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Chapter Thirty-One
Henry
One month later
It’s three twenty-two in the morning and I’m lying in bed, thinking about her. Missing her.
I build a lot of residential projects, create a lot of homes for people, but the home I found with Vicky was beyond anything even I could’ve dreamed up.
Now it’s rubble.
And not the cool kind you can turn into furniture. It’s toxic and twisted up with unbearable loss, not to mention anger with myself.
And every time I see a griffin, or that ice cream she likes, or a mime, or a hundred other stupid things, that rubble pile gets deeper. And every time I get the urge to tell her some interesting news or a funny realization, I remember I can’t.
And the pile gets deeper.
Why did I listen to her when she told me not to go after her that day?
Well, I know why. I wanted to give her a little space. I wanted to respect her in a way that the world hadn’t.
Fool move.
I underestimated the trauma that sixteen-year-old Vonda endured, underestimated how deeply it burned.
A day later it was too late. She and Carly were gone. Vanished. When Vicky vanishes, she doesn’t mess around.
I got the company, just like she said I would. I got it back—full control. Cold comfort.
I pour myself a scotch and wander out onto my veranda where she fed me cookies and joked about tea cozies. I know what they are now. I looked it up.
The night is mild for late October. I stare up at the moon, wondering if she might be looking at it this very moment. A cliché.
It’s unlikely she’s moongazing. It’s probably daytime where she is; that’s what our PI thinks. He had a lead for Hong Kong. A few continental European cities. Nothing panned out.
In the dark of the veranda, I open up my laptop. Before I even check my email, I click to a section of bookmarks that’s all jewelry. It’s a morbid ritual, perusing the latest debut designer collections of high-end boutiques around the world. I also look at solo designers.
She wouldn’t be so stupid to start up her sequined dog bowtie business again. And she probably wouldn’t create that Smuck U line I so loved and hated, either, but she has to do something.
She’s a maker—it’s in her bones—and women’s jewelry was her passion.
She told me so many things. I could’ve told her about the hearing and the good cop thing, explain that I’d abandoned it. Was some little part of me holding all that back to protect my advantage? Covering my ass? Needing to arrange things to come off perfect to her? Not wanting to rock the boat of our time together? Not trusting her to understand?
I click through collections. It’s not the names I’m looking at; it’s the pieces. I feel sure I’ll see a necklace or a pin or something, and I’ll recognize her vision in it, her sense of humor, her spirit—something essentially her bubbling up out of the pages of baubles, unmistakable as a fingerprint.
I stay out there until dawn, clicking through the images. Then I switch to coffee and get ready to deal with the world.
Over the next few weeks, Latrisha completes the cool-as-hell furnishings for the Moreno, and we collaborate on the installation and interior finishes. I make sure the website is updated with plenty of pictures, just so Vicky can see.
Or should I call her Vonda? I don’t know, but what I do know is that she’ll check. She won’t be able to help herself.
I throw myself into the Ten redesign. It feels good to do the place right. The neighbors are excited—we’re experimenting with bringing them into limited sections of the process. Maybe it’s arrogant, but I have this idea that one of these days, Vicky will pull up the website for that, too.
I want her to see it. I want her to see that beautiful things can be real. Or maybe that real things can be beautiful.
Not everything I do that autumn is noble. I have enough anger to go around, and my sights also happen to be set on Vicky’s mother and the Woodruffs.
The New York Nightly Reports I-team is excited about the idea that I brought them for a news-hour segment about what really happened with Vonda O’Neil. Getting the salacious truth of the story. The mindfuck that everyone was wrong about her, and the opportunity to shame the true villains on camera.
