Why is it that no one you love ever seems to stay?
She knows all your secrets.
She knows all your lies.
Guess what?
So do I.
Inside the envelope was the tiny gold star on a chain, the one I’d given to Beck, its clasp ripped away. Everything inside me went still. And I knew two things. I was in deeper trouble than I had imagined. And Luke Kahn had not written that note.
22
“There’s money,” I said. “Lots of money. And I’ll get it all when he dies.”
“How much?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “More than two million, I think. A lot of it went toward his defense and appeals. But there was a lot to begin with. Old money, generations of wealth which he inherited later in his life.”
“And it’s yours?”
“After he dies,” I said. “Or some of it when I turn thirty. Whatever comes first.”
Beck liked the idea of money, the way people who have never had money like the idea of it. They think it’s a kind of magic, a panacea, the cure for all of life’s woes. They imagine dream vacations and hired help, clothes and cars, yachts and jewelry. Only people who have money know the truth about it. It makes life easier, sure. But it doesn’t fix any of the important things that break and are lost. It doesn’t bring back the dead, or turn back the clock. It might look nice on the outside, but it doesn’t change anything on the inside. No matter where you go, or how you get there, like my aunt is so fond of saying, there you are.
“And the money is still his, even though he’s in jail?” asked Beck.
“Yes,” I said. “His lawyer manages it for him. But it’s not like they can just seize your assets because you went to jail. My mother’s family never filed a civil claim. No one ever saw the point in that.”
“The point is to get his money,” she said.
“They already have money,” I said.
The conversation annoyed me. Beck had her share of angst, but as far as any real grief was concerned, she was completely innocent.
I found myself thinking about this for some reason as I stood holding the paper in my hand. I didn’t take the necklace out of the envelope, let it sit in the crease at the bottom.
“What does it say?” Langdon asked.
I folded up that paper and put it in the envelope. There was a siren going off in my head, loud and long, more like an air-raid horn.
“It’s private,” I said. He must have read it. How could he have opened the envelope and not read the contents? It just didn’t seem possible.
“Really?” he said. “You’re not going to tell me?”
I started moving toward the car, and I heard him follow.
“Fine,” he said. “You’re right. This is none of my business. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
I had no idea what I was doing. I was flying blind. I just knew that Luke hadn’t written that note. I don’t know how I knew, something about the words and the rhythm, the maturity of it, the possessiveness. Luke was possessive, but in a childish, tantrum-throwing way. He would wrest what he wanted from you, snatch and grab. He didn’t have the self-control yet to tease and manipulate it out of you. Did he? He was still slamming doors and stomping up steps. He was still a kid.
But if not him, then who? To whom did I belong? Who knew all my secrets and lies? And did that person know what happened between me and Beck? Did they know where she was now? The game was no longer a game. It was a matter of life and death.
That night in the woods, my whole body came alive for Beck in a way I’d never experienced. I’d been wrapped up tight in an armadillo shell for as long as I had been aware of myself sexually. I was terrified of the touch of other people, of the reactions deep inside over which I had no control. Puberty came late, long after it was suspected to have passed me over altogether. It rocketed through me, setting my hormones ablaze. Desire was a sudden blast that sucked all the air from the world. And still I wrapped myself up tight. I wasn’t sure who I was, or what I wanted. So I chose to want nothing at all.
But Beck-she was my polar opposite. She wanted everything all the time. She’d been with boys and girls, and loved them both the same. Love is love, she said. We can all get each other off, one way or another. She was easy with her body, free with her touches. She would get naked anywhere with anyone. Sexuality radiated out from her like a beacon, and I couldn’t help but be drawn to her and repelled by her at the same time.
“Don’t be afraid of your own pleasure,” she whispered.
Her breath had been hot and wanton. She started tugging at my clothes, her mouth on my neck. The ground was cold beneath me, hard and uncomfortable. But she gave off so much heat, opening her coat and the shirt beneath. Her body looked like milk in the moonlight, glowing a translucent blue, and I couldn’t stop my hands from touching her. Skin contact… babies need it from their mothers, flesh on flesh. We all need it, all the time. But the virginal, the chaste, the sexually repressed-we hide our skin in long pants and shirtsleeves. We hide it, protect it, even as it burns to be touched. I could have died right there as Beck got to work on peeling back my layers.
“Don’t,” I breathed. “Please.”
But we both knew it was far too late for that. I was shuddering as she undid my belt buckle, the button on my jeans, unzipped my fly. I was a useless lover; I didn’t even know how to pleasure her. But she moaned at my tentative touch, pushed her tongue deep into my mouth.
She moved her hand slowly down my belly, and I reached up a hand to stop her. I grabbed her wrist hard.
But she just shook her head and smiled. “I know,” she said. “I already know.”
And I let her. I let her touch me. I let her know me. And it was so. Goddamn. Good.
A short while later, she would rip that star from her neck and toss it to the ground. How can you be so cold? I hate you. I fucking hate you. That was Beck, a tempest, powerful and unpredictable, thunder and lightning-so unlike me in every way.
Langdon pulled up in front of my dorm, and he looked grim and disappointed in me.
“I’m here for you,” he said. “You know that. Whatever you need.”
“I know,” I said. I wanted to show him what was in the envelope. I wanted his help. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to pull him into my mess. If the last few days had proved anything, it was that I was better off alone. I got out of the car and watched him drive away. Why is it that no one you love ever seems to stay? Because I push them all away. No mystery there.
My aunt was waiting for me when I walked in the door. She’d turned on the gas fireplace and was sitting huddled under a blanket nursing a cup of tea.
“It’s freezing here,” she said. “How do you stand it?”
“You get used to it,” I said. I liked the cold. It allowed me to bury my body beneath layers of clothes. Why don’t you get yourself a spiked collar? Beck had spat at me once. Just to be sure everyone knows to stay away.
I sat beside her. Have I mentioned that I love my aunt? I think I’ve only said unkind things about her, made fun of her a little. But she looks just enough like my mother that I feel a desperate closeness to her. And she looks just enough like my mother that she causes me to be deeply, deeply sad and lonely. Because she is not my mother, and she never will be. But that’s the only wrong she’s ever done me. She has been unfailingly kind and present for me, and I have never once thanked her for it.
She was pretty in the firelight, her golden hair catching the light as it fell around her face in soft waves. She had some lines around her eyes and mouth, a middle-aged pull to her skin. But she had good genes and money, looked forty-something when she was fifty-something.