Chapter 5: The Offer

By eleven the last aunt had left, and Marguerite had gone out on Rodrick's arm without looking back.

Kelsey was the final one to go.

She stopped in front of me at the elevator with her ring turned to the light.

"You're really something," she said. "I hope it felt good."

"It felt like a Friday," I said.

The doors closed on her face.

I walked back through the empty terrace and sat down at the bar, and my hands finally started to shake.

Nadine put a glass of water in front of me and a plate of the little almond cakes that nobody had touched.

"Thirty-one thousand dollars," she said. "On her own card. Cora, I have never loved a bill so much."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and she came around the bar and held me for a long time.

"Go home," she said at last. "Sleep. Fly to your Greek island."

"I'm going to."

"Take the scarf."

"I'm throwing the scarf in the lake."

When she had gone to count the till, Tobias came out of the kitchen with his jacket over his arm.

He had stayed all night in the back, and I had known it the whole time.

"I'll walk you down," he said.

The elevator was glass and slow. The city dropped away under our feet.

"That was the best-run exit I've ever seen," he said, looking straight ahead. "I wanted to applaud, and I didn't think you'd forgive me."

"You'd have been the only one."

"I think I would."

We reached the lobby. The night air outside was cold, and he stopped at the door and did not open it.

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