Page 71 of The Getaway

“Well, I asked her, very calmly,” Lily assured Gemma, “what happened to all my paintings, and she said, and I quote, ‘I have no idea. Lincoln dealt with all that.’ As if Lincoln just threw them in a dumpster somewhere.”

“Would he really do that?” Gemma asked, appalled.

“Never,” Lily assured her. “They’re in this house somewhere, and we’re gonna find them.”

Instantly, a memory of stored paintings flashed in Gemma’s mind. Her hand shot out to stop Lily before she could turn and descend to the great room. “Wait! I know where they are.”

“You do?” Lily’s eyes went wide like it was Christmas morning.

“Follow me.”

Lily did as she was told, trailing Gemma back down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor. She paused for a second outside the room that had been Juliet’s, touching the door almost reverently. Gemma waited for her friend to come out of whatever trance she was in, then turned and opened a couple of doors.

“Did you have, like, a craft room or something?” she asked Lily.

“Oh yeah. My scrapbooking phase.” Lily walked confidently down the hall in the opposite direction and flung open the door. Inside were dozens of stacked canvases and framed paintings, some wrapped in brown packing paper. “Omigod! They are here!”

Lily walked into the room and started to flip through the paintings, her face going gooey with emotion. “These have my address on them in Lincoln’s handwriting,” she said, lifting one of the wrapped paintings. “He was sending them all to me.”

“Wow,” Gemma said, leaning sideways against the doorjamb. “That was big of him, doing it himself.”

Lily nodded and squeezed her eyes closed, tears leaking from the corners.

“Thank you for finding them,” she said. “I swear I forgot this room even existed.”

Imagine having the kind of wealth where you could forget an entire room in your second house.

“Thank you for getting us invited on this trip,” Gemma replied, pushing her hands into the pockets on her cotton pajama pants. “I mean, obviously I’d rather be anywhere but here right now, but I appreciate you talking to Lincoln about Grant.”

Lily carefully replaced the painting on the floor and shot Gemma a guilty look. “I never did. Talk to him about Grant, I mean.”

Gemma blinked. “What do you mean? You must have. You said you did when I called to thank you. Why else would we be here?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. When you told me Lincoln had invited you guys, I was as surprised as you are right now,” Lily said, crossing her arms over her chest and lifting her shoulders. “All I did was mention Grant to Lincoln, and he went off about how annoying and needy he is, so I figured it was best not to push it.”

Gemma’s jaw dropped, and Lily’s hand slapped over her mouth.

“I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. And an idiot.” Lily stepped closer to Gemma. “Please forget I said that.”

“Wait, has he always felt that way?” Gemma asked.

“If he did, he never told me,” Lily replied. “But maybe now that we’re divorced, he decided all bets were off when it came to my friends? I don’t know. For what it’s worth, I’ve always loved Grant.” She reached out and gripped Gemma’s forearm. “And I did defend him to Lincoln. But I can’t imagine I did enough to make him suddenly consider offering Grant a job.”

Gemma’s head felt fuzzy. “I don’t understand. If you never talked to him, why did you pretend like you did? Why did you make me deliver the notes as a thank-you?”

Lily looked chagrined. “Yeah, that was kind of a dick move. Sorry.”

There was a split second, really just a blink, in which Gemma felt like she could actually punch Lily. Her right hand even curled into a fist. But instead, she turned away and breathed. She was not a violent person, and now was not the time to turn into one.

But the very fact that Lily could use her like this. That she could think a blasé apology like that was enough . . . What kind of friendship was this?

Focus on Grant, Gemma told herself as she breathed. If Lily never talked to Lincoln, how did Grant score this invite?

She thought back, taking herself through the timeline. A couple of months ago, Gemma had asked Lily to talk to Lincoln, and Lily had promised that she would do it the next day. When he hadn’t heard anything immediately, she’d suggested Grant give Lincoln a call, thinking that either (A) he was waiting for Grant to call him or (B) he’d spaced with everything else going on, and all he needed was a little nudge. Then a week or so had gone by, and Grant had come to her all excited, saying they’d been invited to Hamptons week.

“I heard through the grapevine that he’s not happy with the way his current team is handling a new international deal, so maybe he wants to talk about that,” Grant had told her.

Maybe that was the explanation. Maybe Lincoln had decided that Grant’s expertise in international law and dealmaking trumped his dislike of her husband? But no. There were hundreds of other people with the same expertise. If Lincoln truly hadn’t liked Grant, there would be a line out the door to take the job. The whole thing made Gemma’s skin crawl. She turned to face Lily again.