Page 211 of Sweet Ruin

The first is a photo.

It takes me a second to understand what I’m looking at. It’s me. This morning, in the kitchen. I’m at the steel table with a piping bag in my fist and my hair shoved up in a claw clip and about nine hundred red hearts spread out in front of me.

My apron is filthy. There’s a stripe of raspberry buttercream across my forearm. My mouth is open because I’m talking to somebody, probably telling Cameron for the fourth time that the tall boxes go on the bottom, not the top.

I look busy and sweaty and about as far from the pretty woman in the wine-colored dress as a person can get.

I zoom in on my own face and wait for the old, self-hating reflex to arrive. Double chin. Lunchlady arms. Pooch belly.

But before it finds any of those things, it just sort of putters out and dies.

Because whoever took the picture wasn’t looking at any of that.

I don’t know how to explain it except that I’ve been in ten thousand photographs where I was standing next to somebody the photographer actually wanted, and this isn’t one of them.

The frame is centered on me. Nothing else in it matters. Not the trays, not the wall, not Priya’s elbow at the edge.

Just me.

Then I read the second message. It’s a screenshot of an email.

From: The Membership Council at Dyker Heights Golf & Social Club

Effective immediately, the membership of Mr. Connor J. Boyd is revoked. Mr. Boyd’s guest privileges are likewise terminated. He may not enter the clubhouse, the grounds, or the parking facility. Dues paid through the current calendar year are forfeit per Section 9(c).

Connor loved that club. He didn’t even golf well. He mostly just went for the bar and the card room and the guys who called him Conn and let him tell the same three stories about his “glory days” over and over and over again. He paid the dues out of our joint account for six years and never once brought me along, not even just to drive the cart.

It was proof to him that he was the kind of man he always wanted to be.

Without it, what will become of Connor Boyd?

I type out an answer.

ME: You’re going to run out of things to take.

He answers in under a minute.

KANE: No. I won’t.

I put the phone against my chest and lie back down and enjoy it. I’m not going to pretend I don’t.

Then the enjoyment thins out.

Guilt follows.

The car. The casinos. The club. Kane keeps taking things off him, one per holiday, ruthless, efficient, then handing me the torn-up ruins of Connor’s life like fistfuls of confetti.

What happens when that’s no longer fun for him?

What will become of me?

Somebody is going to get hurt. I don’t know who yet.

I type back: Thank you for the evening. I had a nice night.

Then I turn off my phone and go to sleep.

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