“Nice busy day today,” Moira called cheerily. “Would you like your cappuccino, Mrs. Gardner?”
I pulled open the robe, frowning distastefully at the rip in the silk nightgown. Another one for the trash. “Yes, please, Moira.”
As the sounds and scents of the coffeemaker filtered in, I continued my inventory-taking. I was married to a man who gifted me his negligence ninety percent of the time and made up for it in the worst possible way the other ten. But what had once been an occurrence two or three times per year, when my husband was actually home, had become almost nightly since Calvin’s arrest five weeks ago for racketeering, bribery, and human trafficking. Since his travel was stunted while the trial began, I was a convenient place to take out his frustration. Particularly since January, when I refused to comply with his other wishes.
Frigid bitch.
It could be worse, I thought numbly. From the neck up, I looked relatively normal. My blonde hair was a mess, but Mikael, my stylist, would fix that later. My light gray eyes, a little too big for my face, were framed with dark circles, but I had concealer. My bottom lip was puffed slightly, but nothing lipstick wouldn’t hide.
We had a deal, after all. Anything but the face. And he only broke that deal sometimes.
Elsewhere, there were a few small bruises at the base of my neck left over from last Tuesday, but I thought I could cover those up too. It was the large one I could feel forming on my inner thigh, deep under the skin, that might make it difficult to walk properly later.
A decade ago, I had been called sharp. Striking. Full of promise. Now look at me. Thirty years old, haggard, beaten.
And what’s more, I deserved it.
The fuck you do, doll.
I suck in a sharp breath as the voice—deep, coarse, and utterly hypnotizing—echoed in the back of my mind. Uncalled for, but when was it ever? Matthew Zola’s voice was a bell whose ring never faded. Once I’d heard it, I couldn’t sleepwalk through this life anymore.
I still wasn’t sure if that was for better or for worse. These days, maybe the latter. Since, of course, he turned out to be the man prosecuting my husband.
I splashed a bit of water on my face, wincing as it dribbled over my lip. I ignored it and went about the mundane tasks of cleaning myself up for the day.
There was another knock on the door. I opened it to let Moira in. The older woman set my coffee on the vanity, then began running through the day while I brushed my teeth.
“Spencer will be here in twenty minutes for your morning Pilates. After that, you have cycling at seven forty-five. Your gym kit is on the bureau. You reached three hundred miles last week, so I picked up some new sneakers too. Be careful about blisters.”
I quirked a smile in the mirror. Moira had started laying clothes out for me when I was in the throes of postpartum depression and had never stopped. I didn’t always use them, but it was a sweet gesture. My own mother had never even done that.
“After that, you’ve got acupuncture at nine around the corner from the studio.”
I winced as the marble countertop pressed into my thigh. Acupuncture would be good today, but the look on the practitioner’s face when I removed my clothes would not. “Reschedule that for next week, please. And then?”
“Blowout with Mikael, then lunch with your mother at noon. She wants to discuss the Met luncheon she’s planning in honor of your cousin’s recent contributions. I assume you’re planning to go?”
I sighed. Once upon a time, luncheons, charities—all of these were daily occurrences, things that, if not particularly fulfilling, at least gave my shadow of a life some meaning. Now, I couldn’t help wondering how much of our “charity” work was simple self-congratulations. I’d rather just write a check and be done with it.
I spat, then rinsed and replaced my toothbrush in its charger. “Mother really is pulling out all the stops to kiss the ring, isn’t she?”
Moira didn’t respond, which was basically her way of agreeing with me. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out what was going on. Less than a year ago, my cousin Eric had returned to the family fold after a ten-year absence. He might have been the black sheep of the family, but he was welcomed as its prodigal son. The last of the line of birthright de Vrieses. Heir to the bulk of our now-passed grandmother’s considerable fortune, including controlling ownership of the family company).
Now that Grandmother was gone, Eric was the de facto head. Which made Mother and me nothing but poor relations, relatively speaking. I realized that we weren’t exactly in line at the food bank, but considering that De Vries Shipping was valued at something close to twenty billion, my supposed fifty-million-dollar inheritance and the similar amount handcuffed in my trust were paltry in comparison. Mother too had her own, plus the estate near Southampton, but again, neither came close to Eric’s newfound wealth.
I couldn’t lie. When the will was read, I was hurt. Really hurt. Not because of the money. And I loved Eric. I had even come to love his wife. What did I care if my portfolio or theirs expanded by a factor of ten or ten billion? No, it was the fact that in the end, Eric’s last name mattered more than the decade I had spent with our grandmother while he had been off doing God knew what. They say blood runs thicker than water, but in our family, gender trumped all.
My husband, however, definitely cared about the money. After all, it was the reason he married me. And it was why, six months after the will was read, he was still quietly trying to get my other family members to fight it in probate. So far, he hadn’t succeeded.
So, for now, Eric paid the bills. And Mother would want to do what was needed to keep that faucet running, which included sucking up to the new head of family and the wife that no one thought belonged on the Upper East Side.
“Okay, lunch,” I repeated after splashing water on my face and grabbing a towel. “What else?”
“An appointment with Dr. Raleigh at three.”
I dropped the towel. “Is it that time already?”
Moira shrugged. “It’s been six months. You missed your last appointment, and the receptionist called.” She looked up from her list. “Shouldn’t I have made it? I assumed you’d want to look nice for tonight. Not that you don’t always, of course. But since it’s special…”
I frowned into the mirror. “Special how?”
Moira blinked. “Well, since it’s your anniversary, of course.”
We both stilled as my sudden awkward silence landed in the middle of my bathroom like a wet blanket. Moira wasn’t stupid. She had been my assistant for nearly ten years, which meant she understood at least something of the distance between Calvin and me, even if she didn’t know what happened behind closed doors.
“Mr. Gardner’s assistant hasn’t said anything to me about it,” Moira said quietly. “I assumed you were planning something at home. Might be nice not to think about…everything.”
It was her kind way of suggesting I should probably do something to distract from the embarrassingly public trial we were facing in a matter of weeks. And offering to help, should I need it.
I cleared my throat. “Um, yes. I suppose I am. But nothing you need to worry about. Thank you, Moira.”
I leaned closer to the mirror again, more in order to avoid Moira’s gaze than because I really saw anything. I pressed at my skin, eyeing the minuscule, practically nonexistent wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. I didn’t have nearly the work done regularly that many of my friends had. But they also didn’t smile. Or laugh. Or love. And until recently, neither did I.