Page 86 of The Getaway

“Thanks,” he said.

“Start talking.” She put the apple juice down and sat again.

“Now?”

“You’re going to do it now, or I’m walking out that door, and you’re never going to see me or the girls again.”

She wasn’t bluffing. She had already packed her bags, just in case this went south. In fact, she was thinking about leaving even if this didn’t go south. After everything that had happened, she needed space. Time to be by herself and think. But she needed all the information first.

This time, when Grant took a breath, a tiny wail escaped. It was a desperate, sad sound she would have thought her husband incapable of producing.

“Lincoln didn’t invite us this week. We crashed.”

Gemma blinked, surprised but not shocked. This possibility had occurred to her in the middle of the night last night when she was turning over every last thing that had happened this weekend, and then the past few weeks, and then the past few months. Every conversation, every expression, every tone. What Lily had said at the craft room that night about being shocked Lincoln had invited them had led her to wonder . . . Had he?

“Explain, please,” she said.

Grant shoved his good hand into the mattress at his side and attempted to push himself up straighter. All he succeeded in doing was knocking himself crooked, and Gemma had to get up and nudge him into a more comfortable position.

“You kept talking about how I should call Lincoln,” Grant explained. “How he’d definitely help, but I wasn’t as sure as you were. Lincoln and I never really got along. I know you and Lily thought we did, but he was always kind of a dick to me.”

Gemma’s brow knit. This tracked with what Lily had told her, of course, but there was something about the way Grant said it that made her uncomfortable. As if he was trying to justify what he’d done. He never really laughed at my jokes, so I killed him.

“He was always perfectly nice to you,” she said. Though she knew that wasn’t entirely true. In her hours and hours of thinking time, she had come to realize that Lincoln did often ignore Grant when he was trying to be funny. Or shoot down his ideas for activities or restaurants when they were on vacation, for no obvious reason other than the fact that it was Grant suggesting them. But Gemma had always thought that was a guy thing—natural jackassery. Until Lily had indicated otherwise. Certainly, she had never known that Grant was hurt by it.

“See, that’s what you think, but you’re wrong. He talked down to me all the time.” Grant turned his palms up on the table. “He was just really good at the backhanded compliment. He clearly thought I was a joke. Whatever, let’s just say I didn’t think cold-calling him in desperation was going to help my cause. He would have just laughed me off and lost whatever iota of respect he might have had for me. But you were also right. I knew there was a good shot he’d be able to give me a job. Even if it was a demotion.”

“So you decided to crash Hamptons week,” she said.

“I figured if I showed up and brought you and the girls, he wouldn’t be able to just throw me out,” he said. “And I was right.”

“Oh my God, Grant. How humiliating.”

“I just needed a day or two to talk to him and explain what I could bring to the table,” Grant said, turning his palm up. “I thought doing it in person would make a difference. And I also thought he would respect the risk I took just showing up there.”

“And?” she said. “Did he?”

Grant tipped his head back, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyes unfocused again. “He put us in the guesthouse to keep us away from his real friends, so.”

Gemma shook her head, a wry chuckle escaping her. And here she thought they’d been getting special treatment by scoring the guesthouse.

“He basically avoided me that whole first day, making excuses, saying he had to help with the party. I knew I had to get him alone somehow, so I resigned myself to waiting for the next morning. But then I couldn’t sleep after the party—you know I think those Shizzy’s have caffeine in them?”

He looked at her as if expecting a response. She stared back. Grant sighed.

“So I was drinking a Shizzy’s, and I went outside to check out the storm, and I could see someone moving around over by the pool, and I recognized it was Lincoln. I mean, who else could it be? He’s so tall, and it was after two a.m. Whatever he was doing, I figured I’d go help and then make my pitch.”

Out in the hallway, a doctor was paged. Someone at the nurse’s desk laughed loudly. Gemma squirmed a bit in her seat, shivering, wishing she had brought a sweater. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this next part, but she had to know.

“What happened then?”

“I went up there, and he was unplugging the speakers and putting them away. He told me he didn’t need any help, but I took one and followed him inside with it, to the storage room.” Grant reached for the apple juice and was able to work it himself this time. He placed the cup back down on the tray, empty, before he continued the story. “When we were in there and out of the rain, I told him I just wanted fifteen minutes. That Lily would want him to hear me out. He said now was not the time, and, in retrospect, he was right. But we were both a little impaired, and I had come up there to help him in a psychotic hurricane, so I thought now was the perfect time. He started to go back outside, so I grabbed his shoulder to stop him, and he took a swing at me.”

“Oh my God,” Gemma said, the words just coming out.

“What was I supposed to do? I swung back. Maybe a little harder than I should have, but I was drunk! And he was so ever-loving smug.”

A little spittle escaped his lips at this declaration. Gemma felt sick to her stomach. She lifted her water bottle to her lips and took a few short sips.