Aster left her father’s town house a few minutes later, feeling scooped out and emotionally drained. She held Mitch’s hand as they walked down the sidewalk, knowing he was waiting to hear what had happened. But she wasn’t ready to tell him quite yet. They walked block after block in peaceful silence, past the dog walkers who wrangled six dogs on split leashes, past other beautiful town houses and co-ops with marble lobbies and stiff-postured doormen. The air felt fresh, the day new. Aster felt new too—strangely reborn. A hopeful feeling she’d never experienced before filled her. She felt in control of her destiny, suddenly. She felt . . . right.
She pulled her cell out of her bag and called Danielle. “H-hi,” Danielle said shakily when she answered, as if she wasn’t sure whether Aster meant to call or if this was a pocket dial.
“Hey,” Aster said in a strong voice, pausing at the corner to let a line of cabs sweep by. “Want to come to dinner with me tonight?”
“Really?” Danielle coughed on the other end. “Are you sure?”
The light turned green, and Aster pulled Mitch’s hand across the street. “Of course,” she said. “I’m positive.”
33
One week later, dressed in a trench coat and a floppy hat that covered most of her face—both to avoid the sun and to give her at least a little privacy—Corinne pushed through the Bendel’s revolving door and looked around. A salesgirl swept up to her immediately.
“May I help you, miss?” she asked, her gaze dropping to the six carry-alls in Corinne’s hands. Then she looked at Corinne again, and her eyes widened. “Oh! You’re . . .”
Corinne angled past her toward customer service. Yes, she was Corinne Saybrook, the woman who’d almost died on the eve of her wedding. Yes, she was also the woman who’d called off the wedding to Dixon Shackelford, the heir to the Shackelford Oil fortune. All she wanted was to return her gifts in peace and crawl back home to hide. She was annoyed that she even had gifts to return, after all the trouble she’d gone through to direct everyone to donate to charity. They’d all seemingly come from Dixon’s side of the family, as though they knew she was going to call everything off and would have to slink to Bendel’s, tail between her legs.
“Hello,” the woman at customer service said evenly, then did the same double take as the perfume girl at the front. “Oh, honey,” she simpered, pressing her long nails to her cheek. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
Corinne twisted her mouth into a polite smile. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you.”
It had been obvious, after their ordeal, that she and Dixon couldn’t get married the following day—Corinne was too traumatized, the police needed them for questioning, and Meriweather’s single bridge had been shut down while the police dredged the waterway for Julia’s missing body. After that, Corinne stayed at Rowan’s in the city, trying to collect her thoughts and not answering Dixon’s calls.
But a few days after seeing Natasha wake up in the hospital, Corinne felt a mental clarity she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She knew what she wanted, and she suddenly wasn’t afraid of it anymore. She’d returned to her and Dixon’s apartment, her nerves jumping, her lips dry. Dixon was waiting for her on the couch; he smiled at her as though they hadn’t spent a week apart. “So I have good news,” he said. “Since we’re rescheduling, Francis at L’Auberge can cater for us again. Isn’t that great?”
Corinne’s lips parted. And then she just . . . said it. “I don’t want to get married.”
Dixon had blinked, looking almost childlike in his surprise. “Oh,” he’d finally said, blinking hard before tears began to run down his face. Corinne was astonished: she’d never seen him cry. He put his head in his hands. His shoulders shook. “I’m an idiot,” he said in a muffled voice.
“You’re not,” Corinne said, sitting down next to him and patting his back. “But, Dixon, look at us. Are you really happy?”
She’d stayed with him several hours after that, discussing how they would tell their families, even deciding to list their apartment—neither wanted to live there alone. After that, they reminisced about meeting at Yale, all the places they’d traveled, and how he’d tried to teach her to ride bareback at his family’s ranch in Texas. It was actually pleasant, as if they were two old acquaintances catching up, knowing they owed each other nothing and that they probably wouldn’t see each other again. After Corinne left, she cried for hours, astonished that she’d made such a life-altering choice. But every day that passed, she’d cried less, and today she hadn’t cried at all.
The Bendel’s customer service rep undid the box and peered at the gift. “Oh, how beautiful.” She pulled out a crystal bowl. A tag fluttered out too—“Best of luck, Corinne! Love, Danielle Gilchrist and Brett Verdoorn.”
Poor Danielle. A lot of gossip blogs had implied that she’d known what her mother was up to. Others said she’d been like a Svengali to her mother, encouraging her to kill the Saybrook heiresses one by one in the hope of Danielle finally capturing the whole pot.