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“All night. At the bus station?”
“It’s what I was going to do in Jesse,” I pointed out. “Russell, too. We were going to wait there until the bus came at seven.”
“Yeah, at a bus station in Bumblefuck, Nevada. You want to wait all night at a Vegas bus station?”
I shifted my feet, not quite sure how to get out of this. But I did know the longer we debated logistics, the small window for making the midnight bus to California was going to close. “I mean—maybe I can get there by midnight.”
“You can’t.” Her voice was definitive. “And I really don’t want to send you there and then you get murdered and the guilt of it haunts me my whole life.”
“You could probably get a good true-crime podcast out of it, though?”
Chloe laughed at that, loudly, like I’d surprised her. “Just stay here. We’ve got more than enough room. One of the guesthouses is just sitting empty. You can have your own space; we won’t bother you. Get a good night’s sleep, and then we can drive you to the bus station in the morning.”
“That’s really generous of you. But I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask me. I offered. So you’ll stay.”
“I mean…” I looked around, and discovered that it is very hard to come up with rational excuses when you’re surrounded by Picassos and half-naked sci-fi portraits. I shook my head. “Russell—”
Chloe waved her hand in a gesture that somehow managed to be dismissive but not unkind. “Leave him to me. I’d really feel a lot better if you stayed.”
As I stood there in the foyer, the thought of a hot shower, a soft bed—things I hadn’t had in days—was too tempting to pass up. I could take a moment to breathe, pull myself together. And if Russell thought it was weird that I was here—well, I would never have to see him again after tomorrow. “It’s really kind of you.”
Chloe shook her head. “It’s nothing. And besides, I had to make it up to you. I heard you were dragged in front of C.J.” She gave me a look that let me know she understood exactly what I’d gone through with the lawyer. “So you’ll stay?”
I nodded. After all, wasn’t this what I’d just wished for, sobbing out on the driveway? Someone to take me in hand, make things okay, take care of me? “I’ll stay. Thank you so much. I left my stuff…”
“I’ll get someone to grab it.” She grinned at me and clapped her hands together. “This will be fun. Let’s get you set up.”
* * *
I’d been worried that it might be awkward to go back into the house after I’d left it. But it was like Chloe wasn’t allowing for this possibility. Like she was bending the situation to her will.
We walked back into the main room, where everyone was sitting around the dining room table with half-eaten plates in front of them, laughing and talking, Artie on Sydney’s lap, his face covered in sauce. Neither Russell or Wylie was there, and clocking their absence, I felt some of the tension leave my shoulders.
“Andy got out again,” Chloe said as she breezed past the dining room table, me following in her wake. “Darcy got him, though. She’s staying here tonight.”
“What?” Wallace asked, looking up from his plate, but Montana gave me a smile.
“Good work, Darcy! Come back here and play Fishbowl when you’re all settled.”
Before I could answer that, Chloe was opening a glass door and stepping into the backyard, and I hurried to follow.
The backyard was just as stunning as the front—the pool was huge, and ringed with loungers and round covered chairs that seemed like mini cabanas. There was a connected hot tub, bubbling away. Bobbing in the pool was a huge float that seemed to be a punk-rock unicorn with wings, and a smaller circular float that looked like a bagel with a schmear. Striped towels were flung over the lounge chairs and the big circular chairs, but there were also baskets all around the perimeter with neatly rolled-up towels inside them. There was a huge, hulking piece of black metal to the side of the pool, which I was pretty sure was a Richard Serra.
“Darcy?”
“Yeah,” I said, hurrying to catch up with Chloe.
I hadn’t known what to expect when I’d heard guesthouse—but not this. It was one of the five guesthouses ringing the backyard. And the one I’d be staying in was a little smaller than our house in Raven Rock—but honestly, not by much. It looked like a one-story version of the main house, all wood and glass and sharp angles. There were three steps up and a small porch in front with two Adirondack chairs facing the pool.
Chloe headed inside, and I followed. It was a proper house—we were in the living room, with a couch and a TV, an open-plan kitchen behind it. There was a hallway where I assumed the bedrooms and bathroom were.
“Wylie misses being on tour, so he named all the guesthouses after his favorite places and decorated them accordingly. This one is Bleecker Street, in the Village.”
I was about to ask what she meant by that—what village?—but then I took in the décor and realized, all at once, that she meant New York City.
Hanging above the couch was a large framed poster for Metropolitan. All over the walls were photographs and sketches of the city. There was even a huge, old-fashioned-looking metal sign hanging in the kitchen that read H&H BAGELS—NEW YORK’S FINEST.
