Roses Revenge novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Fifty Thousand to Be Quiet

I answered Paisley's message at noon.

I wrote: "Dolan's Coffee on Fifth. Two o'clock."

Elliot read it over my shoulder and said nothing.

"You're going to tell me not to," I said.

"I'm going to tell you to record it."

"I was already planning to."

"Then I have nothing to add."

He had one more thing to add. He wrote the name of a lawyer on a napkin and pushed it toward me.

I put it in my pocket.

Dolan's was a narrow room with a long window and eight small tables.

Aunt Bea took the table by the pastry case, ordered a lemon square, and opened a crossword.

She did not fill in a single clue.

Paisley came in at five past two.

She wore a cream sweater and no makeup, and her eyes were red.

She had put real work into looking like a woman who had cried all night.

"Rose." She sat down across from me with both hands around her cup. "Thank you for coming. I know I don't deserve it."

"You asked me to."

"I did something terrible."

I set my phone face up on the table, next to my saucer, with the voice recorder running.

"Go ahead," I said.

Her eyes went to the phone and then back to my face.

"Oh, you're recording. That's fine. That's fair." She gave a small, shaky laugh. "I have nothing to hide."

She stirred her coffee for a while.

"It started last spring. At the retreat in Napa. You'd gone to bed early with a migraine."

"I remember the migraine."

"I wanted to tell you so many times."

She pressed her hand to her mouth.

"But Colton said it would destroy you. He said you were fragile."

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