Chapter 24 Hailey
Hailey
It had taken a lot to get Rebekah to agree to see her.
Hailey had promised to remove her name from the litigation the firm was starting against her husband, something she had yet to run by the other partners.
She’d also lured her former client there with the carrot of a plan about how Rebekah might move forward out of her situation, how she might untangle herself from David.
In actuality, that plan was just about as solid as the walls in Hailey’s basement.
Hailey had admitted to nothing, and if Rebekah had proof of her night with David, she hadn’t revealed it yet.
The café Rebekah had chosen, Milk her eyes were dull and tired, and yet somehow still jumpy with the restlessness that Hailey had always found so irritating. Still, in Hailey’s expert opinion this did not look like a woman reveling in the certainty of her convictions.
“I think it’s important that you know I never slept with him.” This felt so true as it came out of Hailey’s mouth. “He’s just trying to use that accusation to get at you, and we need to figure out a way through it.”
“I thought we had figured out a way through it,” Rebekah said, her eyes fixed on Hailey.
“Me and David had figured out a way through it. But he fucks me over every time. You too, apparently.” She took a deep breath and blew it out across the frothy coffee that had just been put down in front of her.
“I know you never believed me about how bad he is. I know what you think: I’m a gold digger, I trapped some rich guy, why can’t I just shut up and get divorced like a nice little girl so you can make your money? ”
She didn’t seem to want a response. After a long sip of her coffee, she continued.
“You know he did have affairs. Even if you all didn’t find any evidence. He left me at home with two little kids, all alone in this crappy city where I don’t know anyone and where he didn’t even want to live. I mean, he’s in New York, in Paris—everywhere, and I’m here!”
Hailey tried her best to look sympathetic, but she was mostly focused on not remembering David’s eyes over the rim of his fancy cocktail glass, or the feel of his hands on her back in the elevator, or the weight of him on top of her.
“And I could have lived with that, you know?” Rebekah went on.
“Except I couldn’t pay for anything. David controlled every fucking cent.
I had more money working front of house at Houston’s than I ever did as his wife.
He wanted receipts for everything I bought, and he told me how I should look, where I should buy groceries, what color I should paint my fucking fingernails.
My fingernails! As if he didn’t already have control over half this city!
” This time Rebekah sloshed her coffee onto the table.
Hailey passed her a napkin, but she used it to wipe her eyes instead.
“He also told our children—from the age of two, by the way—that Mommy was a bimbo. He told our friends that I was psychotic, that I did drugs. He put video cameras everywhere—for safety, he said—and then he’d call me at night and tell me what I’d done wrong that day.
It did make me psychotic, so eventually he was right. ”
Rebekah folded the napkin into smaller and smaller squares. The shiny puffiness of her face looked different in this light—swollen and tender.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I did tell you. You just didn’t listen.”
Hailey felt blood rush to her cheeks. She had heard Rebekah complaining about not having enough money.
She had heard Rebekah complaining that her husband was sneaky and domineering.
But Rebekah was right: she had not listened.
Instead, she had jumped right into the hands, literally and figuratively, of someone who got a thrill out of controlling people with his money.
Who was now, she was certain, trying to control her.
It was too late for apologies. “Listen, the only way we’re going to get at David—and I’ve always thought this—is through his finances. Have you ever heard of a company called Sunshine Enterprises?”
“No.”
“Think really carefully. Ever seen any statements with a sun logo on it? Ever heard him mention it?”
“No.” Rebekah’s irritation was obvious. “This is why you asked me here?”
“We’ve been getting payments from a bank in Liberia that I think could be from him. And some threatening letters.” Threatening might have been a stretch, but weird didn’t feel like a strong enough word.
Rebekah laughed. “You’ve got to hand it to him. Only David would go threatening a bunch of lawyers. But I seriously doubt he’d send money.”
“It feels like he is after me personally. My family.”
“Well, if you fucked him, that sort of makes it personal, right?”
Hailey sighed. “Rebekah, I really need your help. My researcher can’t find a link between David and this company.
But there’s a lot of money in its accounts, and I know in my gut it’s him.
If I can prove it, I can show he was hiding assets, maybe that he is involved in criminal activity.
I might be able to get you your kids back.
You could have a real divorce and freedom from him. ”
Rebekah stared Hailey down for an uncomfortably long time.
“You know he won’t even let me see them on Thanksgiving?
I think they’re in Tahoe or somewhere. He told me I could see the twins after I’m settled in the house in Short Hills.
In fucking January.” Tears had worn paths through Rebekah’s foundation, revealing the raw skin underneath.
“And so like a good girl I’ll finish packing things up and go where I’m told. ”
“Is there any way you can get access to his computers? His papers? Or can you think of anyone who could help you?”
Rebekah’s laugh was different this time. “You sound as desperate as I do. Your money is gone. Just tell the other lawyers to forget about it, and maybe David will leave you alone. You do not want to take him on, trust me. He’ll ruin your goddamn life and enjoy doing it.”
“But will you at least try?”
“There’s no point,” said Rebekah, rising to go. “You don’t have a clue what you are up against, do you? The man is a control freak with a God complex and a billion dollars. It’s not a good combination.”
As she reached the door she turned back and called out: “Have a great Thanksgiving with your family.” It sounded almost menacing, but then again everything sounded like a threat to Hailey these days.
* * *
Though it was not a strategy they’d talked about directly—they weren’t talking about much of anything directly—Mack and Hailey were extra careful that her parents did not get so much as a whiff of how stressed out they were.
Thanksgiving Day was to be a break from it all, and Hailey was determined to host it like a grown-up—a true-life grown-up, as Mabel would have put it.
It was Pammy Byers’s tradition to kick off the cooking with a few Bloody Marys, and so when the turkey really didn’t fit in the oven, there was much debate among the generations over what to do about it.
Finally, Mack had picked up the giant bird on his hip like an infant and disappeared.
A minute or so later Hailey, Pam, and Eddie had startled at the sound of his chain saw (his bought-for-the-new-house-and-never-before-even-used-yet chain saw) revving to life.
They arrived in the garage just in time to see flecks of poultry flesh and bone whirling through the air like snow.
Mack had set the turkey on his workbench and was sawing away at the raw meat.
“How will we put the stuffing in?” Hailey wondered aloud.
“You two are as nuts as each other,” Eddie Byers said, draining his cocktail, but Hailey heard approval in his tone. She fetched Mack the roasting tin, and together they plunked most of the pasty, goose-bumped turkey parts into it.
“Nobody likes the leg meat anyway,” Mack said, tossing the drumsticks into the big garage trash can. “Who wants a beer?”
“I bought the pies,” Hailey confessed to her mother, “So we’ve got those even if everything else is terrible.”
But it wasn’t terrible. The turkey turned out fine—better than normal, maybe.
Hailey’s sister Lyndsey arrived from the faraway land of Dayton with her husband, three kids, and some overcooked baked goods, the Macy’s parade was watched by all, and the new house was duly toasted, with only the quickest side-eye between Hailey and Mack.
Those with double-digit ages were just polishing off the last of another bottle of wine when the doorbell rang.
Hailey felt the house sway slightly as she made her way through the hall; at this rate the dishes might have to wait until tomorrow morning.
She set her wineglass down on the hall table and didn’t bother to look through the peephole.
Luckily it was only Betsy from next door.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” Betsy said, and Hailey was struck by the dramatic arches of her perfect eyebrows. “Sorry to bother you.”
“No problem.” Even in her current state, even with her fixation on Betsy’s facial grooming, Hailey was able to reach down for Gulliver in one smooth swoop as he came charging down the stairs.
It wasn’t like him to be late for a front-door frenzy.
He must have been passed out on tryptophan from his share of the Frankenstein turkey.
“I just wanted to bring you this,” Betsy said, stepping back slightly.
“It got misdelivered yesterday. It looks urgent.” She held out an envelope, and the feast in Hailey’s stomach did a dangerous churn.
This was classic Sunshine Enterprises font and stationery, and stamped in red above their address were the words FINAL NOTICE. Hailey felt her cheeks grow hot.
“I just didn’t want them turning off your electricity or something,” Betsy continued in a hushed tone, glancing toward the voices coming from deeper within the house. “I didn’t notice it yesterday, and when I saw the envelope just now, I thought, oh no, what if they can’t cook din—”
“I don’t think it’s that kind of bill, but thanks for bringing it over.” The back of the envelope had the same red stamp, Hailey noticed as she took it from her neighbor.
“I brought you some banana bread too,” Betsy said, and then she continued the tradition they had kept up for six months: “And we really should have that coffee sometime.”
“Definitely,” Hailey said. “Let’s find a date after the holidays.
” She did not invite Betsy in; she could barely bring herself to say goodbye.
The delight in their neighbor’s eyes at this tasty tidbit of Bratenahl gossip—it seems like the husband is out of work, and they can’t even pay their bills!
—was evident, and what a bonus for Betsy that it had arrived just in time for Christmas!
Hailey thought of the upcoming Shoreby party and felt the dread sink into her soul.
She shut the door, plopped Gulliver down, and opened the letter.
Her first thought was that she really was drunk off her face; angry red letters jumped off the page at her.
But this was not wine goggles: in her hands was the same Payment now due letter they had received a week ago, but with the FINAL NOTICE stamp all over it, repeated at least a hundred times.
The back was covered too; it looked like a small child had been playing office, except that someone had written in the same terrifying scrawl, in the same black marker as before: A deal is a deal.
Hailey felt something akin to a tantrum rise in her.
There had been no deal! But she was raging at someone—no, something, some faceless entity—that she didn’t understand the first thing about.
It felt like Gigi’s hysteria when they’d tried to explain to her that, no matter how many birthdays she had, she would never be older than Mabel.
“Hailey?” Her mother, swaying slightly, had come to look for her. “Who’s here?”
“Just the neighbor, dropping something off.”
But her mother had spotted the letter, with its red stamps and angry marker.
“What’s this, honey?”
“Nothing! It’s nothing—”
“Mommy, we need you.” Mabel appeared in the doorway, with Hailey’s father behind her, holding part of a Playmobil house.
“What’s that?” Eddie was an aficionado of poking his nose in, and in that moment Hailey longed to hand the letter over, to let him take charge and have him tell her it was not as bad as it seemed.
She did not do that.
“For Christ’s sake just give me a minute, all of you!
” She thrust the banana bread—Hailey hated banana bread—at her bewildered mother, fled upstairs, and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
The letter looked even more frightening in here, like it was worming its way deeper into their lives.
Who would send this? She looked out over the lake and knew that there could only be one answer.
All of this had started with the deterioration of Rebekah Rainier’s divorce.
Hailey pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. The wine was really hitting her now, and it took her a minute to scroll through her messages and find his number. It went straight to voicemail, which was pretty much what she had been expecting.
“Fucking stop this right now!” she screamed into the phone. “I know it’s you, David! You got what you wanted. You win, okay? You screwed your wife’s lawyer. Now leave me alone. I mean it, you total psychopath! Leave us alone before I call the police!”
Hailey ended the call and fought to slow the air being sucked into her lungs. She leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes. It was only when she opened them again that she noticed Mack standing there in the doorway.