“They did?” Belinda said. This was unsettling news. Most likely, they were talking about Belinda. At that very instant, Laurel would be describing Belinda’s indiscretions, and Scarlett would be on the phone to the New York Post. Belinda broke out in an unpleasant sweat. “How long will they be gone?”
Buck shrugged.
It was nearly noon. Belinda was starving, and she was sure Ellery was hungry, too. Who would make Ellery’s lunch? Was Belinda supposed to do it? She noted the reversal here, and she didn’t like it one bit: Scarlett had left Ellery in Belinda’s care, as though Belinda were Ellery’s nanny!
Belinda regarded Buck. He was lost in thought, preoccupied with the shell. They had barged in on his private moment of mourning. Belinda remembered that shell from the day Deacon had moved out of his apartment on West 119th Street and into the St. Regis with Belinda. He had come with one duffel bag and the canvas satchel that held his knives. When he’d unzipped the duffel, the clamshell had been on top. Belinda had picked it up.
What’s this? she’d said.
He had all but snatched it away from her. It’s mine, he’d said. It goes where I go.
Belinda wanted to apologize to Buck, but she didn’t know how to do so with Ellery right there. She lightly touched his back. “You finally look relaxed,” she said. He jumped. Belinda retracted her hand immediately. She had lost her right to touch Buck even casually, even in friendship. “Would you like some lunch?”
“I’m all set,” Buck said.
Belinda opened the fridge. At home, Mrs. Greene had food prepared and waiting. Before Mrs. Greene came into her life, there had been Deacon to cook for her and, when she was on location, catering crews. Before Deacon, Belinda had sustained herself on Tab and saltines. She had been terrified of gaining an ounce.
There was a whole roast chicken that had been basically picked clean, some green grapes, a box of Velveeta—oh, how Deacon had loved Velveeta, the greatest of all melting cheeses!—milk, butter, beer and wine. When Belinda checked the cabinets, she found bread, cereal, peanut butter, jelly.
Belinda spun around to Ellery. In her best Miss Kit Kat voice, she said, “You can have cereal, my darling pet, or you may have that timeless classic, peanut butter and jam.”
“I eat toast with brown sugar,” Ellery said.
Toast with brown sugar. Belinda could only picture the look of Mrs. Greene’s extreme disapproval. Belinda wasn’t much of a cook, but she knew Scarlett was even less of one. The woman didn’t eat at all, and now she was passing her poor habits along to her daughter. But Belinda wasn’t going to argue. She could do toast. She checked the cabinets again for brown sugar.
“We have white sugar,” Belinda said. “That will have to do.”
Just then, Angie burst into the kitchen, loaded down with bags. She eyed Belinda holding the bread knife.
“Let me do that,” Angie said.
“I can handle it,” Belinda said. “It’s toast.”
“Mother,” Angie said. If Belinda wasn’t mistaken, there was a playful note in Angie’s voice. Belinda looked up. Angie was giving her a warning look, but with amusement in her eyes. “If you want to help, you can put these groceries away.”
Belinda stared at the bags on the counter.
Angie said, “If it’s cold, put it in the fridge. Otherwise, set it next to the stove.”
Buck stood up. “I’m finally going to go for that swim,” he said. “Anyone else want to go?”
“I’ll meet you in a little while,” Angie said.
“I’ll go!” Ellery said.
“You have to eat lunch first, El,” Angie said.
“And then you must wait an hour for your food to digest,” Belinda said.
“No,” Angie said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“Is it?” Belinda said. She was certain Mrs. Greene would disagree.
At that instant, Buck’s phone rang. “Hello?” he said. “Hello, hello, hello?” He jabbed his finger at the display. “Gosh darn it! I’m going down to the end of the driveway. When I get back, we can go for a swim.”
“Deal,” Angie said.
Buck disappeared. Belinda pulled mussels and clams from the bag. “These go in the fridge?”
“Yes,” Angie said. “It’s fish.”
“Right,” Belinda said. She didn’t like her daughter talking to her as if she were the class dunce, but at least Angie was talking to her. She set the mussels, clams, and scallops in the fridge. She would quit while she was ahead.
“I’m going upstairs for a while,” she said. “To Clara’s room.”
“But that room is haunted,” Ellery said.
“It’s okay,” Belinda said. “I’m not afraid of ghosts.”
Upstairs, Belinda heard a groan coming from Hayes’s bedroom. For a second she thought she had caught him in a private moment—Oh no, awful!—but then Belinda realized he was groaning in pain. She tapped on the door. “Hayes?”
Another groan, but one that contained a “come in.”
Belinda cracked open the door. The sight of Hayes’s face—beaten to a bloody pulp, half of it swathed in bandages, half of it discolored and misshapen—startled her even more than being faced with the apparition of Clara Beck.
“Hayes!” she said. “What happened?”
“Beat up,” he said. “Can you please… reach my… pills?”
“Of course,” Belinda said. She had played a nurse once in a terrible film called Dire Emergency that had nearly won her a Razzie and ended her career. Belinda picked up the bottle of pills—Percocet—and shook out a few in her hand.
“How many?” she said.
“Three,” Hayes said.
Belinda checked the prescription bottle: 1 to 2 pills every six hours. And Hayes wanted three. Belinda sighed. When Hayes was little, she had tried to mother him, but he had been obstinate. He had spent an entire year alternately throwing tantrums, complete with flailing limbs, and ignoring every word Belinda said, nose turned defiantly in the air. Belinda had cried about it to Deacon. She had wanted the three of them—and then, after they adopted Angie, the four of them—to be a family. But Hayes would have none of it. How many nights had he cried for his mother? Deacon had told Belinda not to worry, to just concentrate on being his friend, but Belinda didn’t know how to make friends with a little boy, and so she had resorted to giving in and bribery.
Hayes had once thrown a keg party in her and Deacon’s apartment in the Waldorf Towers, when Belinda was filming Macbeth and Deacon, Angie, and Scarlett had come to Scotland to visit. Hayes had allowed the girls at the party full access to Belinda’s closet, which was how he’d gotten caught. Belinda came home to find her Valentino and YSL gowns in silk puddles on the floor, beer spilled all over her dressing table, and vomit in her Birkin bag.
Then there was the time Hayes had come to L.A. during his spring break from Vanderbilt and gotten into an accident in the parking lot of Paradise Cove while driving Deacon’s Porsche.
Those incidents were long ago. Hayes was an adult now, a successful man with an enviable career and a loft in Soho that he rarely stayed in because he was so busy globe-trotting. But Belinda feared there were vestiges of the little boy who knew how to swindle her.
Should she give him three pills, or only two, as the bottle instructed? She recalled what Naomi Watts had told her. He was on something. Like, really on something.
But Hayes was in legitimate pain, not out partying. Belinda gave him three pills. He reached for his water glass, which was empty.
“Here, let me freshen that,” Belinda said. She was being nice again, and it felt wonderful! She took the glass to the bathroom and brought it back full. Hayes slugged back the pills, then collapsed on the bed with the effort.
“Thank you.”
“Do you need anything else?”
He shook his head.
Belinda said, “If you think of something, just shout. I’ll be in my room, resting.”
She turned to leave, and as she did, she saw something on the floor by the other bed, where Hayes’s duffel gaped open. She bent down to pick it up. It was a glassine packet filled with a brown powder, like so much dust. Cocaine? she thought. It was too dark to be cocaine. It was…? She peered inside the duffel bag and saw the shiny, sinister point of a hypodermic needle. He was shooting something. It was… heroin? She blinked and froze in her tracks. Heroin. When she checked on Hayes, his eyes were closed.