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“Would you like a glass of wine?” I said, a little desperately, eyeing the bottle of Château Cos d’Estournel on the counter. Sometimes wine worked. Sometimes it didn’t.
“Wine? Marlowe, it’s eleven-thirty in the morning. Who the hell do you think I am? I’m traumatized. I’m not a fucking alcoholic.”
She marched past me, swatting my arm.
Now she was yelling from her bedroom door. I followed her voice but didn’t crowd her. In this mood, crowding her was unforgivable. I found her eyeing my work.
“I don’t know why I pay you,” she was saying. “I genuinely don’t. Any person off the street could do this. A child could do this. You just move things around. That’s all you do. You move things around and you make lists and you don’t actually help me with anything that matters.”
She looked me over once, then marched into her meditation room and slammed the door.
Somewhere during the outburst, Sofia had arrived. She was now hovering in the bedroom doorway, shaking her head.
“Qué puta,” she whispered. She saved Spanish for the moments that horrified her the most.
I nodded.
We spent an hour working together. She unpacked the dishwasher and I organized Vivienne’s salt collection.
Then the meditation room door opened. Her expression had become almost humane.
“I’m so sorry, Marlowe,” she said, pulling me into a bony hug.
I hugged her back, gingerly.
“You don’t deserve this. It’s just all been so intolerable. I want to make it up to you. Let’s have a pool party. We can have it at the Healdsburg estate. Schedule it for June 15.”
“Great,” I said, working very hard to make sure it didn’t sound flat. That was only a month away.
A pool party.
A pool party at the wine-country estate that she’d wrestled from her ex-husband in a bitter divorce settlement. A middle finger to Marco that I would have to organize.
Sofia and I exchanged glances. Vivienne left for Pilates.
I checked my phone, wondering if Damian had texted me. He hadn’t. I hated how far my heart sank.
Chapter Nine
Idrove to the wine bar I’d suggested in the group chat, a quiet place on a side street with a haunted jukebox that randomly played Fleetwood Mac and the Cure. It looked like someone’s whimsical aunt had decorated it in the nineties.
The Victorian streets of Eureka flew by. My windshield was unwashed and filmed with salt-crust and coastal mist, blurring the gray waters of Humboldt Bay into a charcoal smudge. I drove a little too fast, my body still carrying the quiet rage I felt whenever Vivienne used me as her punching bag. It had become a daily ritual: wake up, drink coffee, tell myself I was going to find another job. But getting one that paid as well in this economy had so far been impossible. And now that I wasn’t sharing rent with a useless boyfriend, I couldn’t take a pay cut.
I arrived twenty minutes early, ordered a glass of wine, and settled into a booth at the back.
Priya and Callie arrived together, Callie in a signature slouchy sweater, Priya still in a dress shirt from work. Callie looked pale, and Priya looked sallow, like their bodies were still holding on to the betrayal of terrible plant medicine.
We hugged like we’d survived a small plane crash together, then they ordered drinks hurriedly, swapping glances with me from the bar. We had a lot to discuss, and wine would be necessary.
Jess arrived last, draped in another oversized cardigan and a navy dress covered in small moons, sunglasses on her forehead, her feet laced in Doc Martens. She didn’t hug any of us. Just a quiet “Hi,” then a struggle to decide whether to order water or wine, which we all watched with interest. It was the first time we’d seen her do anything indecisively.
“Okay, first of all,” Priya said, looking at each one of us, “what in the occult bullshit is going on?”
“There’s something I need to show you,” I said, unlocking my phone. I found the Reddit posts and sent them to the group chat. “I didn’t want to send these to you while you were alone. It’s creepy enough.”
The three of them opened the links.
“Oh my god. Oh my god, I feel sick.” Callie put her hand over her forehead.
