Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108905 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
“I’m at work, Sophie–” She halted with a sigh. “All right. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You don’t think he’ll have put anything where Olivia could get it?”
“No, I don’t think that’s a concern. At all.” I put emphasis on the last words.
“All right. I’ll be there before supper time.”
“Thank you. Thank you, thank you.”
After I hung up, I fished the book off the shelf again and found the little packets. I took them to the guest bathroom, ran water in the sink, and not only shook the contents down the drain, but rinsed the bags out before throwing them in the trash.
While I did it, I tried to remember all the drugs Neil had confessed to having used over the years. I hoped I wouldn’t find heroin, and I doubted I would find meth—it wasn’t exactly a big trend among Long Island billionaires—there was every chance I would find pills or booze or more coke.
If I found any weed, I was keeping it.
My earlier idea of inspecting every book on the shelf seemed a lot less daunting now. I took each one out and flipped through the pages. I checked under dust covers and shook series out of boxed sets. When I was done, I neatly stacked them with the others, until the room became a little Stonehenge of hardbacks.
He was going to put every one of them back when he got home.
After the study, I went through our bedroom. I screwed off the base of his bedside lamp like we were in a prison movie. I lifted every watch from their glass-enclosed shelves and checked all of his shoes. Because I was feeling particularly angry, I forced my whole hand into the damn things, not caring if I stretched the leather.
He’d tried to leave me. Sure, he hadn’t tried to run off with another woman, but I still felt betrayed. I became a low-level version of Angela Basset in Waiting To Exhale, sorely tempted to pile all of Neil’s expensive suits into one of his cherished super cars and light it all up.
But, while the fantasy was momentarily satisfying, it was replaced by guilt. Neil wasn’t being selfish, he was being sick. How could I hold that against him? Why would I want to punish him? He was already going to feel crushing remorse, once he got better.
Wow, that was going to be a wild series of conversations.
When Valerie arrived, I was just about to go through the den. She joined me and didn’t ask many questions about Neil’s hospitalization as we worked.
“Sophie, you don’t really think he’s hiding drugs in lamps?” she asked, her voice tired.
She was tired? She wasn’t the one crashing from the first upper she’d had since college. “He hid some in a book. So, yeah, I’m going full Addams Family vault here.”
Valerie felt along the seat cushion of the leather recliner. “Aha!” she declared, triumphant as she held a flask aloft.
I don’t know what my face looked like, but Valerie sure reacted to it.
“Sorry,” she said, clearing her throat as she unscrewed the top. She sniffed it. “Okay, that is scotch. That is… Ooh, that’s good scotch.” She tossed back a drink of it, and I laughed with shock.
“Valerie!” I crossed the room to take the flask from her hand. “What is this, some sick Easter-egg hunt thing where we find all of Neil’s substance abuse hotspots and do all his drugs?”
But I took a drink, too.
Her lips canted in a smirk. “Why not? You did.”
So far, I really had been on a weird little “get high” scavenger hunt. I’d snorted the coke in the library, now I was swilling scotch in the den. No, this wasn’t a scavenger hunt. It was like the Wolf of Wall Street version of the Clue! board game.
There was a sick kind of closeness in it, and that’s what drove me, I guess. We didn’t find much, but every time we came across a little coke or booze, I felt like I was discovering a bit of Neil that had previously been hidden from me. I thought I knew what his life was like, but this was Neil’s life. A double life I couldn’t begin to understand.
It was nearly ten by the time we’d searched every room. We’d flushed some unlabeled pills, a few packets of cocaine, and poured seven hidden bottles of various liquors down the drains. All that was left was the kitchen.
“We won’t find anything there.” It sounded stupidly optimistic, considering how well I clearly didn’t know my husband, but I knew it in my heart. “He wouldn’t want to accidentally poison Olivia. Or me.”
“You’re right,” Valerie agreed. “I guess we can call it a night?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the dark windows. “If you want to stay here—”
“No. That’s very generous of you, but I have to get back.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked on her heels. “You two really need a smaller house.”