Chapter 20
IMOGEN
Celeste’s head was hot and heavy on her shoulder, making Imogen feel trapped.
Where did Marta and Bernie disappear to?
Why do I have to deal with this mess alone?
Celeste had been a wreck since they came in from the lake, crying into her wine that she’d had no idea Harry was struggling.
Imogen wanted to go change out of her swim cover-up, and to check whether—by some miracle—her phone had service again.
She really needed to read those emails before she talked to Francesca.
Most of all, she wanted to escape from the weight of Celeste’s sadness.
“. . . but I did tell you about the financial mess Harry left me in.”
Imogen nodded absently as she mm-hmmed, wondering how she was going to gracefully extricate herself from this situation.
“I thought it was just bad investments, you know? But he must have been spending our money on drugs.” Celeste whispered the last word.
“It’s been hard, Immy, really hard. And with the mortgage and everything .
. . I think I need to . . . I’m going to have to withdraw some money earlier than we talked about. ”
Absolutely not. Imogen felt the first burning stab of an ice-pick headache.
She patted Celeste’s head softly and made a concerted effort to keep her voice calm.
“How about we talk about this another time, Cee? Not right now. We’ve been drinking .
. . let’s save this conversation for when we get back to the city. ”
“No, I’ve decided.” Celeste reared her head up to look Imogen in the eyes.
“It’s done, I’m done. I need the money. I know I can convince my mom to pay for Milly’s education, so I don’t need to lock away so much money for the future.
” Celeste’s voice was rising, as if the louder she made her point, the more seriously Imogen would have to take her.
This was exactly the type of shit Imogen didn’t have the time for right now.
First, she needed to get back to civilization so she could address the problem with Francesca (whose new husband suddenly had all kinds of questions about her finances and wanted to pull her entire investment out of the ITFF, and fuck, can’t people just trust me to do my job?).
She could only take on so many things at once.
“This is a stressful time for you, Cee, I know that,” said Imogen.
“But think about it this way. Not only is your money safe with me, it is actually earning you more money. So, I hear you, I see you, but I also need you to give it some time. Don’t you remember how you begged me to let you into the fund?
That was with the agreement that we would be doing long-term investments.
I think your commitment was a minimum term of five years, and we haven’t even reached that.
You’re not going to see the kind of returns you want—the kind of returns I’ve guaranteed you—until you give it some time.
I’ll talk to my accountant when we get back, okay?
” Imogen scooched sideways away from Celeste and got up off the couch.
“What accountant?” asked Celeste.
Imogen froze. “You want their name or something? What does it matter?” Imogen didn’t like the look in Celeste’s eyes. There was the corner of something shrewd glinting through the glassiness.
“No, I mean, whenever something comes up at work, you always say that you have to call your accountant and that he’s messed something up, or, like, you’re going to call your tax people or whatever.
But . . . I’ve been thinking about it. I do all your admin and I know you don’t have an accountant.
You do it all yourself. I saw the expenses you claimed for that software.
” Celeste crossed her arms like so there.
Imogen was momentarily stunned into silence.
This was not a conversation she wanted to be having right now, or ever.
She’d always thought of Celeste as a paint-by-numbers employee: send this email, fill out this spreadsheet, tabulate these expenses.
No initiative, no motivation to go above and beyond, no indication that she would even know what above or beyond looked like.
But she wasn’t as dim as Imogen had counted on.
“It’s an outside firm. Of course, I do the first pass—that’s the stuff you see.
But I send everything for an external financial audit.
Sometimes they’ll give me accounting suggestions, things like the accrual approach, off-balance items, accelerated revenues, you know.
” Imogen invented furiously, hoping to terminate the conversation with a mishmash of financial terms. Celeste went quiet and Imogen momentarily thought she was off the hook.
She took two steps backwards, but Celeste wasn’t done with her.
“I got a call before we came here.” Celeste’s voice was almost singsongy, but it had a serrated edge.
She picked herself up off the couch and stood, unsteadily, facing Imogen.
“They left a message. It sounded really official, like a fraud department or something, and I think I’m supposed to call them back.
Immmmy’s in trouuuubl . . . ohmygod.” Celeste’s hands shot up to cover her mouth.
“I’m gonna be sick.” She brushed past Imogen and raced down the hallway.
Imogen didn’t follow her, but she heard the stream of vomit hit the water in the toilet bowl.
The splash was almost enough to make her retch as well.
Fuckfuckfuck. Hopefully, Celeste was so drunk she wouldn’t remember asking about her money, because if she didn’t drop it, they were potentially going to have a problem.
But the call . . . every nerve in Imogen’s body was suddenly on fire.
The call was very definitely a big fucking problem.