Her center. Her new truth.
This is what she’s come for.
Now she can go.
But her legs have lost their strength. Instead, Graye slowly sinks onto Laura’s side of the bed.
Holding the pages tightly in her left hand, she flips through them with her right, words flying past. Years of work and tears and dreams, woven carefully together, recreating Graye as the master of her past, no longer its victim.
The weight of the pages, solid in her lap, anchors her, and the voices in her head grow quiet at last. The soothing balm of relief washes over her.
Anxiety over Nick, over Dr. West and his ridiculous demands, over everything, drains from her limbs, leaving little behind.
She’s never been so tired.
Without thought, Graye holds the manuscript close and lifts her feet from the floor to tuck them under her. She lays her head on the pillow that belongs to her friend.
It smells of Laura. It smells of kindness and new beginnings and hope for the future.
Graye closes her eyes, just for a moment. She won’t stay, of course. She’ll get up and leave Laura’s private space, place the manuscript back where she found it.
No one will know.
But first, she’ll rest. Just for a moment.
Laura won’t mind.
27
GRAYE
The peace that Graye falls asleep with doesn’t last.
Plagued by strange dreams full of the same cast of characters who fill her waking thoughts, though in bizarre new combinations, she wakes with a gasp.
Glancing sharply around, Graye struggles to regain her bearings. The bedcovers are twisted tightly in her hands.
Her grip has loosened in sleep and the papers she’d been clutching have fallen. Scattered along the edge of the bed and across the floor, they’re undeniable evidence that Graye has intruded someplace she has no business being.
How long has she slept? She can’t say. Light still fills the room, but it doesn’t have the brightness of afternoon sun, she realizes with rising panic.
At least she hasn’t been discovered. Yet.
In a burst of movement, Graye pulls loose pages to her, gathering them as quickly and quietly as she can manage. She drops to her knees and continues to do the same on the floor.
Her hands stall when she hears sounds traveling down the hallway from the front of the house. If Graye was alone before, she isn’t any longer.
She makes out a voice, muffled and indistinct, but undeniably male.
It’s Dr. West, and he’s upset about something, that much is clear. It sounds as if his stint at sobriety was brief as well.
With her heart pounding in her throat, Graye straightens and stacks the pages together, no time and no thought given to their order or neatness.
She has to get out of this room.
As carefully as she can manage, Graye puts the manuscript back on the nightstand, replacing Laura’s glasses on top of the messy, disorganized heap.
That will have to do.
Graye holds her breath as she creeps out of the room with quick, light steps.
The house is old. Creaky. But Dr. West’s voice is raised, and he doesn’t hear the floorboards announcing Graye’s passage.
Closer now, she can make out his words a little better. He’s making no effort to keep his voice down.
“You don’t even know me,” he yells. “What makes you think you can come here and ruin my life?”
She’s never heard him so angry. Drunk and pathetic, yes. Sarcastic. Biting. But this is new and unnerving.
There’s a muffled response that Graye can’t make heads or tails of, but David’s reply is loud and clear.
“Pregnant? That’s ridiculous,” he says with a hoarse laugh. “You need to leave.”
Graye’s breath catches in her throat. Laura’s closely guarded news isn’t a secret any longer. She peeks around the corner of the hallway, trying to catch a glimpse of the person who has betrayed Laura’s trust, but David is standing in the front doorway, blocking her view.
He steps forward, pushing whoever is at the door farther out and away from his home.
“. . . need to talk . . . can’t ignore this.”
A female voice, muffled and impossible to identify.
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” David says, violence in his voice. “I can’t be the father. That’s impossible.”
Graye sucks in a breath, then ducks down and hurries through the living room while David’s back is turned, catching little more than an impression of a figure out front.
Slipping into the kitchen, Graye heads immediately for the door that leads outside. She doesn’t let out her breath until she’s quietly closed it behind her and made her way quickly across the carport and through the door of the guesthouse.
But her relief is short-lived.
Laura.
She needs to find Laura, to warn her. David’s anger was palpable, and if he decides to turn that on his wife, Graye can’t begin to predict the outcome.
Checking the clock on her desk, she sees she didn’t sleep as long as she feared. There’s still time, but she has to hurry.
The wind has picked up and the day has taken on the strange, illuminating glow often called the “golden hour,” with the added dimension of the still-looming storm.
Graye hurries back to the hotel, casting a wary eye at the distant skyline. The darkened clouds have paused, stopping to observe those below, curiously perhaps, before crashing the party.
And a curious sight they must be.
While the breeze dances with the strings of patio lights at the hotel bar, the group casts a glow of its own as the partygoers spill out onto the sand. The women are glittering caricatures of a bygone era, the men austere and sharp in black and white tuxedos.
Graye scans the crowd, searching for her friend. Her eyes pass over the waitresses, also dressed in black with ruffled white aprons and caps, paid extra to work the event in costume.
She spots a woman in a nun’s habit, but despite the madness that overtook her earlier, doesn’t confuse this woman for Sister Margaret. She’s a guest dressed as the character she’s been assigned, and the habit is different than the ones worn by the sisters at St. Sebastian’s anyway.
There’s Hugo, whose magnetism is only enhanced by the formal clothing and the highball glass in his hand. His teeth sparkle like the string of pearls looped around the neck of the woman next to him.
A woman who isn’t Laura.
Graye pushes her way into the group, her eyes open and searching. Where is she?
Conversations buzz around her, most concerning the narrative that will dominate the evening.
“Rumor has it she’s going to name a successor. That she plans to walk away from the business entirely and travel the world.”
“No husband or children, right?”
“Not officially, but—”
An urge comes to turn to the gossipy women and ruin the mystery, just to see the disappointment on their faces. Only the care Laura has put into building the suspense for her guests stops her.
“Everyone will have a little piece of the story,” she’d explained to Graye. “Only by mingling and asking questions can they gather enough information to find the truth.”
At the time, Graye shared Laura’s excitement. She’d been anticipating how the story, which centers around the indomitable Baroness Lyttleton, a prominent businesswoman at the helm of a textile empire, would play out as much as anyone. Perhaps more. But now, with real concern churning, the incessant chatter about a fictional character grates on her.
Graye spots Mai Linh, a glass of champagne in hand, deep in conversation with two other women.
Graye shoulders through the crowd, making her way to the author’s side.
“Hi, Graye,” Linh says when she sees her. “Have you met—”
“Have you seen Laura?”
Surprise crosses Linh’s face, but she quickly recovers.<
br />
“No, not recently. Is something wrong?”
“I just need to . . .” She trails off as her eyes search the crowd again. A light-blue sparkle catches her eye.
“Excuse me,” Graye mumbles, then pushes her way through the crowd again, this time toward the hotel. She doesn’t spare the trio of women a second glance, missing the raised brows and exchanged glances she leaves behind.
Once through the wide double doors, Graye turns her head quickly from side to side.
More guests. More staff.
She jogs forward, checking the lobby, the ballroom, the corridors.
Laura is nowhere.
The mechanical rumbling of the elevator catches her attention. A couple dressed in period clothing steps off. Not Laura, but the ding of the elevator door reminds her of the text alert on her phone.
The phone lies heavy in her pocket, waiting for Graye to remember it exists. When she palms it, the screen lights up. It’s a quarter past six and there’s a message waiting from Laura.
Just checking in. Let me know when you get back to the hotel. ☺
It was sent thirty minutes ago.
Graye’s fingers fly as she types out a reply. If David is headed this way, he won’t be far behind her. His anger was a hot blast of heat radiating from him. She can’t let Laura walk into that blind.
Where are you?
Graye hits “Send” and listens to the digital whoosh that says the message is heading to its target. Thankfully, after only a few seconds, she sees the dialogue bubble that shows Laura is typing a reply.
On the roof.
Graye shakes her head and reads the message a second time, but it doesn’t change.
The roof?? Need to talk. Important!
“Send.”
Her eyes stay trained on the small screen in her hand as the dialogue bubble appears again.
And then it’s gone.
Graye is already typing when the bubble reappears, followed by Laura’s message.
OK. In the middle of something though. Call you when I’m done.
Graye lets out a growl of frustration that elicits a side-eye glance from a passerby.
I can come to you.
“Send.” Her toe taps impatiently. She’s not even sure how to get to the roof.
No need. Be down in a few. Gotta go.
Like a dam approaching its critical tipping point, Graye’s frustration pushes against the walls of her control. With no care for the scene she’s creating, she runs back outside and elbows through the crowd again, bumping into bodies and jostling drinks along the way.
Once she’s far enough out, Graye turns and scans the roofline of the hotel. The clouds begin to rumble at her back, but faintly, far in the distance. Time still, before the rain arrives.
There. Along the side of the building and around a corner from where the crowd stands unaware, Graye sees a shadow of movement. A hint of sparkle from a light-blue sequined dress.
Then, a scream.
A body falling.
The deafening silence that remains when the scream cuts short.
A darkness crashes around Graye.
And the dam bursts.
28
GRAYE
For the barest moment, silence reigns. There’s no sound at all other than a sharp collective intake of breath that sucks the oxygen from around them. The crowd is a living snapshot, a sea of frozen faces.
It doesn’t last.
The moment passes and time speeds up, the seconds ticking past at double the pace, covering for the missed step, hoping no one notices.
No one does.
All around Graye, people react. Shock. Fear. Panicked voices saying, “Oh my God.” Bodies begin to rush toward the hotel, a wave of humanity that will crash against it.
Graye can’t move her legs.
Her mind tries to stretch itself around the terrible impossibility of what she’s just witnessed and fails.
She stands rooted in place, jostled as people flow around her.
“Laura.” Two syllables of breathless sound, a voice she doesn’t recognize.
“Laura!” she says again, louder, stronger this time, full of a contagious urgency that finally, finally spurs her limbs forward.
Once moving, she can’t stop.
Coming against a wall of people, each craning to see, Graye doesn’t slow but pushes her way between them.
After the mad dash, why are they all just standing there?
“Get out of my way,” she says, shoving a tuxedo-clad man aside.
Graye absorbs the sight in front of her, but understanding is slower to come.
A body sprawls upon the ground at their feet. The body of a woman.
This is wrong. All wrong. Graye shakes her head, not trusting her eyes, not after the day she’s had.
Nothing makes sense.
She feels it. The very moment the energy of the crowd changes. The whispers begin and, like smoke, drift outward, flowing from lips to ears, then back again.
“It’s her,” the whispers say.
Who? Graye wants to scream.
A man walks forward and leans over the prone form, blocking the woman’s face from view.
“Is she . . . is she dead?” asks a woman nearby.
The moment stretches as he glances over his shoulder, confusion evident on his face.
“I don’t understand,” he says, shaking his head.
“Oh for goodness’ sake.”
The words elicit a gasp from the gathered onlookers. They come from the mouth of the woman stretched out on the ground. The woman who’s apparently just fallen from the roof.
A woman who definitely isn’t Laura. And doesn’t appear to be the least bit harmed.
“Of course I’m dead,” she says. “Now help me up, you idiot.”
“Is that . . . ?” the whispers ask, this time with more excitement than fear. The woman rises with help from the man at her side. She brushes a hand down her elegant red pantsuit, then pushes a mane of silver hair back from her face imperiously. “Yes, I think it is,” they answer.
“Oh, oh,” says a voice from the back of the crowd. “This is my line.”
Heads turn as a small woman Graye recognizes as the proprietress of an independent bookstore bursts through the line at the front of the group.
“It’s the baroness!” the bookstore owner says, her voice breathless with excitement and theatricality. “Someone’s pushed her from the roof! She’s been murdered!”
A chain reaction begins. Frothy delight bubbles up, which quickly morphs into laughter. Guests turn to one another in embarrassed relief, eyes rolling toward the sky, sheepishly admitting they’ve been had. They bring their hands together, applauding their own deception.
The woman in red bows low, then stands with her shoulders back, her chin high, until the applause lessens.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” she says, nodding in acknowledgment, “I’ll be at the bar, where, before you ask, I will not be answering any questions, because I am, obviously and unfortunately, deceased.”
The man next to her holds out his arm, upon which she places a bejeweled hand. The crowd parts for them to pass as she makes an exit grand enough for any Gilded Age screen goddess.
Graye watches them, though her mouth can’t form a smile. She’s not as enchanted as the others by the turn of events. There’s no room for her to be. Terror—honest, real terror—isn’t easy to let go of, and she’s still clamped in its fist. Visions of Nick pushing an unsuspecting Laura from the roof are too fresh.
“I had no idea she was going to be here,” a woman’s voice says. “Did you?”
Graye overhears Mai Linh’s amused answer.
“Not for sure,” she says. “But I did suggest to Laura this weekend wouldn’t be complete without the murder of Cecelia Ainsley. And she actually pulled it off.”
29
LAURA
Laura doesn’t immediately register that she’s been slapped across the cheek.
&nbs
p; The signs are there. Graye’s quick, darting hand, out and then back again, like the tongue of a frog licking a fly from the sky. The sting that’s left behind. Her assistant’s wide, frightened eyes as it dawns on her what she’s done.
They’re standing just outside the ballroom. More than a few of the guests who are headed through the doors see the exchange. They give the two women a wide, cautious berth.
It doesn’t occur to Laura to be angry. She’s never been slapped before, so surprise has its foot firmly in the door before anger can gain any traction.
“Graye?” She raises a hand to her face. She’s about to ask why, when it bursts upon her like fireworks. Again, the signs are there, if she’d only look.
“Oh God,” Laura whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears pool in the bottom of Graye’s eyes. “This was your big secret? I thought . . .”
“Graye, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“You didn’t tell me . . .”
Laura reaches for the other woman’s shoulders, pulls her into a one-sided hug, even as Graye keeps her own arms firmly wrapped around her middle.
“I wanted it to be a surprise, that’s all,” Laura says. “It never occurred to me you’d think it was me.”
“You told me you were on the roof! What was I supposed to think?”
“I was on the roof to help throw the dummy over.” Laura backs up, her hands still on Graye’s forearms as she tries to get the girl to meet her eyes. To see the humor in the situation. Graye’s not ready for that yet. “Someone from the hotel staff was at the bottom with Cecelia. They tossed the dummy behind the bushes before the crowd arrived.”
“You should have told me,” Graye whispers. She shakes her head back and forth, her hand pressing against her lips as she takes several steps backward.
Laura steps forward.
“Graye, I’m sorry,” she says again. It’s the only thing she can think to say, and it’s clearly not enough.
“I thought . . . Oh God. I think I’m going to be sick.”
Graye turns away. Laura takes a step forward to follow, but a voice at her side stops her.
The Shadow Writer Page 13