Is there anything else? A flash of the bloodstained carpet from this morning’s visit to the house springs to my mind. “Yes, there is something else.”
“I’m listening.” A muscle throbs in her jaw.
“Did you drug me at your party, Jo?” The words rush out of me like water through a broken dam. “Did you knock me out so you could go into my house and look for that bracelet? Because you knew it could lead back to Van?” The thought crystallizes fully, no longer just a suspicion lurking in the shadows of mymind. “Did you drag me into the basement of that house on Baltimore?”
“You sound crazy.” Jo pushes her chair back with such force, it nearly topples over. She stands, looming over me, her shadow falling across the table. “Drug you? Do you hear yourself? You got drunk. We all saw it. We’re all talking about it. Did you know that? You’re the gossip of the neighborhood. Poor Caren, about to turn fifty, no job, no prospects, her kids are gone, and she’s becoming a lush. Did you hear she passed out in the street?”
“Go to hell, Jo.” I stand as well, my legs shaky.
“I feel sorry for you, and whatever this is.” She gestures at me with both hands, fingers splayed as though I’m something distasteful. “The place you should look for answers is in the mirror. Preferably with the help of a good therapist. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some packing to get to.” She starts to walk away.
“I wasn’t drunk,” I call after her. “You know that and I know that.” The conversations of the past few days—Finn’s story, Yumi’s tales of secret visitors—swirl in my mind. “What about that nanny who lived in your rental?” I gesture with my chin to her large window that overlooks the backyard. “Autumn. She was killed in a robbery gone wrong. A break-in.”
She’s halfway across the room but stops and pivots. “Watch it.”
The thoughts keep coming, like a rushing river. “What if it was a burglary gone wrong and someone got killed? Even accidentally. I mean, a stolen bracelet, who cares? But murder? That would be a different story, wouldn’t it? If Van was involved.”
“Stop,” she commands. “Stop right there.” For one terrible second, Jo’s mask slips completely. Her face contorts intosomething monstrous—eyes narrowed to slits, nostrils flared, lips pulled back in a snarl of pure rage. I step back, genuinely frightened by the transformation. Then, just as quickly, she recomposes her features into the Jo we all know and admire.
“You’ve got it all wrong, as usual.” Her voice drips with disdain. “Poor Caren, always the last to know. Always a step behind. You may have clawed your way into this neighborhood, but you’ll always be the girl who went to some second-rate state school, who married up, but doesn’t quite fit.”
“You would know all about marrying up, Jo.”
“You should leave now.” She sneers at me. “And if you have any more questions, I suggest you ask Miguel. Let him fill you in.”
TEN MONTHS AGO
By the end of July, Tori was spending as much time at the Allards’ house as Van did at hers. No longer did she dread Wednesdays, when Leo was with her ex. Now she couldn’t wait for the middle of the week. When she got a text from her regular Wednesday-afternoon client canceling for the rest of the summer—she chose a lake house in Maine over therapy in Bethesda—Tori didn’t mind at all, despite the lost income. It just meant more time with him.
Van.
His name made her pulse quicken.
He possessed her thoughts every waking moment that she wasn’t actively focused on some specific task.
Undressing in the morning reminded her of being naked with him—the way his eyes darkened when she slipped out of her clothes. Washing herself in the shower sparked the memory of his hands on her body, leaving trails of heat where his fingers had been. Eveneating breakfast recalled his teasingly feeding her fresh strawberries after they made love on his parents’ bed.
Nothing turned her on more than making love in Jo and Daniel’s bed, on their Egyptian cotton sheets, cool against her feverish skin, the faint scent of Jo’s expensive perfume lingering in the pillows. It felt like the ultimate revenge against the two people who’d made her feel so unwelcome in this neighborhood. So small.
When Van was on top of her, his lean muscles flexing with each movement, she would imagine Jo and Daniel returning early from France, exhausted and jet-lagged, bickering. Jo would be wilted from the flight, her designer clothes wrinkled, and all she’d want to do was take a hot shower and sleep in her own bed.
For Tori, picturing the horror on Jo’s face when she opened the door and saw her son framed by Tori’s legs could bring her to climax, her body arching with a pleasure enhanced by vengeance.
“I love these sheets,” Tori said one lazy afternoon, spreading her arms out wide like a child making a snow angel, the silky fabric sliding against her bare skin. “What brand are they?”
“Let’s see.” Van rolled over, exposing his naked back, a constellation of freckles scattered across his shoulders. He reached around the mattress to yank up a corner of the sheets. She loved that he was game for anything, his youth making him pliable in her hands. “Sferra Giza. That mean anything to you?”
It didn’t. But later, at home, when she should have been falling asleep to a meditation app, she pulled hercomputer onto her lap and looked it up. A full set of the Italian sateen sheets cost around twenty-five hundred dollars. Click. Into her cart they went.If Jo can have them, so can I.She told herself she wasn’t backsliding. Just buying a few choice things. Didn’t she deserve it? She vacillated between her hatred of the woman and scorching envy. Was Jo worth more than she was? Better than she was? The questions burned her mind like acid.
In the Allards’ master bathroom, after discovering a pink-and-red silk kimono hanging on a hook like a whisper of luxury, she took note of the designer and bought the identical one later at home. The fabric against her skin felt like stolen victory.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,” Van said one night after they had made love, as his fingers traced lazy patterns on her stomach. “It is my life. I’m nineteen now. Why should I go to college if I don’t want to?”
“You shouldn’t. You should live the life you want. I mean, you deserve to be happy.” For someone trained as a therapist like herself, it was child’s play to plant these seeds of rebellion in the fertile soil of a young man. She only wished she could see Jo’s and Daniel’s faces when these seeds sprouted later this fall.
“I don’t want to go to some psycho school and just like compete with a bunch of sweats to be the best so I can get the highest-paying job and work like ninety hours a week.” He rolled over on his back. “What is the point? So I can have kids and put them through the same rat race? No, thanks.”
“Someone has to be brave enough to break the cycle.”