by Leigh James
She stood up and started pacing again. “I had an idea,” she said, wringing her hands together. “What if I go back to your mother and pretend to try and blackmail her? What if I tell her I’ve guessed the truth about Danielle? And that I want money to keep quiet—or in exchange for my silence, she lets me stay with you? Sort of like a blackmail quid pro quo?”
“If she wanted to kill you before, this will seal the deal,” I said.
“But now I have something on her,” she said. “And I can tell her I’ve made arrangements for it to go public if something happens to me.”
I thought it through for a minute. “I don’t know if she’ll believe that.”
“I’ll make her believe it. In fact, I’ll do something—write a letter, something like that—and show her that I’ve already made the arrangements. I’ll tell her I’ve addressed letters to all the major Boston news outlets, and that I’ve asked friends to send them for me if something happens. And I’ll tell her the friends don’t include Jenny, so she doesn’t try to hurt her.”
“Are you going to tell my mother you’ve told me all this?” I asked.
“No—not yet. I’ll say I haven’t said a word about my suspicions to you. Let her believe that I’ve spent some time thinking about it on my own, and I’m trying to leverage this for my own gain. That way we keep the element of surprise on our side.”
“I don’t know. My mother is shrewder than I wish she was,” I said.
“Remember—I’m an escort. You do a lot of faking when you’re an escort. Trust me, I can fake something this important.” She looked at me and scowled. “You’re the one who needs to put on an act. You look enraged. And even though you have every right to be, we have to play this just right. Even if it only buys us a little more time.”
Audrey
I didn’t ever want to talk to James’s mother again, but I really didn’t want her to kill me, either. I was taking a risk with the threat of the letters. A calculated risk, I kept telling myself, but I was still petrified.
Celia Preston could do that to you.
“I’m going to the bar,” I told James. I was wearing a conservative black dress so that when she called me a whore, at least I’d be dressed like a lady. I held up an envelope. “This is what I’m going to show her. I drafted another one. It’s in the bedroom. If she strangles me, please mail it to the Tribune.” I smiled at him, trying to make light of the situation, but James glowered at me as I stuck the envelope in my pocketbook.
“It’s not funny,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I don’t want her anywhere near you.”
“You said it yourself—she’s not going to hurt me here. It’s too close. And you can come, too, but you have to stay with Todd and Cole. And no glowering, at least no more than usual. We don’t want your mother to know that I’ve told about Danielle. Okay?”
“Okay for right now,” James said. He grabbed my hand, and I noticed how very sexy he was looking in his T-shirt and a pair of faded cargo shorts with flip-flops. I loved the man in a suit, but I loved him dressed casually, too. He looked as if he were a mere mortal, not a gazillionaire.
I think the point was I loved him.
“I love you,” I said, stopping him before we went outside. I pulled him in for a deep kiss. “All this family intrigue is really messing with our sex schedule,” I said, pretending to pout and keep our moods light. “I thought we were just going to be in bed this whole trip.”
“I wish,” James growled, running his hands over me. “But we have to deal with this. I can’t have my mother even thinking about harming you. We’ll try this tonight, but tomorrow, I’m calling Danielle’s parents and alerting the authorities back home. They’ll have to reopen the case as a criminal investigation.”
I nodded at him. “Okay. Let’s just see what your mother has to say to me right now.”
* * *
As this was a group vacation, and as James’s family liked to drink, everyone in our party was at the bar. The floor-to-ceiling windows had all been opened, so the warm night air spilled in. There was a breathtaking view of the ocean and the moon above it. Someday, I thought, James and I will come back here and have a real vacation. I clasped my fingers around the small, gold necklace that he’d given me before the wedding; I needed it to remind me to be brave. I loved James, and I had to protect him from his mother. Protecting myself from her was secondary—but if something happened to me, if she did something horrible, I knew it would break him.
We had to beat her.
He ordered us drinks, and I gave him a small kiss, leaving him with Todd and Evie and Evie’s sinewy cousins, as I searched the room for his parents. They were seated near the indoor fireplace with several of the older guests.
I took a sip of my martini, hoping it would act as liquid courage, and approached their little group.
“Good evening,” I said, barely able to contain the shakiness in my voice. Celia Preston was wearing an island-appropriate flowered tunic, white linen pants, and orange patent-leather gladiator sandals that probably cost as much as a mid-sized Hyundai.
“Hello, dear,” she said, and I noticed she was drinking a martini, too. So she’d already had some liquid courage.
Not that she seemed to need any.
“May I speak with you for a moment, Mrs. Preston?” I asked politely. “It’s about what we discussed earlier.”
She smiled at me tightly and stood. “Of course,” she said. She motioned for me to follow her to a small table at the corner of the bar, away from everyone else. I was afraid, but I knew she was too dignified and far too premeditated to throw herself across the small glass table at me right here in public. Still, a cold sweat coated my palms, and I felt positively queasy to be so close to her again.
“What is it, Audrey?” Her voice was ice.
“I thought about what you said this afternoon,” I said. “About the Preston luck. I realized something. James had told me about his poor high school girlfriend, Danielle. He was explaining how hard it was for him to get close to a woman after what happened to her. Because that almost ruined him, Mrs. Preston. When Danielle died—I’m sure you know how difficult it was for him.”
“For a senior in high school, he dealt with the tragedy admirably,” she said.
“He said the same thing about you. That you did all the right things, made all the right donations.” I paused for a beat. “The other thing I remember him saying, though, was how inappropriate you were privately. That you told him her death was a blessing in disguise. That you said the ‘Preston luck’ had saved him from a poor match. That really stuck with me,” I said. “And then yesterday, when you mentioned Preston luck to me, I started to piece things together.”
“Audrey, dear, that martini’s gone straight to your head. You’re not making any sense.” She didn’t look vaguely rattled, but I didn’t let myself doubt my gut.
“The thing is, it hasn’t.” I took another big sip, which I desperately needed at this point. “You’ve threatened me several times now. And I finally believe that you mean exactly what you say. So I want to take you up on your offer.
“You offered to pay me. I accept. Except now, I’m dictating the terms. I will accept your payment, Mrs. Preston, in exchange for my silence on this matter. I’ve written several letters to the Boston media outlets—just in case something happens to me, you know? Like a head-on collision with a guardrail? That sort of thing. But if you pay me and you let me follow my natural path toward a happily ever after with your son, I will agree to never speak on the matter. Your secret will be safe with me.”
Celia Preston smiled at me and drained her drink. “You know, dear, I have much more experience with this sort of thing than you do.”
My stomach dropped while I waited to hear what she had to say. I drained my drink, too, wishing desperately that I could wave a waiter over. I already needed another one. I did not have enough courage for this.
“I anticipated something like this from you,” she said. “You might
be smart, but you’re guileless. This was the obvious move, and I was expecting it. So in advance of our little impromptu meeting tonight, I called your mother, who is very much alive. We had an excellent conversation.”
My mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but no sound came out at first. “What?” I asked. “What did you say?”
“I said I called your mother earlier this evening. She and I had a lovely talk. About your family, your brother, your wretched treatment of her. And of course, her desperate living situation and her myriad of financial needs.” She smiled at me. “I explained to her that you were being difficult about parting ways with James.”
“Did you explain that you have a nasty habit of killing the girls James loves? The ones you deem inappropriate?”
Celia gave me another unfazed smile. “First of all, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Second of all, we didn’t get that far. What we did cover, however, was the fact that you recently had your mother removed as a responsible party for your brother at his facility. I don’t think you had the legal right to do that, Audrey. So I told your mother I would have my attorney—who’s excellent, by the way—look into the situation. And that you could be removed as his guardian permanently, and your mother could go back to being solely responsible for making choices for him.”
She beamed at me while I tried to catch my breath. “I also told her I’d be happy to put her on salary in exchange for her silence about your profession, as well as the fact that you were ever anywhere near my son. She agreed with everything. She was very accommodating.”
My heart was frozen, and I couldn’t say a word.
I could feel James watching me from across the room; my face must be white, all the blood draining out of it. “You didn’t do that,” I finally said. It only came out as a mumble.
“Of course I did, dear. And that was just a warm-up. I can stop it all, of course, but you have to do everything that I ask. Including not telling my son a word that I just said.”
She smiled at me in triumph as James stalked over to our table, his mouth set in an angry line. “What’s the matter, Audrey?” he asked, looking at my face.
“Nothing,” I responded, too quick and too sharp.
He turned to his mother. “What did you say to her?”
“She’s quite capable of speaking for herself,” Celia said calmly.
“Nothing. We weren’t talking about anything,” I said immediately.
James reached out his hand and grabbed mine. “Let’s go.”
I looked back at Mrs. Preston as he pulled me away. She was looking at me with an expectant smile on her face. “I’m assuming we’re on the same page, dear,” she said.
All I could manage was a nod.
James
“Let’s stay and have another drink,” Audrey said. Her voice was jagged. All I wanted to do was wrap her in my arms and hold her, but she looked wary. I ordered us drinks, and we went and stood with Todd and Evie.
“What’s Celia’s problem?” Todd asked, watching our mother.
“Nothing,” Audrey said. She took a shaky sip of her martini. “She was just talking to me about graduate school.”
Todd raised his eyebrows at that. “She probably wasn’t that helpful,” he said. “Mother’s education consisted mainly of sorority rushes and mixers.”
“She had some insight,” Audrey said. I watched as she put her game face on, tight and intact. “But enough about that. How does it feel to be newlyweds, you two?” She reached down and twined her fingers through mine, holding on for dear life.
“It’s so great,” Evie said, linking her arms through Todd’s. “We are enjoying every minute this trip. And then it’s back to reality.”
“Are you going back to work after this?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Evie said and laughed, her teeth a blinding white against her new tan. “We’re buying a townhouse, and I’m going to be managing the remodeling, the decorating… and then we’re going to try and start a family.” Evie turned and grinned at Todd, as he squeezed her tiny frame against his.
“That’s wonderful,” Audrey said. Only I would notice this, but I could hear sadness in her voice, maybe mixed with a little envy. “You two will be wonderful parents.”
“And you two will be a wonderful aunt and uncle,” Todd said, beaming at her. “We’re going to start our own family traditions. We can come out to California for Thanksgiving, you two can come to Boston for Christmas. Mother and father are being put on the back burner—they no longer get to boss us around. Evie’s going to organize everything.”
“As long as that’s okay with you, Audrey,” Evie said.
“I’ll happily defer to you, Evie. I’m sure you’re better at all that than me,” Audrey said, and I could still hear that undercurrent of sadness in her voice. Her hand held mine in a death grip, and she drained the rest of her martini in one gulp.
“If you two will excuse us, it’s past Audrey’s bedtime,” I said.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Todd said, looking at his watch. “It’s only nine o’clock.”
“We’re still in that new relationship phase where we have to have sex every couple of hours,” I said. “You old married people probably don’t even remember that, right?” I grinned and swept Audrey up in my arms; I was going to pretend that everything was normal with us, even if it was clear to me that Audrey was about to crack.
“On that note,” Evie said, laughing. “Just remember to get some rest, too! We’re snorkeling the West End reef tomorrow.”
“Good night,” I called jovially. I leaned down to Audrey’s ear. “Smile,” I commanded.
She made her best effort at it. But inside, I could tell her heart was breaking.
* * *
“What happened?” I asked when we were back in the safety of our room. “What on earth did she do to you?”
Audrey was pouring herself a glass of white wine. “I can’t tell you,” she said. Her voice was flat, dead.
I went over and stood next to her. Without asking if I wanted any, she poured me a glass and handed it to me. I had a sip and watched her face, which was drawn and pale underneath the color she’d gotten today on the boat. “You have to tell me. We’re in this together.”
“I can’t be in this anymore,” she said, her voice small and far away. “And your mother said that if I tell you what’s going on, the deal I just made with her is off. And it’s not even a good deal, James. It’s not gonna end well, and I know it.”
She looked defeated. My heart broke for her then, for her and Danielle both, what loving me had done to them. I pulled her to me. “This is on me. I should have known it wasn’t safe…that I wasn’t safe to be with.”
She pulled back and looked at my face. “Stop it. Your mother is a monster. While we’re at it, so is mine. We didn’t make them that way.”
I took her face in my hands. “Please tell me what she said. No matter what, I promise you, I’ll make it better. If she doesn’t want me to know, I’ll pretend I don’t. I’ll deny it till I die. Just tell me.”
“Your mother doesn’t fight fair,” Audrey said. I could see her visibly calming herself down, drinking her wine and taking deep breaths.
“Go on.”
“I told her about the letters. I said that I was going to send them to the Tribune. She didn’t flinch. She wasn’t even surprised,” Audrey said. “She said it was an amateur move. And then she said she’d called my mother, and that she was having her lawyer look into having my mother reinstated as Tommy’s guardian.” She swallowed hard. “She said I didn’t have a legal right to take her off his account at the home in the first place. She’s started paying my mother so that she’ll never go public with the information about me.”
She looked up at me. “I had to promise her that I’d stay away from you, James. And that I wouldn’t even tell you this. She said she’d take Tommy away from me. She’ll make sure that my mother gets total control. And she’ll do it, James. I know she will.”
Even though she hadn’t moved, I could almost feel her pulling away from me in her voice.
“She won’t do that. I won’t let her.” I wrapped my arms around her. “I’m so sorry, Audrey.”
“No. It’s my fault,” she said, her voice flat. “She told me I didn’t belong. She gave me fair warning.”
“She doesn’t get to win,” I said, holding her to me. “And neither does your mother, Audrey.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see a way out of this.”
“There’s always a way out,” I said, my mind churning. “We have tonight to figure out what it is. Tomorrow, we’re back with the nuclear arms.”
“I’d be happy with a BB gun at this point,” she muttered.
“One of my first business rules is, when it gets scary, stay in and push. That’s not the time to back off. And also—it’s okay to lie. There’s something to be said for saying one thing and doing another.”
“Ethical behavior is pretty much a non-issue for me at this point,” Audrey said, watching my face. “What’re you thinking?”
“I’m thinking,” I said, “that we fuck with her a little.”
Audrey looked at me expectantly, like that wasn’t good enough.
“Or a lot, babe.”
* * *
Later, as she slept in my arms, I made plans. I ran my fingers up and down her smooth skin, relishing the feel of her. I loved her. She was mine; nothing my mother could do or say was going to change that. I thought of Danielle, of what had happened. I would never forgive my parents for what they’d done to her. My heart was closed against them forever.
To Danielle, whose life was taken too early, I sent out silent love and prayers that she’d gone on to a better place and that maybe she could forgive me. As I sat there in the dark, I tried to forgive myself. I had no idea who my parents were when I was eighteen. I had an inkling… but I hadn’t realized the depths they would sink to in order to protect their precious, useless ideals.