Chapter 4

It had taken my father eighteen years to tell the truth about what he’d done. By then, the woman he owed an apology to was dead, and all he had left was a camera and an audience.

I’d thought about that video often enough to know what an apology could be worth.

“I’m sorry, Valerie,” I said. “I shouldn’t have let your gown fall.”

The garment bag lay between us on the wet pavement. Valerie looked down at it. The zipper was still closed.

“An apology ought to look like one,” she said. “How else am I supposed to know you mean it?”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go inside and tell them you begged Adam to keep you as his mistress. Tell them you’re just like your mother.” She glanced at Adam before she added, “Actually, Rosie, I think you’re worse.”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s mistress. Adam and I are done.”

I twisted the ring off my finger. He’d turned it until the stone sat straight when he put it on me. I’d let him do it because I thought it was the ring I’d wear at our wedding.

“Take it back, Adam.”

He’d started toward me. He stopped when he saw what I was holding. I let the ring go between us. It struck the stone and rolled against his shoe.

“If I say you wanted him, you wanted him,” Valerie said.

She caught me by the hair and dragged me through the glass doors. One of the Sanchez men at the entrance stepped aside. The other looked straight at Adam before he did the same.

The band was between songs when we reached the ballroom. Valerie’s voice carried all the way to the tables by the bar.

“Everybody, look. Here’s a woman who begged to be somebody’s mistress.”

A man near the door set down his drink. “Isn’t that your girlfriend, Adam?”

“Valerie Herring is my girlfriend,” Adam said. “She works for me at the shipping office.”

A few people laughed. They’d seen me at his side at every Sanchez gala since we’d started dating. Some of them were sitting at tables I’d assigned them myself.

A woman stepped out from between two of those tables.

“I always said a mistress’s daughter would grow up to be one. Remember when you used to defend her, Adam?”

“She even slapped herself twice to get his attention,” Valerie said. “Look at her cheeks. She thought he’d feel sorry for her.”

She let go of my hair and slipped against Adam’s chest.

“But Adam has principles,” she said. “He wouldn’t fall for something that cheap.”

His eyes went to my face. For a moment I saw the same discomfort I’d seen in the car, when he’d looked down and realized my hand was bleeding.

“Whatever you say, babe.”

I opened my mouth to tell them which cheek he’d hit.

Someone threw champagne in my face.

“Are there no single men left?” the woman in front of me said. “You had to go after hers?”

I’d taken a breath just as the champagne hit. I bent over coughing, one hand against my ribs. Another glass caught me across the side of the head.

“Homewreckers deserve to die,” somebody said.

After that, I couldn’t tell whose glass was whose. One went down the front of my dress. Someone behind me poured another over my head. A hand closed around my jaw and forced my mouth open. I tried to turn away, and liquor ran down my throat faster than I could cough it back up.

I looked for one of the men who’d been guarding the doors. They were still there. Neither had moved.

Someone shoved me down. My knee struck the floor first. Then came a fist against my shoulder and a shoe in my ribs. I put both arms over my head.

My mother had been surrounded like this in a hotel before she died. People had called her names, poured drinks on her, and watched her try to get away. She’d made it into the elevator. It had taken her all the way to the roof.

When Adam asked me to be his mistress, I’d said no before I could talk myself into making an exception. I knew what my mother had done. I’d spent years afraid I’d end up in a room full of people who thought that told them everything they needed to know about me.

And here I was anyway.

Through a gap between two people, I could see Adam with his arm around Valerie. She said something I couldn’t hear. He smiled down at her, his eyes bright under the ballroom lights.

I remembered him pulling a clean chair over for me in the dining hall. He’d made every person in that room answer one simple question before they could say another word about my mother.

I’d give anything to know what he would have said to himself tonight.

The next time someone reached for me, I caught their wrist and shoved it away. I got one foot under me, then the other. I ran for the elevator with one hand pressed to my ribs.

The doors shut before anybody caught up. I hit the button for the roof.

My phone was still in my coat pocket. I sent Caroline the hotel name and one line.

I need out now. I’m going to the roof.

Her reply came before the elevator stopped.

There’s a helicopter at the docks. Stay by the rooftop door until you see it.

Outside, the rain had eased enough for me to see the lights across the harbor. I stayed by the door. Below me, the gala was still going on. I could feel the bass through the soles of my shoes.

Then I heard the rotors.

The helicopter came over the roof and held above the open terrace. A crewman lowered a ladder. Its bottom rung swung once before settling within reach.

The rooftop door slammed open behind me.

“Rosie!”

Adam’s face was white. His eyes went straight to the parapet.

“Rosie, don’t!”

He’d remembered my mother, too.

I took hold of the ladder, put my foot on the first rung, and climbed.