“Lighten up, amigo. You’re right.” So much so that Donnie decides that he can’t avoid it any longer. He needs to reach out to Mia, Ben’s widow.
Widow. The word hits him like a gut punch. He opens his new flip phone and dials the number from memory. It goes to voicemail.
“Mia, it’s me, Donnie. Please call me, dear.” He leaves his number and hangs up. “Where were we?” he asks Reeves. “I’ve got some good stories from when we toured Japan. This one time we all got back to the hotel at like four in the mornin’ and our rhythm guitarist Walker goes to his room and for some damn reason decides to take a bath. He falls asleep with the water running. One of our roadies was in the room on the floor below and woke up because it was like a torrential rain comin’
down in his room.” Donnie barks a laugh.
Reeves is taking notes, but he’s not smiling. He’s not too interested in the on-the-road partying stories.
They’re interrupted by the purr of the flip phone. A Philadelphia area code is on the caller ID.
“Mia, darlin’， thanks for calling me back so quickly,” Donnie answers.
There’s a long silence. Ben’s wife has never liked Donnie, but he’s Ben’s best friend, Bell’s godfather, so she tolerates him.
Finally, she speaks. “Don’t call here again, Donnie.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on, Mia? I don’t—”
“He told me what you did. This is your fault.”
“Mia, please, I don’t—” She disconnects the line.
Donnie stares at nothing, dumbfounded.
“Everything okay?” Reeves asks, a concerned look on his face.
Donnie sits quietly, processing. What in the hell…？ He can’t ignore the ache in his chest over Ben’s death anymore, can’t pretend that he can pick up the phone and the Honorable Robert Benjamin Wood will drop everything if Donnie needs something. Can’t pretend that he didn’t hear what Mia said: He told me what you did. This is your fault.
Donnie says, “You’re a writer, so you’re good at research, right?”
“I’m okay, I guess,” Reeves says.
“I need you to find out the details for Ben Wood’s funeral. Can you do that?”
“Sure. He was a public figure, so it shouldn’t be hard.”
“Good. Do it. Then go pack your stuff.”
Reeves cocks his head to the side.
“We’re going to Philly.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
JENNA
Jenna is out of the District Inn by ten as promised. Behind the hotel there’s an off-brand rental car place, so she decides to risk using one of the credit cards. If any of her other identities are compromised and someone is tracking her cards, at least she’ll be mobile in the rental car and not a sitting duck in a hotel room. She rents a Toyota Corolla, you can’t get more ubiquitous than that, and heads to D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood.
She’s driven by the address only once in the three years since she saw the familiar face in Washingtonian magazine. The story was about the wedding of the ambassador to Brazil to his exotic-looking French-born bride. It was just like Sabine to hide out in the open, taking a Valerie Plame–like gig. The magazine did a spread of the couple’s tony home, so, on a lark one day after picking up Lulu from ballet class in Cleveland Park, Jenna cruised through Kalorama and there it was, the house from the photo shoot on Tracy Place.
And today, what seems like a lifetime later, she sits in a Toyota staring at the 1920s Colonial. She considers going up to the door and knocking, but there’s probably security. And in any event, it’s not like Sabine would come to the door. She’d have staff. Jenna thinks of that first day on the private jet, Sabine quietly assessing fifteen-year-old Jenna. A flight attendant wearing a skimpy uniform, placing food trays in front of both of them. Jenna had been stubborn, terrified about what was going on. But she’d also been hungry. And the food looked delicious. Not like the airplane food that time her parents had taken her to Disneyland. It was some type of fancy fish, displayed beautifully. She reached her fingers onto the plate, but Sabine slapped her hand, hard.
“We might as well start now,” she said in that French-Russian accent. “A woman with manners, breeding, gets what she wants.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” Jenna told her. She reached for the sharp steak knife on the tray.
This amused Sabine. “Mon chéri, if you think you’re better with a knife”—she tapped her own steak knife with her index finger—“go right ahead.” Her smile faded. “Otherwise, sit up straight, and do what I do.”
That’s what Jenna learned in the first lesson of her training, which later included not only etiquette but also communication skills, exuding old-money confidence, and murdering someone without leaving a trace.
Jenna’s startled by the hard knock on the window of the Corolla.
A Goliath of a man is staring at her suspiciously. Through the glass he says, “Can I help you,
ma’am?”
Jenna smiles. Rolls down the window. Slipping into her yoga-mom persona, she says, “Hi, I’m looking for Kalorama Circle. I’m visiting my sister from out of town and this rental car has no GPS
and I’m so embarrassed my phone’s dead.”
The man doesn’t smile back. But he tells her to go up to the stop sign, take a right, follow Belmont, and she won’t miss it. He says it quickly, with a beat it tone in his voice. So she beats it. A van’s pulled in front of Sabine’s home, and the man walks over to it, signals to the driver to move the vehicle to the street and not use the driveway. Jenna makes a point of not turning her head as she passes the house. But she still sees it. The signage on the side of the van: CATHY’S CATERING.
Jenna smiles as she turns the corner. Of course. It’s Friday night in Washington, D.C.
Sabine is having a dinner party.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
NICO
Nico’s in his trailer. Shannon stands with her iPad clutched in her hand, like always. Shannon is a capable showrunner; she’s been doing reality shows for a decade and should be the one filling in as EP while Nico takes some time off. But she likes being behind the scenes. She and her wife keep a low profile generally. Rural West Virginia isn’t always the most enlightened place. And Davis, the fuckstick from the network, keeps insisting that he should host The Black aftershow while Nico recovers. The guy is such a douche.
Shannon waits for Nico to finish tapping on his phone. His seventh sports bet since he was pulled to the surface. He looks up at her.
She says, “The kid with cancer is scheduled to be on-set today. Given everything that’s happened, Davis wants me to reschedule with the organization that set it up.”
“He knows this kid is dying, right?”
Shannon doesn’t say anything. She’s not keen on getting in the middle.
“You can tell Davis I said we’re not canceling, and let the cast know that they’d better be there.”
The teenager’s last wish—to meet the cast of The Miners—wouldn’t be on Nico’s own bucket list, but he sure as hell isn’t going to cancel.
Shannon walks him through other show issues and Nico pretends to listen. He wants to make a few more bets before the day gets away from him.