Page 119 of A Better World

“Good for you!” Linda said. “But that’s early to be out. Are they giving you something for the withdrawal? White-knuckling this kind of thing can cause some damage.”

“They’ve got me on Glamp,” she answered, and Linda felt, for a moment, like she might vomit. “Smooth ride, baby. Best shit I’ve ever had.” She took Linda’s upper arm.

“You can’t take Glamp. It’ll make everything worse,” Linda said, urgent and low.

Rachel smiled at her with needle-width pupils. She raised her voice so Daniella and everyone else nearby could hear. It radiated desperation.“I said some things that scared you. We can talk about it all later. But you should know I was sick.”

Linda nodded, going along with the performance. Rachel looked so weak she might collapse. Kai appeared equally wretched. Had Daniella forced her to check out of the hospital to make her rounds of public apologies?

Yes, Linda realized. She had.

“I was out of my mind,” Rachel said. “I’m just hoping everyone forgives me.”

Linda’s voice got loud and wrong with fake enthusiasm. It broke a little, too, because she wanted to cry. “I’m sure they will!”

Then Anouk burst between them. “We’re all here! Even naughty Linda! Guess what? Daniella and I did so much begging! And now Daddy’s happy about the clinic and he says he won’t close it after all!” she whispered. “Isn’t that amazing? I did it! I did it all myself because I help people! Even though it’s not my fault people get sick, it’s bad parenting and bad genes, I help them. That’s my calling!”

Rachel took a breath, looking to Kai, who Linda just then realized reeked of booze. So, now he was the one drinking, and she was on an even worse and faster journey to oblivion. Poor Rachel. Poor him. This was awful. “Ready?” Kai whispered.

“Yeah,” Rachel said. Then he was helping her through the crowd, where she said the same thing over and over. “I’ve been hospitalized! I’m two days dry! I said some things that were wrong. I’m so sorry!”

Before dinner, they were ushered into a giant hall with perfect acoustics, where BetterWorld’s board issued their annual report on the state of the company and of Plymouth Valley. They’d had their eleventh year of contraction, but remained solvent. This tracked, given global population and resources had declined accordingly. “As you all know,” Jack Lust said, “we’ll be spinning off our most profitable industries into Caladrius Corp beginning the next financial quarter. BetterWorld will manage only Omnium.”

Everyone clapped in synchronicity. Parson then announced thatsome positions in the governing body would shift. Rachel Johnson would be stepping down from leadership, replaced as compliance director by Farah Nassar. Lloyd would remain on the board, but would not be promoted to chairman of Caladrius. The position of his successor, chairman of the board, was going to Jack Lust.

The cheering ceased. The room went still, the rock ceiling seeming to lower. “Oh God, no,” someone nearby whispered. The formerly neat rows everyone had been standing in, naturally equidistant, fell into disarray. “He’s a monster,” Ruth Epstein whispered.

Onstage, Lloyd’s gorgeous, dimpled smile turned rictus. Linda had the feeling he was in shock. Jack had been in competition with Rachel for the CEO spot, hadn’t he? Since when had he wormed his way into the chairman job Lloyd had been fighting for all these years?

Jack’s wife, Colette, a shell of a woman with a toothy, cadaver grin, clapped her hands once, twice. No one in the crowd followed until Parson clapped from his chair. The Jack Lust sympathizers on the board of directors clapped, too. These claps were out of synchronicity, confused squawks from an injured organism. Slowly, the crowd joined and momentum built.

Skinny, black-suited Jack Lust bowed playfully like a funereal wraith. Maybe from hysteria, emotions pent without egress, people began hooting with fake, desperate joy. And then the whole hall was clapping and hollering and even screaming. Weakly, Linda, Russell, and Josie joined in.

Jack Lust, a quiet monster, would now run Plymouth Valley.

Evening came, and they all filed through the kitchens and got their meals on their own from what had been left out. Hip joined the Farmer-Bowens at a four-top in the large dining room. “Are you okay?” Linda asked.

Hip’s eyes got wet and he quickly wiped them. “Yeah.”

“She’s not—” Linda started.

“Don’t say anything bad about her,” Hip interrupted. “I know she’s overreacting. It’s because she loves me so much.”

“I won’t say anything bad. I wasn’t going to,” Linda said.

“But why did you and Josie do something like that?” he asked. Linda noticed that the people at the tables surrounding them were listening.

“I’m sorry. I know it means I ruined things for you. But I’m also not sorry. It was the right thing to do.”

She’d known this kid intimately for nearly sixteen years. Away from Cathy, exhausted and raw, his defenses were down. He heard her.

After dinner, the children’s choir, all in angelic white, sang songs about John Parson, followed by actual labyrinth dancing. The ceiling was high, and someone had put up lights there, to look like stars.

“It’s pretty,” Russell said as he held her.

She pressed into him as they tried to match the steps. “Do you think we can sneak out?”

“No. I looked around. Even if we got past the guards, everything’s locked.”

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