Sasha was patient. I'll give her that.
I watched her work the room at Titan's November cocktail hour like a woman who had been rehearsing for years. She moved between clusters of Grays and their associates with a glass of white wine and a laugh that never quite reached her eyes, and every fifteen minutes or so she would touch someone's arm and say something soft and careful.
I was close enough to catch it once.
'I just have to be so careful at these dinners,' she said to Cullen's aunt, her voice dropping just enough to signal intimacy. 'My allergy is — it's not the kind of thing people take seriously until something happens. Last time I was exposed, I was in the hospital for two days.'
Cullen's aunt made the appropriate sounds. Concern. Sympathy. A hand on Sasha's wrist.
'I'm sure the kitchen here is very careful,' she said.
'Oh, absolutely.' Sasha smiled. 'I just like people to know. Just in case.'
I turned back to my sparkling water and said nothing.
She did it again at Titan's wife's Tuesday lunch. I wasn't there, but Cullen's cousin mentioned it over dinner that week — offhand, the way people repeat things they don't realize they've been handed. 'Sasha was saying she has a serious peanut allergy. Like, anaphylactic. Isn't that terrifying? She carries an EpiPen everywhere.'
'That must be stressful,' I said.
'She seemed so calm about it, though. Very graceful.'
I nodded. I reached for my water glass.
I noted the date in my sketchbook that night. Third mention in eleven days. I wrote the names of the witnesses beside each one.
---
She found my grandmother's brooch on a Wednesday.
I hadn't meant for anyone to see it. I wore it pinned inside my collar, against my skin — a small oval cameo, ivory on onyx, a woman's profile carved in profile. My grandmother had pressed it into my hand the week before she died, when I was fourteen and Paulina had already started taking money from my waitressing shifts. 'Keep this somewhere she can't reach it,' my grandmother had said. I had.
But that Wednesday I'd worn it outside my blouse. Just for an hour. We were sitting in the east drawing room after dinner — me, Cullen's aunt, Sasha, and two of Titan's associates' wives — and I'd been tired, and I'd forgotten.
Sasha's eyes found it the way a hand finds a bruise. Not a glance. A study.
She said nothing. She smiled at something Cullen's aunt said and crossed her legs and looked away.
I moved my hand to my collar and covered the brooch. Too late.
That night I unpinned it, wrapped it in a handkerchief, and tucked it into the lining of my coat where I kept my sketchbook. I pressed my thumb against the handkerchief in the dark and felt the raised edge of the carved silhouette through the cloth.
I didn't sleep well.
---
The call to my mother came two weeks before Thanksgiving.
I didn't know about it then. I pieced it together later, from the small things — the way Paulina texted me out of nowhere that first week of November, asking if she could come to the holiday dinner. Warm. Hopeful. Nothing like her.
*Cullen's family sounds lovely,* she wrote. *I'd love to meet them properly. It's been so long.*
I stared at the message for a long time.
Paulina had not asked about me once since the car accident. She had not called the hospital. She had not texted to check if I was alive.
But she wanted to meet the Grays.
I wrote back: *I'll see what I can do.*
I didn't ask Cullen. I didn't ask Titan. I just noted the date and added it to the sketchbook.
---
I found out about the rest from Delia, who had a contact at the social club where Sasha had made the introduction.
A mutual acquaintance. A lunch. A very simple arrangement.
Sasha had offered my mother a seat at the table — not metaphorically. A literal seat, at Thanksgiving dinner, inside the Gray family mansion, with all the introductions that implied. All the proximity to money. All the doors that proximity could open.
In exchange, Paulina would simply confirm what she witnessed. If anything happened at dinner. If anyone asked.
Delia's message was characteristically brief: *Your mother met with Reyes twice. Second meeting ran ninety minutes. She's been coached.*
I sat with that for a while.
Ninety minutes.
My mother had sat across a table from the woman trying to destroy my life for ninety minutes and taken notes.
I pressed my thumb against the handkerchief in my coat lining. Felt the brooch underneath. The carved edge of a woman's profile, small and permanent and mine.
Then I opened my sketchbook and wrote down everything I knew.
They were building something. I could see the shape of it now — the allergy narrative seeded across three social occasions, the witnesses cultivated, my mother rehearsed and positioned.
They were going to do it at Thanksgiving.
And they were going to use her to do it to me.
I closed the sketchbook. I looked out the window at the gray November sky.
I just needed to let them.
