with it?
Goddamn you, Freddy,
she thought (zillionth and third). She tried to concentrate on the words on the page of her book—it was about a woman in a small town who is murdered—but Meredith’s mind was squawking. She lived with a bullhorn in her head, loudly announcing and reannouncing her fears; it was the internal soundtrack of extreme anxiety. There was medication for it, perhaps. Meredith wondered if Connie had anything. She didn’t want to snoop, but a few minutes after Connie left the house, Meredith padded upstairs to the master suite. She just wanted to see it.
The door that led to the suite was closed tight, and Meredith wouldn’t have been surprised or insulted if the door had been locked. After all, Connie was now rooming with the wife of the biggest crook in history. But the door was open, and Meredith tiptoed through the rooms. The bedroom had an arresting view of the ocean, and the bed was made up with Frette linens (Meredith checked, she couldn’t help herself, though she knew she shouldn’t care about things like thread count anymore). The closets were roomy. Wolf’s closet was completely empty except for some padded hangers and a thick, nubby fisherman’s sweater folded on the dresser. Meredith touched the sweater, then felt she had, somehow, crossed a line. She didn’t look in Connie’s closet, though she would have liked to—even as a schoolgirl, Connie had had a flair for fashion. However, Meredith couldn’t help from peeking in the master bath—and that was when she saw the prescription bottles. There were four or five of them, and Meredith was sure that one of those prescriptions would help her. She eyed the brown bottles for a long, hot moment, then she made herself retrace her steps and leave the suite, shutting the door behind her.
She wondered if it was a bad thing that Connie had brought her to this beautiful house where she had nothing to do but think. If she had been scrounging half-eaten Big Macs out of a Dumpster, consumed with worry about her daily survival, she wouldn’t have this much time to think.
And that might have been better.
Back on the deck, Meredith tried to read. The woman in her novel was worse off than she was; she had been murdered in the woods. The mother of that woman was worse off than she was. But then Meredith realized she
was
that woman. If Leo went to prison, he would be raped, beaten, and eventually killed. She was sure of it. But she had to stop thinking like this. The bullhorn blared in her head. Freddy was in Butner for all eternity. Meredith was here. How had she gotten here?
Before Meredith graduated from high school and attended Princeton and fatefully met Freddy Delinn in the stacks of the campus bookstore, there had been one presiding fact in Meredith’s life, and that was that she loved her parents. She had loved her mother, Deidre, certainly, but she had been especially devoted to her father.
Meredith’s father’s name was Charles Robert Martin, but everybody called him Chick. Chick Martin was a respected lawyer in the downtown Philadelphia firm of Saul, Ewing, Remick, and Saul; he worked on the thirty-eighth floor of the high-rise known throughout the city as the “clothespin building,” because of the Claes Oldenburg sculpture out front. Chick specialized in the laws of arbitrage, and although Meredith loved her father to distraction, she had never learned exactly what arbitrage was. (Fred had claimed to understand arbitrage inside out, but it was safe to say he had been bluffing about that.) The way her father explained it, he had very specialized knowledge about a certain portion of the tax code, and his law partners came to him with intricate and tricky questions that he would, after hours of research, produce the answers to.
Chick Martin made a handsome salary. The Martins had an impressive home in Villanova with white columns and black shutters and a wide green lawn in front and back. Inside the house, there were
Goddamn you, Freddy,
she thought (zillionth and third). She tried to concentrate on the words on the page of her book—it was about a woman in a small town who is murdered—but Meredith’s mind was squawking. She lived with a bullhorn in her head, loudly announcing and reannouncing her fears; it was the internal soundtrack of extreme anxiety. There was medication for it, perhaps. Meredith wondered if Connie had anything. She didn’t want to snoop, but a few minutes after Connie left the house, Meredith padded upstairs to the master suite. She just wanted to see it.
The door that led to the suite was closed tight, and Meredith wouldn’t have been surprised or insulted if the door had been locked. After all, Connie was now rooming with the wife of the biggest crook in history. But the door was open, and Meredith tiptoed through the rooms. The bedroom had an arresting view of the ocean, and the bed was made up with Frette linens (Meredith checked, she couldn’t help herself, though she knew she shouldn’t care about things like thread count anymore). The closets were roomy. Wolf’s closet was completely empty except for some padded hangers and a thick, nubby fisherman’s sweater folded on the dresser. Meredith touched the sweater, then felt she had, somehow, crossed a line. She didn’t look in Connie’s closet, though she would have liked to—even as a schoolgirl, Connie had had a flair for fashion. However, Meredith couldn’t help from peeking in the master bath—and that was when she saw the prescription bottles. There were four or five of them, and Meredith was sure that one of those prescriptions would help her. She eyed the brown bottles for a long, hot moment, then she made herself retrace her steps and leave the suite, shutting the door behind her.
She wondered if it was a bad thing that Connie had brought her to this beautiful house where she had nothing to do but think. If she had been scrounging half-eaten Big Macs out of a Dumpster, consumed with worry about her daily survival, she wouldn’t have this much time to think.
And that might have been better.
Back on the deck, Meredith tried to read. The woman in her novel was worse off than she was; she had been murdered in the woods. The mother of that woman was worse off than she was. But then Meredith realized she
was
that woman. If Leo went to prison, he would be raped, beaten, and eventually killed. She was sure of it. But she had to stop thinking like this. The bullhorn blared in her head. Freddy was in Butner for all eternity. Meredith was here. How had she gotten here?
Before Meredith graduated from high school and attended Princeton and fatefully met Freddy Delinn in the stacks of the campus bookstore, there had been one presiding fact in Meredith’s life, and that was that she loved her parents. She had loved her mother, Deidre, certainly, but she had been especially devoted to her father.
Meredith’s father’s name was Charles Robert Martin, but everybody called him Chick. Chick Martin was a respected lawyer in the downtown Philadelphia firm of Saul, Ewing, Remick, and Saul; he worked on the thirty-eighth floor of the high-rise known throughout the city as the “clothespin building,” because of the Claes Oldenburg sculpture out front. Chick specialized in the laws of arbitrage, and although Meredith loved her father to distraction, she had never learned exactly what arbitrage was. (Fred had claimed to understand arbitrage inside out, but it was safe to say he had been bluffing about that.) The way her father explained it, he had very specialized knowledge about a certain portion of the tax code, and his law partners came to him with intricate and tricky questions that he would, after hours of research, produce the answers to.
Chick Martin made a handsome salary. The Martins had an impressive home in Villanova with white columns and black shutters and a wide green lawn in front and back. Inside the house, there were
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