Chapter 13
Someone applauded downstairs. She didn’t know how much time had passed. Summer lifted her head, expecting Jonah in the doorway, and pain ran from her neck into her shoulder. The phone was still in her hand.
He hadn’t answered. She could see that much, although she had to read each word separately. She typed two letters and stopped.
Summer looked toward the partly open door. Someone passed beyond it, a dark shape crossing the strip of light, but the steps continued toward the bathroom. She rested her head against the cushion, keeping the phone where she would feel it if he answered.
The next thing she knew, her cheek was pressed into the sofa and one arm was numb beneath her. Music was playing. Summer lay still, trying to understand how the room had turned sideways.
Her first effort to sit brought nausea so abruptly that she stopped. She waited with one hand against the cushion, breathing through her mouth until she could try again.
The phone had slipped between her hip and the sofa. She found it by touch and held it close to her face. Nine seventeen. Her message to Jonah said eight forty-two, and the two letters she’d begun afterward still waited below it.
She checked the time again. Thirty-five minutes couldn’t have happened while she was listening for someone in the hall. There was no part of it she could find.
Anger came through the confusion, small but clear. He had said two minutes, and she had asked for him. Kylie had been going to bring him.
Summer pressed the call button. His photograph filled the screen, the one she’d taken before the wedding, blurred where he’d turned away. She waited for him to answer.
The ringing seemed to come from outside her phone. At first she held it farther from her ear, wondering whether something had gone wrong with the sound. Then she heard it again, faint and unmistakable, beyond the sitting-room door.
He was upstairs. Relief made her try to stand too quickly; her knees held, but the floor shifted enough that she sat back down.
“Jonah?” Her voice was thin. She swallowed and tried again. “I’m in here.”
No answer came. The call ended, and his recorded greeting began in her hand.
Summer stood more carefully. Her legs would hold her if she didn’t hurry, and the sofa back gave her something to keep a hand on. She left her bag and wrap where they were.
At the doorway, the corridor seemed brighter than she remembered. Across from her, a little farther along, the bedroom door stood ajar. She called his phone again. The sound came from inside that room.
Summer put her free hand against the wall. Perhaps he had left his jacket there, or someone had brought the phone upstairs. She couldn’t arrange the possibilities into anything that explained why he hadn’t come.
At the bedroom door, she heard a woman’s voice. “Leave it,” the woman said quietly. The phone kept ringing.
Summer pushed the door wider. The dressing-table lamp lit the nearer side of the bed, where Jonah lay with his jacket beside him.
A woman in blue leaned over him. Her skirt spread across his knees; one hand was behind his neck, and her mouth was against his.
For a second Summer looked down at herself. The same blue covered her legs, the same pale folds gathered at her waist. The sight was impossible in a way her tired mind couldn’t work around.
Then the phone stopped ringing. She could hear the fabric move, could see Jonah’s hand against the woman’s bared breast, and nothing about that needed explaining.
“Jonah.” Summer’s voice came out clearly this time. Her hand tightened around the phone.
The woman lifted her head. A silver mask flashed in the lamplight, and beneath it was Kylie’s mouth.
Summer couldn’t move. His hand was still there. She’d asked whether he wanted Kylie and let him hold her while he said no.
Kylie straightened but didn’t move away from him.
Summer waited for Jonah to get up. His jacket lay beside him; he could reach it without even moving away from Kylie. She wanted him to stop touching her. She wanted him to be ashamed.
“I asked you to get him.” She spoke to Kylie because that was the part she could bear to say. “I asked you to bring him to me.”
“I did.” Kylie reached for the mask ties. “He came upstairs. He wanted to be with me.”
Jonah turned toward Summer. His eyes didn’t settle on her at first, and she hated him for making her stand there while he found an expression.
“Summer?” he said. He put a hand against the mattress. “What?—”
“Yes, it’s me,” Summer said. She took one step into the room and had to stop, her free hand against the doorframe.
Kylie pulled the mask off. Her hair was pinned high, with loose pieces around her face, and Summer saw the whole of the imitation at once: the square neckline, the sleeveless dress, the silver mask around the eyes.
“Where did you get that?” she asked. She could barely hear herself over the sound of blood in her ears.
“I bought it.” Kylie looked down at the dress, then back at her. “It’s just a dress, Summer.”
Her own mask was across the corridor. Summer knew where she’d left it, could picture the gray ribbons beside the glass.
This one lay on the bed with white ties, and that small difference seemed to demand more thought than she could spare.
“How long?” she asked. She was looking at Jonah now. “How long has this been going on?”
He shook his head, stopped, and pressed a hand to his temple. “What?” he said. “What are you doing there?—”
Kylie moved toward him. “Don’t get up,” she said. She reached for his shoulder as she pulled the dress up over her chest. The look she gave Summer was a cheshire cat smile.
“Don’t.” Jonah pulled away from her hand. The movement was sudden and frightened, and Summer’s anger faltered for the first time.
He tried to stand. His knees failed to straighten, and he sat back heavily, catching himself against the bed with both hands.
Summer stared at him. He had been dancing with her an hour ago; he had held her steady when she stepped wrong. Now he couldn’t get off a mattress.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. She moved forward before she had decided to, and the room tilted so sharply that she caught the doorframe.
“I don’t know.” Jonah looked toward Kylie, then away so quickly that Summer followed his gaze. “I thought—Summer, I thought she was you. What—? I don’t?—”
She flinched. The explanation was unbearable: she had been lying across the corridor wanting his hand on her back, and he was telling her he couldn’t tell them apart.
“You know me,” she said. “You were with me downstairs. We were dancing.” He was looking straight at her, yet he seemed unable to follow the words.
He tried to answer. His mouth opened, but nothing came; he swallowed and looked between her and Kylie with an effort that frightened her more than anything he could have said.
His jacket lay within reach. He searched for the pocket, missed it, found the phone and let it slip against the cover. Summer watched his fingers try again.
She’d been unable to work her phone too. She’d woken with it wedged beneath her after losing half an hour on the sofa. Jonah missed the phone again, and she forgot the question she’d been about to ask.
“Did you drink anything else?” she asked him. “After the wine?”
Jonah shook his head once. He kept his eyes on her, as if losing sight of her would be dangerous.
Kylie came toward the door. Summer held up her phone between them. “Stay there. Don’t touch me.”
Footsteps stopped behind her. A woman in gold stood in the corridor with a crumpled paper towel in her hand, her expression changing as she looked into the room.
“Do you need help?” she asked. She held a hand near Summer’s elbow. “Can you sit?”
“He can’t get up.” Summer looked from her to Jonah. “I’m not well either.”
“My name’s Ruth.” The woman helped her lower herself onto the carpet, then took out her phone. Summer heard the name of the society, the address, the words two people and difficulty standing. It was a relief so strong it made her want to cry.
Kylie began saying they’d both been drinking a lot. Summer looked up at her, at the smooth blue skirt and the face above it.
“One glass,” she said. She could hear how desperate she sounded. “You brought us one each.”
Ruth called toward the stairs for someone to get Lorraine. Kylie said she would go, but Ruth held up a hand and repeated the request to a man who had appeared at the landing. He turned back downstairs at once.
Jonah leaned sideways to see Summer past the doorframe. “Don’t go,” he said. His voice broke on the second word.
Jonah held the mattress as if letting go would send him to the floor. Summer tried to answer and couldn’t. In June she’d made him leave the bathroom before she cried, had told him she wanted to be alone. She could still remember him outside the door, asking whether he should call her mother.
Summer drew a breath. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m on the floor. I can’t stand either.”
He looked down, understanding at last where she was. His hand left the mattress and reached toward her, then stopped because the distance was too far.
Lorraine arrived with her husband. She knelt beside Summer while Jonah’s father went into the room, stopping between his son and Kylie.
“What happened?” Lorraine asked. She took Summer’s hand.
“Kylie took me to the sitting room.” Summer pointed across the corridor. “I asked her to bring him. Then I woke up, and he was here. With her.”
Jonah’s father looked at Kylie. “You told him bedroom,” he said. “I heard you. You said Summer was waiting in the bedroom.”
Summer stopped trying to explain. She looked through the open door of the sitting room, at the blue sofa beneath the window.
Kylie had put her there. She had watched Summer struggle with the mask, promised to fetch Jonah, and left her where he wouldn’t find her.
“She was upstairs,” Kylie said. Her voice was innocent now. “I was trying to help.”
“You knew where I was.” Summer’s fingers tightened around Lorraine’s. “You were with me.”