I rubbed my temples. “You realize I’ll be the only one who can hear you. In a room full of strangers.”
“Then I suggest you practice your poker face.”
Lori and Tammy exchanged a look. They couldn’t see Rosaria, but they’d learned to recognize the pauses in my conversation where she was filling the gaps.
“She’s insisting on coming, isn’t she,” Lori said.
“She’s already picked out her outfit. Metaphorically. She’s dead.”
“I heard that,” Rosaria said. “And this blouse is not metaphorical. It is St. John. I was buried in it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Humane Societybenefit was being held at the Seacoast Grand in Portland, a hotel that was trying very hard to live up to its name. The ballroom was done up in navy and gold, with tables of silent auction items lining the walls and a string quartet playing something inoffensive in the corner. Waiters circled with trays of canapés. The wine was, as Tammy had predicted, cheap.
Claudia was in her element. I spotted her the moment I walked in—cream dress, those pearls again, moving through the room like she’d been born to chair galas. She touched elbows, tilted her head at the right moments, laughed at the right volume. Every gesture calibrated. The devoted daughter-in-law turned community pillar, channeling her grief into good works.
I took a glass of white wine from a passing tray and positioned myself near the silent auction tables, where I could watch without being obvious. The auction items ranged from spa packages to a weekend at someone’s lake house. A local artist had donated a painting of the harbor—bright, loose brushstrokes, a little rough around the edges. The placard read: Paula Ferraro,First Light, Starfall Bay. Early work. Donated by the artist.
I paused in front of it. Paula had donated one of her early pieces to Claudia’s charity event. That was either an olive branch or a middle finger, and with Paula it could go either way.
George was there too, which I’d expected but which still made my stomach tighten. He stood near the bar with a bourbon he hadn’t touched, watching the room the way a rabbit watches an open field. He kept tugging at his tie. His eyes moved to Claudia every few seconds and then away, like he couldn’t stop tracking her but didn’t want to be caught doing it.
Claudia glided past him on her way to greet a couple near the entrance. She touched his arm as she passed—light, wifely, automatic. George flinched. His bourbon sloshed, and he grabbed a napkin to blot his sleeve, face burning.
She didn’t notice, or pretended not to. She was already shaking hands with someone in a blue blazer, her laugh carrying across the room.
Something was very wrong between them.
I waited until Claudia was between conversations—a brief pause while she scanned the room for the next person to charm—and approached.
“Claudia. Beautiful event.”
Her expression did a quick shuffle: surprise, calculation, then the warm mask snapping into place. “Gina. I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you a Humane Society supporter?”
“Always loved animals.” I smiled. Lying to Claudia felt less like dishonesty and more like speaking her language. “How’s George holding up? He seems a little on edge. This whole thing with the family—it’s been hard on everyone.”
Claudia’s smile tightened at the corners, the way a seam tightens before it splits. “George is... George. You know how he gets.”
I did know. I’d watched George be overlooked and overshadowed for thirty years of family dinners.
“He just needs time,” Claudia continued, reaching for her clutch. “We all do.” She unclasped it and pulled out a lipstick—matte, expensive—and as she did, something slid out and landed on the carpet between us.
A keycard in a paper sleeve. I bent to pick it up before she could.
Harborview Inn, Portsmouth.
I held it out. Claudia snatched it—too fast, fingers closing over it like she was catching something alive. Color rose up her neck and into her cheeks, the first crack in that polished surface I’d ever seen.
“George forgot this in his jacket.” Her voice had gone brittle, thin as old ice. “I keep finding things in his pockets lately.”
She shoved the keycard deep into her clutch and snapped it shut. Her eyes met mine, and for half a second the mask dropped entirely. Underneath was something raw and humiliated—the look of a wife who knows her husband is up to something and would rather die than discuss it.
“Men, right?” She attempted a smile. It didn’t land.
“Right,” I said quietly.
She excused herself to refill her wine, and I stood there holding my own glass, turning over what I’d just seen. Across the room, George was staring into his bourbon like it contained the secrets of the universe. He looked miserable. He looked guilty.
