“I’m in town for the month. I don’t know…” He shrugged, as if he also could plainly see how awkward this all was. “If you need anything…when you’re away from home, it’s always good to know some people, you know?”

She didn’t know—but seriously, what-the-fuck-ever right now. All she wanted was to escape this never-ending nightmare. “Sure.” She nodded. “Thanks.” She dropped the card into her black-hole bag, most likely to never be seen again, and headed for her driver.

“Ms. Eileen Greyden?” the driver asked her when she approached him.

“Yes,” she answered.

The man nodded, and an unmistakable sadness pulled at his features. “Hello, I’m your sister’s driver, Henry. I’m so sorry for your…” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “For your family’s loss,” he managed to finish as he stepped in and hugged her.

Surprised, overwhelmed, still a drunken mess, Eileen let this Henry person wrap her in his arms before leading her out the tinted double doors.

Chapter 11

Eileen

Henry led Eileen to the back seat of a champagne-colored four-door Bentley he had parked nearby in the short-term lot. As he loaded her bags into the trunk, Eileen crawled onto the two-tone beige-and-white leather back seat. When Henry finished with the bags, he returned, shut her door softly, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

The car smelled like money. Rich, full-bodied luxury. Eileen hated that she thought it, but her sister was so ridiculously rich.

Was. Eileen thought. Clare was so ridiculously rich… She started to cry again, quieter, tears that originated in her belly, seized at her heart. Tears that rose up from some deep, dark well at the core of her—tears that would weep out of her forever.

Her sister was dead.

Her sister had killed herself.

Why, Clare?

Eileen lay down across the dewy, soft leather and closed her eyes.

“Ms. Greyden?” Henry asked. “I’m sorry to disturb you. But if you could please buckle your belt?”

Eileen pushed herself up, grabbed the middle seat belt, and wrapped it around her waist while leaving the shoulder strap up against the seat, then lay back down and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, sick, drunk, and sadder than she could ever remember being in her whole life. Clare and Simon’s house was at least a forty-minute drive from the airport. She wanted to spend it passed out.

“Thank you, Ms. Greyden,” Henry said, then left her alone until they pulled into Clare’s garage in Muir Beach.