The plan stunned Nola. It was a glorified version of their parents’ living room, which Jenna couldn’t possibly remember. “All my life I wanted to own real furniture,” Nola said. “It means chairs and couches people can sit on. Pillows on floors don’t count.”

“You’ve told me I’m in charge. You lied, like you always do—”

“Decorating our home means a style that would appeal to both of us,” Nola said. “C’mon. You’re so creative. Come up with something great that would include furniture.”

Jenna threw the plans on the floor and trampled them. “I’m through with it!”

Wade’s accountant, who paid the decorator’s bills, noticed multiple invoices. Three microwave ovens? Six clock radios?

Nola refused to believe Jenna was converting them into cash until Leslie’s friend discovered several of her costumes at a SoHo vintage clothing store. Each gown, costing ten thousand dollars or more, was priced at only a couple of hundred.

Leslie broke the news to Nola. “We’ll need to put locks on your closets,” he said, and Nola only bit her lip.

She would not let her bodyguard enter the apartment with her because Jenna hated her staff’s coming and going. In the foyer, Nola halted at the sound of laughter from the living room, which still had no furniture. Nervous laughter. A man hooting. More voices. It was not the nurse.

She walked into the living room and stopped.

Jenna and three men were half-naked on what seemed like a pile of all the bedding in the apartment. Giggling, Jenna traced a razor along the skin grafts on her stomach while the men laughed and licked her blood.

Frantic, screaming, Nola struggled to grab the razor out of Jenna's hand, cutting herself in the process. Hearing the commotion, her bodyguard entered and threw the men out.

Nola called an ambulance, her psychotherapist, Gabby and Wade.

That evening, dizzy with the finality of it, her slashed palm throbbing under a bandage, she signed the papers, admitting Jenna to an institution that combined psychiatric treatment with drug rehabilitation.

One week later, five months after she had moved out of Eddie’s apartment, Nola called him.

“I will always have a corner in my heart for you,” he said.

She was certain he was crying on the other end. She clutched the phone, longing to be there with him, to smell his scent, to trace the line of his nose down to his lips, to kiss him. “Please come over,” she whispered.

His voice was hoarse when he said, “I’m sorry. I’m getting on with my life.”

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 37