I moved to the suitcase, the big one she’d just closed. I pushed it over and tore at the zipper. Once I had the lid up, I started pawing through the contents. She tried to pull me away.
“Stop it! Stop it, Megan!”
I shook her off and pushed through the slippery garments. “I know it’s here. I know you brought it.” I jumped up to face her. “You wouldn’t have come down here without your insurance. Tell me, have you already threatened Doro with it? If she cooperated with me?”
“What could I threaten her with?”
“That you’d turn in her father? That you’d kill her yourself if she talked?”
“Megan, I would never!”
“You have no right, Frances. No right to play with the truth like that! A little girl was murdered.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with here, Megan. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I turned back to the wrecked suitcase. “Where is it? Where the hell did you put it?”
The phone rang again, but before Frances could reach for it, I dove across the bed.
“No!” she screamed.
I jabbed at it without bothering to check the screen. “Hello? Who is this?” She leapt to grab it from me, but I dodged her. “Hello?”
“Meg?”
A voice from what sounded like the other side of the planet, and my brain seemed to buzz and scramble.
Asa.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 19
Cormley, rigid against the banister, groaned every couple of minutes. It was a low, feral sound that erased everything else but the tight bud of terror blooming in Fay’s stomach.
She flung open one of the windows near the check-in desk and kicked at the storm panel. Kicked and kicked, over and over again, but it held fast. She ran into the salon and tried another window, and another, but the plywood wouldn’t budge.
Then she remembered: the panel in Kitten’s bedroom, the one Kitten—or Cappie—had repeatedly pushed out, was only loosely secured. That window was her only chance. Her only way out.
She paused at the foot of the staircase and looked up at Cormley. Intermittent bursts of air and bloody spittle blew from his lips, and he still stared at her. Hungrily, like he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her and devour her. She would have to make it past him to get to Kitten’s room. Revulsion rolled through her, but she sucked in a smoky lungful of air and charged up the steps.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Forty-One
Fury washed over me. I felt like I could crush Frances’s phone in my bare hand.
“How are you?” Asa said on the other end.
“How am I?” I screamed. “HOW AM I? Why don’t you tell me how YOU are? And how it is you’re calling my MOTHER?”
I looked at Frances, but she’d turned away. I realized, with a flush of guilt, how much I was sounding like her. Well, so be it. I had learned from the best. I knew how to fight to the death.
“Are you all right?” Asa said. “Is everything all right there?”
“Oh, yes, Asa. Everything’s all right. Just kindly answer the question.”
“The question?”
“Why you’ve been avoiding my calls. Why you’re calling Frances.”
“Look, Megan—”
“Tell me what business you have with my mother.”
“I couldn’t figure out how I was going to tell you. I really respect everything you’re trying to do.”
I was quiet. My stomach had twisted into a series of knots.
“Are you there?” he asked.
I bit my lip to prevent another outburst. “Tell me what’s going on. Now.”
Asa cleared his throat. “I think Frances should be the one to tell you.”
“Okay, fine.” I hit the speakerphone button and held the phone out to Frances. “You’re on.”
She smoothed her blouse and leaned toward the phone. “Asa?”
“I’m here.”
“All right. So, Megan, Asa has come to the decision that he is ready to make a move.”
“A move,” I said.
“Let me back up. Edgar’s passing was very difficult for me,” Frances said.
I snorted.
Frances continued. “The truth is, he was everything to me, personally and professionally, and his passing left a void. A very large and unmanageable void that only a singularly skilled person could fill.”
She hesitated a beat, and it dawned. I cackled in disbelief.
“Asa?” I said. “You’re telling me that Asa’s your new agent?”
“He is.”
“He’s a newbie, Frances.”
Frances pursed her lips. “He got you a book deal, didn’t he? A fat advance based on nothing else but my name and his charm.”
I closed my mouth.
“It was time I moved on from Rankin Lewis,” she went on. “I’d gone as far as I could go with them. I considered my options and decided to ask Asa if he would represent me.” Here, she smiled, an oily, self-satisfied smile. “Amazingly, he accepted. So while my lawyers work on getting me out of my contract, Asa and I are working on a couple of new projects.”
I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt sick to my stomach.
“Megan?” It was Asa again, from the phone. “Are you there?”
“Where else would I be?” I snapped.
“Look. I’m really sorry, Megan. It just felt like the right thing to do.”
“For you.”
Silence.
“At least, I hope it was,” I said. “I hope she made it worth your while, Asa.”
“It was the right move for Asa as well,” Frances said. “I just signed a contract with Pelham Sound, a nice deal for my next book.”
“What book?” I asked.
“It’s going to be an autobiography,” Asa chimed in. “A kind of chatty behind-the-scenes, writing-craft sort of thing—”
Frances took the phone from me. “Asa, let me handle this.” She looked at me. “In exchange for my book, and a few more after that, they’ve agreed to drop yours.”
“What?”
“Your book is dead, Megan.”
I shut my mouth.
“And though it may be too much to hope for, one day, I hope you’ll understand. I did it for you.”
She stood there, holding the phone between us like an offering. My mind felt like a computer that had been wiped blank.
She had been right earlier. I didn’t care about the book. Not really. I was just tired of the lies. Weary from trying to find my life beneath all of them. I was just trying to find a way to be free by fighting her.
Asa’s voice came, tinny and pathetic, from the phone. “I’m so sorry things worked out this way, Meg. If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t an easy decision for me.”
I brushed past Frances and tripped against the wall of luggage, sending everything toppling. As the stinging tears rose, I barreled through the door.
“She’ll be okay,” I heard my mother say to Asa as I fled.
I kept going, the neat click of her door echoing back to me. At the head of the stairs, I stopped. I still had questions that needed answering—but I could talk to Doro. She would tell me what was really going on. I wiped my eyes and inhaled.
“Doro!” I called into the still house. I clattered down a flight of stairs, then ran down the hallway. Another flight, and I pulled up short in the foyer. It was deserted as well.
“Doro!”
I felt my phone buzz, tucked in the back pocket of my jeans. I whipped it out.
“Megan?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, it’s Dr. Lodi.”
“Oh, hi . . .”