He presented her, one evening, with an expensive designer watch, a gift he framed as an apology “for how distant I’ve been, with the merger and everything.” Odette accepted it with a soft, grateful smile, and thanked him, and wore it, and thought about the hundred and thirty thousand dollars of her own money he had spent on another woman, and let none of it show on her face.
She had learned to hide her feelings from this family over six long years.
She had simply never before had a reason to be glad of the skill.
Lyra avoided her, which told Odette that Lyra, at least, sensed something.
Maeve, meanwhile, glided through the week issuing instructions about the catering and delivering little sermons over tea about the sacred importance of the family’s reputation.
“We must show the community,” she said more than once, “that this family is impenetrable.” And in those words Odette finally understood the whole of it.
For Maeve, the affair had never been the crime.
The crime would be letting the neighbors see a crack.
Odette nodded along, and agreed, and quietly sent one more file to Imani Hartley, and counted the days.
The strangest part of that week was how calm she felt inside the performance.