Chapter 3

The minutes that followed had a strange, suspended quality, as if the red alarm light had frozen time itself.

The guests who had been recording had all lowered their phones now. The woman in pearls had gone back to her seat and was gripping a glass of white wine that she had not once lifted to her lips. The man in the linen suit had returned to his table, but he kept looking back over his shoulder at the small woman in the slate-blue trench coat as if she might vanish or, worse, might look at him next.

Margot had not moved from her spot in the center of the lobby, a few feet from where the silver chain lay on the floor. It lay there exactly where it had fallen — a thin, gleaming line against the cream marble, still holding the faint curve of the arc it had made when it slipped from Serena's fingers.

Serena Vance stood where she had been for the past several minutes — frozen, her arms wrapped around herself now, the cream clutch pressed against her chest like a child hugging a stuffed animal. Her white-blonde hair was perfect. Her fuchsia dress was perfect. Her face was not. She looked ten years older than the woman who had walked into the lobby an hour ago, shedding contempt like perfume.

"Can I —" Serena's voice was thin, barely a whisper. "Can I at least sit down? My legs are shaking."

"You may sit," Margot said, "when I tell you the conversation is over." She paused, correcting herself. "When I tell you the conversation is at a point where sitting is appropriate."

The correction hung in the air. Serena looked at the marble floor, then back up at Margot. Her green eyes, no longer glittering with contempt, were wet at the edges.

"You're enjoying this," she said, the words coming out as an accusation and a plea and a confession all at once. "You're enjoying watching me suffer."

Margot looked at her for a long moment before answering. "No," she said. "I'm not enjoying anything. I'm tired. I've been tired for a very long time. And I have learned that the only way to make tiredness stop is to address the cause of it, not to keep letting it pile up and pretend it isn't there."

She looked at the chain on the marble floor. Then she bent, slowly, and picked it up.

The silver links slid through her fingers, cool and smooth. She held it up, letting it dangle in the red light, and looked at it as if seeing it for the first time.

"Where did you get this?" she asked.

Serena blinked, thrown by the change in direction. "What?"

"Where did you get the chain? You didn't pull it from thin air. You arrived with it, or you acquired it. Where did you get it?"