Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My eyes are watery, and my skin goes cold as I stare at her. “He was what?”

“You know I’m right,” she says, coming to her feet. “You know how sick you were, how sick you suddenly got out of nowhere? Whose fault do you think that was?”

I’m shaking my head now, backing away. Matt is a lot of things, but a killer?

“Chess. There’s no way Matt was poisoning me.”

Chess stares at me, and there’s that expression on her face again, that look that’s half love, half pity.

And then she laughs. “Em, you’ve been writing those murder books for way too long. I didn’t say he was poisoning you. I said he was killing you. When did you start getting sick? Honestly, think back. When was the first time you remember feeling that bad?”

My mouth is dry, my thoughts spinning, but I can pinpoint the date exactly. It was Valentine’s Day, of all fucking things. Matt had made his big announcement to my parents the previous November, and he’d expected us to be pregnant by February. The thing was, I hadn’t stopped taking my pills. I hadn’t felt ready yet, had started working on that thriller idea, and figured I’d eventually get on board with the whole baby thing later, maybe by the summer.

But that night, while we were getting ready to go out to dinner, I’d been rummaging in a drawer in the bathroom and he’d seen the pills. Seen the date printed out on the prescription sticker that proved I’d just had them filled a week before.

We’d fought about it, really fought, the biggest argument we’d ever had. He said I’d lied to him, that he’d actually been expecting me to tell him I was pregnant at dinner that night, and here I was, knowing there was no chance.

And I’d argued that I was working, that I had never really told him that I was ready, he’d just assumed because he wanted it, I did, too.

That Valentine’s Day ended with Matt sleeping in the guest room, and the next morning, I’d apologized. I was never really sure why, only that it seemed easier than fighting with him, and I’d agreed to stop taking the pills.

But later that afternoon, I’d been hit by the first dizzy spell, a wave of nausea climbing up my throat, and I hadn’t felt like myself again until he’d moved out the next spring.

“The body always knows,” Chess says now. “Chapter Six of The Powered Path. ‘The world warns us about putting toxins in our body, and assumes toxic people can only hurt our souls. But there are people just as poisonous to us as any chemical.’”

“That’s bullshit,” I croak, but Chess shakes her head.

“How can you say that after what you went through? How many doctors looked at you and told you nothing was physically wrong? How many medicines did exactly fuck all for you? Your body knew. It was warning you.”

She moves closer. “He was the wrong man for you, Emmy. And you were on the wrong path. Your body was trying to tell you.”

I almost want to laugh as I slide back down onto the sofa. But could Chess be right? Was it all in my head after all, just like all those doctors said?

The ENT who told me it could be my inner ear tricking me.

My gyno saying that sometimes stress makes the body think it isn’t safe to support a pregnancy.

The acupuncturist who told me I needed “healing sleep” in order to fully rest.

“That’s why you got better once he left. Which is what I told him to do, by the way. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that when you started getting better?”

It is, and she knows it, so I don’t bother responding.

“And that’s why you got sick here when you talked to him,” she goes on, crouching down next to me. “Think about it. You were fine for weeks; fifteen minutes after talking to him, you were on the bathroom floor.”

It sounds like the same psychobabble bullshit that fills all of her books, but she’s right. I can’t deny how my body responded. It felt like it was shutting down all over again.

“You told me to talk to him,” I remind her, and Chess smiles.

“Look, I knew I was right, but I still wanted just a little more proof. And come on, Em. Ostrich Moment? Surely you think I’m a little better than that.”

“I knew I hadn’t read that shit,” I reply, and she actually laughs a little.

“Anyway, as soon as I saw you there on the floor, I realized you needed to know what happened between me and Matt. For us. But also, for the book.”

“The book?”

“Honestly, as soon as I read the first pages, I got it. I understood all of this had happened to lead us right here. It’s why Matt had to leave you, it’s why we needed to come to Italy. It’s what the universe wants for us, to finally write together. Like we should have been doing this whole time.”

My world is slowly tilting on its axis, but Chess keeps going, pacing around the room. “I can’t write these self-help books forever, Em. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. Do you know how boring it is to come up with mantras? Do you know how fucking sick I am of lemon water? I don’t even like lemons, Em. And there’s no future in this. The only way this ends is with me streaming my vagina on Facebook Live, or being canceled for making one fucking misstep, and I want something better than that.”

She stops in front of me. “You’re a great writer, Em. Better than you know. Those cozies aren’t setting the world on fire or anything, but that’s just because you’ve been too scared to do anything but play it safe. You’re great. Honestly. And I want you with me. I want us to write together.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have slept with my husband,” I reply, my voice flat, but Chess is, as always, unfazed.

“Haven’t you been listening? That was part of this journey, Em. It was an ugly part, and I’m so sorry I did it, but without it, who knows what might have happened? Maybe Matt would have actually fucked with your birth control. You might have gotten pregnant and felt a whole lot more trapped in a marriage that was slowly killing you. You might have gotten even sicker. In a way, that one stupid afternoon is the best thing that ever happened to you. To us.”

“That’s … actually fucking nuts, Chess,” I say, but she only smiles at me, that beatific smile that has gotten so many women to download her app, even though it costs fifteen dollars a month and is just the same shit she puts on Instagram, slightly repurposed as “Your Daily Chess Move! ”

“I told you, stupid,” she says, touching her finger to the tip of my nose. “It’s fucking love,” she says. “You’re my best friend, Em. I did something that hurt you, but I promise, I’m going to make it up to you.” She leans in close, pressing her forehead to mine. “And, admit it. Admit that you never would’ve started that book without me. Admit that Matt leaving you and you deciding to come here with me and writing something that actually mattered to you has made your life better.”

I’m about to laugh at her, to tell her she’s so horribly wrong, but …

She’s not.

I am happier without Matt. I have loved writing this book about the villa more than I ever enjoyed the Petal Bloom books.

And, I realize, I like this story the best. The story where every mistake, every bad day, was leading me here.

Because the other story is that my husband, the man I thought I loved, was making me sick with his very presence. That he slept with my best friend. That the life I was so proud of was never actually real.

That the person closest to me in my life is lying and manipulating me.

I don’t want that to be the story. I can’t be that story. And after all I’ve been through, shouldn’t I get to decide how my story ends?

So I reach down and thread my fingers with hers, squeezing tight.

Chess squeezes back.

We sit like that for a long time. Then she sighs, and I watch as she unfastens the anklet, tossing it to the floor.

“You wanted me to notice it,” I say, looking at the piece of jewelry winking in the lamplight.

“I did,” Chess confirms. “And I gave you that bullshit line about my mom on the phone. The last time I talked to my mom it was to threaten her with legal action, for fuck’s sake.”

“Why not just come out and tell me?” I ask, and when she looks at me, I roll my eyes. “If you say something about ‘agency’ or ‘self-knowledge,’ I’ll tackle you again.”

“Then I guess I’ll be quiet,” she replies, making a gesture like she’s zipping her lips. She used to do that whenever I’d tell her a secret.

Chess and I, we have so many secrets.

“So, we’ll write the book?” she asks after a beat, and I think about Mari’s pages, hidden away.

The truth inside them.

Chess really does want to write this book with me, without even knowing just what a gold mine we’re actually sitting on. That means something. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does.

And then I remember the secret I’m still keeping from her.

“Matt’s after my money,” I say, and her head snaps up.

“What?”

I nod. “He wants this massive cut of all things Petal Bloom, and he’s threatening to try for anything I write after that, too. Specifically, this book.”

“Fucking dick.”

“To be fair, you’re the one who told him about me writing it.”

She sighs at that, tipping her head back. “Every time he called, he was always going on about how stalled out you were on your writing, how frustrating it was watching you throw your career away, given how much he’d sacrificed for it. But even though he’d talk like he was pissed off about it, he always sounded … I don’t know. Gleeful, kind of? Like it was a schadenfreude thing. He always felt like you picked your career over him, so I think he wanted you to be miserable in it. And I wanted him to know that wasn’t actually true.”

Looking back at me, Chess ducks her head to look into my eyes. “I swear to god, Emmy, if I’d known he was doing this, I never would’ve said anything.”

So Matt didn’t just want my money, he wanted my joy, too. All of it squeezed out of me because he had written his own version of how our marriage was supposed to go, what his life was supposed to look like. He was supposed to be the successful, happily married father with the successful, dutiful wife. That was his story.

And there I’d gone, changing the plot on him.

Servesyou right for marrying a writer, huh?

I reach out and squeeze Chess’s hand. “When Matt doesn’t get what he wants, he goes hard. I mean, if he’s still calling you, he must think that he still has a shot with you. You’re clearly letting him think he still has a shot with you.”

Chess thinks about that, her brow wrinkled. “Well, you’re right about him going hard. The one time I actually tried to blow him off, he said something about how interesting people might find it that the self-help queen slept with her BFF’s husband.”

“Not very Powered Path,” I observe, and she grunts in agreement.

“I guess it seemed safer to keep taking his calls, to play up this idea that maybe we could be together at some point, but I needed time. That’s what he thinks this trip is about, me finally telling you about the two of us. He thinks that once you know, I’ll feel less guilty about it all and we can—”she makes air quotes—“‘see where this thing goes.’”

I take that in, thinking about all of Matt’s texts and calls. Not just about the legal stuff, then. Probably trying to get a sense of whether Chess had told me yet.

“So, Matt is trying to take my money and make sure I’m as unhappy as possible for committing the crime of not being the perfect wife. And he says he’s in love with you, but will also go full scorched earth if you won’t be with him?”

“That seems to sum it up, yes.”

I sit back slightly, looking at her. Outside, the rain is still falling, thunder rattling the windows, and the lights flicker for a second, briefly leaving us in the candlelit gloom.

“So how is this going to work, exactly?” I ask Chess. “The two of us working on a book together, while he’s still trying to claim a piece of what I’ve already written and he’s determined to be Mr. Chess Chandler? What kind of happy ending exists there?”

She doesn’t answer me, drawing her legs up and resting her chin on her knees, thinking.

There’s another crack of thunder outside, and this time, when the lights go out, they stay out.

The candelabra on the mantel sends flickering shadows over Chess’s face, its familiar lines shifting and blurring, hollows under her cheekbones dark.

“Maybe the advance for this book will be enough to pay him off?” I suggest, and I’m only half joking. “I can settle with him over the Petal Bloom stuff with my share, and you can send him hush money with yours.”

“And then what, he buys a fucking boat with money we made?” Chess says, her head snapping up. Her hands are resting on her upraised knees, fingers laced together so tightly her knuckles are white. “No fucking way.”

“He gets seasick, so it would probably just be a really stupid car,” I reply, and then I tilt my head back, looking up at the ceiling. Our shadows are up there, dark shapes sitting side by side, larger than life.

“I can’t believe that asshole is actually going to win in the end,” Chess murmurs, and her shadow lifts one hand, the movement elongated and slightly grotesque.

She’s right. It doesn’t seem fair that Matt should be able to take so much from both of us.

That Matt is the person to almost come between us for good.

That he will always be wedged in between us, our friendship—and now, even this book that we’ll make together.

That we might never cut ourselves free.

The thought starts out so small.

It’s just those words, really.

A seed that sprouts in dark, dark soil, a vine twisting into an idea, an idea that should horrify me, but doesn’t.

“I need to show you something,” I tell Chess.

Taking the candleholder near the door, I go up to my bedroom in the darkness, a pool of golden light just barely illuminating each step before me.

I fish under my mattress for Mari’s pages, and when I bring them downstairs, I hand them to Chess without a word.

It only takes her a second to realize what I’ve given her, and her whole face glows as she reads.

We sit there in the drawing room, Chess reading, me watching her, until she gets to the end.

(Well, almost the end. There’s actually still one more section that Mari wrote, but I’ve kept that for myself. I have to keep some part of this just for me.)

When Chess reaches the final page—Mari calmly writing the end of Lilith Rising as Noel screams downstairs—she looks up at me.

I wanted to see if she’d understand what needs to happen next, or if I’d have to tell her.

But she’s my best friend.

She’s always been able to read my mind.

ONE WEEK LATER

Chess hears the car pull up before I do.

We’re at either end of the dining room table, each of us typing Mari’s handwritten pages from 1974 into our computers, and I have my earbuds in, so Chess has to wave to get my attention.

“He’s here,” she says, and I smile, saving the document and standing up from the table.

You can see the drive from the window, and Chess and I both stand there now, looking at the little blue rental car, watching the man who gets out of the driver’s seat.

He’s still handsome, still achingly familiar in his uniquely Matt way, and for a moment, I remember what it felt like to be in love with him. Like Chess, Matt had a bright light, and when it was shining on you, it was beautiful.

So long as he was getting what he wanted.

He turns, sees us there in the window, and lifts one hand in a hesitant wave.

“What exactly did you tell him to make him come?” I ask, and Chess reaches down, taking my hand and squeezing it.

“That I figured out that we had to tell you together. That you’d be so devastated and upset, and I didn’t want to deal with that on my own, and since he was equally responsible for how miserable you’d be, he had to actually see the consequences of our actions.”

Gleeful,Chess had said. That’s how he’d sounded when he talked to her about how unhappy I seemed. Because I deserved that, right?

Sometimes we don’t really know we’ve won until we see the reflection of that win in the loser’s eyes.

(From chapter two of Things My Mama Never Taught Me.)

Chess takes a breath now and looks at me, her eyes full of compassion. “He said he’d be on the next flight.”

It hurts to hear.

But that’s good.

That makes it easier.

TRAGEDY IN ITALY

Author and wellness guru Chess Chandler was struck by tragedy this week while vacationing outside of Orvieto, Italy. The frequent Oprah guest and self-help star had been renting a villa just outside the city with two guests when one of them, Matthew Sheridan of Asheville, North Carolina, drowned while swimming in a pond on the property. Both Chandler and Sheridan’s wife, Emily, were away from the house at the time. Sheridan, thirty-five, was apparently a strong swimmer, but, early reports say, may have been drunk or otherwise incapacitated at the time.

Of course, the villa was also the scene of an infamous murder in 1974 when up-and-coming musician Pierce Sheldon was bludgeoned to death by Johnnie Dorchester, a drug dealer and wannabe writer also staying at the property.

Chandler and Sheridan are already understood to be back in the United States, with Chandler’s lawyer issuing the following statement:

“Ms. Chandler is deeply distressed at this tragic accident, and requests privacy at this time. She and Mrs. Sheridan have no further comments.”

“The house is just cursed,” a local resident who wished to remain anonymous told us. “It’s a bad place, and I don’t know why anyone would rent it.”

Others scoff at such superstitious ideas. “It’s a house like any other,” another local said. “The only thing this has in common with what happened all those years ago is that both times, people got stupid on vacation. It happens here. It happens everywhere.”

—People, July 29, 2023

MARI,1980—NEWYORKCITY

He’s changed, but then haven’t they all?

Mari stands outside the tiny restaurant he’d suggested, stamping her feet against the cold as she watches Noel walk toward her, hands in the pockets of a greatcoat, that same rolling gait she remembers so well.

But she can see even before he reaches her that he’s different.

The changes are small in Noel, subtle. He was already completely himself when they first met, had probably been completely himself from the day he was born, and yet—he isn’t the same man he was in Italy six years ago.

There’s something more haggard about that beautiful face, as a lifetime of excesses has finally caught up with him, and he’s thinner, his body seeming less solid than she remembered as she hugs him.

“So kind of you to make time for me in your busy schedule,” Noel says, opening the door for her.

Heads turn when they enter, and they’re all for Noel. Authors, even ones as successful as Mari, are not nearly as recognizable as rock stars.

Noel hasn’t put out an album since 1973, but he still commands a room, and they’re ushered to a large booth by a window. Outside, it’s begun to snow, the streets slick and wet under the orange lights, but inside the restaurant, it’s almost too warm, thick scents of garlic and roasting meat hanging in the air.

“When was the last time we saw each other?” she asks, and he leans back. He’s still wearing his coat despite the heat, and she thinks again how pale he looks, how drawn.

But the smirk is classic Noel. “I think it was your book signing in London three years ago.”

Mari snorts, picking up the menu. “You nearly caused a riot coming to that.”

“That’s precisely why I came,” he tells her, and she laughs.

She’s missed Noel, she realizes. More than she’d thought. Sometimes he feels like the last person standing from her past, like she became a completely new person after that summer in Italy with completely new friends, a completely new life.

Cut yourself free,he’d told her on that sunny day by the pond. And she had.

She just hadn’t known how lonely that would turn out to be.

The waiter comes then, depositing a bucket on the table, a wine bottle inside, and Noel gestures to it. “I took the liberty of calling ahead to make sure they had this,” he says, and when the waiter lifts the bottle, Mari sees the familiar word curling across the label.

Orvieto.

Mari doesn’t say anything, doesn’t rise to the obvious bait as the waiter fills their glasses, and when she lifts the wine to her lips, her hand doesn’t even tremble.

She’s proud of that.

“A toast.”

Noel lifts his glass, still smiling that odd little smile.

“I’m not going to toast to myself, Noel,” Mari replies, her fingers wrapped around the stem of her own glass. “That’s your bag, not mine.”

His smile widens.

Curdles.

“To lost friends, then,” he says. “Pierce and Johnnie, the poor sods.”

Mari doesn’t lift her glass to that, either.

Her pulse seems to slow, heart beating heavily in her chest.

She’s always wondered if Noel knew. If he suspected the truth of what unfolded that night. In the six years since, she’s only seen him a handful of times, exchanged a few phone calls, maybe a dozen letters, but he’s never so much as hinted at anything.

Until now.

“What are you doing?” she asks him quietly, realizing that he is quite drunk, that the bottle of wine on the table is not Noel’s first drink of the evening.

He drains his glass, setting it back on the table hard enough that she winces, and then he takes the bottle of wine out of its bucket, water dripping onto the dark red tablecloth.

“Not sure, to tell the truth.” Noel fills his glass. “Feeling maudlin tonight, I suppose.”

The bottle sloshes back into the ice, and Noel studies her across the table. “I sometimes think I died that summer, too, you know. Nothing has been the same since.”

“That is maudlin,” Mari says, hoping they can change the subject, but understanding now that this is why Noel wanted to meet her tonight.

“Of course, you and Lara, you’ve both ascended to heretofore unknown heights, so I’m sure neither of you see it the same way.”

Mari doesn’t bother pointing out that Noel’s long slide had started before that summer, that what happened to Pierce and to Johnnie has nothing to do with where he’s ended up.

“Do you ever talk to her?” Noel asks. “Lara? I tried once, you know. Went backstage at her concert in Paris. She had security throw me out.”

Laughing at the memory, he slaps one hand on the table. “They didn’t want to, but I let them because, Jesus Christ, if she had the balls to do it, I deserved it, didn’t I?”

Pierce and Johnnie’s names no longer have the power to hurt Mari, but Lara’s …

“You know, I sometimes wish she’d had the kid,” Noel goes on. “I would’ve liked to have been a father, I think. And lord knows your sister was a handful, but she was pretty. Talented, too, turned out. Would’ve been a good mix of genes at the very least.”

Mari wonders if Lara told Noel she terminated the pregnancy, or if he’s just assuming she did, but the truth is that Lara miscarried two days after Pierce’s death. A loss and a relief all at once, for both of them, Mari thinks.

Now she only shrugs and says, “Last I checked, you’re not even forty, Noel. Fatherhood is still in the cards.”

He shakes his head, lifting his glass. “No, doors are beginning to close, Mistress Mary. I feel them slamming shut on all sides of me. Family?” He slams a hand on the table, their cutlery and glasses rattling. “Bam! Closed. Marriage?” Another slap. “Bam!”

Arabella divorced him in the middle of Johnnie’s trial, heaping scandal on top of scandal. Last Mari heard, she’d permanently decamped to her family’s country estate and gotten very interested in buying Thoroughbred horses.

“Friends? Bam! Rotten lot, all of them, though present company excluded, naturally. Music?” Noel continues, and brings his hand up to once again slam it down, but Mari reaches over, stopping him.

“That door will never close to you, Noel,” she tells him, and she means it. “You mustn’t let it.”

His hand goes limp in hers, and Mari has the strangest feeling he might begin to weep.

“You’re still seeing the best in us,” he says, pulling his hand free. “In spite of it all.”

Mari is grateful when their food comes because it derails this mawkish stroll down memory lane. Soon, Noel is regaling her with tales of how he found this restaurant, of other little holes-in-the-wall he’s discovered all over the world, and by the time the meal ends, Mari feels on much more solid ground.

The air outside is frigid after the warmth of the restaurant. Mari wishes she’d brought a heavier coat because even though the snow has stopped, the night has turned bitterly cold, the kind that slips underneath collars, making her eyes water.

Seeing her shiver, Noel unwinds the paisley scarf he’s wearing.

“Here.” He wraps it around her neck, but holds on to the ends, tugging her close and looking down into her face.

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,” he murmurs, still smiling that odd little smile at her, and finally, Mari understands that it isn’t mocking or knowing at all.

It’s sad.

She doesn’t know it then, but this is the last time she’ll see Noel. In a month, he’ll leave for Nepal, seeking inspiration, but also wanting to do something grander with his life. It’s an impulse that will kill him, less than a hundred days from now, when the tiny plane he’s flying in crashes into the side of a mountain. Mari will spend the rest of her life thinking about that moment, wondering if he knew what was coming, wondering how Noel Gordon could be snuffed out so quickly.

And there will be a little part of her that thinks, Now it’s just me and Lara.

Now we’re the only ones who know.

She’ll hate how much that thought warms her.

Noel leans down then and kisses her, his lips cold but gentle against hers.

When he pulls back, there are tears in his eyes, and it might just be the frigid air, but Mari doesn’t think that it is.

“I wish I’d never said it,” he tells her now, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment she was earlier.

That day in the sun by the pond.

Cut yourself free.

“I don’t,” she replies, and he gives a huff of laughter, letting the ends of the scarf drop.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

Then he turns and leaves. Noel Gordon, once the most famous rock star in the world, now just another man on the cold, damp streets of a December night in New York.

Mari starts walking in the other direction, intending to hail a cab at the corner, but she spots a phone booth, and before she knows it, she’s ducking inside, fumbling with gloved hands to pull out the necessary change.

She’d gotten the number months ago, not long after she’d heard that Lara had moved to California. She kept it jotted down on a scrap of paper in her purse, but she’d looked at it so many times, she now knows it by heart.

Punching in the numbers, Mari tells herself that Lara won’t even be home, that this is a wasted call and a stupid whim that she’ll feel silly about in the morning.

So, when she hears Lara’s familiar, “Hello?” Mari is so surprised, she almost hangs up.

She stops herself, though, and stammers, “L-Lara? It’s me, it’s—”

“Mari. I know.”

The last time Mari saw Lara, she was onstage at the Scala in London, the stage lights making a halo around her. She’d played all of Aestas from beginning to end, and Mari had listened in the dark, her hands clenched against her chest, her eyes full of tears.

She hadn’t tried to go backstage, hadn’t even wanted Lara to see her in the audience.

“I don’t know why I’m calling,” she says now. “I just … I suppose I missed you.”

There’s silence over the line for so long that Mari thinks maybe Lara hung up, but then she hears a sigh, and Lara says, “I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been waiting for you to call, actually. I knew you would one day.”

Mari stands there in the phone booth, her breath fogging the glass, the city lights distorted.

“I’m proud of you,” Mari tells her. “I’ve listened to the album more times than I can count. It’s breathtaking, Lara.” She laughs then, self-conscious. “Not that you need me to tell you that, given how it’s sold.”

“I bought three copies of Lilith Rising,” Lara replies. “At first, I couldn’t finish it because it was all … it was too close. But it’s wonderful, Mari. Truly.”

Mari feels her throat go tight, her eyes stinging. “Thank you.”

There’s another pause, and Mari rushes in to fill it. “I’m in New York right now for some promotional things and meetings with my publisher.” She laughs, drawing a line in the condensation on the glass. “They’re being very polite, but I’m sure they’re all really thinking, ‘Is this bloody woman ever going to turn in her second book?’”

She will, one day, she’s sure, but it’s hard to imagine anything following the success of Lilith Rising. Readers are bound to be disappointed, but it’s more than that holding her back. It’s that ever since that awful, stormy night when she finished Lilith Rising, whatever voice was inside of her seems to have gone silent.

“You’ll get there,” Lara replies. “The follow-up to Aestas was the hardest album I’ve ever written, but it was finished, eventually.”

Mari has listened to it, Golden Light, Silver Moon, and she’d liked it, but it didn’t have the magic of Aestas, something she suspects Lara already knows.

“Maybe,” Mari offers, hesitant. “Since I’m in the States, and you’re in the States—”

“No.”

It’s soft, but also completely unyielding, and Mari stands there in that phone booth, watching as across the street, a laughing couple walks hand in hand, their collars turned up against the cold.

“Mari, what happened that night … I’ve never forgiven myself for it. I never will. But the thing is … I think you have. I think you think it was all worth it.”

Anger spikes her blood, her fingers curling around the receiver. “Aren’t we both in a better place now? Would we have any of what we have if you’d had the baby, if Pierce had kept dragging us around, if—”

“We could’ve just left, Mari,” Lara says, her voice tired, like they’ve been having this argument for hours instead of minutes. “That night, I believed the same thing. That it was the only way. But I realized a few years ago that we weren’t trapped. That’s just what you told yourself to make it seem like you didn’t have a choice. But you did, Mari. I did. We can’t take it back, but I can’t sit across a table from you, or on a sofa with you, and pretend like what we did wasn’t terrible, just to make you feel better. And that’s what you want from me.”

Mari doesn’t reply, and outside, it begins to snow again, the flakes thicker now, falling faster.

“I’ll miss you forever, Mari,” Lara says. “But I’m not giving you absolution. We don’t deserve it.”

There’s a click, and then Lara is gone, leaving Mari alone in the cold phone booth, snowflakes sticking to the glass.

She stands there for a long while with the receiver still clutched in one hand before, finally, she places it gently in the cradle.

The door of the phone booth screeches as she pushes it open, and a blast of cold air hits her as she steps out onto the snowy street and begins to walk to the corner.

Alone.

You are cordially invited to a reception at the

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

to celebrate the authors of

The Villa,

Chess Chandler and Emily McCrae.

An instant #1 New York Times best seller, The Villa has sold over two million copies, and been translated into more than two dozen languages. An adaptation is currently in the works at HBO, led by Emmy-winning director Elisabeth Hart.

Called “an immediate classic that marries true crime, literary mystery, and memoir” (Los Angeles Times), and a “searing but deeply personal look at art, sisterhood, and the crucible of loss” (NPR), The Villa has remained on the New York Times list for more than sixty weeks, forty-three of those at the #1 spot.

The authors will be giving a short talk detailing the creation of the book, followed by cocktails and small plates.

ATTIRE: BUSINESS CASUAL