Page 33 of Say Yes to the Death

“I tried to talk, Luke. Remember that.” She helped Rosie into the cab and slammed the door behind her. She turned to her mother, willing herself not to cry.

“How did you know?”

“I had an intuition, sweetie. Oh, my sweet Queen of Cups,” Alice said, pulling Claire into her. She stroked her hair, the same way she did after Claire had gotten a B on a spelling test as a child. Rosie jumped up from the floor and settled on both of their laps, sending a cloud of dog hair flying.

“Go easy on him if you can,” Alice continued. “There’s something very deep and very painful there. He’s not ready to talk about it. Trust takes time to grow.”

Claire closed her eyes and breathed in the rich spice of her mother’s perfume. Though Alice was absolutely bonkers most of the time, she was still a pretty great mom.

CHAPTER NINE

To Do:

- Pencil in hot yoga

- Persuade Barney to murder Luke

Claire threw her purse onto the couch and kicked off her shoes, utterly exhausted from the trial and fighting with Luke. Not even a long walk with Rosie had been able to lift the crushing weight of this day from her shoulders. Moonlight streamed through her kitchen window, casting a pale glow on the murder binder she had abandoned shortly after returning home from the hospital. It still felt strange to walk into her apartment alone. Prior to her abduction and Barney’s subsequent arrest, her friends had rotated through her apartment, barely leaving her alone long enough to pee in solitude.

She trudged to the bathroom and glanced in the mirror. Her eyes were hollow, her skin paler than usual. But at least she wasn’t a vagina billboard anymore. She washed her face furiously in the sink, eager to rinse off the day.

Her phone vibrated, and she picked it up to see a text.

Luke: Can we talk?

Her shoulders hunched up around her neck. She decided a middle finger emoji was a sufficient response and opened her bedroom door, tossing her phone onto the bed where she wouldn’t have to see it.

She started for the shower but remembered the bottle of pinot grigio that Past Claire had very thoughtfully left in her refrigerator. She padded down the hallway on bare feet, and then yanked the refrigerator door open as if it had personally wronged her. With her fingers inches away from the bottle, Rachel’s allegations crept into her mind. An alcoholic?! She snatched her hand back.

“I don’t have a problem,” she shouted at the bottle, slamming the fridge door and filling up her water thermos instead.

Though a shower water was substantially less fun than a shower wine, Claire needed one either way. She closed her bathroom door to prevent Rosie from gnawing on her bathmat, lit the aromatherapy candle on her sink, and dimmed the lights. After she removed her courtroom outfit, it puddled on the floor. She ducked under the steaming head of her shower, welcoming the warm spray on her exhausted body.

She scrubbed at her mascara and lathered shampoo into her mass of curls, still fuming over Luke’s lie and his mother’s surprise betrayal.

“Is that the kind of wine you were drinking the night of your alleged abduction?” she mimicked to herself, angrily gripping her bodywash. No wonder Rachel had interrogated her so heavily. She was using her, preparing more information for Barney’s case.

Suddenly, a loud, pulsating wail sounded from the hallway outside her apartment. Claire flinched. Crash. The bodywash dropped to the floor, narrowly missing her big toe. Rosie barked furiously. Shit.

Claire shut the water off, stumbling out onto the wet tile of her bathroom floor. She wrapped a towel around herself and threw open the door.

The flashing light of the fire alarm system illuminated the gap beneath her front door. Groaning, she hesitated between her bedroom and bathroom. Should she try to fight her way back into the button-down shirt or risk having no clean laundry besides her Camp Susquehanna T-shirt from eighth grade?

“EMERGENCY. ALL RESIDENTS MUST IMMEDIATELY VACATE THE PREMISES,” a prerecorded voice announced in her hallway.

“Ugh!” Claire scuttled down the hallway with wet feet. There was no time for dillydallying about clothes. On the off chance that this was real, she had to save the essentials. She shrugged into a bathrobe and flung open the hallway closet. A pink backpack hung on a hook inside, and she yanked it off the wall. Darting from room to room, she tossed in a picture of her and her mom, her wallet, phone, Rosie’s favorite stuffed toy, her laptop, and Tyler and Aaron’s proposal binders. Between those essentials and the water filtering straw and emergency flashlights, the backpack was at capacity. With a wistful look at her row of designer shoes, she closed the closet door and padded back to the front door.

“Damn you, Mrs. Kline, and your burnt popcorn,” she said. The third-floor resident had set off the fire alarm twice last year.

Claire threw her front door open, tightening the sash of her robe with one hand while the other clutched Rosie’s leash. The backpack dug so deeply into her shoulders it might as well have been filled with bricks. Maybe she needed to switch to virtual binders.

Claire joined the shuffle of sleepy residents heading toward the staircase. She didn’t smell smoke or burnt popcorn, but she didn’t like to take chances.

“Oh, Mrs. Dodge, you really shouldn’t take the elevator.” She rushed over and gripped the arm of her kind and elderly neighbor.

“Nonsense. If I lived through World War II, I can live through this damn fire alarm,” Mrs. Dodge said, stubbornly pressing the down button. The elevator was a dimly lit, outdated nightmare at the best of times. In a fire, it would be a death trap.

“How about you come with me,” Claire suggested in her best customer service voice, trying to banish the mental image of the elderly woman trapped in an elevator as the world burned around her.

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