a P

ion glowing mockingly on my phone screen. S

one rang. An unknown number. I ignored it. It rang again, pe

come

with a fury he was trying to suppre

I don't have one of those anymore, remembe

Caroline. You ripped a necklace off her neck in front of my mother. You stood in my foyer and humiliated every single one of us, then stormed out of my ap

t you?" I asked

use the answer would force him to admit what he already knew: that Caroline had knocked my parents' ashes into the sand, that his mother had sat there laughing about it over tea,

cemetery, refusing to come home, acting like you're the one who was wronged? After you put your hands on C

olent, unhinged woman who had attacked an innocent friend over a minor disagreement about a necklace. He couldn't defend what Caroline had d

stole my voice for a mome

a beach party. Your mother sat in my living room drinking chamomile and calling me a vase while Caroline laughed. You handed my dead mot

er. She was just trying to get you to stop being hysterical. And the necklace was a gift between friends. You provoked h

. The final

n his head until he had convinced himself that I was the villain, that Caroline was the victim, and

anything I had ever felt for

the marble tombs surrounding me. "Not tonight. Not ever. M

let you just walk away f

t or not let me do a

ulations running through his head. Damage control. How to spin this. How to protect the company. How to pr

this," he fin

said. "I

Blocked t

need a ride. And I ne

e the curb, its engine a throaty growl in the stillness. She leaped out,

I've been going

n jacket, onto the supple leather of her back

ys. Are you sure you don't want to go back there

done with that place. I'

rm. "The expensive kind. The kind you'd never let

ajamas. Sat on the couch with the urn beside me and the sapphire

a glass. Sat be

mile summit. The four-person evisceration in the foyer. All of

ll him," she sai

nd then we're going to sleep. And tomorrow we're going to f

lass. "To not bei

ed hers

ere deep and quiet and slept fo