To be fair, that’s probably enough. My heart rate increases as I evaluate new formations for my revenge, and I smile as I realize that, perhaps, if I do things right, Lander will never even know that I’m behind the chaos.

chapter twenty-eight

As predicted, Jessica doesn’t even notice that I’m a half hour late.

“Bell,” she says in a hollow voice that matches her cloudy eyes, “how are you this morning? I’m sure my email account is bursting at the seams with new Evites. I haven’t had a chance to even look at it in over a day. Could you see to that? Oh, and did you happen to run into Mrs. Jennings on the way up? A very fair-skinned Nordic-looking woman almost six feet tall? She just left here. She’s donating a diamond necklace to a silent auction to benefit the ballet. It was very kind of her, of course, but what I really want to know is what you thought of her new haircut! It’s perfectly awful; it makes her look even more manly than usual.”

She yabbers on and on but never mentions or even alludes to my dinner with her husband, which she clearly objected to. And she certainly doesn’t bring up the last time we spoke, when she shut me down after I tried to push her to strike back at Travis. Maybe she’s forgotten all about that. It’s a real possibility when you consider the number of brain cells that have fallen casualty to her little internal drug war.

I’m beginning to learn Jessica’s patterns. She spends her days floating around the penthouse, complaining about Travis to anyone who crosses her path—house-cleaners, deliverymen—occasionally lapsing into intense moments of depression and sadness, only to be partially revived by another pill or spa treatment. But at least she’s predictable. And when you consider the craziness of what’s been going on lately, Jessica’s predictability is kind of soothing. When she takes a nap at noon I’m able to check the email account that I’ve set up for her, the one she doesn’t know about. Sure enough, the email I wrote from Travis to her is still there. I see no sign that anyone has been on this account other than me. There’s no trace of it in the browsing history, which hasn’t been wiped clean since the last time I erased it.

And there are lots of responses to “Jessica’s” last post on a forum that deals with abusive partners.