack and Hailey were extra careful that her parents did not get so much as a whiff of how stressed out they were. Thanksgiving Day was to be a break from it all, and Hailey was determined to host it like a grown-up—a true-life grown-up, as Mabel would have put it. It was Pammy Byers’s tradition to kick off the cooking with a few Bloody Marys, and so when the turkey really didn’t fit in the oven, there was much debate among the generations over what to do about it. Finally, Mack had picked up the giant bird on his hip like an infant and disappeared. A minute or so later Hailey, Pam, and Eddie had startled at the sound of his chain saw (his bought-for-the-new-house-and-never-before-even-used-yet chain saw) revving to life. They arrived in the garage just in time to see flecks of poultry flesh and bone whirling through the air like snow. Mack had set the turkey on his workbench and was sawing away at the raw meat.
“How will we put the stuffing in?” Hailey wondered aloud.
“You two are as nuts as each other,” Eddie Byers said, draining his cocktail, but Hailey heard approval in his tone. She fetched Mack the roasting tin, and together they plunked most of the pasty, goose-bumped turkey parts into it.
“Nobody likes the leg meat anyway,” Mack said, tossing the drumsticks into the big garage trash can. “Who wants a beer?”
“I bought the pies,” Hailey confessed to her mother, “So we’ve got those even if everything else is terrible.”
But it wasn’t terrible. The turkey turned out fine—better than normal, maybe. Hailey’s sister Lyndsey arrived from the faraway land of Dayton with her husband, three kids, and some overcooked baked goods, the Macy’s parade was watched by all, and the new house was duly toasted, with only the quickest side-eye between Hailey and Mack. Those with double-digit ages were just polishing off the last of another bottle of wine when the doorbell rang. Hailey felt the house sway slightly as she made her way through the hall; at this rate the dishes might have to wait until tomorrow morning. She set her wineglass down on the hall table and didn’t bother to look through the peephole. Luckily it was only Betsy from next door.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Betsy said, and Hailey was struck by the dramatic arches of her perfect eyebrows. “Sorry to bother you.”
“No problem.” Even in her current state, even with her fixation on Betsy’s facial grooming, Hailey was able to reach down for Gulliver in one smooth swoop as he came charging down the stairs. It wasn’t like him to be late for a front-door frenzy. He must have been passed out on tryptophan from his share of the Frankenstein turkey.
“I just wanted to bring you this,” Betsy said, stepping back slightly. “It got misdelivered yesterday. It looks urgent.” She held out an envelope, and the feast in Hailey’s stomach did a dangerous churn. This was classic Sunshine Enterprises font and stationery, and stamped in red above their address were the wordsFINAL NOTICE. Hailey felt her cheeks grow hot.
“I just didn’t want them turning off your electricity or something,” Betsy continued in a hushed tone, glancing toward the voices coming from deeper within the house. “I didn’t notice it yesterday, and when I saw the envelope just now, I thought, oh no, what if they can’t cook din—”
“I don’t think it’s that kind of bill, but thanks for bringing it over.” The back of the envelope had the same red stamp, Hailey noticed as she took it from her neighbor.
“I brought you some banana bread too,” Betsy said, and then she continued the tradition they had kept up for six months: “And we really should have that coffee sometime.”
“Definitely,” Hailey said. “Let’s find a date after the holidays.” She did not invite Betsy in; she could barely bring herself to say goodbye. The delight in their neighbor’s eyes at this tasty tidbit of Bratenahl gossip—it seems like the husband is out of work, and they can’t even pay their bills!—was evident, and what a bonus for Betsy that it had arrived just in time for Christmas! Hailey thought of the upcoming Shoreby party and felt the dread sink into her soul.
She shut the door, plopped Gulliver down, and opened the letter. Her first thought was that she really was drunk off her face; angry red letters jumped off the page at her. But this was not wine goggles: in her hands was the samePayment now dueletter they had received a week ago, but with theFINAL NOTICEstamp all over it, repeated at least a hundred times. The back was covered too; it looked like a small child had been playing office, except that someone had written in the same terrifying scrawl, in the same black marker as before:A deal is a deal.
Hailey felt something akin to a tantrum rise in her. There had been no deal! But she was raging at someone—no, something, some faceless entity—that she didn’t understand the first thing about. It felt like Gigi’s hysteria when they’d tried to explain to her that, no matter how many birthdays she had, she would never be older than Mabel.
“Hailey?” Her mother, swaying slightly, had come to look for her. “Who’s here?”
“Just the neighbor, dropping something off.”
But her mother had spotted the letter, with its red stamps and angry marker.
“What’s this, honey?”
“Nothing! It’s nothing—”
