And just as quickly, I remembered the look on his face when he had decided, despite my protests, that I was a liar and a fraud. And thus, had promptly shattered my heart.
“What about you, though?” I asked finally. “Do you want me in your home, Eric? You and Jane just moved back there, did you not? I don’t want to intrude.”
Our family was private. Maybe too private. We saw each other frequently, but everyone had their designated spaces. We barely touched, hardly shared compliments. Conversation was determined by decorum over substance.
Yes, a family like ours had rules to follow. And by spending fifteen days in a jail cell, I had promptly broken many of them.
But then again…so had Eric.
“You won’t,” he answered quickly. “I—we both wanted you to know you’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you want. And if you’d rather go somewhere else…well, you know I’ll help with that, too.”
He was being kind not stating the obvious: that the assets I shared with my husband were frozen, and the bulk of my inheritance was still tied up in probate court following Grandmother’s funeral nearly a year ago. It was an issue Eric didn’t have once he had been formally hired as CEO and chairman of the board—even without his inheritance, his salary alone was astronomical. I, on the other hand, had a small allowance from the trust set up by my father, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to live on. Despite a storage room full of couture and jewelry, I was all but penniless these days, dependent on the good will of others to keep me afloat. An heiress with absolutely nothing but a record and the Chanel on her back.
Pathetic.
“Why don’t you stay through the holidays, at least,” Eric continued. “We’re having a bit of a Christmas party next week, and after that, Jane will want to see Olivia when she comes home for the holidays. She wants to spend a little more time with kids because…well…” He tipped his head back and forth, causing his straight blond hair to flop from side to side. “She’ll probably kill me for telling you this, but, yeah. We’re trying for a baby again.”
I sat up straight. “You are? Since when?”
“Right after Thanksgiving. The doctor thinks we have a good chance of conceiving naturally, even after everything she went through in Korea.”
“Oh, but that’s…” I trailed off remembering the horror of Eric and Jane’s loss of their first pregnancy at the hands of a complete and total monster. Jane was nearly dead when Eric found her. “Eric, that’s wonderful!”
My cousin’s long, straight nose pinked visibly at the end, the only sign of any anxiety as he nodded. “Yeah. It is. But I’m sure you understand that she’s feeling…a little fragile. We haven’t told anyone else. Not even Skylar and Brandon.”
I nodded with a small smile. I had come to like the Sterling family, Eric and Jane’s Boston-based friends, during my brief stay with them in September. They often opened their home to others during the holidays especially. Eric and Jane had also visited for Thanksgiving in part so they could see my daughter, Olivia, who attended school not far from Boston, in my stead.
But then another thought occurred to me.
“Did Matthew go?” I wondered, unable to help myself completely. Matthew was friends with the Sterlings too.
Eric glanced at me, but then kept his gaze trained almost completely on the traffic ahead of us. “He did not. You know we haven’t heard from him since September either. But Brandon mentioned that he was still on leave. Working at a bar downtown while he waits, I guess.”
I kept my face perfectly still. Matthew? At a bar? The idea of that beautiful, intelligent man wasting his time pouring drinks was painful.
I didn’t have time to ask more as the traffic started moving. Eric had reached out again, and this time actually clapped his hand on mine and squeezed. “Jane could use you being there. I know I could too.”
I didn’t have to think twice.
“Of course I’d love to stay,” I said, and was genuinely surprised by how much I meant it.
Chapter Two
December 2018
Matthew
Drip. Drop.
Freezing cold raindrops smacked the collar of my trench coat and splashed my cheeks. A storm was threatening from the New Jersey side of the Hudson, darkening the skies over the Statue of Liberty. From this crumbling cement block of an abandoned Red Hook dock, I had a front row seat.
It was the first day of December, and Mother Nature was celebrating with a harsh drizzle that could easily turn into the first snow of the year. The rest of the streets in my lonely corner of Brooklyn were suspiciously empty—people had already gone to work or else had hibernated at home.
But I hadn’t moved for the last three hours, since I’d returned to my side of New York after finishing my latest shift at Envy, the Lower East Side lounge where I currently had a job as a part-time bartender.
Job. Ha. More like a joke. Once I was a Marine. An officer, even. Captain fuckin’ Zola before I became Matthew Zola, ADA. I had medals, degrees, accolades and honors. Now I was slinging drinks for Wall Street assholes and the women they wanted to fuck, night after night while I waited for the powers that be to decide if I could, in fact, still be a prosecutor in the city of New York.
And who fuckin’ knew when that might be.
With a swig from the flask of bourbon I’d been nursing since clocking out sometime past four, I stared at the front page of the Post I’d found abandoned on the subway on my way home. A few more rain drops stained the newsprint, from which
