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I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, I have. Darcy White. Do you know Darcy?”
I shake my head again. Ann talks very fast. It’s like listening to an audiobook on triple speed. Ethan used to do that. Hearing is the fastest sense, he’d say if I complained. The human body can hear faster than it can see, taste, smell, or feel. Once a sound wave reaches your ear, your brain can recognize it in just 0.05 seconds, something he seemed to like to t
est.
“Darcy,” Ann says. “She recommended this caterer, and something deep down said I shouldn’t listen. Alarm bells went off. Clear as day. I knew I shouldn’t have hired her. I knew it. If I didn’t need her to like me for the sake of my kids…her children carry a lot of weight at school I hear…you know… I might have listened. But I didn’t listen—and now I have dozens of overcooked appetizers on my hands.”
I leaned forward with enthusiasm. I could fix this in a jiffy, but I’d probably better not. Ethan always said, less is more. I just hadn’t realized he’d actually meant it.
When I fail to offer a response, Ann apprises me carefully. “What is one supposed to do with a situation like this?”
I note the way she poses a question—what she doesn’t say is what she plans to do about it. In fact, I’m surprised she brought up Darcy White. I doubted she’d go for the ones on a level playing field.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” I offer, which is exactly the wrong thing to say. I realize this when she corners me.
“IT WILL NOT BE FINE.”
I stare at her in that wild-eyed and languid way one does when they aren’t sure what to say. Ann is tall and scary. I am short and lumpy. Sure, I could probably take her on size alone, but I’m sure she’s accounted for that. Now, there’s nothing but cheese and cold half and half between us and no way out of this. She’s staring me down. She’s waiting for something to happen, for me to say something, for me to show fear.
I feel nothing.
Well, I feel something. But I don’t think it’s fear. I’d say it’s more along the lines of a rush. Something close to excitement. Something I can’t put my finger on. Something I haven’t felt in a long time.
“Did you know fear can be a turn on, Sadie?”
“I didn’t,” I say. But I’m moved by her display of emotion. I realize she and I are one and the same. If the lid is kept on for too long, eventually it slips. Her rage is like a fast car: zero to sixty in no time. Maybe she senses this, and maybe this is why she steps off the gas. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, and just like that she slams the brake. She retreats backward. She smooths her dress. “No one likes dry chicken, Sadie. We have to get rid of them.”
“The caterers?”
Ann gives me the side eye. “No, the appetizers. My husband will kill me if he finds out I threw them away. Paul hates waste of any kind.”
“What should we do with them?”
“Do you know about the three Ps?”
I don’t, but I make a mental note to learn them quickly. “I could hide them in my car.”
“Perfect,” she says with a curt nod. “Do that.”
I realize it was a dumb thing to say, in retrospect. No one wants to drive around smelling like chicken salad tarts, and yet I bet that’s exactly what Ann wanted to happen. Clearly, this was a test. The first of many. I wasn’t sure I’d passed. Something just told me I wanted to.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HER
The weight of the gas pedal feels good beneath my foot. Driving a car with this kind of power gives me the third best kind of rush, just below fucking and killing.
Maybe I shouldn’t drive so fast. Maybe I don’t know these roads like I think I do. But as Julia Roberts says in Pretty Woman, this car corners like it’s on rails, and if I wasn’t enjoying the feel of it so much I might ease up a bit.
But I don’t.
Which is why it’s a beautiful day that’s about to be ruined in 3...2…1. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. One second everything is fine, and the next someone is flying through the air. Gravity being what it is, well—what goes up must come down. On the descent it’s clear what’s happened.
A lady.
On a bike.
