The Stranger in My Bed

Chapter 4

"Tell me, Sienna—how much did you cost him?"

Cassandra Cross says it while pouring her own coffee, like she's asking about the weather.

I set down my fork. "They teach us to wait until the host sits. You might try it."

"Do they? How quaint."

"Manners usually are."

Adrian's chair scrapes. He hasn't sat yet. He's standing at the head of the table with his phone in one hand, and for half a second the corner of his mouth moves.

Cassandra's smile doesn't slip. It sharpens.

"Adrian, darling, sit down. Your wife's correcting me."

"She's not wrong," he says, and sits.

"You're taking her side before coffee."

"I'm taking the side that's right."

Mrs.Harding refills my water glass without a sound.Her hand is steady.Her eyes flick to mine for a quarter of a beat, and that quarter beat is the only warmth in this room.

"Thank you, Mrs. Harding."

"Of course, ma'am."

"So." Cassandra folds her napkin into a perfect triangle."Six weeks married.I keep waiting for the press release.The Cross Foundation gala is Saturday, and I have no idea what to tell people about you."

"Tell them my name."

"That's the problem.Nobody's heard it." She tilts her head."Hartley.Hartley.There was a Hartley who did the accounting somewhere, wasn't there?Some little firm out in—"

"Ashvale Audit and Compliance." I keep my voice flat and pleasant."My father.He signed off on the Meridian Holdings books for eleven years.Including the years your family bought in."

"That's a very specific thing to remember."

"It's a very specific thing to lose."

The silver clinks. Nobody's chewing.

Cassandra's fingers rest on the stem of her glass. "I don't follow the details of Meridian."

"No. I don't imagine you follow the details of anything."

Adrian sets his phone face-down on the tablecloth. The sound is small. It lands like a gunshot.

"Cassandra," he says.

"Oh, let her talk.She's fascinating." Cassandra leans forward, all cheekbone and grace."Here's what I know, sweetheart.Girls like you come through this house every three or four years.They arrive with one suitcase and leave with a settlement.You're not the first and the paperwork's already drafted."

"How much?"

She blinks. "Excuse me?"

"The settlement. You said the paperwork's drafted. I want the number."

"You—"

"Six figures? Seven? Round it up for me."

"Don't be vulgar."

"Because if you know the number, you've seen the document.And if you've seen it, you've been in my husband's private files." I pick my fork back up."Which one is it, Cassandra?Are you guessing, or are you snooping?"

Silence.

Mrs. Harding turns toward the sideboard, and her shoulders shake once, and she covers it with the coffee pot.

Cassandra's laugh comes out thin. "Adrian. Are you going to let her speak to me like that?"

"You started it." He butters his toast.Slow.Unbothered."She finished it.That's how conversations work."

"She's a *nobody*—"

"She's a Cross." He looks up.His eyes are that grey that goes flat when he's done."Say the word nobody at this table again and you'll find out how fast the foundation board can vote on your seat."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Try me before dessert."

The color leaves Cassandra's face in stages. Neck first. Then the cheeks.

She stands. Her chair doesn't scrape—she's too well-trained for that.

"Saturday," she says to me. "Wear something that fits."

"I'll wear whatever you were going to wear. We can see who carries it better."

She walks out. Her heels go quiet on the runner, then hard on the marble, then gone.

The dining room breathes.

Adrian keeps eating. Twenty seconds of nothing but the clock in the hall.

"Meridian Holdings," he says.

"What about it."

"You've been reading."

"I've been remembering." I fold my napkin.Not a triangle.A square."My father talked about work at dinner.Every night.He was boring about it.I used to put my headphones in."

"And now you wish you hadn't."

"Now I'd give both hands for one of those dinners."

He looks at me then.Straight on, the way he almost never does over food.There's something moving behind his face and I don't have a name for it.Not pity.Pity I'd recognize.

"You handled her," he says.

"Was that a test?"

"No." He drinks his coffee. "But I'd have been disappointed if you'd cried."

"I don't cry at breakfast. I have standards."

"Do you."

"I married you, so no. But I have a schedule."

Something happens at his mouth. It's not a smile. It's a near-miss, and it's worse than a smile, because it makes my stomach turn over and I hate that.

He stands. Buttons his jacket. "Saturday you'll need a dress."

"I have dresses."

"You'll need one Cassandra can't survive." He's already walking. "Harding will handle it."

"And if I pick it myself?"

"Then pick something that photographs like a threat."

The door closes.

I let out the breath I've been holding since the word *gold-digger* didn't get said out loud but sat in the room anyway.

"Mrs.Cross." Mrs.Harding is at my elbow with fresh coffee I didn't ask for."That was—" She stops.Recalibrates."Miss Cassandra hasn't been spoken to like that in twenty years."

"Should I apologize?"

"Absolutely not." She pours."Drink this.Your hands are shaking."

They are. I hold the cup with both of them.

"Does she always eat here?"

"Only when she wants something, ma'am."

"And today?"

"Today she wanted to see what you're made of."

"Mrs. Harding. Can I ask you something."

"You can ask."

"How long have you worked for this family?"

"Thirty-one years."

"Then you've seen everything."

"I've seen enough to know which questions cost money and which ones cost more."

"So you were here when Meridian bought Ashvale's audit contract."

Her hand stops mid-pour.

It's the smallest thing. A half-inch hitch in a woman who has poured coffee through divorce, funerals, and whatever this marriage is.

"I don't handle the business, ma'am."

"That's not what I asked."

"No," she says. "It isn't."

She sets the pot down.She looks at the door Adrian went through.Then at the door Cassandra went through.Then, finally, at me.

"Your father came here," she says. "Once."

The room goes very small.

"When."

"February.Two years ago." Her voice drops so low I have to lean in."It was raining.He didn't have an appointment.He stood in the front hall for forty minutes with a folder under his coat and he wouldn't let me take it to hang it up."

"Forty minutes. Nobody offered him a chair?"

"I offered. He said he'd rather stand."

"That sounds like him."

"Who did he see?"

"Nobody. Mr. Cross was in Zurich."

"Then who—"

"Miss Cassandra came down." Mrs.Harding's mouth is a line."They spoke in the blue room.Twenty minutes.He left without the folder."

"Did he say anything on the way out?"

"He said, 'Tell her I kept a copy.'"

"To who? Tell who?"

"He didn't say, ma'am. I've wondered for two years."

February. Two years ago.

My father drove off the Kestrel Bridge on the third of March.

"Mrs.Harding." My voice comes out strange.Somebody else's voice."What did the folder look like?"

"Grey. String tie. He'd written on it in marker."

"Written what?"

She hesitates. Thirty-one years of discretion pulling against something else, something that's been sitting in her chest for two years waiting for someone to ask.

"Four letters," she says. "I only got a glimpse. I thought it was a name."

"Say it."

"Ma'am, please—"

"Say it."

"S-I-E-N."

The cup goes down too hard and coffee goes over the rim and nobody moves to blot it.

Not a name. Not a whole one.

*Sienna.*

My father walked into this house three weeks before he died with a folder that had my name on it, and he handed it to the woman who just told me I was nobody.

"Where's the blue room?"

"Ma'am—"

"Where."

"East wing. But it's been locked since—" She stops.

"Since when?"

"Don't make me answer that."

"I'm asking you as the woman whose name was on that folder."

Mrs.Harding's face empties.Not fear of Cassandra.Something further down.

"Since the night your father died," she whispers."Mr.Cross locked it himself.I watched him do it.He was still wearing his coat from the airport, and Mrs.Cross—"

Her eyes go past my shoulder.

Behind me, from the doorway, Adrian's voice: "Finish the sentence, Harding."