Chương 3
She pressed both palms between her knees.
The locket rested against her chest.
She wanted to tear it off.
She wanted to hold it so tightly it cut her hand.
Neither impulse won.
Twenty minutes later, Rachel stepped onto the yacht’s tender wearing jeans, sneakers, and a gray sweater over her uniform dress. Denise had given her the sweater because Rachel’s own jacket was still at the marina office.
Alexander was waiting at the stern.
Rachel stopped.
“You said you’d give me a minute.”
“I gave you twenty-three.”
Despite everything, she almost smiled.
Something about the answer bothered her.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was familiar.
“You count when you’re nervous,” she said.
Alexander stared at her.
Rachel’s skin went cold.
“I don’t know why I said that.”
He looked away toward the water.
“I count when I’m terrified.”
Ethan stood several yards behind him with a crew member.
Victoria was nowhere in sight.
Alexander held out a business card.
Rachel did not take it.
“I don’t want your money.”
“I wasn’t offering money.”
“You’re a rich man holding a business card. It has a certain visual grammar.”
That almost made him smile.
Almost.
“I want you to have my number.”
“I can get your number.”
“Probably.”
“You’re not difficult to find.”
“No.”
“Neither am I, apparently.”
That landed.
Alexander lowered the card.
“I’m sorry.”
Rachel looked at him.
“For which part?”
“I don’t know yet.”
It was the first useful thing he had said.
Rachel boarded the tender.
Ethan called her name.
Not Claire.
“Rachel!”
She turned.
He stood with both hands clenched at his sides.
“Are you coming back?”
Rachel could have lied to make him feel better.
Some instinct stopped her.
“I don’t know.”
His face crumpled, but he nodded.
She sat down.
As the tender pulled away from the yacht, Rachel looked back once.
Alexander stood beside his son.
Victoria had appeared behind the glass wall.
Even from a distance, the crimson dress was unmistakable.
Rachel touched the locket.
Then she turned toward shore.
By midnight, the first video was online.
By breakfast, there were eleven.
By noon, Rachel’s manager at the hospitality company had called to tell her not to report for her next shift.
“It’s not disciplinary,” he said.
“Then why am I not working?”
“We’re letting things cool down.”
“That sounds disciplinary with better branding.”
“Rachel, clients are calling.”
“I didn’t hit anyone.”
“I know.”
“I was hit.”
“You weren’t actually hit.”
She closed her eyes.
“Excellent distinction.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
He sighed.
“We’ll pay you for the canceled shift.”
“What about the other four this week?”
Silence.
Rachel looked around her apartment.
It was a small second-floor place above a laundromat in Savannah. The washing machines below produced a low vibration in the kitchen floor every afternoon. She had once hated it. Eventually it had become reassuring.
Rent was due in thirteen days.
“Call me tomorrow,” her manager said.
Rachel ended the call.
Her phone showed eighty-seven unread messages.
She turned it facedown.
Then turned it over again because ignoring a phone did not make eighty-seven people disappear.
The videos had transformed the confrontation into competing narratives.
DEAD BILLIONAIRE’S WIFE RETURNS.
YACHT SERVER EXPOSED AS MISSING HEIRESS.
CHILD RECOGNIZES DEAD MOM.
SECOND WIFE HUMILIATED.
Rachel disliked all of them, particularly “returns.”
She had not returned anywhere.
She had gone to work.
A knock came at the door.
Rachel froze.
Another knock.
“Rachel?”
Denise.
Rachel opened it.
Denise entered carrying coffee and a paper bag.
“You look terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I brought a bagel.”
“That repairs most identity crises.”
“I thought so.”
Denise sat at the small kitchen table.
Rachel had slept perhaps forty minutes.
She had spent most of the night searching for Claire Mercer.
The internet had supplied a dead woman.
Claire Bennett Mercer, thirty years old at the time of her death.
Wife of Alexander Mercer.
Mother of Ethan Mercer.
Former elementary school art teacher.
Missing after a boating accident off the Georgia coast nine years earlier.
Presumed dead after debris and personal effects were recovered.
A badly damaged body had been found weeks later.
Identification had apparently been made through dental records and a personal item.
There had been a funeral.
Photographs from before the accident showed Rachel’s face.
Not approximately.
Not suggestively.
Her face.
The woman had worn her hair longer. She had smiled more easily. In one photograph she was holding a paintbrush between her teeth while helping children make a cardboard castle.
Rachel had stared at that picture until sunrise.
Denise pushed the coffee toward her.
“Have you called him?”
“No.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Lawyer?”
“With my enormous yacht-server legal budget?”
Denise reached into her purse and produced a card.
Rachel looked at it.
“Why do you have a lawyer?”
“Second divorce.”
“Of course.”
“She’s good.”
Rachel picked up the card.
“What kind?”
“Mean.”
“That’s not a specialty.”
“It should be.”
Rachel put the card down.
Denise studied her.
“You think you’re her.”
Rachel looked toward the window.
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“I think there is a photograph of a woman who has my face. I think her son knew my necklace. I think I knew his name before anyone told me.”
“That sounds fairly persuasive.”
“It sounds terrifying.”
Denise said nothing.
Rachel rubbed her thumb along the edge of the locket.
“There’s something else.”
She had not told anyone.
Not even the police nine years earlier, because she had not remembered it then.
Last night, after seeing Ethan, fragments had continued surfacing.
A kitchen with yellow walls.
Alexander asleep on a couch with a baby on his chest.
A woman’s voice arguing over a phone.
A marina.
Rain.
A hand grabbing Rachel’s arm.
Not Alexander’s.
A woman’s hand.
A diamond ring.
Rachel looked at Denise.
“I remember being afraid before the accident.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of Alexander?”
Rachel pictured him catching Victoria’s wrist.
His face when he saw the locket.
May you like
“No.”
That answer frightened her too.
