Page 55 of The CEO’s Assistant

"How far in are you?"

"Ninety pages. Don't ask me again next week. I’ll probably be in the same spot."

Wren carried the phone into the kitchen and put away the dishes she had washed earlier. Lillian's tomatoes had blight and she was pretending they didn't. Her middle daughter had called twice in a fortnight, which was a record and probably meant something. The Aldridge girl from two streets over had had twins, both girls, both enormous.

Twelve months of Sundays since the funeral, or thirteen, and Wren had never once had to wonder whether Lillian would call her. She had thought that Lillian was keeping a promise to Millie. It had never occurred to her that it was Lillian keeping her. She shut the cupboard.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Go ahead."

"I've been doing something my whole life, and I only worked it out three weeks ago. I make myself necessary to people so they can't get rid of me. And then I never ask them for anything, because if I never ask, nobody ever gets to say no and reject me."

Lillian didn't answer.

"I did it to her." Wren leaned back against the counter. "To Millie. I moved home and I paid the taxes and did the pharmacy runs. I ran that whole house for three years, and I never asked her for one single thing. Not one. And the worst of it was that she would have given me anything I wanted."

The silence went on long enough that Wren checked the screen to see whether the call had dropped. It hadn't. She knew what was happening in it. Lillian would be in the yellow chair by the front window, still as she contemplated her thoughts, and she wouldn't speak until she had the words she wanted.

"She knew," Lillian said, finally.

"What?"

"She knew, little bird. She talked to me about it. Six weeks before… Well, she said, ‘Lil, when I'm gone, that girl won't ask a living soul for anything. She'll keep herself very busy and nobody will notice a thing.’" Lillian stopped and started again. "She asked me to call you every week. She said, ‘Don't wait for her to call you or ask because you'll be waiting a long time.’"

Wren stopped moving. Millie had seen her, really seen her, but never said a word about it to her. She'd gone to Lillian instead and made sure Wren would be looked after when she was gone. "You've been calling me because she asked you to."

"I started because she asked me to. I've kept on because I wanted to, so don't go making it into a favor. You're good company and I'm eighty-two and my friends insist on dying."

Wren laughed, and she wiped her face on her sleeve. "I want to ask you for something.”

"Well, there's a first."

"Come out here and stay with me. You can have the bed."

"Yes," Lillian said. "But in October. I don't fly in summer; it's a nightmare."

"October."

"Now, tell me about the woman."

Wren opened her mouth and shut it again. "I don’t think I’ve mentioned a woman."

"No," Lillian agreed. "You haven't."

They talked until twenty past. Afterward, Wren stood in the kitchen a while, and then she scrolled through her text messages. The last two new messages in the thread were from Cordelia, from the Saturday before the story broke. You seemed tired this week. Are you all right? And four minutes after that, Disregard that. Enjoy your weekend.

She'd drafted no less than eleven answers over three weeks and sent none of them. She started a twelfth version just now. She wrote that she was sorry for the silence and that none of it had been Cordelia's fault. She wrote that she understood about that Sunday now, that she knew what it had been, that Cordelia owed her no explanation for any of it. She got three lines into telling her how easy she was going to make all this.

She read it back and deleted every word. Then she wrote what she wanted. Friday, your coastal house. I'll drive myself. She read it three times, wondering how Cordelia would interpret it, and then sent it. Then she set the phone face-down on the windowsill and walked out of the room, which was harder than sending the text had been.

At four, she folded Millie's afghan over the back of the green chair, put her shoes on, and went out to walk the harbor, leaving the phone exactly where it was.

Chapter 25: Cordelia

"Nine o'clock," Veronica said to Cordelia from the doorway. "Remy's note to the staff goes out with the press release."

Cordelia had written hers on Tuesday and had it ready. Veronica came into the office and went as far as the end of the desk and stopped there, holding a manila folder. "She's been at it since half the morning."