These Girls (5 page)

She’d had to wander past the racks and racks of size 2s and 4s—reluctantly sliding her hand along a slim cranberry-colored skirt made out of fine leather and a creamy silk halter-necked dress—before hitting the meager collection of 12s. She’d finally settled on a V-neck shirt with bell sleeves in a deep ruby color,
worn by Renée Zellweger for a cover shoot after she’d put on weight for her last movie. The material was forgiving, and it highlighted her cleavage. The black skirt that went with the top was simple and well-constructed, with a little fishtail swirl.

Now Renee finished brushing her teeth and stared in the mirror as she reminded herself of her priorities for the party: Don’t eat or drink too much. Make Trey want to date her again. And don’t stain Renée Zellweger’s outfit.

There was one other thing she really needed to tackle today. She’d delayed it far too long. Renee walked back into her bedroom and reached into her purse, her fingers closing around the blue letter with Becca’s e-mail address. She opened her laptop and stared at the blank screen. I’m so excited to meet you! she typed into a new e-mail. She looked down at the words and slowly backspaced over them.

Renee had been an only child. Was she still one, since Becca had grown up in a different household and her father hadn’t known of her existence? It was so strange to think they’d be tied together for the rest of their lives—had been all along, really, even though neither woman was aware of the bond. They might meet and realize they had nothing in common—or worse, they might not even like each other.

Becca was also a reminder that her parents’ marriage wasn’t ideal, that it had facets and hidden nooks Renee knew nothing about. Of course, that wasn’t Becca’s fault, Renee thought, suddenly wondering if Becca had a stepfather. She imagined her half sister wondering about her father, missing him at holidays and birthdays, and suddenly the words flowed out easily onto the screen: Thanks so much for your note. I’m really glad you reached out, and I’d like to meet you, too. A visit to New York sounds good. But only if you let me pay for half the cost of the trip!

She sent a silent apology to her beleaguered bank account, wrote a few more lines, then added her cell phone number at
the bottom. She hit Send before she lost her nerve, then went into the kitchen to eat an apple before her walk. As she leaned against the counter to stretch her calves, she noticed a piece of paper propped against the fruit bowl. It looked like someone had crumpled it up, then smoothed it back out. It was from Naomi, who, at the age of twenty-three, still dotted her
i
’s with little hearts.

Renee read the two-sentence note, grateful that Cate had broken the news in person. A third roommate who was actually around all the time would make the apartment feel so much more crowded. But they’d have to get someone else, or the rent would demolish Renee’s already strained budget. Cate’s big promotion meant the end of her financial worries, so Naomi’s move was just a minor inconvenience for her, not a potential financial catastrophe, like it was for Renee.

“Damn,” Renee said, her voice sounding too loud in the small space, as she reached into the cabinet for—for what? Something like cookies or graham crackers. Soft carbs that would slip down her throat and soothe her tummy with a comforting fullness.

Renee forced herself to shut the cabinet and walked out the door, her head hanging low. It seemed as though every time she tried to get a handle on her life, it slipped out of her grasp.

Cate leaned up against the wall in Trey’s apartment, nursing a bottle of Sam Adams and taking in the scene: Men and women clustered into small groups, then split apart and recoupled, while others wandered through the crowd, holding glasses of wine or bottles of beer high to avoid being bumped. Thelonious Monk’s music soared from the speakers, but it was almost drowned out by the sounds of laughter and the buzz of a dozen conversations. The lighting was low but good, and Trey’s place
wasn’t the stereotypical bachelor pad that Cate had expected.

Trey favored oversize chairs, rugs that looked so soft Cate was tempted to kick off her shoes and sink her toes into them, and bold, textured pieces of art that probably came from the countries he’d visited. He also had a balcony, window seats with red cushions, and an open kitchen–dining room combination with cement countertops that held nothing but a top-of-the-line espresso maker. Chunky candles filled the room with little glows of amber that made Cate think of fireflies. Few writers could afford to live like this in the city, but Trey’s last several articles had been optioned for film, and Ryan Gosling was attached to one of the projects. Trey was currently under contract to write a book about extreme sports addicts—the kinds of guys who ran three-day ultramarathons, or sailed solo around the world in tiny boats.

At the age of thirty-two, Trey’s professional star was soaring. “The next Sebastian Junger,” trumped the headline in a
Sports Illustrated
article. When magazines featured articles about journalists, you knew those writers were heading for the big time.

Cate felt someone watching her, and she turned to meet the eyes of Jane,
Gloss
’s art director. Cate raised her beer in a silent greeting. Jane gave a quick smile, then turned to the woman next to her, leaning over so that her lips were close to the other woman’s ear.

Were they talking about her? Cate wondered as her hand tightened around the cold Sam Adams bottle.

Images of what had happened earlier that day at work filled her mind: She’d walked by Nigel’s office, and he’d motioned for her to come in. She’d tried to stand a healthy distance away from his desk, but he’d waved her to a chair and pulled his own up next to it.

Being alone with Nigel in the quiet room had made her heartbeat quicken for all the wrong reasons. He was the picture
of rumpled ease in his old jeans and a gray sweatshirt, with his head full of pure white hair, classic Roman nose, and electric blue eyes. He wasn’t her type—he wouldn’t have been, even twenty years earlier—but the vibe he emitted made it clear he found himself irresistible. Apparently lots of women agreed; he’d been married twice, both times to women young enough to be his daughters, and he dated voraciously.

“I wanted to show you this layout,” he’d said. “What do you think? Do you see anything that troubles you?”

It felt like a trick question—did he want her opinion, or was there something wrong with the page, something she was expected to catch?

To buy time, she’d taken a sip of the Starbucks latte she’d picked up on her way in.

“Is everyone in our office addicted to this stuff?” he’d asked, picking up an identical cup from his desk and taking a sip.

Just as Cate had laughed, Jane had popped her head into the office.

“Sorry—I didn’t know you were busy,” she’d said.

Cate could see how the scene appeared from Jane’s perspective. It was 10:00
A.M.
on a Saturday and no one else was at the office. She and Nigel had both just arrived. Did it seem like they’d come in together, maybe stopping for coffee on the way?

It had looked bad.

“It’s okay,” Cate had called after Jane, but she didn’t seem to hear.

Could people suspect Cate and the editor in chief had something going on? No one else had heard that low, appreciative noise he’d made, but his appetite for young women was common knowledge.

Why
had
she gotten the promotion? Cate wondered again.

Cate had finished talking to Nigel quickly—she’d told him the truth, that she loved the layout—then she’d gone to her
office and worked straight through until it was dark outside. As she was hailing a cab to go back to the apartment to meet Renee, inspiration had struck. She hadn’t yet assigned the cover story for her first issue as features editor. As usual, they were spotlighting a celebrity—a young singer named Reece Moss, who’d burst onto the scene with the voice of an angel, face of a cover girl, and moves of a pole dancer. She’d bring some star power to the issue, but what about getting Trey to write it? It wasn’t the sort of thing he usually did, but even though she didn’t know him well, she could try to convince him. And her gut told Cate the singer might open up a bit more with a gorgeous guy hanging on her every word. Trey could turn a routine story into a coup.

Getting an outside writer to pen the cover story might cause some grumbling within the magazine, but Cate couldn’t worry about that. This issue had to quash anyone’s—especially her own—doubts about Cate’s ability.

From the moment they’d arrived at the party, she’d been tracking Trey with her eyes, waiting for a chance to pull him aside. But apparently she wasn’t the only woman with that agenda; he was constantly surrounded—filling drinks, laughing, and switching around the music when a tipsy woman hung on his arm and complained about the Death Cab for Cutie song that replaced the jazz.

“We need something sexier,” the woman breathed, her glossy red lips practically touching Trey’s cheek, and Cate barely refrained from snorting. She glanced at her watch and covered a yawn: It was almost eleven o’clock. She needed to get Trey alone soon.

Renee had been pulled away by friends the moment they’d arrived, but now she walked back over to Cate’s side. Renee looked especially pretty tonight, Cate thought. She had the lush
figure of a forties pinup girl, her blond hair was shining, and her eyes were bright.

“Isn’t this place amazing?” Renee asked. “You can tell a lot about someone by seeing their living space. If we’d walked in here and discovered he collected Precious Moments dolls, I never could’ve looked at him the same way again.”

Cate laughed, thinking for the hundredth time how much she wished Renee’s easy warmth was contagious. It seemed like she never stopped smiling. Even now, while talking to Cate, Renee was interrupted by someone shouting her name in greeting across the room, and a gay photographer named David who worked for the magazine leaned over and pinched Renee’s butt. Instead of reacting in shock, like Cate would have, Renee goosed him back, admonishing, “You little tease.”

“Did you think I was Trey?” David asked.

“In my dreams,” Renee responded. “I would’ve superglued his hand there.”

“You and me both, honey,” he said. “Another drink? What are you having?”

“Vodka on the rocks. Dieting.” Renee sighed.

“I keep telling you, girl,” David said. “You wear your curves well. You need to embrace your inner Marilyn Monroe.”

“It’s my outer Marilyn I’m more worried about,” Renee said. “Cate, how about you?”

Cate held up her half-full beer. “I’m good.”

“So I saw the note from Naomi,” Renee said as David wandered away. “I can’t believe she’s leaving in two weeks.”

Cate nodded. “But she paid rent through the end of the month. She can’t ask for that back.”

The ice clinked in Renee’s glass as she drained her drink. Someone jostled her as they squeezed behind her to pass, and she spilled the last sip of vodka on her shirt.

“Damn,” Renee said, swabbing at the mark with a napkin.

“It’s just vodka, right? It won’t stain,” Cate said.

Renee nodded. “God’s way of telling me to stay away from fattening sangria, clearly. Everyone’s a critic. So any ideas about who to ask to move in? I just hate the thought of getting someone we don’t know. What if she gets all single white female and tries to kill us with a stiletto?”

Cate laughed. “We could put up an ad on the Listserv at work. It worked for us.”

It was true—that was how Cate and Renee had connected.

“Maybe even start spreading the word tonight,” Renee said. “There could be someone here looking, or someone who knows someone . . .”

Cate nodded, then reflexively glanced back toward Trey and saw him moving quickly across the room. Renee’s words trailed off as she turned to stare, too.

A thin woman with long dark hair, maybe in her late twenties, was standing in the doorway. She was wearing jeans and carrying a backpack, and her eyes were huge. She didn’t shut the door or step forward; she just froze, like she’d entered the wrong doorway and the ground behind her had disappeared and now she was trapped, unable to move forward or back.

“Abby?”

Cate could hear Trey’s voice cut through the crowd. It seemed like the whole room went silent—laughter abruptly falling away, conversations halting in midsentence—as everyone turned to watch.

“Abby?” Trey repeated, as if he couldn’t really believe she was there. He practically ran toward her.

The dark-haired woman said something too softly for Cate to hear, and Trey wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground. Cate sensed, rather than saw, Renee stiffen beside her.

Something was off about the woman, Cate realized. She was so pale, and the expression on her face was identical to the one Cate had witnessed years earlier when she’d stopped to help a woman whose car had skidded off the road and crashed into a tree.

“It’s okay,” Trey was saying. He gently slipped off Abby’s backpack and placed it on the floor just inside the door. He kept an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him as he practically carried her out into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.

“Who was
that
?” David the photographer was back, holding out a fresh drink for Renee.

Cate saw Renee’s shoulders slump as she blinked a few times, then took a long sip of her drink. When she finally answered, she said, “Whoever she was, she’s important enough to make Trey leave his own party.”

Three

SHE HAD TO RUN.

Abby Watkins tossed a few shirts, a pair of jeans, and her cell phone into her backpack as she fumbled to unlock the basement door with trembling fingers. Upstairs, tomato sauce filled the house with a sweet-sharp aroma, and Abby could hear the murmur of muted voices. This cozy basement suite, tucked inside a house in Silver Spring, Maryland, had been her home for nearly two years. These were the rooms in which she’d been the happiest in her entire life.

A sob welled up in Abby’s throat as she twisted the house key off her ring and left it on the nightstand. She didn’t belong here, not anymore. She didn’t belong
anywhere.
Who would ever want her, when they knew what she’d done?