Chapter 5: The Shower

I didn't think about it for long.

"I'm staying," I told the owner. "And so is the wedding."

She raised one white eyebrow. "How?"

"Where is Margaux tomorrow?"

The housekeeper knew. The housekeeper always knew.

"Her bridal shower," she said. "At the Fitzroy house in Greenwich. Two o'clock. It was in the paper."

"Take the good bill paper," she said. "The cream kind, with the letterhead."

I called Ivy that night and told her everything.

"Film it," she said. "Film all of it. I want to watch it at the bar on a loop."

I took the train to Greenwich the next afternoon, alone, in black jeans and a clean white shirt.

I wasn't there for the family. I was there for my bill.

The front gate was open for guests.

Nobody stopped me. I'd hired half the staff in that house.

The drawing room was full of pink peonies and forty women in pale dresses.

Honora stood by the fireplace in cream silk.

Margaux sat in a white chair, with her mother beside her and three friends filming.

She was telling a story.

"And she just came at me," she was saying. "In the hallway, at three in the morning. I've never been so scared in my life."

"She wrecked her own room to make me look bad. That's how sick she is."

I walked into the middle of the rug.

The talking stopped in a ripple, from the door to the fireplace.

"Oh my God," someone whispered. "It's her."

Margaux's hand closed on the crystal glass in her lap.

"Neve," Honora said, as if I were a stain. "You signed a paper saying you'd stay away."

"I'm not here to visit," I said. "I'm here to deliver an invoice."

I walked to the big television over the sideboard.

I'd installed it two years ago. I'd chosen the password.

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