The Weight of Lies
Emily Carpenter
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 1
“Kitten”—that was what everyone called her. No proper Christian name, just Kitten.
“Kitten, dear,” her mother would say at breakfast in her musical Southern drawl, and the girl would skip from the hotel’s elegant dining room, reappearing with a fresh pitcher of orange juice for the guests gathered around the great mahogany table.
“Kitten, my sweet,” her father would say after cognac had been poured and cigarettes lit. And the girl would turn the great iron key that dangled in the lock of the front door, curtsy, and bid everyone a good night.
Fay felt lucky to be entrusted with the care of such a poised and advanced child and in such a beautiful setting. She wasn’t without worries about her small charge, though. The child had some oddities—a few secretive tendencies and strange habits.
On more than one occasion, after Kitten had locked the front door of the hotel for her father, Fay was sure she saw the girl take the key out of the old brass lock and slip it into her pocket.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter One
The envelope lay on the hotel’s poolside chaise—a creamy ivory rectangle of heavy, premium-quality paper. Propped against the neck roll I’d been resting on less than five minutes ago, it was lit by the burning midday Vegas sun like it had been stamped with heavenly approval.
I dropped the bottles of water I’d just fetched on the nearby table and gulped air. I could picture, without even looking, the intricately swirled monogram engraved on the back flap. The tangerine tissue liner. The tasteful card inscribed with gilt words. I knew exactly what this envelope was.
A bomb. The kind that explodes without making a sound. The kind that destroys.
The needles had kicked in already. Pinpricks engulfing my fingers and toes, growing and intensifying until it felt like I was clouded all around by a swarm of stinging wasps. It had started about eight months ago, on a trip to Colorado. I’d sprained my ankle skiing and headed back early to LA. The flight had been a nightmare—along with the aching of my ankle, my other extremities had gone completely numb.
The Internet told me it was called peripheral neuropathy. I’d done the requisite online diagnosing of the tingling and discovered that causes ran the gamut from diabetes to autoimmune issues to tumors. None of which I was willing to entertain the possibility of having. I was young—just twenty-four—and perfectly healthy otherwise.
I didn’t need to waste half a day so a doctor could tell me I’d twisted my ankle. Or that the tingling would probably go away when I healed. Doctors were my mother’s favored territory, not mine.
The needles had hung around longer than expected. But at worst, they were an annoyance, which, I assumed, would eventually resolve itself. I had it under control, for the most part. They mostly flared up in moments of stress. Like right now, for instance.
I sat on the chaise. Inhaled. Curled my hands into fists.
What the hell had I been thinking? Frances might live in New York, but the woman had spies everywhere. Of course word would have gotten back to her—about us easing Aurora through her divorce with a Vegas party. I should’ve known she’d gather her intel and track me down. The CIA had nothing on Frances Ashley.
I shouldn’t have used my real name to register. I sure as hell shouldn’t have stuck around for three days. But I couldn’t leave Aurora alone with the Glitter Girls, her party posse. They were nice enough. But divorce is a black hole of heart-hardening sorrow. (I should know. I was the child of three of them.) And the Girls weren’t known for being deep wells of empathy. Their cure for heartache was a week of gambling, drinking, and indiscriminate hooking up. Even though Aurora was acting okay and kept calling it her “starter marriage,” I could not allow my best friend to go it alone in this sad, smoke-filled town.
So for three days, I’d been trotting behind the squealing, amorphous, vodka-soaked blob as they migrated from casino to club to restaurant to spa. All the while keeping one eye on my phone, in case Omnia, the nonprofit I’d interviewed with the previous week, called with news. But they hadn’t, not yet.
And now there was this.
My mother had found me. And delivered her elegant explosive.
I eyed the envelope again. It was from her personal bespoke stash: Smythson of Bond Street—Jackie O.’s stationers, if you were the sort of person who cared about that. My first name was written on it in a flourishy script with gold ink. Megan—not Meg, what everybody else in the world called me. There was no return address or stamp.
It ought to have been mailed last month—no later than six weeks before the party, Megan, and, for God’s sakes, never one of those email invites. This one was late, just one day before her birthday. And dropped off by a messenger. Obviously, Frances had told them to wait until I stepped away, so there wouldn’t be the chance of me refusing the delivery.
The tingling had now moved from my palms to the soles of my feet. I rubbed my hands together so briskly sparks should’ve shot out from them.
I glanced at the guy on the next chaise. His messy hair glinted reddish-brown in the sunlight, and freckles blotched his shoulders. My type. I racked my brain for his name. All I could summon was a brief but flirty conversation between us on the walk back to the hotel last night. Earlier this morning, not long after I’d gotten settled by the pool, he’d materialized and plopped down beside me. He was cute, but a faint odor of last night’s drinks still hung around him, and I wasn’t in the mood for company. I’d managed to slip out of the room without waking anyone—dodging Glitter Girls sprawled across beds, sofas, and overstuffed ottomans—and thought I’d found a quiet spot to wait for my phone call.
Which hadn’t come yet.
I checked yet again, then replaced the phone on the teak table. I’d been volunteering with Omnia’s after-school program for over a year. It had been the most fulfilling thing I’d done, maybe ever, and I’d been excited when the coordinator job opened up. It was a full-time gig, offered decent pay and benefits and, for the first time in my life, a shot at something I’d never experienced before. Independence. The word felt like a treasure stored in a private corner of my heart.
I’d thought I had a pretty good shot at the job when I’d initially interviewed, but now my confidence was flagging. It was past twelve thirty, three thirty in New York. How long were they going to draw this out? I cleared my constricted throat.
“You didn’t happen to see who left this letter, did you?” I asked Mr. Freckled Shoulders.
He didn’t stir, not even slightly. I considered the possibility that he’d passed out.