Chapter 6: The Name in the Journal
I called Reeves's personal number myself.
It rang eight times and went to voicemail.
His office line gave me an automated message saying the number was no longer in service.
His assistant's cell went straight to nothing — not voicemail, just silence and then a disconnect tone.
Gerald stood in the doorway watching me work through the list.
"How long has he been unreachable?" I asked.
"His office says eleven days."
Eleven days.
Sofia had been de@d for nineteen.
I set my phone on the desk.
Vivienne was watching me with an expression I hadn't seen on her before.
Not calculation.
Something closer to relief — the relief of a person who has been carrying something alone for too long and has finally set it down.
"The journal," I said.
"Where is it?"
"My apartment.
In the city."
"I need it tonight."
"I know." She didn't hesitate.
"I'll have it brought here."
She made one call.
Short, quiet, to someone she trusted.
When she hung up, she looked at me and said, "Two hours."
I nodded.
Then I looked at the ring still on her finger.
"Why did you take it?" I asked.
"The ring specifically.
You had the journal.
You had the records.
Why take something so visible?"
Vivienne was quiet for a moment.
"Sofia showed it to me when we met," she said.
"She wore it every day.
She said her mother had given it to her — that the star inside was something her father had scratched in himself, the night Sofia was born." She looked down at it.
"When I went to her room after she d*ed, it was still in the box by her bed.
And I thought — if someone had done something to her, if this was not an accident, then I didn't want it to disappear.
I didn't want it to be taken by whoever might come next." She paused.
"I was going to give it to Rosie.
I just hadn't worked out how."
I looked at her for a long moment.
"You could have told me all of this," I said again.
"I was afraid you were involved."
"And now?"
She looked at the photograph on the desk.
"Now I think you weren't.
But I think someone in your circle was.
And I think they knew Sofia was getting close to something." She met my eyes.
"And I think Reeves disappearing eleven days ago is not a coincidence."
Gerald came further into the room and sat down in the chair against the wall.
He had his notepad out — the small leather one he only brought out when things had moved past conversation into something that needed to be documented.
"The payment records Vivienne recovered," he said to me.
"I need to see them tonight.
All of them.
Before we decide who else to contact."
"Agreed."
"And the clinic in the photograph.
I'll have someone run the director's name first thing in the morning."
"Tonight," I said.
He looked at me.
"Tonight," he agreed.
I stood and walked to the window.
The rain had stopped.
The grounds were dark and wet, the Long Island trees standing black against a sky that had gone from storm-grey to a deep, flat nothing.
Thirty-two guests were still somewhere in my house, waiting in the drawing room with cold coffee and unanswered questions.
My engagement dinner.
I thought about Sofia bringing me coffee every morning for six years.
The quiet way she moved through the house.
The way she had never once asked for anything beyond what she was owed.
She had been frightened.
She had called Vivienne — a near-stranger — because she had no one else to call.
And I had paid for her funeral and told myself I had done enough.
"Gerald," I said, still facing the window.
"Yes."
"Pull every payment record from the last five years.
Everything that moved through the household accounts.
I want to know every firm, every name, every amount I didn't personally authorize."
"That's a significant—"
"Tonight, Gerald."
A pause.
"All right," he said.
Behind me, Vivienne opened the journal photograph again and smoothed it flat against the desk.
Her finger rested on the face of the man standing next to Reeves.
"His name is in the journal," she said quietly.
"Sofia wrote it down."
I turned.
"What name?"
Vivienne looked up.
"Harlan," she said.
"She wrote it three times.
Always just the one name.
Harlan."
Gerald's pen stopped moving.
I had heard that name once before.
Two years ago.
May you like
At a dinner not unlike this one.
And the man who had said it had been sitting at my table tonight.
