Part 5
“You will leave now,” she said to Isabel.
Julian faced her. “Mother.”
“She has done enough.”
Isabel walked toward the foyer.
Vivienne followed at a measured distance.
“You will hear from our attorneys.”
“I expect to.”
“You will not enter this property again.”
“I’ll return Tuesday with the engineer and the insurance representative.”
“I will have you arrested.”
“You have an occupancy license. You do not have authority to exclude the owner.”
Vivienne stopped beneath the portrait of Henry Ashford.
The words seemed to offend the painted men around her more than the actual sale had.
“You think a document makes you belong here?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It makes me responsible for what happens next.”
Vivienne’s grip tightened around the envelope.
Isabel opened the front door.
Cold air entered the hall.
Before she stepped outside, she looked at Julian. He stood beside the table where she had left the ring, staring at it as if it were another legal instrument he had failed to read.
His mother remained upright beneath the portrait.
For a moment Isabel saw not two villains but two people held together by a house neither had known how to keep. The recognition did not soften what they had done. It only made leaving more painful.
She crossed the stone terrace and walked to her car.
The cream remained on her face until she reached the highway.
At a red light near the Merritt Parkway, she caught her reflection in the rearview mirror. The dried smear looked theatrical now, almost ridiculous. A driver in the next lane glanced over, then quickly looked away.
Isabel found a packet of tissues in the glove compartment.
She wiped her nose first, then her cheek, then the dark strand of hair. The cream left an oily shadow on the skin. The berry stain near her temple remained.
She folded the tissue inward so she would not have to see it.
Her apartment in Stamford was forty minutes away in weekday traffic and twenty-six minutes that afternoon. She drove with the radio off.
At home, she removed the dress in the bathroom and lowered it into the bathtub because she did not know where else to put it. The blackberry at the neckline had left a crescent-shaped stain. She ran cold water over the satin, then stopped when she realized she had no idea whether cold water was correct.
Her mother would have known.
The thought arrived without warning.
Helen Hart had treated stains as moral tests. Blood required cold water. Coffee required patience. Red wine required salt unless salt was merely something people said because it felt useful. She had died six years earlier after a short illness that Isabel still described as short because saying four months sounded obscene.
Isabel sat on the closed toilet lid in her underwear and searched for instructions on cleaning berry stains from satin.
The first result recommended professional treatment.
She laughed once, then covered her face with both hands.
The laugh became something else.
She cried without elegance, shoulders bent, breath catching in a way that would have embarrassed her at Bellweather. She cried for the brunch, for Julian’s laugh, for the ring on the hall table, for her mother, for the eleven-point-eight-million-dollar problem she had spent nine months pretending was merely professional.
She cried because she owned a house with fifty-three rooms and could not decide what to do with one ruined dress.
When the crying stopped, she remained seated.
Water continued running into the tub.
She turned it off.
Maya arrived at six carrying Thai food, a garment bag, and a bottle of club soda.
“You left me three messages saying you were fine,” she said. “That is how I knew you were not fine.”
Isabel let her inside.
Maya was five feet tall, wore navy suits regardless of season, and distrusted any room with decorative pillows. She set the food on the kitchen counter and looked at Isabel’s face.
“You missed some.”
She pointed near her ear.
Isabel touched the dried berry stain.
“I showered.”
“Apparently around it.”
Maya placed the garment bag over the back of a chair. “My dry cleaner said not to touch the dress again.”
“It’s in the bathtub.”
“Of course it is.”
They carried it out together. Maya used two towels to support the wet satin and slid it into the plastic bag.
“This is not how garment bags work,” Isabel said.
“Neither of us is at our best.”
They ate noodles from cartons at the small table by the window.
Isabel had bought the table after moving into the apartment three years earlier. It seated two comfortably and four with negotiation. Julian hated it. His knees struck the underside, and he said the wood looked unfinished.
Maya read from her phone while eating.
“Vivienne’s attorney emailed at five twelve. They allege fraudulent concealment, breach of fiduciary duty, predatory acquisition, exploitation of an elderly occupant, and emotional coercion.”
“Emotional coercion?”
“You made her sad by buying her house.”
“She put cake in my face.”
“I mentioned that in my response.”
“You already responded?”
“I acknowledged receipt.”
“What did you say?”
“‘We acknowledge receipt.’”
Isabel waited.
“That was all?”
“It’s a strong sentence.”
Maya took another bite.
On the windowsill, a basil plant Isabel had forgotten to water leaned toward the glass. One stem had turned gray. She poured a little water into the pot.
Maya watched her.
“What?”
“You own Bellweather and you’re worried about a five-dollar herb.”
“It was seven.”
“That explains it.”
Isabel sat again.
The ordinary exchange loosened something in her chest.
“Can they prove any of those claims?”
“No.”
“Can they make them expensive?”
“Yes.”
“How expensive?”
“Do you want the honest answer tonight?”
“No.”
May you like
“Then probably less than the house.”
Isabel looked at the city lights beyond the window. From the ninth floor, Stamford appeared organized. Office towers stood in bright rectangles. Cars moved along the avenue in two clean lines. She knew the impression was false. At street level, buses arrived late, delivery trucks blocked intersections, and people crossed against the light.
