5. Alison #3
“Not now.” Fear flashes across her face. And there she is. The woman who called Cassandra. The woman who handed her son to someone she trusted and asked her not to tell her husband.
Mom picks up the dish towel. “You need to be careful.”
“I am.”
“I mean with him.” She twists the towel between her hands. “If you can avoid being alone with him…” She doesn’t finish.
“You don’t want me alone with Victor?”
Her eyes snap to mine. “Keep your voice down.”
“Sorry.”
She looks toward the hallway again. “I didn’t say that.”
“You kind of did.”
“Ally.” She’s scared. Not angry. Terrified.
I soften my voice. “Okay.”
Mom closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them, they’re wet. “Just be good.”
The words hit wrong. They’ve always hit wrong. Be good. Behave. Do what Dad says. Don’t cause trouble. She sees something in my face — because her hand suddenly closes around mine. “Ally.” I look at her. She squeezes once. “Be good.”
This time I hear it differently. Not obedient. Careful. My heart starts beating harder. “Okay.”
Her fingers loosen. “Do you understand?”
I nod. “I think so.”
Mom looks toward the study. “Good.”
“Mom, Monday—“
“No.” Immediate. Quiet. She drops my hand. “Not here.”
My breath catches. Not don’t talk about it. Not nothing happened. Not here. I stare at her. Mom picks up another plate. “Your father doesn’t need to know every time I ask someone for help.” It’s the closest she comes to saying it.
I keep my voice low. “Why Cassandra?”
Her hands stop again. For a moment, I don’t think she’ll answer. Then she whispers, “Because I knew she’d take care of him.” Tobias.
“Why couldn’t he stay here?”
Her face changes. Footsteps sound in the hall. Mom turns the faucet on so fast water splashes against the sink.
Dad appears in the doorway. “What are you two whispering about?” My heart stops.
Mom doesn’t turn around. “Dessert.”
Dad looks at me. I shrug. “She thinks Tobias had too much cake.”
“He did.” Dad seems satisfied. “Victor’s leaving.”
Mom nods. “I’ll come say goodnight.”
Dad disappears. Neither of us moves until his footsteps fade. Then Mom grips the counter. “Don’t ask me again.” Her voice shakes. “Not here.”
I nod. “Okay.”
She takes a breath. Another. By the time she turns around, her face is composed again. “Come say goodbye.”
I follow her. Victor is waiting in the foyer with his coat, Dad beside him. Victor smiles when he sees me. “There she is.”
I stop beside Mom. Victor steps closer. Too close. He takes my hand, and I let him. “Sunday.” Not a question.
I smile. “Sunday.”
He lifts my hand like he might kiss it, and my stomach turns. Then Mom moves beside me. Barely. Just enough that her shoulder touches mine. Victor seems to change his mind. He squeezes my fingers instead. “I’ll call your father with the time.” Of course he will. Not me. My father.
“Goodnight, Alison.”
“Goodnight.”
He leaves. Dad closes the door. Mom walks away before he can look at her, and I stand there with my hands at my sides and the ghost of Victor’s fingers still wrapped around mine.
I lie in bed and repeat the dinner until I can hear it exactly. Hollis. Vane. Zurich. Bellamy. Mercer. Foundation. Pennington. Lucian. Hartley. Ashford. London. Separate account. Middleburg. Palm Beach.
I go through it again. Then again. I add Dad’s questions about Ryan.
Victor’s hand. Sunday. Thirteen. I add Mom.
I think it’s weird. I don’t like it. If you can avoid being alone with him.
Be good. Do you understand? Not here. And Monday.
Cassandra. Dad still doesn’t know. Something is happening with Mom. I just don’t know what yet.
I send Ryan one message.
Dinner was bad. I heard a lot. Need to tell you in person.
Ryan: safe?
yes
Ryan: tobias?
asleep. safe.
A pause. Then:
Ryan: tremblay touch you?
I stare at the screen. Of course that’s his question.
nothing bad.
Ryan: ally
hand on my back. held my hand. that’s it.
Longer pause.
Ryan: i fucking hate him
My eyes burn.
me too
Ryan: you have to see him again?
sunday
Three dots. Disappear. Come back. Disappear again. I can practically hear him swearing. Finally:
Ryan: we’ll talk tomorrow
Ryan: love you
I stare at that one longer.
love you too
I delete the conversation.
The next afternoon, I leave Edgewood with Penny. Ryan leaves with Kaiden, Danny, Xander, and Iz. Nobody looking at the parking lot would have any reason to connect us.
Penny drops me at a bookstore across town twenty-five minutes later, tells me she’s going to get coffee, and drives away. I browse for almost ten minutes before Ryan appears.
He doesn’t come straight to me. He moves through two aisles first. Checks the front. Waits for an older couple to pass. Then he steps into the aisle, and his eyes go over me immediately, head to foot, the way they always do — like he’s counting me to make sure all of me came back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Tobias?”
“Fine.”
“Your mom?”
I blow out a breath. “I don’t know.”
His expression sharpens. “What happened?”
“A lot. Let me start with dinner.”
Ryan pulls his phone out, and I look at it. “Notes?”
“Unless you’ve got a better idea.”
“I remembered everything.”
“I know.” Something in the way he says it makes me look at him. No teasing. No surprise. Just certainty. He knows I did. “Okay,” he says. “Start at the beginning.”
So I do. Victor’s arrival. The house in Middleburg. New York. Palm Beach. London. Ryan types as I talk.
“Zurich next month,” I say. “Someone named Hollis is waiting for confirmation from Vane.”
“Hollis. Vane.”
“Then there was Bellamy.”
“What about him?”
“Dad asked what happens if Bellamy doesn’t fall in line. Victor said he would.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Dad said Victor said the same thing about Mercer.”
Ryan’s fingers stop. “Mercer.”
“Victor said Mercer was different. That he required more encouragement.”
Ryan looks up. “Exact words?”
“Exact.” He types again. “Then they talked about money. Dad said not through the foundation.”
“What foundation?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Anything about where the money was coming from?”
“Victor said the usual.”
Ryan’s eyes lift again. “The usual?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Keep going.”
“Dad said after Pennington he wasn’t having anything trace back there.”
Ryan goes very still. “Pennington.”
“Yeah.”
“What else?”
“Victor said Pennington was careless. Dad said Lucian was too. Victor called Lucian arrogant. Hartley stupid.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Then Dad said that’s a lot of people around Edgewood suddenly making mistakes.”
Ryan’s jaw tightens. “He’s connecting it.”
“He sees a pattern.” His eyes flick to mine, and I lift my eyebrows before he can spiral.
He exhales. “Right. Pattern. Not proof.”
“Thank you. Don’t get smug.”
“Too late.” His mouth twitches, then flattens again. “What did he say about us?”
“The five of you keep showing up around families when things fall apart.”
“That’s not entirely inaccurate.”
“No. He’s worried about you specifically.”
Ryan doesn’t look surprised. “Why?”
“Walter’s connections. You’re smart. You’re curious. You dig into things that don’t concern you.”
“Aw. He noticed.”
“Ryan.”
“What?”
“This isn’t cute.”
“I know.” The smile disappears. “What did you tell them?”
“That you’re an asshole.”
His head snaps up. “Excuse me?”
“And that I don’t spend time with you.”
“Less offensive.”
“Dad told Victor you barely acknowledge me.”
That shuts him up. For a second, the bookstore disappears and Wednesday morning sits between us instead. Ryan’s expression changes. “Ally—“
“I know.”
“Still.” He looks like he wants to touch me. He doesn’t. Not here. “What else?”
I tell him about Victor. His hand on my back. Holding mine at dinner. Marriage. The way he talks about where I’ll live and what I’ll do like I’m already his. When I tell Ryan that Victor called my writing a hobby, his face twists.
“He can go fuck himself.”
“I thought you’d like that.” I take a breath, because this is the part I’ve been dreading telling him. “There’s something else. He said—“ My voice catches, and I make myself keep going. “He said he and my dad have understood each other about me since I was thirteen.”
Ryan’s hands go completely still over the phone. “Thirteen.”
“Dad didn’t correct him.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. A muscle works in his jaw, and when he speaks his voice has dropped somewhere low and terrible. “You were thirteen. He looked at a thirteen-year-old and made an arrangement.”
“I know, Ryan.”
“And then he sat at a dinner table and called it patience.” His knuckles have gone white around the phone. “Like you’re something he put in a fucking cellar.”
I flinch, because that’s exactly the word Victor used — laid down — like a wine, and Ryan sees it land, and his whole face goes to war with itself. He wants to reach for me. He can’t. Not here.
He drags a hand down his mouth instead. “I’m going to be sick. Five years.” He says it to himself. “He’s been waiting five years.”
“He said waiting like it was a gift he was giving me.” I hear how thin my voice has gone and hate it. “Like I should be grateful he didn’t just take me at thirteen.”
“Ally.” He steps closer than he should, closer than is safe in a public aisle, and lowers his voice until it’s only for me.
“You listen to me. That arrangement is not a fact about you. It’s a fact about them.
You were a kid. You did nothing. You are nothing that either of those men decided you were. ” His eyes hold mine. “You hear me?”
My throat aches. “Yeah.”
“Say it back.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Good.” He exhales, slow, forcing his shoulders down. “I hate that you were alone in that room while he said it.”
“I wasn’t completely alone.” I glance at him. “My mom told him I wasn’t difficult. Out loud. To his face, basically.”
Something shifts in Ryan’s expression. “She did?”
“So quietly I don’t think Victor even understood what she’d done. But she did it.”
He nods slowly, filing it, and I watch him make himself set the thirteen thing down — not let go of it, he’ll never let go of it, just set it down long enough to keep working. “Okay,” he says quietly. “And Sunday?”
“Lunch.”
“Alone?”