She couldn’t eat a winner dinner.

“I can’t eat,” she said.

Connie said, “Come on, you’ve just had a bad day.”

A bad day. A bad day was when Meredith got an A-on her French quiz and her mother made chicken à la king with tinned mushrooms for dinner. A bad day was when it was raining and Meredith had both boys in the apartment pulling each other’s hair and ripping pages out of their picture books and refusing to go down for a nap. What had happened with Amy Rivers in the salon hadn’t been a bad day. It had been a moment Meredith would never forget. Amy had forced Meredith’s face to the mirror and shown her the truth: She was ugly. She could try to hide, but once people discovered who she really was, they would all agree. Meredith was a despicable human being, responsible for the downfall of thousands. Responsible for the trajectory of the nation’s economy into the Dumpster. Gabriella, on hearing the name Meredith Delinn, had blanched and said, “But you told me you not know Freddy Delinn! Now you say he your husband?”

“She lies,” Amy said. “Lies, lies, lies.”

The receptionist had backed away from Meredith slowly, as though there were a tarantula sitting on her shoulder.

Meredith whispered, “Cancel my hair appointment, please.”

The receptionist nodded; her face showed obvious relief. She banged on the computer keyboard with hard, eager strokes, deleting Mary Ann Martin.

As Meredith moved to the door, Amy said, “You can enjoy your Nantucket summer vacation, Meredith, but you’ll pay. The other investors are clamoring for your head. You and your son are going to end up just like Freddy, moldering in jail where you belong.”


Meredith had sat in the scorching hot interior of Connie’s car like a dog-a dog that would have expired if he’d been left in the car for the length of this appointment-but Meredith had made no move to put down the window or turn on the AC. She didn’t care if her brain boiled. She didn’t care if she died.

Moldering in jail where you belong. You and your son.

Amy was right: On some level, it was Meredith’s fault. She was, at the very least, responsible for Amy’s loss. She had begged Freddy to take Amy on as a client. For me, please? And Freddy had said, For you, please? All right, yes. But Meredith hadn’t known. They could surgically remove her brain and scour its nooks and crannies, and only then would they realize she hadn’t known a thing. Back at the very beginning, Meredith had offered to take a polygraph test, but Burt had told her that with certain kinds of people, polygraph tests didn’t work. Meredith didn’t understand.

“With pathological liars, for example,” Burt had said. “They are so convinced their lies are the truth that nine out of ten times they beat the machine.”

Was he calling Meredith a pathological liar? No, no, he insisted. But there had been no polygraph test to announce her innocence.

And there were certain things Meredith was guilty of: She was a coward; she had lived a life of submission. She had never asked Freddy where the money was coming from. Or rather, at a certain stage, she had asked him, and he hadn’t given her a straight answer or any answer at all, and she hadn’t demanded one. She hadn’t picked the lock to his home office under the cover of darkness and gone through his books with a fine-tooth comb the way she should have.

Eleanor Charnes, the mother of Alexander, Leo’s friend from Saint Bernard’s, had put a rumor out through the school that Freddy’s business was crooked, and Meredith had subtly seen to it that Eleanor wasn’t invited to the Frick benefit or to the Costume Institute Gala at the Met.

Phyllis Rossi had insisted her husband pull $25 million out of Delinn Enterprises because she’d chatted with Freddy at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, and she said she found his answers about his business “evasive.” Meredith had blackballed Phyllis for membership to the Everglades Club.

And then, of course, there was what she’d done to Connie.

Meredith was guilty of those things. But Leo-Leo wasn’t guilty. (Was he? Oh, God. Oh, God. Hundreds of pieces of evidence. From which “reliable sources” had Amy heard this? What did this mean?) When Amy had said Leo’s name, Meredith wanted to bare her teeth and snarl. Don’t you tell lies about my son. Amy Rivers was another scary pelican from the nightmares of Leo’s childhood.

Meredith’s vision started to splotch. She was going to pass out, but she didn’t care.


Connie came rushing out of the salon. When she opened the door, clean, fresh air blew into the car.

“Jesus!” Connie said. “What happened?”

Meredith told her, sparing no detail.

Connie said, “This is the woman you told me about? The one from Palm Beach?”

“Yes. I knew she was on the island. I saw her at the bookstore, but I didn’t think she recognized me.”

“Those things she said about Leo?” Connie asked. “They’re not true, are they?”

“They’re not true,” Meredith whispered. They couldn’t be true. They couldn’t be.

“I’d like to go back in there and rip her face off,” Connie said.

Meredith stared out the window. They were on Milestone Road, on their way home to Tom Nevers. There were trees and more trees. People riding bicycles. Normal people.

“The wig didn’t work,” Meredith said. “She knew me instantly.”

“Because you used to be friends,” Connie said. “Let me ask you this: Do you think she’s the one who took your picture? Vandalized the house? Slashed my tires?”

The thought had crossed Meredith’s mind. Amy was certainly angry enough to do those things, but the spray painting especially seemed juvenile and beneath her. The first word that Meredith would use to describe Amy Rivers was: “busy.” She was always rushing from one commitment to another. Her day was overscheduled. When she had lunch with Meredith, she always left ten minutes early and was already five minutes late for the next thing. Seeing Amy on a bicycle had thrown Meredith. In Palm Beach, she whipped her black Audi into the parking lot of the Everglades Club and screeched out. In Meredith’s mind, Amy Rivers was too busy to plan and execute that kind of vandalism. Surely she had bigger things to worry about?

But maybe not.

She would never have misspelled the word “thief.” Unless she was trying to throw the police off her trail.

Possible?

“I don’t know,” Meredith said.


Once Meredith retreated to her room, she dialed Dev at the law firm, while praying a Hail Mary. It was six o’clock on a Friday evening. What were the chances Dev would be at his desk? Meredith got the firm’s recording, which meant the miserable receptionist had left for the weekend. She was probably already in her seat aboard the Hampton Jitney. Meredith entered Dev’s extension. He answered.

“It’s Meredith.”

“Hey, Meredith-”

Meredith launched into what Amy Rivers had said. It wasn’t true, was it? There weren’t hundreds of pieces of evidence against Leo?

Dev was quiet. Meredith felt like she was free-falling.

“I’m not Leo’s attorney,” Dev said. “Honestly, I’m not sure what kind of evidence is amassed against him. There’s something, Meredith. I mean, we knew that, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t be under investigation. But right now, from the sounds of it, nothing they have is strong enough to stand up in court-otherwise, they would have charged him. And he hasn’t been charged. Julie is hunting down this Misurelli woman, the secretary. She said she’d fly to Padua herself if she had to. Julie has a phenomenal legal mind. And she has the eye of the tiger. Leo is in good hands, Meredith. There’s nothing you can do except tell yourself that Leo hasn’t been charged and he’s in good hands.” Meredith heard Dev swallow. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Meredith said. Dev promised he would talk to her after the weekend, but if she needed him in the meantime, she had his cell number.

Meredith said good-bye and hung up, then turned off her phone. Deep breath: Not charged with anything. In good hands. Phenomenal legal mind. Amy Rivers was lying. Your family is going to be flushed away. Like turds.

My God, Meredith thought.


Later, Connie grilled the salmon, and the smoke floated in the open balcony doors and made Meredith’s stomach rumble. She should just go down; she was being childish. Without Meredith downstairs, Connie might drink too much. She might obsess about the reason Dan hadn’t called, or she might fall deeper into self-pity about Wolf and Ashlyn.

Meredith should go down. But she couldn’t.

A little while later, Meredith heard a rustling outside her room. A piece of paper shot under the door.

It said, “Your dinner, Madame.”

Meredith opened the door and despite her prevailing sentiment that all she should be eating was stale bread smeared with rat guts, she took the beautiful plate-rosy salmon glazed with some kind of mustard dill sauce, grilled asparagus, and a pearly ear of Bartlett’s Farm corn already buttered and salted-and sat on her bed and devoured everything.

Meredith flipped the note over and wrote, “It was delicious. Thank you.” She wanted to add, I love you, but she and Connie hadn’t completely cleared the air between them yet. Soon, maybe. Meredith left the note out in the hallway, then shut her door and lay on her bed. It was still light outside, and her book was right there, but she couldn’t read. She hadn’t shut herself away to block out Connie. She had shut herself away because she needed to think.


Hundreds of pieces of evidence. Eye of the tiger. In good hands. Hasn’t been charged. Fly to Padua. Spend the rest of his life in prison.

Sick love story. That was another phrase that bothered Meredith.