Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Wasn't Dead
I turned so fast my shoulder hit the hall table.
A woman stood just inside the doorway.
She was maybe forty, thin in the way people get after a long illness or a long period of being tired, with dark blond hair cut to her jaw and rain shining on the shoulders of a gray wool coat.
She wasn't dressed for the Halloween party.
She wasn't smiling.
And I knew her name before she said it.
"Elise Mercer."
My mouth went dry.
The woman Adrian said had died in a crash outside Madison five years ago.
The woman whose signature appeared on a deed transferring Alder House to Blackwood Restoration Group eighteen months after her supposed death.
"You're alive," I said.
She gave a small, humorless nod.
"Apparently that's become inconvenient information."
Footsteps sounded behind me.
Adrian came through the open door, vampire cape hanging crooked from one shoulder.
"Evelyn, please, just let me-"
He saw Elise.
He stopped.
For one second, nobody moved.
The party noise outside continued as if we weren't standing inside a lie big enough to swallow the whole house.
Then Adrian said, very quietly, "You shouldn't be here."
Elise's face changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Like she'd heard those exact words before.
"That's what you said last time," she replied.
I looked between them.
"You told me she was dead."
Adrian closed his eyes.
"Evelyn-"
"You told me you identified her body."
"I said-"
"You told me you couldn't talk about the funeral because you still woke up hearing the rain."
The brunette appeared in the doorway behind him, cat ears still on, one hand gripping the frame.
Up close, she looked less glamorous than she had beneath the porch lights.
Younger.
Angrier.
"Who is that?" she asked.
Elise looked at her.
"And you must be Celeste."
The brunette's chin lifted.
"Do I know you?"
"No. But I know you're married to my ex-husband."
Celeste glanced at Adrian.
"Ex-husband?"
Adrian rubbed both hands over his face.
"Can everyone stop talking for thirty seconds?"
I almost laughed.
That was Adrian's favorite response when reality stopped cooperating with him.
Slow the room down.
Reframe.
Make everyone else sound emotional.
Then become the reasonable one.
I'd watched him do it in vendor meetings, with architects, with angry clients.
I had even admired him for it.
Now I could see the trick.
"No," I said. "Actually, I think we're going to talk a lot."
Celeste looked at the candy bowl on the porch table.
The real diamond glittered among miniature chocolate bars.
"Adrian," she said, "why does she have the real ring?"
He didn't answer.
Elise glanced at the ring.
Her eyebrows rose.
"Your grandmother's?"
"Yes," I said.
"It wasn't his grandmother's."
Adrian's head snapped toward her.
"Don't."
That single word landed harder than a shout.
I stared at Elise.
"Whose was it?"
She looked at me.
"Mine."
The hallway seemed to tilt.
Elise continued before Adrian could stop her.
"My mother left it to me. I wore it for six years. When Adrian and I divorced, it disappeared from a safety deposit box that was still in both our names. He told my attorney he had no idea where it went."
I looked at Adrian.
His face had gone gray.
Three years earlier, when he proposed to me at a rooftop restaurant, he'd told me the diamond had belonged to his grandmother, Frances Blackwood.
He'd cried when he said it.
I remembered wiping his cheek with my thumb.
I remembered feeling trusted.
Chosen.
I remembered calling my mother from the bathroom because I couldn't stop shaking.
Every memory changed shape at once.
Celeste took off the cat ears.
"You told me you sold that ring after Elise died."
Elise gave a soft laugh.
"That must have been a difficult sale, considering I was still using my Social Security number."
Adrian stepped toward the living room.
"Not here."
"Why?" I asked. "Too many witnesses?"
"Because there are sixty people outside. Employees. Clients. Neighbors. I am trying to stop this from becoming a circus."
"You invited both your wife and your fiancée to the same Halloween party."
Celeste's eyes flashed toward me.
"I didn't know you were coming."
"I wasn't supposed to."
That shut her up.
Elise moved past us toward the study.
She knew the layout.
Of course she did.
The house had been hers once too.
Adrian caught her arm.
"Don't go in there."
Elise looked down at his hand.
He released her immediately.
"Still doing that?" she asked.
"Doing what?"
"Deciding where everybody is allowed to stand."
I followed her into the study.
The room smelled like cedar, whiskey, and the candle Adrian always burned when he wanted people to think he read more than he did.
Elise went to the window.
Celeste stayed near the door.
Adrian stood in the center of the room, suddenly looking like a man being deposed by his own furniture.
"Tell me what happened to you," I said to Elise.
"I left him."
"That's not what he told me."
"I know."
"Why would he say you died?"
Elise looked at Adrian.
"You should ask him."
I did.
He sat down hard in the leather chair.
"Because you kept asking why I was divorced."
I stared.
"So you said she was dead?"
"You met me nine months after everything fell apart. I didn't want to explain-"
"Explain what?"
He pressed his fingers to his forehead.
"The divorce was ugly. The business was failing. Elise's family hated me. I made mistakes. I was ashamed."
Elise folded her arms.
"That's a very clean sentence for what happened."
"I never said I handled it well."
"You forged my name on Alder House."
Celeste turned sharply.
"What house?"
Adrian stood.
"That is not what happened."
Elise looked at me.
"Show him the deed."
I opened the file on my phone.
The transfer had moved Alder House from Elise Mercer to Blackwood Restoration Group for ten dollars and "other valuable consideration."
Her signature was dated two years after the divorce.
One year after Adrian had told me she died.
"I didn't sign that," Elise said.
Adrian's jaw tightened.
"You knew I was trying to save the company."
"That's not an answer."
"Your lawyer stopped returning calls. You left the state. The taxes were overdue. The roof was collapsing. I put three million dollars into that property."
"You put company money into a house you didn't own."
"Because you told me you never wanted to see it again."
Elise's voice softened.
"I told you I couldn't live there anymore."
"Same result."
"No, Adrian. It isn't."
That sentence changed something in the room.
Because it was small.
And because it explained him better than any dramatic confession could have.
If two things looked the same from where Adrian stood, he treated them as the same.
If someone left, they were gone.
If someone was silent, they agreed.
If nobody stopped him, he decided he had permission.
My phone vibrated again.
This time it was a fraud alert from my bank.
A new personal guarantee had been submitted that afternoon using my name.
Attached to it was the address of the condominium I'd owned before I met Adrian.
I looked up.
"What did you file today?"
Adrian's face went blank.
And that was when I knew the signature I'd found wasn't Elise's.
May you like
It was mine.
