I turn. And I know her immediately.
The blond curls. The blue eyes. The small frame, barely five-three, now unmistakably pregnant in a way that her black funeral dress couldn’t quite conceal. The last time I saw this woman, she was standing in my office doorway holding a tan legal envelope, tears welling in her eyes, telling me she was really glad to meet me.
Raven. She spots us and makes a beeline for the booth, sliding in next to Saylor with the easy familiarity of someone who has decided they belong here and isn’t interested in waiting for an invitation.
“Hi.” She beams at me across the table with an intensity that borders on unhinged. “Oh my God, Celeste, your speech was incredible. I was sobbing. Like, full ugly-cry. Whitney would’ve loved every second of it. She would have been so proud of you.”
I look at Saylor. His expression is carefully neutral, but his shoulders rise almost imperceptibly before settling back down, like he’s bracing for impact and hiding it badly.
I look back at Raven. The woman from my office. The legal courier from Valcott & Finch. The one who handed me the envelope that brought me here. Who is now sitting in Whitney’s booth, at Whitney’s restaurant, talking about Whitney like she knew her.
“Raven,” I say slowly. “You delivered the documents to my office.”
“Yes!” She reaches for a roll, dunks it in dip, and pops it in her mouth with the enthusiasm of someone who has been nauseous for four months and is currently experiencing a window of tolerance. “I can’t believe you remember me.”
“I’ve got a knack for remembering names. I thought you didn’t know Whitney. Yet, you attended the service?” I don’t say it unkindly. But I am aware, suddenly, that something is very wrong with this picture. Or very right with it. I can’t tell yet.
“Right. Yeah. That was—” She waves a hand. “A lie.”
She ends her sentence as if it needs no further explanation. She is very incorrect.
“I’m sorry. How do you two know each other?” This time I’m pointing between her and Saylor like a detective connecting pins on a board.
“We just met. At the funeral,” Saylor answers. Carefully.
“And you’re already this chummy?” I silence that quiet bitch named jealousy. First Greg, now Saylor. I remember when men so quickly wanted to be myfriendtoo. Roughly more than a decade ago.
“We bonded aggressively,” Raven adds with zero carefulness. “He held my hair while I threw up in the men’s bathroom. So we have just met, but I’d say our friendship intensity is at least a year old.”
“The men’s bathroom?”
“The signs were very confusing,” Saylor adds.
I file this away. Something is building in the air between the three of us—a pressure change, like the deceptive warmth mere minutes before a hellacious storm breaks. Saylor is too still. Raven is too animated. And the thing Saylor has been trying to tell me all afternoon—the big thing, the thing that required a separate location and a third party—is sitting across from me with blond curls and a slight baby bump.
“Raven,” I say. “What do you do? At Valcott and Finch?”
The roll Raven helped herself to freezes halfway to her mouth. She glances at Saylor. He gives her the smallest nod.
“Okay.” Raven sets down the bread and takes a breath that seems to require her whole body. “I don’t work at Valcott and Finch. That was one of the lies.”
“Oneof them?”
“One of many,” Saylor chimes in. Raven shoots him a pointed look that seems to say:don’t you dare throw me under the bus, buddy, because I’ll take you with me.
“I don’t work there. I’ve never worked there. I just was familiar with that firm because of the Traces.”
The booth feels very small. The chalkboard burger with the cowboy hat grins at me from across the room.
“Then who are you?” I ask. Calm. Too calm. The kind of calm that precedes either an epiphany or a felony.
Raven’s hands drift to her stomach. That gesture again—protective, automatic, the same one she made in my office when I asked her how her pregnancy was going. She looks at me and her light eyes fill with tears, and for the first time since she sat down, her energy shifts from manic to something raw and frightened and desperately honest.
“My name is Raven Pecker. And I’m a surrogate.”
“Pecker?” Saylor whips his head toward Raven, his brows narrowing in concern. “That’s your actual last name?”
Raven returns to her prior chirpy demeanor. “Oh, it sucks. And, my mother’s maiden name is Drews. After my parents got divorced she insisted I hyphenate, so for the longest time everyone made fun of me because my last name was?—”
