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"Skylar, I'm sorry, but you cannot expect me to believe that you are so impossibly clueless!" Janette finally broke completely through her polished façade. "You must know what dire straits Maurice and I are in. Everything we had in France is gone. The house, the cars, all of it. We're living with my family right now, and it's horrendous! My mother––no, don't give me that look. You should be grateful I never subjected you to her."
"Janette, what in the hell are you talking about?" I asked, my voice rising with every word. "What happened in France? What did Maurice do?"
She turned a little green at the question, but to her credit, didn't completely turn away.
"My dear husband," she said in a voice that sounded anything but fond, "led some of his investors on a scheme that went...awry, shall we say." She gulped. "I refuse to go into the sordid details. But needless to say, all of our personal assets went to paying back some of that debt, and Maurice was sent here to procure new accounts. Otherwise, he'll be out, and will likely go to prison." She laughed, a sharp sound that cut through the air. "Hilarious, isn't it? I ended up marrying the French version of Bernie Madoff."
"So he thinks that Brandon is the golden goose that will get him back in the game," I finished, more to myself than to Janette.
When Janette looked up, her green eyes were wide with pure terror, set off further by the fringe of threaded eyelashes.
"Don't you see? We can help each other this way!" Her voice began to sound manic. "I'm from this world, Skylar, in a way you will never be. You help me stay in it, and I can help you navigate it. Teach you how to talk, how to dress, how to interact with these ridiculous people. Keep you from being a laughing stock! Help you keep your deepest, darkest secrets, even the baby!"
At the end of her final sentence, I froze completely, my hands utterly and completely glued to the counter. The rest of my body suddenly felt like cracked glass. Like someone could push me with a single finger and watch me shatter across the posh marble floor.
"What-what did you say?" I managed to get out.
Janette had the decency to look contrite. She closed her eyes for a moment and reached up to touch her hair again. It was her nervous tic, fixing imperfections that didn't exist. Checking her armor for chinks.
"I don't judge you for it, darling." She reached out a hand to touch mine gently. "Don't be like that. I understand, really. I've...been there myself once."
I blinked, confused. "With...Dad?"
Janette shook her head. "No, no, no. Later. One of...the others."
Her other husbands. I had always wondered, really, why she'd only ever had children with Maurice. Maybe in her odd way, she actually loved the man. But that didn't answer the question that was circling my head. How in the hell did she know about this in the first place?
Then, all at once, everything fell into place. I snatched my hand back and stepped away.
"So it was you," I muttered. "You were having me and Brandon followed, weren't you? It wasn't Miranda at all. It was you and Maurice."
Once again, Janette managed to look a bit contrite. "It was Maury's idea," she said. "I told him we didn't need to, that you'd help us out of the goodness of your heart if we just made the effort. But he was convinced we would need leverage. Awful, I know, though it turns out he was right."
"So that's what this was all about?" I asked, more to myself than to her. "Spending the weekend in Cape Cod? Gallivanting to all of these stupid events? Carting your kids around like sideshow spectacles to lure me in?" My face felt like it was on fire, and I pressed my palms into my temples. "How long were you planning this? When I was in New York, Brandon and I were broken up. When did you start this...this...spying?!"
The words fell off my tongue like pieces of raw meat. I was disgusted by this. By everything. My own mother had had someone follow me, had paid someone to pry and uncover my deepest secrets so that she could blackmail me into helping her regain her fortune.
"That's not important." Janette looked uneasy as she wrapped her slim arms around her waist.
I furrowed my brow. "So how did you know about..."
"You were awfully loud at that bar after your exam," she said. She sighed. "I heard the tapes, and the boy you were talking to was more than happy to corroborate after you jilted him."
I gulped. Jared had ratted me out. And, I realized, was mostly likely the person who had corroborated Miranda's story to the Globe as well. What the fuck?
"One of the things I can teach you about is putting off potential suitors," Janette said kindly, almost as if she read my mind. "It's something I've learned well over the years."
Suddenly I had absolutely no patience for her self-aggrandizing bullshit. "Did you tell anyone?" I demanded. "Anyone at all?"
Her green eyes widened and she shook her head. "No, Skylar. I swear it, no one knows. And no one has to, if you'll just––"
Before she could finish her contemptible sentence, the door to one of the bathroom stalls opened, squealing on its hinges. Janette and I both froze, staring at each other in twin looks of horror as, on impossibly sharp heels that clipped across the marble floor, Miranda Sterling strode out in all her perfection.
Swathed in a sleek silver gown, she walked to the sink, and without looking at me, calmly washed her hands and dried them. I wondered if she did it that slowly to emphasize the fact that she still wore her rings: an impossibly large, square-cut diamond and an equally brilliant eternity band.
My left hand drifted up to my neck to touch the necklace. Miranda caught the movement, but her eyes dropped to my hand with its bare ring finger and down to my flat stomach. Then her gaze––cold, haughty, and blood-curdlingly knowing––swept up to my face. She smiled, and her slow, seeping grin turned my blood to ice.
She finished drying her hands, then turned on her heel.
