Chapter Eleven #2
Elodie throws her head back, laughing in a way I did not expect. I wonder if I could have had a friend like her if my teen years had been normal. Someone to go to the movies with, or drive around, talking about our silly problems, commiserating over crushes and homework and our parents.
But my teen years were spent locked in a legal battle where I was forced to fight for my freedom.
When I met Waylen, he was the only one who had given me a sense of “home” in years; the fact that he wanted to build a life with me endeared him to me more than chocolate or roses or cheesy poetry ever could.
Just try making friends, he’s always saying, in that gentle, coaxing way of his. You deserve them.
Curse Waylen and his ceaseless optimism for people. His happy childhood didn’t make him much of a cynic.
“Well, I hope we can be friends,” Elodie says. “I’m really good at keeping a secret. Or two.”
I’m thankful that she breezes forward without giving me time to respond, because I’m suddenly feeling too awkward to reply. “So, what do you say? A train leaves for NYC every twenty minutes or so. We can be there in a couple of hours.”
Today I need to go to the hospital to speak with Mr. X’s doctors.
And then I need to go to his house and secure his computers and documents so that there’s no trace of them when he comes home.
He will need in-home care, whether he wants to admit it or not.
Already the pressure is overwhelming as I realize I’m carrying the weight of all he does for me.
He’s protected me all my life. We’re all each other has, and now it’s my turn to look after him. So I hide how stressed I am. I don’t want him to see how hard it is to take over his role and pretend everything is fine. I owe him that much.
How will I keep Elodie safe? How will I keep myself safe?
I don’t say any of this, of course. I can’t. I’m really good at keeping a secret, Elodie just said. But I’m no good at sharing them.
“I’m working on something here,” I say. What’s one more little lie, if it’s for a good cause? And anyway, it’s partly true. I do need to figure out a new in with Bertram. “Bertram isn’t buying the book angle, so I’m trying something new.”
Elodie pulls the ponytail holder from my hair.
“Ow!”
“Your hair is one of your best attributes.” She waggles her eyebrows at my breasts. “One of your three best attributes. Don’t be afraid to use what you’ve got.”
“I’m not going to seduce him,” I say. “A little flirting was fun to get us in the door, but if I give him the wrong impression, I could derail the whole thing.”
“Nobody said seduce,” Elodie counters. “Mislead, maybe. Just to keep him on the hook.”
I snatch the ponytail holder from her hand, and she hisses playfully at me, like a cat.
“I’m happily married,” I say. Waylen would be beside himself with glee to hear me admit it.
“Yeah, yeah, me too,” Elodie says, tapping her wedding ring against mine like two champagne glasses. “But seriously, what’s your angle? Maybe I can help.”
If I want to communicate with Elodie, I have to mimic her a bit. Speak her language. Lean into the whole “girl talk” conspiratorial tone she’s set up for us. So when I open the car door, I glance back at her with a wry smile. “A magician never reveals her tricks.”
—
Mr. X is looking much better this morning, after a night of fluids and hospital cafeteria Salisbury steak.
But he grouses that it’s impossible to sleep here, because there’s someone waking him up every half hour for his vitals.
He wants to come home. I tell him that if he hadn’t ignored his illness for so long, maybe it wouldn’t be this bad.
I tell him that I’m looking into home care options and I don’t let him argue.
According to his doctors, remission may still be on the table.
All he needs to do is rest, and I’ll handle everything.
“That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, Margaux,” he tells me as I’m getting ready to leave. “I’m supposed to look after you.”
“We’re supposed to look out for each other,” I tell him. And then I close the door behind me.
In the elevator, I catch my reflection in the metal doors. For a second, I see the twelve-year-old girl I once was, in another elevator in another hospital, all the way in Oregon. I had just been told my parents were gone, and it felt as though the world was ending.
My brother and I are not those kids anymore, I tell myself. And nobody knows what we did.
I stride through the hospital parking garage with new determination. I can handle things while he’s infirm—of course I can. First I’ll settle things at his house.
Then I’ll go to Bertram’s apartment. He’ll try to turn me away, but it doesn’t take much to catch him off guard.
He can’t say no to me. Elodie is the one who pointed it out, the afternoon that we got lunch after meeting with Bertram.
“You don’t come on too strong,” she’d told me.
“Your sex appeal has softened edges, like a soap opera filter.”
I’m still trying to figure out whether that was a backhanded compliment.
I spent last night planning this part out, given that I couldn’t sleep after my argument with Waylen. I’ll take a softer approach—as a romantic prospect. He practically handed me this idea on a silver platter.
I’m drafting up a script in my head. How should I play it?
Demure and sweet? Confident and cocky? Something to match his energy and reach the real Bertram, not the part he’s playing when he has someone to impress.
If I get him vulnerable and soft, he’ll either open up and tell me the truth about Erin’s app and where Annie is, or he’ll show me his true colors. Either way, I’ll have him.
The screeching of tires echoes throughout the garage. I turn my head just in time to see a black Honda speeding toward me. Even the windows are tinted an impenetrable black.
There’s a phenomenon known as the deer-in-the-headlights look. Something is speeding toward you and you know that you’ll die if you don’t get out of its path. And yet, your feet won’t move.
I stand frozen on the gray concrete, smelling the exhaust and listening to the rev of the engine. Move, I hear my own mind screaming at me.
And then, suddenly, there’s a flash of light, movement, and I’m on the ground. Something crashed into me, but it wasn’t the car. I hear the squeal of its tires as it speeds down to a lower level and out of sight.
My heart is hammering in my chest. Hands grab me under the shoulders and hoist me to my feet, and when I look up, I’m staring into the infuriatingly pretty eyes of Bertram Casimir. His brow is furrowed in concern. “Are you all right?”
“Why is it that cars are always chasing me when you’re nearby?”
“Trouble always seems to find me even though I go out of my way to avoid it, and I can see you have the same problem,” he says. He has the sense to look chagrined. “Come on,” he says. “Get in your car. My driver will follow us out and make sure you’re okay.”
“What do you mean ‘us’?” I ask. “You can’t think I’m letting you into my car after—well, everything.”
The rev of an engine on the lower parking level gives me a rapid change of heart.
Whoever is trying to hit me is back, and I have more than a sneaking suspicion that Bertram can offer some insights into this situation.
I barely give him time to buckle his seat belt before I throw the car in reverse and peel out of the spot.
Mr. or Ms. Black Honda Civic is back and going full throttle.
I am fully aware that Mr. X has limited means of tracking me. He’s laid up in a hospital bed with nothing but the Find My app to follow my movements. He can do nothing if I find myself in hot water—which seems inevitable ever since meeting Bertram Casimir.
Bertram must have had me followed, the same way he did when he brought me to that strange picnic.
“Shit,” I mutter, as we approach the tollbooth at the exit. There’s a striped bar between us and the street.
“Go!” Bertram says.
“But—”
He reaches over and jams my knee down so that I’m forced to slam down when I tap the gas pedal, sending us careening forward.
The striped bar snaps like a twig, and I wince at the metal crunch it makes against my paint job.
Waylen is going to kill me, if whoever is pursuing us doesn’t get the privilege first.
I speed out into traffic, incurring the wrath of a dozen angry car horns. I blow through two red lights, relying on a wish and a prayer to avoid a collision. Somehow, Bertram’s driver keeps pace with me, acting as a buffer between us and whoever is chasing us down.
We’re five miles from the hospital before I glance in the rearview mirror to see that nobody else is following us.
I let out a shaky breath. Beside me, Bertram is just a bit too casual about what’s happened, as though being chased by a murderous stranger is a routine thing to happen at ten a.m. on a Tuesday.
He directs me to get on the highway, southbound, in the lane that will eventually take us to New York.
Mr. X will see my location and wonder what the hell is going on. I’ll make up something when he inevitably calls. No need to worry him when he can’t help me anyway.
“Okay, what is happening?” I glance at Bertram, who is turned around in his seat and making sure his driver is still following us.
But if I was expecting an explanation, I had another thing coming.
“I warned you to stay out of my life,” he snaps. “But you couldn’t stop meddling, and now you’ve made trouble for us both!”
“Meddling?” I cry. “I haven’t done anything. I was in the hospital visiting a friend.”
“You know what I mean.” His voice is low, not quite seething. “You’ve been all over the place asking about me. You went to one of the wedding venues I toured. You and that little friend of yours contacted my ex.”
“Elodie is not my friend. And anyway, no, I didn’t—”