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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2016 by Fiona Davis

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DUTTON—EST. 1852 (Stylized) and DUTTON are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Davis, Fiona, 1966– author.

Title: The dollhouse / Fiona Davis.

Description: New York : Dutton 1852, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044905 (print) | LCCN 2016001580 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101984994 (hardback) | ISBN 9781101985007 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101986264 (international edition)

Subjects: LCSH: Women journalists—Fiction. | Older women—Fiction. |

Housekeepers—Crimes against—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. |

Suspense fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Contemporary

Women. | FICTION / Literary.

Classification: LCC PS3604.A95695 D65 2016 (print) | LCC PS3604.A95695

(ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044905

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For my parents

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

New York City, 2016

She’d forgotten the onions.

After all the preparation, the lists, the running out of work early to finish shopping and buy everything she needed for their special dinner, Rose had forgotten a key risotto ingredient. She checked the pantry, but the basket was empty save for a few remnants of the papery outer layers.

Griff had raved about her risotto soon after they’d started dating, and she remembered how proud she’d been listing off the more surprising ingredients.

“The coconut milk is the secret to it,” she’d confided.

“Why coconut milk?” He sat back in the rickety chair she’d bought at the thrift store on Bleecker, his long arms and legs far too unwieldy for her small studio apartment.

“I find it makes the texture especially creamy.” She said it lightly, as she collected their plates, as if cooking was easy for her, just another thing she did well, rather than a panic-inducing race to the finish line. “I slowly add the chicken stock and coconut milk to the rice and spices until all the flavors have melded.”

“I like the way you say that. Melded. Say it again.”

She did so, the way she would on camera, her pitch slightly lower than her conversational voice, clear and sure.

Then he’d swept her up and made love to her on her bed with its tasteful handmade quilt. She’d stifled the impulse to sweep it to the side, so as not to have to send it to the dry cleaners tomorrow, and had instead surrendered to the enormity of him, all muscles and sinew, an athlete’s body even at forty-five.

She missed the simplicity and the heat of their life back then, before the angry ex-wife and the surly children punctured their cocoon of happiness. Before she’d given up her apartment and they’d moved into the Barbizon condo on the Upper East Side.

Of course, his ex-wife and children wouldn’t share her perspective. To them she was the interloper, taking up Griff’s attention and love. She checked the clock on the oven. Almost six. If she was fast, she could run out to Gourmet Garage and pick up white onions before Griff got home from City Hall.

Her cell phone rang. Maddy again. The fourth call this hour.

“What, Maddy?” She tried to sound irritated, but laughed before Maddy could reply.

“I know, I know. You don’t have any time to talk to your best friend right now. You’re far too busy doing the dutiful housewife thing, right?”

“Yup. And you’re off to the Soapies?”

“Daytime Emmys, if you please. I wish you were coming, Ro. What shoes go with the Michael Kors? Nude or gold?” Maddy’s career as an actress had taken off since they’d met in college. Maddy had landed a contract role out of school on a daytime soap opera, and this was her first nomination.

Rose swallowed her guilt at not being by her friend’s side. “The nude, definitely. Text me a pic, okay?”

“Any idea what Griff’s big news is yet?”

Rose smiled and leaned back on the kitchen counter. “Probably nothing so big, in the end,” she lied. “Maybe he’s been promoted again? Such an overachiever.”

“I don’t think so. Do the math: It’s been a year since his divorce was finalized, you’ve been living together for three months, and it’s time to set a date.”

“He has been acting weird lately. But what if I’m getting way ahead of myself?”

“Trust your gut.”

“My gut says something’s up. Even though sometimes it still feels like it’s early stages. I mean, we haven’t even furnished the apartment yet.”

The apartment she both loved and hated. Loved for its tall French casement windows, for its Wolf range and spacious closets. Loved for the air of promise it held in its baseboards and crown moldings and Bolivian rosewood floors.

But hated for its emptiness. She and Griff both worked too many hours during the week to take a real stab at furniture shopping, and weekends he went to his house in Litchfield with his kids, his wife off gallivanting with her other divorced friends. Ex-wife, she corrected.

So much work needed to be done to make it homey. The wallpaper in the smallest bedroom was covered in tiny climbing monkeys. Delightful as nursery wallpaper but not at all right for Griff’s teenaged daughters. The floorboards in the dining room were bare except for the ghost outline of the prior owner’s Oriental rug.

Rose often felt like a ghost herself on weekends, sitting in the window seat off the library, staring down at the traffic and pedestrians wandering in pairs below. The sounds of honking and laughter easily permeated their fifth-floor apartment, even when the windows were shut. The neighborhood, Sixty-Third Street just off of Lexington, lacked the character of her old West Village stomping ground, where the trees formed a canopy over the cobblestones. Up here the sidewalks were bare, the avenue crammed with gilded little shops selling white linen toddler dresses and antique maps of Paris.

Rose waited while Maddy grunted into her dress. “Jesus, this zipper is literally unreachable. I need another pair of hands.”