36 Gemma
Gemma
Startled awake by a knock at the door, Gemma refused to move a single muscle. Grant’s breathing was soft and even next to her. Maybe she had imagined it.
Please let me have imagined it.
She couldn’t take another tragedy.
The knock sounded again. Then, “Gemma! It’s me, Lily. Are you up?”
For a long moment, Gemma still didn’t move.
She had avoided being alone with Lily all night.
She was still so angry at her, and at herself, that she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say to her oldest friend, and she didn’t want to risk saying the wrong thing.
Everyone had lost enough this weekend. Gemma wasn’t ready to write off Lily just yet.
Not when everything was so heightened and fraught.
“Gemma, please. I need your help with something.”
Of course she did. And of course this is what got Gemma out of bed. Old habits died hard, it seemed. Quietly, Gemma tiptoed to the door and cracked it open, and a flashlight blinded her. Grant gave a snort and rolled over.
“Oh, crap, sorry.” Lily clicked the light over to a dimmer setting as Gemma tried to blink the purple shadows from her eyes.
Lily was in the hall alone, wearing a pair of white sweatpants and a cropped gray T-shirt. Where she’d gotten the change of clothes, Gemma didn’t know or care. The fact that she was bouncing on her bare toes was a bit disturbing.
“I thought we were supposed to stay with our partners,” Gemma said by way of greeting.
“Josh passed out on the floor in the billiards room, so I made him go up to bed, but it’s not like I’m really going to sleep in the same room as him,” Lily said, waving her free hand. “He needs time to himself. And besides, if you’re with me, I’ll be paired up.”
“But Josh and Grant won’t be,” Gemma pointed out.
Lily rolled her eyes slightly. “Okay, but are you really worried about Grant?”
As if on cue, Grant let out a small, contented sort of sigh and tugged the blankets closer around him. Gemma and Lily both stifled laughs.
“Okay, I guess not.” Gemma slipped into the hall. “So what’re we doing? And please remember that the last thing you asked me to do didn’t go all that well.”
Lily laced her fingers together in front of her chest, holding on to the flashlight with one thumb hooked around its wand, and nodded.
She looked like a little girl about to confess that she’d broken her brother’s bike or something.
“I know. I know. I’m so sorry, Gem. I really am. I obviously had no idea—”
“Don’t start crying,” Gemma said. “If you start crying, I’m gonna start crying, and then we’re never going to do whatever it is you need to do.”
Lily sucked in a long, broken, bolstering breath. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just want you to know I’m truly sorry for everything you’ve been through the last two days, and I will find a way to make it up to you.”
“Thank you,” Gemma said. “Now, what’s the mission?”
Lily turned and began walking down the hall, back toward the main stairway.
“What is up with these photographs?” she asked, gesturing broadly at the artwork in the hallway.
“Doesn’t she know this is a beach house?
Who wants to look at this depressing crap when they’re trying to relax?
Is something fundamentally wrong with her? ”
“Yeah, it’s a little off putting,” Gemma agreed, wrinkling her nose at an empty rocking chair on a jetty.
“And everything is so sharp and dark and ugh. I spent so much time decorating this place. What a waste.”
“Your artwork is still up in the guesthouse, you know.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Lily said.
“Are you okay?” Gemma asked. There was something a bit manic about the way Lily was behaving. Like she was overly caffeinated and wired. But at least she wasn’t fully focused on Lincoln. Maybe it was good for her to be distracted from her sadness for a bit.
“No, I’m not okay! There is literally nothing about any of this that is okay!
” They had reached the top of the stairs, and Lily turned to whisper in Gemma’s face.
Her breath smelled of vodka and coffee. Espresso martinis?
Gemma held herself as still as possible to keep from wincing.
“We should have power, you know. There are three generators. But you know what Magdelena told me? That they disconnected all of them for the construction! What construction, you ask? She’s building a ballroom!
She took out my pool and is building a ballroom.
Like she thinks she’s Cinderella or something! ”
Gemma didn’t tell Lily that she was very aware of the construction because there was currently a dead body back there. It didn’t feel like the time to discuss Trevor and whether or not his blood was on their hands.
Lily wavered on her feet, and Gemma’s heart leaped to her throat. She grabbed her friend by both arms before she could fall backward down the stairs.
“And did you know that she turned my painting studio into a barre studio?” she whispered, completely unfazed by the fact that she’d nearly crashed down the staircase.
Gemma took a deep cleansing breath and gave a nod. “I did hear something about that.”
She really hoped Lily was not about to suggest they burn the barre studio to the ground.
“Well, I asked her, very calmly,” Lily assured Gemma, “what happened to all my paintings, and she said, and I quote, ‘I have no idea. Lincoln dealt with all that.’ As if Lincoln just threw them in a dumpster somewhere.”
“Would he really do that?” Gemma asked, appalled.
“Never,” Lily assured her. “They’re in this house somewhere, and we’re gonna find them.”
Instantly, a memory of stored paintings flashed in Gemma’s mind. Her hand shot out to stop Lily before she could turn and descend to the great room. “Wait! I know where they are.”
“You do?” Lily’s eyes went wide like it was Christmas morning.
“Follow me.”
Lily did as she was told, trailing Gemma back down the hall and up the stairs to the third floor.
She paused for a second outside the room that had been Juliet’s, touching the door almost reverently.
Gemma waited for her friend to come out of whatever trance she was in, then turned and opened a couple of doors.
“Did you have, like, a craft room or something?” she asked Lily.
“Oh yeah. My scrapbooking phase.” Lily walked confidently down the hall in the opposite direction and flung open the door. Inside were dozens of stacked canvases and framed paintings, some wrapped in brown packing paper. “Omigod! They are here!”
Lily walked into the room and started to flip through the paintings, her face going gooey with emotion. “These have my address on them in Lincoln’s handwriting,” she said, lifting one of the wrapped paintings. “He was sending them all to me.”
“Wow,” Gemma said, leaning sideways against the doorjamb. “That was big of him, doing it himself.”
Lily nodded and squeezed her eyes closed, tears leaking from the corners.
“Thank you for finding them,” she said. “I swear I forgot this room even existed.”
Imagine having the kind of wealth where you could forget an entire room in your second house.
“Thank you for getting us invited on this trip,” Gemma replied, pushing her hands into the pockets on her cotton pajama pants. “I mean, obviously I’d rather be anywhere but here right now, but I appreciate you talking to Lincoln about Grant.”
Lily carefully replaced the painting on the floor and shot Gemma a guilty look. “I never did. Talk to him about Grant, I mean.”
Gemma blinked. “What do you mean? You must have. You said you did when I called to thank you. Why else would we be here?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. When you told me Lincoln had invited you guys, I was as surprised as you are right now,” Lily said, crossing her arms over her chest and lifting her shoulders.
“All I did was mention Grant to Lincoln, and he went off about how annoying and needy he is, so I figured it was best not to push it.”
Gemma’s jaw dropped, and Lily’s hand slapped over her mouth.
“I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. And an idiot.” Lily stepped closer to Gemma. “Please forget I said that.”
“Wait, has he always felt that way?” Gemma asked.
“If he did, he never told me,” Lily replied.
“But maybe now that we’re divorced, he decided all bets were off when it came to my friends?
I don’t know. For what it’s worth, I’ve always loved Grant.
” She reached out and gripped Gemma’s forearm.
“And I did defend him to Lincoln. But I can’t imagine I did enough to make him suddenly consider offering Grant a job. ”
Gemma’s head felt fuzzy. “I don’t understand. If you never talked to him, why did you pretend like you did? Why did you make me deliver the notes as a thank-you?”
Lily looked chagrined. “Yeah, that was kind of a dick move. Sorry.”
There was a split second, really just a blink, in which Gemma felt like she could actually punch Lily. Her right hand even curled into a fist. But instead, she turned away and breathed. She was not a violent person, and now was not the time to turn into one.
But the very fact that Lily could use her like this. That she could think a blasé apology like that was enough . . . What kind of friendship was this?
Focus on Grant, Gemma told herself as she breathed. If Lily never talked to Lincoln, how did Grant score this invite?
She thought back, taking herself through the timeline.
A couple of months ago, Gemma had asked Lily to talk to Lincoln, and Lily had promised that she would do it the next day.
When he hadn’t heard anything immediately, she’d suggested Grant give Lincoln a call, thinking that either (A) he was waiting for Grant to call him or (B) he’d spaced with everything else going on, and all he needed was a little nudge.
Then a week or so had gone by, and Grant had come to her all excited, saying they’d been invited to Hamptons week.
“I heard through the grapevine that he’s not happy with the way his current team is handling a new international deal, so maybe he wants to talk about that,” Grant had told her.
Maybe that was the explanation. Maybe Lincoln had decided that Grant’s expertise in international law and dealmaking trumped his dislike of her husband?
But no. There were hundreds of other people with the same expertise.
If Lincoln truly hadn’t liked Grant, there would be a line out the door to take the job.
The whole thing made Gemma’s skin crawl. She turned to face Lily again.
“I don’t get it. What changed Lincoln’s mind?” she said quietly.
Lily shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”