Saoirse had approached me beside the coat rail.
She was twenty-eight then, slim, with dark hair pulled into a low knot. She wore a simple navy dress and carried her coat over one arm, even though nobody else was preparing to leave.
She looked as though she had been standing there rehearsing a sentence for an hour.
“Maris, can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
She glanced toward the room.
“Whatever they put in your name, get your own solicitor.”
I laughed.
Not cruelly. Not deliberately.
I laughed the way people laugh when someone says something uncomfortable and they want to smooth it over before it becomes a scene.
“That’s very specific advice,” I said.
“Please. I’m serious.”
Her hands were trembling.
I noticed them, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
I had already decided that Grayson’s sister was jealous, difficult, and obsessed with money. He had told me those things so often that I heard them in my own thoughts.
