AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I open the lid and let out a preemptive gasp I’ve been holding in since the soccer game. Yet when I look down, I see a thin gold pendant against the velvet backdrop. I blink hard. Where are the diamonds? Where is the platinum? My joy is quickly replaced with confusion.
“Do you like it?” Patrick asks. “It’s three loops for you and the kids.”
I touch the delicate gold loops hanging from the chain. Does Patrick not remember that he got me an almost identical necklace for Mother’s Day? I picture that beautiful tennis bracelet I came upon in his trunk. I hadn’t hallucinated it, had I? Did Patrick return it because he thought it was too expensive? Did he think I’d find it too ostentatious?
But that’s ridiculous. Iloveostentatious. I would have worn the shit out of that bracelet—to dinners, to galas, to school pickups, to fucking spin class.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. Because I’m too stunned to scream.
But a hot flame wells in my stomach as I remove the chain from the box and place it around my neck. I’m going to call the jewelry store tomorrow to check if Patrick returned the diamond bracelet, but I think I already know the answer. That bracelet didn’t go back.
He just didn’t buy it for me.
22
WILLA
TUESDAY, MAY 2, 2017
After a seven-mile run on the noisy Marriott treadmill, I drive to the house and set up shop at the kitchen table with my phone and laptop. My phone beeps with a few updates from work about the university hacks—a colleague from “The Source” has run with the story, and she seems compelled to keep me informed about some off-the-record stuff, perhaps because of my connections to one of the schools that was targeted. I read her report about how the hack has revealed that the Brown admissions staff inflated the SAT scores of its student body. I read something about how Princeton parents are pulling their kids out for the rest of the year. I almost,almostping her and ask if she’s dug up anything about Chi Omega at Aldrich—or any of the schools. I think of the rumors my boss intimated the other day. But I decide against it.
ANew York Timesstory has also come out that the socialist group that authoritiesthoughtmight have hacked the universities was a false lead. Apparently, hackers commonly used proxy machines and fake IP addresses and planted false clues in their malware to throw investigators off their trail. “The truth is, we might not be able to attribute this hack to anyone,” an FBI agent named William Cornish toldMeetthe Press. “Hackers are clever. They know how to hide. What we need to do now is damage control and make sure this never happens again.”
Heelsclackon the wood floor. Kit has on a pencil skirt and blouse, about to go off to work. She looks toward the ceiling, then at me. “Can you check on the girls in a bit?” she asks, thumbing toward the ceiling. “Withoutgrilling them?”
“I didn’t grill them,” I protest.
Kit rolls her eyes. “Of course you did. I shouldn’t even be speaking to you.”
“Kit, I’msorry,” I say, feeling frustrated. I thought we’d gotten past this. Kit and I had talked late into the evening last night, strategizing about how we wouldn’t go to the police with this new information until absolutely necessary. We both felt conflicted—it didn’t seem right to hide evidence—but I wanted to do some more digging before we pulled the trigger. “But look at it this way: Now we know. It was obviously tormenting Sienna to keep that secret to herself. And Aurora, too.”
Kit shrugs. “I guess we know what they were arguing about the day of the funeral, anyway. And why they’ve been acting so weird.”
“True.”
Kit squeezes her eyes shut. “I don’t know what to do now.”
“What about Raina?” I ask quietly.
Kit grabs her handbag from the chair, her expression clouding. “She says she was at a party with Sienna when it happened.”
“Are we sure? Was she there thewhole night?”
Kit looks conflicted, like she’s about to say something. Then she shakes her head. “If Raina stabbed him, I’m not sure I want to know.”
I cross my arms. “So you’d rather everyone thinkyoudid it?”
Kit peers out the window, touching the stained-glass ornaments our mother hung there years ago. I wonder, briefly, if her fingerprints are still on them. Or has too much time passed? “Look, if youwant to investigate, I can’t stop you. But I also can’t help. I can’t handle something like this.”
There is a cacophony of barks out the window, the kind of ruckus kicked up when a new dog comes onto common territory and interrupts the balance. I wonder if that’s what Kit thinks I’m doing—interrupting the balance. Checking in the closet for ghosts. “Just be careful,” she says finally.
“You, too,” I tell her. After all, there’s still a killer on the loose.
The easiest thing to do would be to interrogate Sienna more about Raina’s relationship with Greg, but every time I knock on her door, she doesn’t answer. Maybe in a day or two she’ll settle down and forgive me for exposing her.
Instead, I spend the afternoon reading through Raina’s e-mails on the Aldrich hack server. She has a tidy inbox with only about fifty messages, no specialized folders, and very few e-mails in the trash. She must be diligent about cleaning out her files, whereas I have tens of thousands of unread messages I’m never going to get around to reading. I parse through essays she’s written for school, rants to friends, and a few messages from people asking for access to my father. In each of those, Raina politely replies that she no longer works for him, and she refers them to his new assistant, a girl named Angie.
Is it strange that Raina worked for my father for such a brief time? Back in the day, my dad kept his assistants on for a whole year, if not more—especially if they were pretty. So why was Raina cut loose so soon? Was it her doing, or my father’s?
