Chapter 1
I don’t like to sleep naked, but “Drunk Me” doesn’t negotiate. I shift against the pillow and scoot away from the strands of cool, damp hair clinging to my bare shoulders. My head throbs from the movement and will need to be dealt with, but I’m distracted by the smell of my special-occasion-only honeysuckle shampoo. What should be wafting my way is cigarette smoke and rail gin.
I’ve never taken a shower before passing out.
Flopping an arm over to my husband’s side of the bed, I sigh into the cool sheets. Ethan hasn’t been cuddled beside me for a while. If I’m out late, which really isn’t that often, I want Ethan next to me in the morning. To reassure me everything is okay.
Did I say anything stupid when I came home?
Of course not, Jules. Don’t worry about it. You were having fun.
I smell bacon, our son’s favorite, so it’s likely they’re having breakfast.
Then I remember: The Genius Grant launch last night. Too much champagne. I gag at how that bubbly sweet taste coated my tongue. How many glasses did I have? Three? Four? Fifty?
I sit up, and my skull feels pierced in the middle, so I lie back down. That also hurts. The room spins, even as I’m flat. This hangover was inevitable with the stress of my new job as CEO of the Poe Foundation. I shouldn’t lean on alcohol. But I did. I’m never drinking again.
Shit, shit, shit.
I do the memory scrape where I try to think of anything stupid I said. Shifting to jam my face into the pillow, I claw for truth that’ll ease this anxiety already building in my chest. The night goes by in flashes like video snippets: Funder conversations, pep talks to key members of my staff, my speech to every major funder in Rhode Island, and, of course, Terrance Castle, guest of honor and genius of aforementioned grant, leaving our launch event early in a huff. Not perfect, but no disasters. Nothing I can’t handle the morning after.
I roll my shoulder muscles, and they’re sore, as if I’ve started running again. I need to find my phone. To see if I texted anyone or if there’s a terse email from board chairman Miller Marks, who never wanted me as Poe CEO.
After I shift again, pain sizzles in my knees. I lift my legs off the bed despite my throbbing head. There are large scrapes on both of them, red and still oozing. I drop my legs back onto the bed, cursing those damn Providence sidewalks. Did that happen when I got home from the launch? Wait. No. Oh, no.
I went out after the event. Good Lord, that champagne really got to me. I should have had dinner. Or lunch. Or switched to water. Or stuck to my two-drink plan.
With a groan, I reach to touch the cuts, and there’s something dark, maybe dirt, under my thumbnail. I pick at it until it’s gone and then draw my fingers to my mouth. My lips feel slightly swollen, as if I’ve been kissed. What the hell did Drunk Me do last night?
Familiar music blasts from downstairs. Our son, Fitz, has the TV on YouTube, and he’s watching his favorite show. Well, not a show exactly, but videos of this family living their life, raking in millions of viewers. A vlog, it’s called.
It’s half the reason I pushed the board to agree to have a camera crew around last night. We even streamed the official announcement, made by me, live on our YouTube channel. Video is where it’s at these days.
I feel a spasm in my chest at the thought that maybe I was already tipsy during my speech. I can’t quite remember. Our public relations consultant, Elle Freshly, should have sent me the video files the team recorded and broadcast. Surely it wasn’t that bad? It has to be fine. It must be fine.
There’s a knock on the front door, loud and firm, echoing from downstairs.
“Ethan?” I call out to my husband and flinch at the effort.
The house is silent except for the TV. Another knock, this one even louder.
Mumbling a curse, I have to hold my temples to yell again. “Ethan, do I need to get it?”
There’s no response, only the deep rumble of the vlog father’s voice as he makes Fitz laugh.
I throw my legs over the side of the bed in one fluid move, and just as quickly, I have to brace myself on my scraped knees in a vertiginous double-over.
This is going to be a long day at work. “Ethan?” I call again. “Fitz?”
“He left for CVS, Mama!” Fitz hollers, punctuating each word in his annoyed-little-boy tone.
Not completely unusual, since we’re only a couple of blocks away, but definitely not the best timing. “Okay, honey. Let Mama get the door.”
I do not want to chase kidnappers with this hangover.
Conscious that I’m about to be seen, I hobble—that’s the only word for it—over to examine myself in the mirror: damp bangs over my bloodshot eyes, dehydrated pale skin, and my dark-brown shoulder-length hair chilling my freckled shoulders. After taking a long steadying exhale, I release a breath that could peel wallpaper.
No “Hot Moms of Rhode Island” contest for me today.
I have to answer the door. It could be important. And I don’t want Fitz to do it alone.
As I cross my bedroom, I consider the bottle of Sprite that Ethan left on my bedside table with two Aleve. My stomach quakes at the thought of trying it.
Another firm knock. I hurry over to my clothes from last night. The scent of cigarette smoke wafts up from my black dress. I certainly can’t put that back on.
Instead, I grab Ethan’s clean workout clothes and slip on my strapless bra from last night. His mesh shorts go past my knees, and I have to pull the drawstrings tight to keep them up.
Taking one step and then another, I make it out of the bedroom, but our wide stairway spins like I’m a girl back on the old wooden carousel in East Providence.
Damn champagne hangover. My mind sputters, and I can almost taste the bitter smack of gin too. I gag, and there’s another knock that’s relentless, firm, urgent, and it reverberates in my poor desiccated brain.
After making it down the steps, I pause at the mostly open front door and stare through the glass storm door. The cable salesperson or Save the Bay petitioner has on very, very shiny black shoes. Almost tap dance worthy.
“I’m coming,” I call toward the door.
My breath catches at the perfectly hemmed gray-blue pants leg with a stripe running up the side. It’s a cop.
I hurry the few steps to the living room to make sure Fitz is safe. He’s lying on his stomach, brownish-blond hair sticking up, as he grabs for another piece of bacon.
“Hey, Mom. This is my new, new favorite one. The Farm Family moved into a big house.”
“How long has Dad been gone?” I say, glancing through the glass door at the cop.
“Maybe for one Farm Family video. Our milk is stinky. He said he’d bring me a treat.”
Jesus Christ. Ethan got hit by a car.
I bolt over to the door. “Officer, please, my son is inside. Can we talk—” I step into his personal space before he can answer.
The cop looks about fifteen and a day, and he’s suddenly red faced as he stutter-steps backward. He’s completely off the porch like a windup toy when I see he’s not alone.
A bald man freshly peeled off a Mr. Clean bottle steps forward much more confidently in his ill-fitting suit and decent tie. He wipes at his face in the July morning sun. “I’m Detective Frank Ramos,” he says. “You’re Juliet Worthington-Smith?”