“Simone, I love you too. I have spent twenty-six years running a company without letting anyone really see me. Until you.” Alexandra leaned down and kissed her forehead. Then her temple. Then her mouth, softly. She didn’t pull back when she was done. She rested her forehead against Simone's and stayedthere with her eyes closed. “I fell in love with you months ago, and I should have told you sooner.”
Simone couldn’t speak for a moment. She lifted her hand and put it over Alexandra’s where it rested against her face, and she held it there. Alexandra let out a long exhale against Simone’s mouth.
“Alex,” Simone whispered.
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
Alexandra settled back down against Simone’s chest, and Simone wrapped her arm around her, holding her there.
25
Chapter 25: Alexandra
The Ridge Club sat on the corner of Marine and Fifth, in the brick building that had been a bank in 1908 and a private club since 1934, and for most of Alexandra's life it had been the place you ended up after the rest of the city closed. Tonight the windows on the second floor were lit warm against the wet dark of the street, and below them the brass plate beside the door read onlyMembersin small letters.
Simone parked the car on Marine. They walked the half block to the door together. The rain had stopped earlier in the afternoon and not come back, and the sidewalk gave off the faint mineral smell of pavement drying. It was the first day of March. The streetlamps were on, and the trees along Fifth had the first faint green at the tips of the branches, barely visible against the lamps, the alders coming back.
Simone said, “The city is pretty in this light.”
“Yes.”
The doorman opened the door for them. Inside, the foyer was warm and low-lit and smelled like old wood, old wool, andthe faint trace of whatever the kitchen was finishing two rooms away. The carpet was the same carpet from her childhood, and the brass on the stair rail was the brass her mother had touched on her way to dinner ten thousand times.
The coat check was to the left. Irene was behind the counter, and she looked up, her face recalibrating in real time. Alexandra handed her her coat. Then she handed her Simone's. Irene hung them on adjacent hooks. She gave Alexandra the brass token.
“Good evening, Ms. Vaughn. Ms. Rousseau.”
“Good evening, Irene.”
They moved into the foyer. Alexandra put the token in her clutch. Her hands were steady, and the brass was cold against her fingers for half a second and then warmed.
The maître d' was Harriet. Harriet had run the front of the room since Alexandra's mother was alive, and she looked up from the reservation book and her face moved through the same small adjustment as Irene's.
“Ms. Vaughn. We have you at the window table.”
“Thank you.”
“Right this way.”
She led them across the main room. Alexandra knew where every table was and who sat at which one on Saturdays. Paige Hawthorn would be at the table near the bar with her husband and the Sterlings, the Beck table—where Julianna had been having Saturday dinner with the same four friends for twenty-three years—had its usual occupants, and Astoria Shepry preferred the window table two over from the one Harriet was leading them to. Astoria was already seated with Miller, and Astoria was looking at her.
Eyes from around the room followed her and Simone as they crossed the room together, and conversations slowed by a half beat before resuming. Simone walked beside her, her heels making a quieter sound than Alexandra's on the hardwoodbetween the rugs. She did not look around. She kept her eyes fixed at the back of Harriet's head and then at the table when they reached it. She let Harriet pull her chair out for her, and she sat. Alexandra sat across from her. Harriet handed them menus, said something about the fish, and left.
The window was to Alexandra's right. The harbor lights were below them, and the water was dark and lapping against rocks. She could see her own reflection faintly in the glass and Simone's beside it.
She had sat in this room five months ago, at a table near the bar, describing Simone to Astoria Shepry using language a person uses about a threat.Formidable. Surgical.She could remember the words exactly. Astoria had listened, and at the end she had said, “This one won't blink first.”The warning had been correct. The woman it had been about was sitting across the table from her now, reading the menu.
Astoria set her napkin on her chair and crossed the room. Something in Alexandra's throat went tight. She set her water glass down so her hand would not give her away.
When Astoria reached the table, she smiled at Simone first, which was kind. “I don't think we've met properly. I'm Astoria Shepry.”
Simone half rose and offered her hand. “Simone Rousseau. I know you by reputation.”
“I know you the same way.”
Astoria turned to her. Alexandra's pulse moved into her ears. The wine glass in front of her caught the harbor light and threw a small wavering shape onto the linen. Simone's foot was a half inch from her own under the table. She breathed in, her throat still tight. She breathed out and pushed her voice past it.
