Reece was with them in Tuxedo Park one weekend. She and Leo curled up in the cozy sunroom. It was October now, and the temperature had dropped. The sunroom had become something of a sacred space with Liberty gone. Reece could practically see the two of them as teenagers sprawled out on the window seats, eating a tub of Red Vines: Liberty with her nose in a book and Reece flipping through Vogue.
Now they didn’t want to leave the place. She and Leo had been holed up there for the better part of the day, breaking only when Leo said he was starving and offered to go get them some sandwiches from the kitchen.
“So what do you hear from Laila these days?” he said when he returned, handing Reece the roast beef that he knew was her favorite. It was the kind of gesture that might make her tear up given her current state, but she was too distracted by the mention of Laila. She was the only one who still seemed to be on speaking terms with her. In light of what had happened, Nora and Leo might have forgiven her for ever getting involved with Blake—it would have been absurd to let that melodrama overshadow Liberty’s death—but the television interview had turned them against her once again. Petra and Ben were similarly appalled; perhaps they would eventually forgive her, but for now they were all living in the omnipresent shadow of Liberty’s death.
“Not really, though I think she’s living in the West Village now,” Reece said. It made her feel guilty to think of Laila on two counts: one, because the Lawrences might feel betrayed that she had any contact with the girl; and two, because she had not actually talked to Laila all that much and knew Liberty would want her to step up.
“Fancy,” Leo said, in response. “Pays to sell your family out, I guess. Did she buy a place?”
Reece couldn’t believe Leo’s naïveté about what a down payment on an apartment in the West Village would actually cost. There had always been so much money that he’d never had to understand where it came from, much less how it was spent.
“No way, not unless . . .”
Leo waited for Reece to continue, but she was momentarily dumbstruck by the possibilities: The book deal? If it was that, at least it would be slow-moving; maybe there’d be time to get her to reconsider. Worse would be something on television: so much more immediate.
“Unless what?” Leo finally prompted her.
She hadn’t shared with the Lawrences the fact that Laila had been considering further exploiting the family’s tragedy for financial gain. She’d hoped that the girl had had a weak moment in considering these options; that she’d shown a side of herself that perhaps could be kept from the rest of her family.
“The last time I spoke to her, she said she’d gotten some offers.”
“What kind of offers?”
She let out a deep sigh. “Book deal; reality show.”
“Let me guess: All about Liberty?”
Reece nodded. “She said she wasn’t going to take any. But she seemed like she was pretty low on funds.”
“Well, obviously she decided to take one of those cretins up on their offers! Or else she has a new, rich boyfriend.”
“I suppose that’s always a possibility.” Reece hoped so, but wouldn’t someone have heard if this were the case?
“What are we going to do?” Leo was on his feet now, pacing the narrow room.
“What can we do? I mean, it’s not illegal to talk about your life experiences, I guess. . . .”
“We could sue her!”
“We don’t even know what she’s doing, if she’s going forward with anything.” Was this how it would go now? All of them descending further into lurid melodrama? Oh, the tabloids would love that, if everyone turned on each other.
“Let’s find out, then,” Leo said.
“How do you suggest we do that? My efforts to communicate with her have fallen a little short.” She had hoped that she’d earned Laila’s trust by reaching out, but obviously she had not. Leo was right; there was something more to the situation. Laila never had applied for the job Reece talked to her about.
“Then let’s figure it out for ourselves.”
“Meaning?”
“There are always ways. We could hire a detective to tail her!”
“Leo. Come on.” Reece laughed but couldn’t tell if Leo was joking or not. The twins were like this: they were worldly in that they’d traveled all over the planet, met innumerable famous people and titans of business, and yet so childlike in that they seemed to take their cues about how life operated from movies. The movie, in this case, appearing to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
“I’m serious, Reece, if she’s signed on for some tell-all or whatever, I need to know. She can’t just . . . profit off of Liberty’s death like this. We can’t just let it happen!” Leo had abandoned his half-eaten sandwich, and it sat there forlorn at his feet. Reece’s heart lurched; it struck her anew that, in losing one person, they had, in fact, lost many. A best friend, a fiancée, a daughter, a sister. The age difference between the twins and Liberty made her an almost parental figure to the two of them, one who was a great deal warmer and more openly loving than their actual parents. Without her, they both felt lost.
“I understand how you feel,” Reece said soothingly. “I really do. But Laila’s not the enemy. Besides,” she said, smiling, trying desperately to lighten the mood, “I wouldn’t know where to find a good private eye these days, would you?”
“In fact,” Leo said with a mischievous grin, “I would.”
She looked at him incredulously.
“My friend Nate, his mother suspected her husband—second husband, Nate’s stepfather, not his dad—was cheating on her with his Bikram instructor. So she hired this uptown firm. They got pictures and bam! That sucker was done for. There was an infidelity clause in their prenup.”
Reece turned the idea over in her mind, shook her head. “That’s crazy.” Not to mention that even if they got information, Laila wasn’t breaking any laws.
Leo had pulled out his phone and was already firing off an e-mail. “I’ll get his name, just in case. Then we can decide whether or not to use it. But once she’s out there baring her soul, there will be nothing we can do.”
“Oh, darling, isn’t that a little dark? You’re going to look like a goth.”
“It’s one of the hot fall colors, Mom.” Reece had brought her own nail polish to Haven where her mom had dragged her for mani-pedis.
She’d shown up at her doorstep, a swirl of fresh cashmere in her camel-colored Max Mara swing coat, knowing Reece was home, and announced their appointments.
“It will make you feel better, lovey,” she said, removing the sunglasses she was wearing in spite of the overcast day. “You can’t just mope around.”
Reece went because she knew it would make her mother feel better to take her, not the other way around. Reece held her tongue at moping, her mother’s dismissive term for what she was actually doing: grieving. Not that she was doing it correctly, but she found she didn’t know how to make sense of her life without her friend in it. Every day she woke, and for the first blissful few moments as she emerged from her dreams, she did not live entirely in a world where Liberty was dead. But then her surroundings came back into focus, and it was another long day of putting one foot in front of the other.
At the salon, her mother laughed as she examined the little bottle of dark Essie polish. “Well, what do I know? You’re the fashion expert.”
Reece smiled, but it stung as it reminded her of the neglected prototypes. Since Liberty had died, all she’d been able to do was drag herself to her day job and back. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get back to her own line. Cece had mentioned it once or twice, seemingly in the hope of cheering her up. When it had failed to do so, she’d dropped the issue.
“I saw your brother yesterday. Reece, I’m concerned about him,” Elin said as the nail technicians silently went to work on their toes.
“Yeah, well. Don’t ask me. He’s been shutting me out.”
“Well, he’s a man, darling. I
t’s what they do. You must keep trying.” In Elin’s world, the emotional labor of keeping a family together—or a marriage, for that matter—was a woman’s work.
“It’s not easy for me either,” Reece said. She dearly hoped that her mother had not sought her out just to recruit her to cheer up Cameron.
“I know you were close, darling, of course,” Elin said. “But he’s lost his fiancée.”
“I don’t think it’s a competition,” she said, echoing her brother’s sentiments.
“Of course not! But I’m only saying. Your brother needs you right now. Whether he realizes it or not. You know you’re the stronger one; you always have been.”
“Yeah, well. I don’t know if that’s really the case at the moment.”
“Of course it is. I know you think I baby your brother. But it’s not because I love him more—Reece, you know that, don’t you?”
“If you say so, Mom.” Reece smiled at her, teasing her despite the truth of the sentiment.
“I’m being quite serious. You take after me, sweetheart. Made of steel. Cameron is like your father. And we cannot let him collapse in on himself.”
Reece looked at her mother and let what she’d said wash over her. Could this be true? Had Elin backed off Reece because she’d never needed her as much? She didn’t think of her father as weak in any way, but for a moment she thought of him without her mother, and it was an image she could barely make compute. To think of Elin without Thatcher, on the other hand . . .
“Okay, Mom, okay. I’ll try harder.”
Later that week, Reece tried calling Laila again. She was unsure if Leo would ever actually pursue his cockamamie detective fantasy, but he certainly had the means to do it if he wanted, and if there were another option to the cloak-and-dagger, Reece would like to spare them all. Once wealthy people started using their leverage—say, by paying a pricey detective to pry into Laila’s life—there was such a long way down to go. Reece didn’t want to transgress exactly because she knew that they would get away with it. The Michaels and Lawrence families had far more collective power than Laila—right now she was a rogue agent, but they could crush her; ultimately she was at their mercy whether she knew it or not. It was exactly the kind of thing Liberty had hated about her family. They could dispense with anyone who had become inconvenient, silence them, undermine them—as they had with Laila’s own parents, Reece imagined. Laila was born an inconvenience to the Lawrence family, daughter of the woman who’d caused all the trouble—Liberty had confided in her best friend when she’d learned of the affair—and she had grown up to become an even bigger one. But Liberty wouldn’t want them to disavow her; she’d want her to be looked after, not simply “dealt with.”
She got no answer when she tried Laila from her cell. Then, on a hunch, she tried calling her from her landline. It was antiquated to even have one, but Reece had a vintage rotary phone that had once lived in her grandmother’s estate and which she couldn’t bear to let fall into obsolescence; plus there seemed something romantic about having a landline now that everyone had abandoned the idea. Liberty had referred to it as the Bat Phone. Only a few people had the number, one of them now gone. The number wasn’t listed anywhere, came up as Unknown on caller ID.
“Hello?”
“Laila?”
There was a lengthy pause while Laila sorted out whose voice she was hearing and regained her composure. “Reece! Hi!”
“Hi.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“My home phone; my cell is being wonky.”
“That makes sense. I tried to call you back a few minutes ago, but it didn’t go through. Anyway, how are you?”
Reece blanched at how chipper she sounded, or perhaps she was nervous? The two options made her uncomfortable for different reasons.
“Hanging in there,” Reece replied, “what’s new with you?”
“Nothing much. You?”
Nothing much? Well, what were the chances Laila would tell her this on her own?
“I heard you moved into a new place.”
There were a few seconds of pause that lasted an era.
“Yes! In the West Village. I’m so excited.”
“Renting or buying?”
“Renting, ha-ha, can you imagine? I’m not that kind of Lawrence. As it turns out, the rent alone is bananas enough!”
Reece let the silence hang there until it threatened to engulf them both.
“It’s not what you think.”
“I’m so glad to hear that. What is it, then?”
“Well, I do want to tell you, but the contract is just being finalized, and the deal hasn’t been announced yet. A book, but not like a tell-all; it’s going to be fiction. It’s going to be based on, like, a small-town girl comes to the big city. Not about Liberty.”
“A novel?”
“Yes. Listen, I actually have to run to a meeting in a few minutes. Can I call you later? We should put a lunch on the books.”
Put a lunch on the books? “Sure.”
They said good-bye, and Reece returned the phone to its cradle. She sat for a moment with the information. A novel? It wasn’t beyond the realm of imagination for a bottom-feeding editor to try to make a buck by capitalizing on the infamy of Laila’s name, but somehow a novel felt improbable. Let alone one with a large enough advance to enable Laila to move to the West Village. Reece knew enough about publishing from Liberty to know how unlikely this scenario was.
There was something she wasn’t seeing. What was it?
Reece tried to move on with her day, but it nagged at her. At last she texted Leo: Maybe just get that detective’s info. Just in case.
After sending it, Reece felt an immediate coil of shame. What was she doing? How had she become so desperate to know what was going on?
Because her friend was gone, and staying connected to the Lawrence family, even if it meant putting herself in the middle of the imbroglio, was a way of staying connected with her. Liberty had always been her voice of reason in moments like this. These had been their respective roles since forever: Reece was the one who convinced Liberty to take chances, and Liberty was the one who pulled Reece back from the brink of questionable decisions. But what now? Was this crazy or justified? The universe, in taking her friend, had thrown Reece’s entire decision-making schema fundamentally out of balance.
It didn’t help that her own brother remained absent, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Laila was lying to her. Really, where Laila got her money and what she did with it was none of her business, she knew. Unless where she got it, and what she did with it, hurt her friend’s family, or tarnished her friend’s legacy. What a cruel thing it was that memories were all that were left of Liberty now; she lived only in the flawed recollections of others—including Reece’s own. The idea of her becoming a lurid side note—another murdered rich girl—was too much to bear. Liberty’s death was not Laila’s story; she did not have the right to capitalize on it.
Reece could barely sleep that night wondering what would become of her best friend’s wayward cousin and whether she and Leo ought to push to find out. As it happened, she wouldn’t have to wait very long.
29
* * *
LAILA HAD figured doing the talk show with Megan Capshaw would have scared the Michaelses into capitulating. But she’d underestimated Elin, though not as deeply, perhaps, as Elin had underestimated her.
Five million: that’s what she’d been promised, but of course, that was by the panicked Cameron, who as it turned out had no control over the family’s money—at least not the larger sums of it. Even the wealthiest people did not just have massive piles of cash stashed in safes, Laila now discovered. The Lawrences weren’t a drug cartel, for heaven’s sake; their money was invested, their power more subtle, more dangerous. And this Laila had learned from dealing with Elin.
Cameron carried himself like such a big man, as though with a wave of his hand, the flourish of his signature, a nod of his head—h
e could make you or destroy you. But it was all a facade; when tested, he’d done nothing but cower behind the proverbial skirts of his powerful mother. In the wake of Liberty’s murder, Laila couldn’t fathom how she’d ever been attracted to this man. Where she’d once seen strength, she now saw only a childish obstinacy.
The night of Liberty’s attack, Laila had arrived at her apartment distraught over Blake. She’d banged on her door but quickly grown impatient and let herself in. She reasoned that even if her cousin wasn’t at home, she could take refuge here for the night; she knew Liberty wouldn’t mind. That much she’d told the police, and that much was true.
But upon entering the apartment, she’d immediately known something was wrong. She’d called Liberty’s name again, and again, there had been no response. But she could hear something, a low keening; an eerie, almost inhuman sound. She walked around the center island that took up much of kitchen. The keening grew louder, clearer. She found Cameron with his knees curled up to his chest in a tight ball, his back against the fridge. It was an absurd sight: a man of his stature trying to disappear into the floor.
The pool of red caught her eye next—still creeping outward a millimeter at a time—and then time had seemed to slow as Laila took in what she was witnessing. Liberty lay at Cameron’s feet completely still and bleeding from her head, her face ghostly pale with the exception of a blooming red welt on her cheekbone, her dark hair matted with blood from a wound on the back of her head.
“Cameron,” Laila had said in a quiet voice, as though trying not to startle a wild animal. He’d looked at her and for a moment had appeared not to recognize her. Laila walked slowly toward him, averting her eyes from where her cousin lay. His breathing was shallow. She would have imagined herself screaming in such a scenario, but somehow it was all too surreal.
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