Chapter three

By morning, I had checked into a quiet suite at the Halloran Hotel, blocked seventeen numbers, and eaten my first real breakfast in a week.

At 9:15, the front desk called up to say that a Mrs. Marguerite Vale was in the lobby and refused to leave.

I looked at the phone for a long time. Then I put on my good navy dress, pinned up my hair, and went down.

Marguerite Vale sat in the hotel restaurant like a queen holding court. Sixty-four years old, silver bob, pearls, a coat that cost more than a car. Beside her sat a young lawyer with an anxious face and a briefcase.

"Sit down," she said.

I sat. I folded my hands in my lap.

"You have humiliated my son in front of the entire family," Marguerite began. "You will call him. You will apologize. You will retract that video, and you will complete the transfer you promised him. He is a good boy who made one mistake."

"One mistake," I repeated softly.

"One weak moment."

"Marguerite." I opened the folder I had brought with me and slid it across the table. "Would you like to see the weak moments?"

She did not touch it. So I turned the pages for her, one by one.

"The bracelet Lorcan bought Pia in April, eleven thousand dollars. Her apartment lease, paid from the company account, fourteen months. A weekend in Lisbon he told me was a client dinner. Here is the hotel receipt, two guests. Here is the invoice for the car." I paused. "I found all of it in one night, Marguerite. It was very easy. He was not careful, because he never thought I would look."

The lawyer had gone pale. Marguerite stared at the receipts, and something moved behind her face, slow and ugly, like a fish under ice.

"That does not," she said stiffly, "change your obligations to this family."

"I have no obligations to a family that watched my husband do this and said nothing."

"We did not know!"

"Your sister did," I said gently. "Aunt Vivienne. She sent me a message at midnight. She said she saw them together at the Merrick Hotel last winter, and she was too ashamed to tell me. She has apologized four times. I did not realize until now how many people saw me and looked away."

Marguerite's mouth thinned. She opened it to speak, and her phone lit up on the tablecloth.

Uncle Desmond: Marguerite. The family council is meeting tonight. Bring Lorcan.

She read it. Her face changed.

"You have destroyed him," she said in a low voice.

"No," I said. "He did that himself. I only turned on the light."

She stood, trembling with rage, and swept out of the restaurant. The young lawyer lingered, then leaned toward me.

"Miss Rennick," he whispered. "For what it's worth, I resigned from her retainer this morning. I'm sorry."

He hurried after her. I watched them go, and I sat there feeling strangely hollow and strangely light, as if I had been carrying a suitcase for years and had only just been allowed to put it down.

By noon, the rest of the fallout had arrived.

An email came from the HR director at Pia's firm, formal and polite and devastating. Following a review of recent conduct, your employment is terminated effective immediately. Please return your badge and laptop by Friday. Caspian Reeve, Lorcan's business partner, sent me a long, stiff apology and a screenshot showing that he had dissolved Vale Futures that morning. Two of Lorcan's vendors called to ask, in awkward voices, whether I knew where he was, because he owed them money.

At one o'clock, an unknown number left a voicemail. I listened to it standing at the window.

"Odie." It was Pia, hoarse and small. "Please. I'm at my sister's. I have nowhere else to go. I didn't mean it, you know I didn't mean it, I'll say it on camera, I'll say whatever you want. You were my best friend. Please just call me."

I listened to the whole thing. Then I deleted it.

I did not feel joy. I had expected to. I felt something quieter, like the closing of a long, sad book. She had chosen every one of those words for herself.

That afternoon, Emrys called.

"Mrs. Vale has filed an emergency motion to contest the trust," he said, without preamble. "The hearing is in two weeks. Until then, the court has restricted most of the funds. You have access to a fraction of the ten million, enough for ordinary living, not for a spending spree."

My stomach dropped. "How much is a fraction?"

"Under two million."

I closed my eyes. I had planned everything around ten million dollars. I had lists and lists, and none of them assumed a court order.

"Miss Rennick?" Emrys said. "Will that be a problem?"

I opened my eyes. Through the hotel window, the city shone in the afternoon sun, busy and bright and doomed.

"No," I said slowly. "It just means I'll have to be clever."

That afternoon, I went to Corvane Wholesale.

The manager was a round, sweating man in a wrinkled tie, and he stared at my list as if I had handed him a ransom note. "Twelve hundred cases of instant noodles? Ma'am, are you opening a restaurant?"

"It's for me."

"For a, uh, family event?"

"Something like that," I said.

He laughed nervously and named a price. I paid it in full, by card, and watched his smile falter when the payment went through. By four o'clock, a truck had delivered the noodles to a small storage unit I had rented under my grandmother's name.

But it was one more purchase that changed everything.

I had stopped by a corner store on the way back to buy water and, on impulse, one extra case of instant noodles to carry in the car. I set it on the passenger seat and looked at it, and thought, Where in the world am I going to put all of this?

The bangle on my wrist warmed.

It burned, gently, like a hand pressed against my skin. Green light spilled through my sleeve. I gasped and pulled it back, and the light flowed over the passenger seat, and the case of noodles simply wasn't there anymore.

I sat frozen for a full minute. Then, very carefully, I held out my wrist and thought, Show me.

And there was a room.

Not a real room. A place inside my mind, as clear as a memory: white walls, white floor, a low ceiling, about the size of a walk-in closet. The case of noodles sat in the middle of the floor, exactly where I had left it. The air felt cool and still. Outside, cars honked. Inside, everything hushed.

"Grandmother," I whispered. "What did you leave me?"

The bangle did not answer. But when I thought, Bring it back, the case of noodles reappeared on the passenger seat, solid and sweet-smelling, as if it had never left.

I put my head against the steering wheel and laughed until I cried.