The receptionist noticed Meredith and said, “Oh, did you forget your shoes?”

Yes, all of a sudden, Meredith realized she had forgotten her shoes, a fact that was only going to slow her down. Gabriella walked out of the spa room holding Meredith’s suede flats, the same shoes she had gone to visit Freddy in-they were now, officially, bad-luck shoes-and at the same time, Meredith heard the chiming noise that meant someone was entering the salon. She was so nervous she feared she would pee all over the salon floor.

A voice said, “Meredith?”

And Meredith thought, DO NOT TURN AROUND.

But forty-nine years of Pavlov-like conditioning prevailed, and Meredith responded automatically and found herself face to face with Amy Rivers.

Amy was wearing a light-blue polo shirt and white shorts and her Tretorns. Her hair was in a ponytail; she was tan. The strange thing was how familiar she was to Meredith. It didn’t seem right that someone so familiar-Meredith had eaten lunch with this woman countless times; she had hit thousands of tennis balls beside her-should be so threatening. She had been Meredith’s friend. But that was how the world worked. It wasn’t the bogeyman in the closet you had to fear; the people you liked and cared about could hurt you much worse.

“Nice wig,” Amy said. She reached out to touch it-possibly, to tear it off-but Meredith backed away.

Meredith said nothing. Gabriella was still holding Meredith’s shoes. Very slowly, like she had a gun trained on her, Meredith reached out for her shoes. Amy’s eyes flickered to Meredith’s feet, then over to Gabriella.

“You gave this woman a pedicure?”

“Yes,” Gabriella said, a touch of Russian moxie in her voice.

“Do you know who she is?”

Gabriella shrugged, now seeming less certain. “Marion?” she said.

“Ha!” Amy said, announcing Gabriella’s gullibility. Turning back to Meredith, she said, “Did you get the message I left you?”

Meredith nodded.

“Your husband stole all my money,” Amy said. “Over nine million dollars. And I’m one of the lucky ones because I still have a job and Jeremy has a job, but we had to sell the house in Palm Beach, and we had to pull Madison out of Hotchkiss.”

“I’m sorry,” Meredith whispered.

“But like I said, I’m one of the lucky ones. I honestly don’t know how you can move about like a regular human being-summering on Nantucket, getting pedicures-when you have ruined so many lives. People are broke because of you, Meredith, and not only broke but broken. Our neighbor in Palm Beach, Kirby Delarest, blew his brains out. He had three little girls.”

Meredith closed her eyes. She knew Kirby Delarest. He was an investor with Freddy; he and Freddy had been friendly acquaintances, if not actually friends, because Freddy didn’t have any friends. But Kirby Delarest had swung by the house on occasion. Meredith had once happened on Freddy and Kirby barbecuing steaks by the pool midday, drinking a rare and expensive bottle of wine that Kirby had bought at auction, and smoking Cohibas. Meredith had found this odd because Freddy never drank and certainly not midday during the week, but Freddy had been effusive on that day, saying that he and Kirby were celebrating. Celebrating what? Meredith had asked. Because of the cigars, she thought maybe Kirby’s wife, Janine, was expecting another baby. Meredith had said, Is there something I should know? Freddy had taken Meredith in his arms and waltzed her around the flagstone patio, and he said, Just dance with me, woman. Love me. You are my winning lottery ticket. You are my lucky charm. Meredith had been curious, bordering on suspicious, but she decided to just enjoy it. She didn’t ask anything else. She supposed Freddy and Kirby were toasting the occasion of yet more money, a good deal, a correct gamble, some more unbelievable returns. Kirby had been a tall, lean man with white-blond hair, and he had an accent she couldn’t place. It sounded European-Dutch, maybe-but when she asked him, he claimed he hailed from Menasha, Wisconsin, which did explain his amiable nature and his Scandinavian good looks, as well as Freddy’s affinity for him. Fred loved midwesterners. He said he found them to be the most honest people on earth.

Meredith hadn’t heard the news that Kirby Delarest shot himself, because there was no one to tell her. Samantha had decorated for Kirby and Janine Delarest; Freddy and Meredith had made the introduction. Meredith wondered if Samantha knew.

Gabriella and the receptionist stood watching. Meredith then realized the salon was silent, except for Billie Holiday crooning.

“I’m sorry,” Meredith said. “I had no idea.”

“No idea?” Amy said. She took a step toward Meredith, and Meredith could smell the cigarette smoke on her. Meredith hadn’t known Amy was a smoker; possibly it was a stress-induced habit, caused by Freddy.

“No,” Meredith said. “No idea. About any of it.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Amy said. “Everyone knows you and Freddy were connected at the hip. Everyone knows you two were living out some kind of sick love story.”

Sick love story? Meredith had no response for that.

“And your son?” Amy said.

Meredith snapped her head up. “Don’t,” she said. What she wanted to say was, Don’t you dare say one word about Leo.

“They have hundreds of pieces of evidence against him,” Amy said. “Someone in my company knows that cute little lawyer of his, and supposedly even she says it’s a lost cause. Your son is going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

“No,” Meredith said. She closed her eyes and shook her head. No, there weren’t hundreds of pieces of evidence against Leo. Julie Schwarz was a superstar; she would never have spoken out against her case, her client. Leo! If there were hundreds of pieces of evidence against Leo, Dev would have told Meredith.

“Yes,” Amy said. “Yes, absolutely. My sources are reliable. Your family is going to be flushed away, Meredith. Like turds.”

Meredith opened her mouth to speak-and say what? You’re wrong. Leave me alone. Or again, I’m sorry-but the receptionist took the occasion of Meredith’s loss for words to step in. “Are you ready to be shampooed, Mrs. Rivers? We have to keep things moving or we’ll get backed up.”

Amy laughed. “Do you know who this woman is?”

The receptionist seemed baffled. Gabriella said in a weaker voice, “Marion?”

“It’s Meredith Delinn,” Amy said.


That night, Meredith went up to her room without any dinner. Connie protested. She had salmon steaks marinating and ready to grill, and corn on the cob from Bartlett’s Farm. “You have to eat something. I’m going to make you a winner dinner.”

The winner dinner was the problem. The dazzling house overlooking the ocean was the problem. The beautiful life Connie had allowed Meredith to share was the problem. Amy Rivers was correct: How could she continue to live a life of privilege when so many people had lost everything? Kirby Delarest-the kindhearted midwesterner whose three little blond girls always wore matching Bonpoint outfits to dinner at the Everglades Club-had shot himself. Meredith occasionally took solace in the fact that Freddy hadn’t murdered or raped anyone. But now Kirby Delarest’s blood was on his hands. Seen through Amy’s eyes, Fred’s crimes seemed more reprehensible-as though Meredith had opened a basement door and found thirteen thousand dead bodies stacked one on top of the other.

She couldn’t eat a winner dinner.

“I can’t eat,” she said.

Connie said, “Come on, you’ve just had a bad day.”

A bad day. A bad day was when Meredith got an A-on her French quiz and her mother made chicken à la king with tinned mushrooms for dinner. A bad day was when it was raining and Meredith had both boys in the apartment pulling each other’s hair and ripping pages out of their picture books and refusing to go down for a nap. What had happened with Amy Rivers in the salon hadn’t been a bad day. It had been a moment Meredith would never forget. Amy had forced Meredith’s face to the mirror and shown her the truth: She was ugly. She could try to hide, but once people discovered who she really was, they would all agree. Meredith was a despicable human being, responsible for the downfall of thousands. Responsible for the trajectory of the nation’s economy into the Dumpster. Gabriella, on hearing the name Meredith Delinn, had blanched and said, “But you told me you not know Freddy Delinn! Now you say he your husband?”

“She lies,” Amy said. “Lies, lies, lies.”

The receptionist had backed away from Meredith slowly, as though there were a tarantula sitting on her shoulder.

Meredith whispered, “Cancel my hair appointment, please.”

The receptionist nodded; her face showed obvious relief. She banged on the computer keyboard with hard, eager strokes, deleting Mary Ann Martin.

As Meredith moved to the door, Amy said, “You can enjoy your Nantucket summer vacation, Meredith, but you’ll pay. The other investors are clamoring for your head. You and your son are going to end up just like Freddy, moldering in jail where you belong.”


Meredith had sat in the scorching hot interior of Connie’s car like a dog-a dog that would have expired if he’d been left in the car for the length of this appointment-but Meredith had made no move to put down the window or turn on the AC. She didn’t care if her brain boiled. She didn’t care if she died.

Moldering in jail where you belong. You and your son.

Amy was right: On some level, it was Meredith’s fault. She was, at the very least, responsible for Amy’s loss. She had begged Freddy to take Amy on as a client. For me, please? And Freddy had said, For you, please? All right, yes. But Meredith hadn’t known. They could surgically remove her brain and scour its nooks and crannies, and only then would they realize she hadn’t known a thing. Back at the very beginning, Meredith had offered to take a polygraph test, but Burt had told her that with certain kinds of people, polygraph tests didn’t work. Meredith didn’t understand.

“With pathological liars, for example,” Burt had said. “They are so convinced their lies are the truth that nine out of ten times they beat the machine.”

Was he calling Meredith a pathological liar? No, no, he insisted. But there had been no polygraph test to announce her innocence.

And there were certain things Meredith was guilty of: She was a coward; she had lived a life of submission. She had never asked Freddy where the money was coming from. Or rather, at a certain stage, she had asked him, and he hadn’t given her a straight answer or any answer at all, and she hadn’t demanded one. She hadn’t picked the lock to his home office under the cover of darkness and gone through his books with a fine-tooth comb the way she should have.

Eleanor Charnes, the mother of Alexander, Leo’s friend from Saint Bernard’s, had put a rumor out through the school that Freddy’s business was crooked, and Meredith had subtly seen to it that Eleanor wasn’t invited to the Frick benefit or to the Costume Institute Gala at the Met.

Phyllis Rossi had insisted her husband pull $25 million out of Delinn Enterprises because she’d chatted with Freddy at the Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, and she said she found his answers about his business “evasive.” Meredith had blackballed Phyllis for membership to the Everglades Club.

And then, of course, there was what she’d done to Connie.

Meredith was guilty of those things. But Leo-Leo wasn’t guilty. (Was he? Oh, God. Oh, God. Hundreds of pieces of evidence. From which “reliable sources” had Amy heard this? What did this mean?) When Amy had said Leo’s name, Meredith wanted to bare her teeth and snarl. Don’t you tell lies about my son. Amy Rivers was another scary pelican from the nightmares of Leo’s childhood.

Meredith’s vision started to splotch. She was going to pass out, but she didn’t care.


Connie came rushing out of the salon. When she opened the door, clean, fresh air blew into the car.

“Jesus!” Connie said. “What happened?”

Meredith told her, sparing no detail.

Connie said, “This is the woman you told me about? The one from Palm Beach?”

“Yes. I knew she was on the island. I saw her at the bookstore, but I didn’t think she recognized me.”

“Those things she said about Leo?” Connie asked. “They’re not true, are they?”

“They’re not true,” Meredith whispered. They couldn’t be true. They couldn’t be.