I don’t have to work. I could buy your fucking penthouse twice over myself with my trust fund.
Instead, Daisy says, “Do you have kids?”
A deep, dark laugh.
Daisy turns. “Of course you don’t. Silly question.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anyone can see from this penthouse that no child comes near this place.”
The woman’s eyes narrow slightly. “My husband and I made a conscious choice when we married—a commitment—to not have babies. We don’t want to bring children into this world.”
“So it’s not your first marriage?”
The woman blinks. “Excuse me?”
“He’s had a vasectomy, hasn’t he? Your husband. Snip snip. I’m guessing he’s already got his kids. Grown up. From a first marriage?”
The woman’s mouth opens.
Bingo.
Daisy manages to say sweetly, “Such a male privilege, isn’t it? Meanwhile, you and I have to worry about those ticking biological clocks. And if your husband trades up again, it’ll be too late for you.” She reaches for her purse. “Well, it was so nice to help make your place look salable. Some places just need that extra help, you know? Oh, when the delivery guys come up with the coffee table, show them where you want it. I’m running late myself.” She waddles to the door on her swollen feet. Her heart thumps as she exits the condo and makes her way to the elevator. But inside she grins with glee. Daisy Wentworth Rittenberg has just refound some of her mojo. The young, popular “It girl” that Daisy once was at school is still buried somewhere deep beneath the puffiness and pregnancy hormones. The attractive, wealthy, blonde teen who could cut anyone to the quick with a scathing comment has not totally vanished. Deep inside Daisy is still the schoolgirl who snagged famous gold medal downhill ski racer and sex icon Jon Rittenberg when everyone else was throwing themselves at him.
A little shaky and a lot exhilarated, Daisy enters the elevator and triumphantly jabs the button. She forgot just how damn good it feels to stand her ground, stick in the knife . . . and twist.
Outside the high-rise the October air is cool and welcome. When Daisy reaches her BMW parked down the street, she sees a white envelope tucked under the windshield. She reaches for the envelope, opens it, and extracts a simple card.
I SEE YOU @JUSTDAISYDAILY.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
TICKTOCK GOES THE CLOCK.
DAISY
October 17, 2019. Thursday.
Two weeks before the murder.
Daisy drives home with her wheel in a death grip. Her throat is tight, blood pressure going up.
Not good. Not good for the baby. Calm down, Daisy. Breathe. Focus.
The note left on her windshield lies on the passenger seat.
Whoever is doing this is circling in. Becoming brazen. Now there’s a ticking clock—a time bomb. A warning something is going to explode.
It’s clear that the sender is familiar with her Instagram handle, @JustDaisyDaily. Which means they know a lot about her life—that she is pregnant with a baby boy, that she and Jon have recently moved back to Vancouver from Colorado, that Jon is up for a top job at a brand-new mountain resort being developed north of world-famous Whistler. They also know which car she drives.
She feeds onto the Burrard Bridge, racking her brain—did she post on social media about the condo staging? No. She’s sure she didn’t. So how did the note sender know where to find her car? Was she followed? Daisy needs to quit that job anyway. She hates it. Her mom will understand. Jon will be relieved. He doesn’t want her to work. He says it’s beneath her and that she should stay home and just focus on being pregnant. She’s going to be a stay-home mom, anyway, once the baby comes.
The interior of her car is hot. The traffic on the bridge is stop-start. She glimpses the North Shore Mountains across the inlet, and her mind slams back to the days she and Jon were in school. They both grew up on the North Shore, on the flanks of those densely forested mountains across the water. They both learned to ski on Grouse. They met in high school, started dating in grade eleven. They had the best parties . . . Unease creeps deeper into Daisy. They also did some wild things as kids.
No one told her at the time how unbelievably stupid those things would seem when she became an adult. Or how memories of them could sneak up out of the blue—like now—and make her think, No, that could not have happened. I was never a part of that. She tightens her vise grip on the wheel. Returning “home” is really rattling her.
We were just stupid kids who drank too much. Teens make terrible decisions all the time. Peer pressure. Herd mentality. Collective stupidity. Mix in equal amounts, and something dark, disturbing, primal takes over.
Daisy is so preoccupied that by the time she arrives home, she barely recalls having stopped to pick up a pizza. She unlocks the front door, balancing the hot pizza box and her purse. She enters the hallway and disarms the security system. The interior of her house is spotless and smells fresh. From the entryway Daisy can see straight through the living room to their lush green garden out back. Instantly she decompresses. She kicks off her ugly runners and carries the pizza into the kitchen. She opens the box, lifts out a cheesy wedge, takes a massive bite, then another, and groans with pleasure. While chewing, she rips off her too-tight dress and goes upstairs to find sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt.
Once changed, Daisy returns barefoot to the kitchen. She puts on the kettle for some tea and finishes the pizza in great big gulps like a ravenous She Beast. While she chews and hungrily swallows, she thinks this is all the little parasite’s doing—the one growing inside her belly, consuming her from the inside out. Controlling her urges.
Again Daisy shakes the macabre thought. She has no idea where these images are coming from. She’s really not herself at the moment. As she pours boiling water over her teabag, she notices the note Jon left for her on the counter. It rests beside a printout of their latest ultrasound scan. She picks up the note.
Remember! Dinner with Henry at the pub—6:30 p.m.
Jon has taken to leaving Daisy notes because he says she’s so forgetful these days. Henry Clay—the longest-serving member on the TerraWest board of directors—has invited Jon to discuss a work-related issue over an early meal tonight. Daisy wonders if it has something to do with her father’s abrupt retirement. Her dad suffered a health scare two weeks ago. A minor heart attack. The doctors suggested lifestyle changes, so Labden shocked everyone by announcing his immediate departure from TerraWest, saying he wanted to enjoy what remained of his years.
As Daisy sets down the note and removes her teabag from the cup, a sudden movement outside snares her attention. She tenses and stares at the bushes at the bottom of their landscaped garden. A breeze has risen and the fall-color leaves are stirring. No one is there. But she’s almost certain she saw someone in black moving behind the trees that screen their property from the lane that runs behind their fence. Daisy leaves her tea and slowly goes up to the sliding glass doors. With a hand on her belly, she peers carefully into the garden. Several crows erupt into flight and scatter up into the darkening autumn sky. A crow? Did she see a wretched crow and think it was a person behind the trees? Even so, she can’t shake the feeling of being watched.