Chapter 4
"You look better than I expected," Lila said.
She sat with her back to the club lounge wall. Her pearl pin was fixed above the same ear, but the skin beneath her eyes looked bruised with fatigue. A glass of water stood untouched beside her phone.
"What did you expect?"
She looked at my wrist instead of answering.
I sat opposite her. Through the glass doors, women in white robes crossed toward the pool. An officer in plain clothes waited at the reception desk. Lila knew he was there; Chen had made the arrangement explicit.
"I need you to promise something first."
"No."
Her mouth tightened.
"You haven't heard it."
"You want protection from consequences."
"I can't give you that."
For twelve years I had answered her distress before she finished explaining it. I had lent her money, hired her to manage events at the hotel, and defended her when Eleanor called her ambitious. Ambitious had seemed a cruel word for someone who had grown up counting bus fares.
Now Lila wore my wedding band beneath a diamond Adrian had bought.
I looked at her hand. She slid both rings off and placed them between us.
"I didn't ask for yours."
"You wore it."
"He said you would have wanted someone you loved to have it."
I almost laughed. The sound that came out hurt my throat.
"Did that sound like me?"
Lila pushed the water away.
"Adrian took money from the hotel before the renovation was approved."
"He put it into two properties that failed."
"The loan was supposed to cover the gap until your family shares could be used."
I kept my hands still under the table.
"He needed my signature."
"He already had one."
"He needed you to confirm it was real."
Miriam's envelope. The rushed dinner. A document I was supposed to sign between courses, while everyone watched Adrian smile at me.
"How much did you know?"
"That there was a problem."
"Before the fire?"
She swallowed.
"Yes."
Water ran somewhere beyond the wall, a soft continuous trickle. I had once lain in a treatment room here while Lila told me she hoped to marry a kind man. I had recommended Adrian's friends.
"You collected my bag that evening," I said.
She looked down.
"My rings were inside."
"I was told to keep your things safe."
"By Adrian?"
She nodded.
I let the silence grow until she reached for her phone. The screen lit, showing a photograph of the dress she had meant to wear on her honeymoon. She turned it facedown with a quick, embarrassed movement.
"He says I misunderstood what happened."
"What happened?"
"That is why I kept the recording."
My body reacted before my mind caught up. I pressed my good foot against the carpet, grounding myself the way the therapist had taught me. Outside, a woman laughed. A trolley rattled over a tile joint.
"What recording?"
"I was making a voice note."
"Instructions for the staff, before the dinner."
"I forgot it was still running when the alarm started."
She touched the phone, then stopped.
"If I give you this, he will know."
"The police can discuss keeping you safe."
"And will they arrest me?"
"For what, Lila?"
Her eyes filled. She looked toward the reception desk, where the officer was reading a magazine without turning pages.
I waited. For once, I did not rescue her from the question.
"I thought the room would frighten you," she said.
My fingers went cold.
"You knew I was locked in?"
"Only until you agreed to talk."
"He said no one would get hurt."
I had spent weeks remembering the shape of the door, the brass handle, the precise point where the smoke turned from irritating to impossible. She had spent those same weeks choosing ivory silk.
"Play it."
She hesitated. I stood up.
"Wait."
Her hand caught the edge of my coat, then withdrew before touching me. She turned the phone over, opened a file, and moved the playback marker. On the screen, the recording was nearly twenty-seven minutes long.
"This part," she whispered.
At first there was only static and the shrill pulse of the hotel alarm. Then I heard Rusk's voice, flattened by a radio speaker.
"She's still in the west archive."
My breath stopped.
Adrian answered from somewhere close to the phone. I knew his voice in the dark, half asleep, beneath music, across crowded rooms. I knew it when he said my name.
"Has she signed?"
"No."
"She's shouting for you."
A chair scraped in the recording. Lila was crying, a thin frightened sound beneath the alarm.
"Adrian, please."
I stared at the phone. My husband's voice returned, low and clear enough that I could hear his irritation.
"Get Lila out."
"Leave Nora where she is."
Lila reached to stop the playback. I caught the phone before she could.
The recording continued.
"Don't open that door."