AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Eliza glanced down to where she’d inadvertently shredded her damp napkin into hundreds of tiny pieces. “Because I loved him. And I owed him. I owed him everything. If he hadn’t married me, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Penny blinked her eyes rapidly. “Oh.”
The door to the bar opened after Eliza’s admission and acted as a hard stop to the women’s conversation. The entire bar froze as Eliza turned her head and spotted Marguerite Hill standing in the doorway.
Uncle Joe called out a hearty greeting that wasn’t reciprocated. Marguerite only had eyes for Eliza. Her gaze was wild and sharp, and her white shirt was buttoned all sorts of wrong beneath a black blazer. Her hair was an utter mess. Marguerite Hill had never looked more of a disaster.
When Eliza blinked, the tension broke. The room resumed its normal background chatter, glassware clanked behind the bar, and cars honked and squealed on the streets beyond Garbanzo’s walls. Eliza reached for another shot of tequila and tossed it back.
By the time she swallowed, Marguerite was already on her way over.
“I’m sorry,” Marguerite gasped, coming to a stop beside the table. “I was only trying to help you get away from him.”
Eliza managed to keep her tone steady. “Did you ever think that maybe I didn’t want to get away from him?”
“Roman strayed,” Marguerite said. “First Penny, then me. Probably others. I thought if I could just show you… I never intended to sleep with him. I just wanted to flirt a little. You’d get the picture.”
“You think you know everything, don’t you?” Eliza persisted. “You’re the guru. But you made a mistake with my husband. You fell in love with Roman, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“He didn’t love you back,” Eliza stated. “You tried to play him, and he played you. Well, it worked. I am done. You can have him.”
“No, it was all lies…” Marguerite shook her head, frantic. “I can’t—He can’t get away with this.”
“With what?” Eliza asked. “What do you propose we do?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Marguerite’s expression hardened. “Men are rotten. They all are. My father, Roman, the whole lot of them.”
“I understand you have a deep distrust of men, but I wonder if it’s time—”
“What?” Marguerite interjected. “To move on? Get over it? How do you move on when your own father raped you? I was eleven years old, Eliza. Eleven fucking years old.”
The table went deadly quiet. There were no right answers. Even in a room full of wrong, all the women could agree on that.
“But nobody wants to know those details,” Marguerite said. “They don’t want to hear the truth. That would suck for a PR campaign. Really muddy up my Instagram feed.”
“Marguerite—”
“We need to teach Roman a lesson,” Marguerite said. “He can’t get away with this.”
Eliza was too stumped to offer a response. The author was coming unhinged; Eliza had never seen her so crazed. The evening’s events had triggered her into imploding, slowly, surely…
Turning her attention back to the women sitting across from her, Eliza spoke in a low, throaty tone, surprising herself with her agreement. “She’s right, you know. He shouldn’t get away with this.”
THIRTY-ONE
The Morning After
February 15, 2019
Eliza Tate didn’t believe in hangovers.
What she was experiencing was not a hangover but a whiff of karma back to haunt her after a night of overindulgence. Whoever would have thought book club could get so out of control?
Eliza’s smile widened with gratitude as a server approached her, balancing an oversize latte. It was served in a trendy little mug that was nearly the size of her head. He placed the saucer and beverage on the table before her, dropped off a platter of raw sugar cubes and organic creamer, and then hesitated politely by her side.
“Are you ready to order, ma’am?”
