by Sara Shepard
The moon had risen higher in the sky. Aster closed her eyes and pulled Steven closer to her, letting the anger fuel her movements in place of desire. His mouth was hot, and tasted like whiskey and lime. At one point she thought she smelled a cigar, but then the wind shifted and it was gone.
She didn’t hear her father arrive until he was standing almost directly over her.
Steven scrambled away, yanking up his pants. Mason stood there like a wooden block, solid and firm, his arms at his sides. His eyes blazed. His body shook with rage.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he growled at Aster.
She sat up, pulling her dress around her and crossing her arms over her chest, feeling steadier than she had in a long time. “If you can screw my friend,” she said in a strong voice, “then I can screw yours.”
Beep.
Aster turned her head back to her computer screen. The Blessed and the Cursed had refreshed, a new post appearing above the pictures of Poppy and Natasha. It was a picture of her, she realized, crying as she entered the bathroom at the Time Warner Center. Her eyes were closed, her makeup smeared as tears ran down her cheeks.
“Cry Me a River,” read the headline.
Her heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t noticed anyone in the hallway with her after the interview. How had the site gotten this picture?
She shuddered and closed the window, then turned and headed for the elevator bank. Whatever her father had to say couldn’t be any scarier than this.
ASTER RODE UP two floors to where the execs and lawyers’ offices were. She turned right, toward the big corner office. “Hello?” she called out softly, poking her head inside.
Her father’s office was empty, his chair turned to face the window. Aster walked in and inspected his desk. There was no note saying he’d be back in a moment. She felt a familiar dart of annoyance. This was so like him—calling her down here, only to make her wait.
A web page with the Chase bank logo was on the computer screen. Aster started to glance away—then paused when she saw how many zeros were there. It was the confirmation receipt for a liquidation of company stock: “100,000 shares,” it read. “In the amount of $10 million.” Aster’s mouth made a small O, and she leaned in a little closer. The transaction was from five years ago. She wondered why her father was looking at it now, and what it was for. Why had Mason wanted to unload so much stock all at once?
“Aster.”
Her father stood in the doorway. “Oh, hey,” Aster said, scuttling back to the couch and sitting down.
Another figure stepped out from behind him—Jonathan York, her once-uncle. He was wearing a well-cut gray suit and shiny loafers, and a large gold watch on his left wrist. There was a disconcertingly smug smile on his face.
“Oh, hi, Jonathan,” Aster said, giving him a small wave. Back when he was officially a Saybrook, she’d never known how to deal with him. The family was full of strong personalities, but there was something about him—his silence, his hulking shoulders, his penetrating stare—that put her on edge. Rumor had it that he and her aunt Grace divorced because he was too controlling.
“Jonathan was just leaving.” Mason turned to shake his hand. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” And then, offering a stiff nod, Jonathan was gone.
Mason slipped into his office and shut the door. “What was he doing here?” Aster asked.
“Oh, making trouble as usual,” Mason said quickly, breezing past her to his desk. He spun his chair back around and sat. When he glanced at his computer screen, a guarded look flashed across his face, and he looked carefully at Aster. She kept her face blank. Then Mason reached over and shut the monitor off.
“So.” Mason opened a Diet Coke. He took a long swig and swallowed audibly. “You did a good job on CNN.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did. Deanna and I are both pleased. As is your grandmother. We appreciate you doing it at the last moment.”
Aster tugged at her collar, not used to praise. “No problem,” she said in a small voice.
Mason drummed his fingers on the desk. “I also wanted to thank you for your good idea, about the engagement ring for Ko and Faun.”
Aster frowned. “Pardon?”
“Making a ring like one Faun’s mother used to have. Elizabeth told me about it this morning.”
“Elizabeth used that idea? She told me it was stupid.”
Mason coughed. “Well, she presented it to me earlier today. She tried to take the credit too, but Mitch Erikson was here, working on my computer, and he piped up that it had been your thought all along. I asked Elizabeth if it was true, and she admitted that it was.”
Elizabeth had been upstaged? Mitch had stood up for her to her father? Aster smiled at the thought.
Mason leaned forward, his features softening. “I’d like for you to work more closely with clients. Apparently your background makes you a perfect consultant for some of their wants and needs. Maybe the last few years haven’t been a waste after all.”
Aster stared at him. “Are you promoting me because of my partying?”
Mason looked pained. “I’d rather not put it that way.”
“I just . . . I didn’t expect it.”
“You’re welcome,” Mason said.
They stared at each other in silence. Aster hated it, but she missed her father. Missed having him cheer her on, believe in her, encourage her. “Aster, I’m your biggest fan,” he always used to say. “Don’t ever forget that.”
But then she thought of him embracing Danielle, sleeping with her best friend and thinking he could hide it from her, and the window inside her that had opened a crack slammed shut again.
She cleared her throat. “I have a question.” Mason nodded, and Aster forged ahead. “Do you know if Steven Barnett had a serious girlfriend before he died?”
Mason flinched. His fingers released the mouse. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I mean, Elizabeth’s my boss,” Aster said quickly. She stared at him pointedly, waiting for a reaction. “Anyway, she’s made reference to it,” Aster went on. “I was just wondering.”
“I try not to listen to staff gossip,” Mason said brusquely. “Steven did a lot of things I didn’t approve of.”
“But didn’t Papa Alfred pick him right out of business school? He always gave Steven so much credit for why the business was so successful.”
“Yes, well.” Mason restacked the papers on the side of his desk. “Not all of us thought as highly of Steven as your grandfather did.”
Aster didn’t dare push the subject further. But since the mood was already altered, she figured she might as well keep going. “Did Poppy steal jewelry?”
Mason drew back angrily. “Where did you hear that?” he demanded. “Was it on that site?”
“No. Is it true?”
Mason’s fingers curled into a fist so tight that veins stuck out on the back of his hand. He breathed heavily for a few beats, his eyes downcast. “It’s been taken care of.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means, stop asking about it.”
“Why would Poppy do something like that? Does Foley know about this?”
Mason shot up from his desk. Aster pressed her spine into the cushion and made a small yelp. “What did I just tell you?” he demanded.
“I’m sorry.” Aster breathed shakily. “I just . . .”
“I told you to stop asking about it!” Mason bellowed.
“Okay,” Aster whispered, curling into herself.
Mason’s nostrils flared. It looked as if he was going to say something else, but he was interrupted by the phone on his desk. “I need to take this,” he said, giving a little wave of his hand as if to say, You’re dismissed.
Aster stood and hurried toward the door, slamming it hard behind her.
18
On Friday, Rowan paused outside Scarpetta in the Meatpacking District. It used to be one of Poppy’s favorite restaurants. Before Poppy marrie
d James, she and Rowan used to meet here after work and drink red wine that men at the bar would invariably buy them. “Let ’em pay,” Poppy always said, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder. “It makes them feel needed—and it’s a small price to pay to talk to someone as awesome as you are, Ro.” Now, just seeing the awning filled Rowan with nostalgia and sadness.
But that emotion was swept away quickly as she felt someone’s gaze boring into her back. She turned, and two men, several years younger, turned their heads quickly, pretending they hadn’t been staring. The light changed, and they crossed the street. “Sex tape,” Rowan heard one of them say.
She sighed. All of New York City now knew what she was like during sex. Deanna and the family’s personal lawyers had sent multiple threatening e-mails to the Blessed and the Cursed, and the post had finally been taken down. But they still didn’t know who was running the fucking site—or who was tipping it off.
The video was like a big X on her soul. Her brothers had called her about it, asking awkward, worried questions. Her mother, the feminist, had driven into the city to see Rowan. Over chickpea fries and quinoa salad at Peacefood Cafe, Leona had lectured Rowan about how she was thirty-two years old now and should be a little more careful about her romantic entanglements—not to mention that if she hadn’t been working for the family company, she could have been fired. Even James had been freaked out, though Rowan had assured him again and again that no one knew it was him. The whole situation was mortifying.
Her phone rang, the volume so low Rowan almost didn’t hear it over the sounds of Fourteenth Street traffic. Rowan checked the screen and saw a 212 number. When she answered, a young woman’s voice said, “Rowan Saybrook? This is Shoshanna Aaron. I’m returning your call.”
“Hi,” Rowan said emphatically, cupping her hands around the phone. “Thank you so much for speaking to me.”
A bus passed, drowning out Rowan’s voice for a moment, but then she launched into the speech she’d rehearsed. “I won’t take up much of your time. I’m the legal counsel at Saybrook’s, and it’s come to my attention that you might have pertinent information about Poppy.”
Papers rustled on the other end. “What do you mean?”
Rowan pictured Poppy’s old assistant. Long, dark hair, olive skin, a pretty face, a diamond-encrusted Chopard watch surely paid for by her father and not her assistant’s salary. She had fit in well in the jewelry culture, always traveling with a gaggle of girls to lunch or happy hour.
“I spoke to Danielle Gilchrist recently, and she told me you noticed Poppy acting strangely before you left for De Beers.”
There was a long pause. “I’m really sorry about Poppy,” Shoshanna started. “I feel so guilty saying anything bad about her, you know?”
“I know,” Rowan said quickly. “This isn’t going on the record, either. I’m just curious about what exactly happened.”
“Well, she was acting weird,” Shoshanna said uneasily. “She asked me to get off a lot of calls. She scheduled appointments but didn’t describe who they were with or where she was going. It made it hard to explain to Mason and other executives why she couldn’t make meetings when I didn’t know where she actually was. But what really made me wonder was the suite she booked at the Mandarin.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got a call from the hotel confirming Poppy’s reservation for one of their suites on a Wednesday. It wasn’t on her calendar, so I thought it was a mistake. I was telling them to cancel it when Poppy broke in on the other line. ‘Shoshanna, I’ve got it,’ she said, and then told the reservations person that she would use her private card.” Shoshanna coughed awkwardly. “Then I got off the line. But it seemed kind of . . . clear, you know?”
Rowan shut her eyes. “But you never caught a name? Never . . . saw anyone?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” A phone rang on Shoshanna’s end. “Which means it might not be anything. I mean, I’m sure it’s not.” She swallowed audibly. “Poppy was a really good boss. I don’t want you to think I’d ever, I don’t know—sell this information.”
“Of course not,” Rowan said, though she hadn’t even considered that.
She thanked Shoshanna, then hung up and walked into the restaurant in a daze. There it was, probably as close as she was going to get to proof that Poppy wasn’t who Rowan had understood her to be. But as painful as Shoshanna’s revelation was, it was also freeing. Staying away from James was being loyal to a ghost who hadn’t been loyal to James. Poppy had moved on and found love elsewhere, and now maybe James and Rowan could too.
Corinne waved to her from a back table, and Rowan nodded and wove through the dining room to get to her. An iPad loaded with pictures sat in front of her cousin; Corinne was going through photographs to display at her wedding. When Corinne saw Rowan’s expression, she cocked her head. “Did something happen?”
Rowan explained her conversation with Shoshanna. “So maybe Poppy and whoever the guy was had been meeting at a suite at the Mandarin,” she concluded.
“Huh,” Corinne said softly, though she didn’t look like she quite believed it. “I wonder who it could be.”
“No idea,” Rowan said.
“Are you going to tell James?”
“I already told him what Danielle said.” Rowan ran her finger along a groove on the wooden table. She’d finally mentioned her conversation with Danielle when she slept over at his place last night. “Well, that proves it, then,” he’d said thickly.
James wanted to put it behind them; let sleeping dogs lie, he’d said. They had each other now. But Rowan couldn’t let it go. What if the affair had something to do with Poppy’s death?
A waitress set down two glasses of Corinne and Rowan’s favorite malbec on the table, breaking Rowan from her thoughts. “So. How’s the picture selection coming?”
“Eh,” Corinne said miserably, flipping through a few images.
“What about this one?” Rowan pointed at a photograph of Corinne and Dixon a few years after they’d first met at Yale. They were at a Kentucky Derby party—Corinne was wearing an oversize hat, and Dixon was drinking from a silver cup. “It’s really cute,” Rowan added.
Corinne shook her head. “I look terrible in that one.”
She scrolled through another perfectly good photo, nixing it too. Then another. Finally she let out a long sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. Rowan thought about what Corinne had confessed at the beach estate.
Rowan laid her hands on top of the iPad and gave her cousin a long, serious look. “Honey. What are you going to do?”
Corinne heaved a sigh and then dropped her forehead to the table. The part in her hair was a stark line splitting her head in two. “I’m going to get married,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Do you want to get married?”
“Of course.”
“People will forgive you if you don’t, you know.”
Corinne looked up, her mouth twisting. “What do you think Poppy would do?”
Rowan traced her finger around the top of the wineglass. “I honestly don’t know,” she said in a faraway voice. “I feel like she’s a stranger these days.”
“I know.” Corinne swallowed hard. “First we lose Poppy . . . and then we lose who we thought Poppy was. I feel like I have to revise my whole history with her.” A tortured look crossed her face, but then she sighed and seemed to let it go. She glanced down at the iPad again and smiled sadly at something on the screen. “Aw.”
Rowan looked down too. The next photo was of James. He stood alone on the patio at Meriweather, wearing a seersucker blazer. Rowan remembered that blazer—shortly after he’d booked the house that summer, he’d arrived at her apartment in the city with a Brooks Brothers bag. “Do people really dress like this up there? Or am I going to look like a douche?”
Rowan had snorted. “You’re asking me for style advice?”
James snickered. “Good point, Saybrook. You’re as hopeless as I am.” But he’d shot her
a twinkly-eyed look as if to say, We’re in this together.
She grabbed her phone from her purse and checked the screen. She’d sent James an I-miss-you text earlier, but he hadn’t responded. Skylar had a parent-teacher conference tonight, and she wanted to hear how he was doing.
“You know, I really am happy for you,” Corinne murmured softly.
Rowan looked up and touched her cousin’s hand. “Thank you. But you don’t have to be. I know it’s strange.”
Corinne shrugged. “In the grand scheme of things, after everything else we’ve learned, it’s nothing.” She touched the stem of her wineglass. “Have there been any more posts about . . . the video online?”
Rowan shook her head. “No, but I still don’t understand who could have gotten it off my computer,” she said worriedly.
Corinne nodded. “Do you think it was someone at work?”
“Maybe,” Rowan said. “But . . .” Then she trailed off, noticing something outside. A man had walked by who looked exactly like James. Same height, same build, same color of hair. Only Skylar’s school was way uptown. She must have been mistaken.
But then she caught sight of him again in the windows along the west wall of the building. It was definitely James. His head was down, and he was typing something into his phone. On instinct Rowan looked at her own phone, anticipating a text, but one didn’t arrive.
“What is it?” Corinne asked, noticing that Rowan had hitched forward to get a better view.
James had stopped and was staring at something across the street. He took a few steps forward, past where the window reached, seemingly toward someone. A smile spread across his face. Rowan’s skin prickled. She recognized that smile.
She rose from the table, bumping her knee against the bottom. “Where are you going?” Corinne cried out.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” Rowan called over her shoulder. She would just walk out the door and see who it was. For all she knew, it was Skylar; maybe she’d misunderstood where he was tonight.