The Face of Scandal Read online

  Dylan pressed his palms together, becoming as still as a statue. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Dylan—”

  He held up a hand, cutting off Ward’s protest. “Why are you here, Hazel?”

  “I don’t want to be that person anymore. I think with you two, maybe… I’m not.”

  “Maybe,” Dylan agreed. He wasn’t mollified by her wishy-washy reply. “I’ll hazard a guess that you didn’t tell us all that for a let’s-hug-it-out Hallmark moment, did you?”

  Hazel bit down on thin air. She had met this Dylan once before, when she’d thought Ward might have been taking advantage of their friendship. Dylan had shot her down with the same single-minded swiftness with which he was now dissecting her intentions. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he saw right through her—and, more importantly, that he didn’t think much of what he found at her core.

  “I need your help,” Hazel confessed, digging her toes into the hardwood boards.

  Dylan sunk back into his armchair. “That I’ll believe.” But not the rest, was implied.

  Hazel wanted nothing more than to drop to her knees and kiss his feet until he forgave her—or at least worked himself up enough to take a belt to her backside. She made herself remain upright and clung to what little confidence she was ever likely to feel.

  Their staring match was only interrupted when Ward sighed and reached for the bottle. Whiskey splashed half onto the table and half into his glass. He didn’t seem to notice. “I’ll bite. You need our help with what?”

  That was a far easier question to answer. Hazel wasted no time.

  * * * *

  None of them got much sleep that night. Hazel’s plans of curling up in bed with a textbook and trying to dredge up vague memories of AP Math evaporated as the wall-mounted clock in the kitchen ticked to midnight, then one in the morning. By the time Ward announced he was heading to bed, it was already four. Dylan retired too, leaving Hazel to enjoy a lonely night on the couch.

  Stung, Hazel did her best not to show it. She wasn’t strong enough to refuse Ward’s offer when he called down to her from the landing and told her to come upstairs.

  By seven o’clock, Dylan’s mood hadn’t thawed at all. He gave her the cold shoulder on his way out of the apartment. He didn’t stick around for coffee or breakfast.

  “He’ll get over it,” Ward said, already on his second espresso of the morning.

  Hazel shook her head and methodically spread butter all the way to the edges of her toast. “This time, I’m not so sure.” I hurt him. Dylan had put up with a lot from her, but the night classes had broken even his strong broad back. Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. A relationship like theirs couldn’t work without trust. And Hazel constantly dealt in half-truths.

  “He will,” Ward insisted. “What’re you up to today? No work, right?”

  “Graveyard shift. I was thinking of paying Sadie a visit, catch up… For real,” she added, in case Ward suspected otherwise. She couldn’t hold it against him. She hadn’t been the most dependable of girlfriends lately—or ever. “In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of big words to get through, so if you could buzz off…”

  Ward followed her gaze to the textbooks spread out in front of her. “Business management, huh? Can’t say if it’s an excellent choice or the biggest waste of time.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Hazel drawled.

  “I didn’t mean it like—”

  Hazel poked him with a pencil. Stop. I know how to take a joke. She had figured out that Ward occasionally said the first thing on his mind without giving much thought to the consequences. At first, he mostly did it with Dylan. It was a sign of how comfortable he felt with her that he included her in his slip-ups.

  “You know,” Ward mused, smacking his lips. “Dylan could help you with some of this stuff. He didn’t get that MBA for nothing.”

  “I’ll ask him if I get stuck.” If he ever deigns to talk to me again. She couldn’t pretend that the silent treatment left her indifferent.

  Ward shot her a lukewarm smile, then pressed close against her flank to kiss her neck. “Try not to worry too much.”

  “Have we met?” Hazel laughed. Worry was what she did when she wasn’t running from the messes she’d made. “Think you’ll be back in time for dinner? I can fix something up for you…” She was aware that she was trying to buy back his affection, but better with dinner than her submission in the bedroom. They both had enough hang-ups when it came to that.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Ward said, not meeting her gaze as he shrugged into his suit jacket. He had chosen a light gray suit today with an indigo shirt. He looked good, but that was hardly a surprise.

  Hazel hooked a finger in his belt buckle and, grinning in the face of his bewilderment, she pulled him to her. “I want to.” I want to be here. Dylan might have dissected her motives into the next century, but Hazel couldn’t afford to let that shake her already rickety commitment to stay. To give this a shot. She kissed Ward square on the mouth, nipping at his lips until he gave her a proper goodbye.

  That’s better. Hazel reclined against the edge of the kitchen island. “Is that incentive enough to make it home for dinner?”

  “Yeah… And to play hooky, if I’m honest.”

  Hazel laughed and stabbed a finger into his flank. “Go away. Those millions won’t make themselves, you know.” Something Travis had said flashed through her mind, a shard of insult she’d responded to with violence and little sense. “Hey, Ward?”

  He turned, already halfway to the door. The sides of his blazer fanned open, exposing the black satin lining within. “Changed your mind?”

  Despite her plans for the day, Hazel hesitated before shaking her head. “You know you can talk to me, right? I mean, other than when we wake up in the middle of the night for a drink.” Something which, in retrospect, they were probably better off not turning into a habit.

  “Sure,” Ward answered, knitting his eyebrows. “Is this about—?”

  “No. Sorry. Never mind, I’m just being weird.” Hazel made to spin back around to her tepid coffee. You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?

  “You’re a strange one,” Ward pitched at her back. “Lucky I have a thing for oddballs. Try not to sulk all day.”

  “I’m not—”

  The door clanged shut before Hazel could devise a suitable denial, leaving her alone in the loft. With a sigh, she turned back to the textbooks. Immunization strategy, whatever it was, sounded right up her alley.

  * * * *

  After years of knowing Sadie, several truths had become self-evident. One of them was the knowledge that unless she absolutely had to, Sadie would not wake up before nine in the morning. With that in mind, Hazel gave Sadie another half hour before she jumped into the Volvo and drove downtown to see her.

  It wasn’t until she’d parked the car, blocking a small driveway, that she dialed Marco’s to check if her instincts were correct. Emmalee picked up on the second ring.

  “Hey, it’s me. Did Sadie come in today?”

  She wasn’t scheduled to, but Hazel knew there was always a risk she’d gotten the days mixed up. It happened to the best of them and rarely with as good a reason as heartbreak and bruises.

  Emmalee told Hazel that she hadn’t. “Just me and Travis today, sweetie. Hey, how did the classes go?”

  Not so loud, Hazel irrationally wanted to beg. “Pretty well. I’ll give it a couple of weeks before I decide.”

  “Stick with it,” Emmalee urged. “I know it’s hard at first, but it’ll pay off. Ah, fuck. I gotta go. Some kid dumped ice tea all over himself.”

  Saved by restless toddlers, Hazel hung up and restored her phone to the inner pocket of Ward’s leather jacket. She had borrowed it without asking, but whatever guilt might have blossomed for the crime was mitigated by the illusion of comfort she got from wearing his scent.

  Hazel
puffed up her lungs and stepped out of the car. Sadie would surely be awake by now. Her mom lived on a fairly quiet street—not too far from Aulden Way, but in an area that resembled Hazel’s neighborhood more than it did theirs. Developers had yet to descend on the squat single-family homes that lined the potholed road. Short of tearing everything down from shingles to foundation and starting fresh, there wasn’t much developing to be done here.

  The doorbell shrilled when Hazel stabbed a knuckle into the belly of the tacky metal-and-plastic bumblebee mounted onto the wooden frame. Her own mother would have abhorred the very sight of it, but Sadie’s reveled in that particular brand of quirky kitsch. Different iterations dotted every corner of the overgrown front yard.

  A muffled thump of footsteps on the other side of the door had Hazel shamming a smile. It didn’t dim until Mrs. Ling appeared in the gap, her iron-curled silver-black hair in disarray and features half lost to the shadows of the tiny vestibule.

  “Is she with you?” she gasped. Her red eyes gleamed wetly. “Did Sadie call—?”

  Hazel’s heart sank. “I thought she was here.”

  A sob racked Mrs. Ling’s body before she could get a grip. She fell against the door, muttering, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe my Sadie left.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sadie, gone.

  Hazel couldn’t wrap her head around it. She had known that all was not well, suspected that Sadie’s refusal to so much as mention what happened with Frank concealed something more than an iron will. But for Sadie to walk away from everything and everyone with no word—it was too much.

  A hot burst of steam moistened Hazel’s cheeks before she shook herself and gingerly lifted the kettle off the stove. She tried to avoid spillage as she filled two cups. The sweet, tangy aromas of Mrs. Ling’s favorite tea eddied behind her like a smoky train, dissipating fast on the way to the living room.

  Mrs. Ling had yet to stir from the couch. She glanced up when Hazel sat down beside her. “Should we go to the police?” Incredibly, her voice didn’t quake.

  “I don’t know,” Hazel admitted. I have no idea if that would help. If Sadie wanted to disappear, she would. She was clever enough to erase her trail, live under the radar. Hazel couldn’t imagine why she would, but that was another matter. “You said she left you a note?”

  With a nod, Mrs. Ling reached into last month’s Bazaar, one of many on the coffee table, and pried out the folded piece of paper. It was white, nothing ominous about its provenance or the hasty lines of black ink scrawled across the page. Sadie only said that she needed to be on her own for a while. She would call when she was in a better place. As ominous as her choice of language sounded, Hazel took heart from the promise to get in touch again.

  “I called Frank,” Mrs. Ling said. “I thought he would know.”

  Hazel could feel her gaze, scrutinizing with the same searching look Sadie had employed when she was sure Hazel was holding something back.

  “Frank said they haven’t spoken in weeks.” Mrs. Ling reached for Hazel’s hand and clasped it tightly. “You knew. You two—you’re as thick as thieves. Sadie told you, yes?”

  “Yes,” Hazel forced out around the knot in her throat. Lying was impossible.

  Mrs. Ling nodded, as though she’d simply had her suspicions confirmed. “Tell me everything.”

  It was a betrayal of Sadie’s trust and likely the final nail in the coffin of a friendship built on keeping each other’s secrets safe, but Hazel was too weak to refuse. She dredged up the late night phone call that had led her to find Sadie on that hairpin turn on Mulholland Drive, a black eye marring her pretty face. She told Mrs. Ling about Frank and what he had done. She edited out the parts where jealousy had kindled in her veins while Sadie stayed over at the loft, exchanging those details for the more palatable ‘she stayed with me and some friends’.

  Silence was Mrs. Ling’s recourse as Hazel unraveled her skein. She didn’t release her hand until it was all laid out on the table with the glossy fashion magazines and the dried fruit bowls.

  “She didn’t say she was leaving,” Hazel added hastily, an exculpatory note in her voice. “I thought she just—wasn’t feeling well.” Or hungover. Sadie had been known to indulge in her fair share of nightcaps and she always had weed on hand to help pass the time. She wasn’t the type to do hard drugs—Hazel clung to that tenuous conviction, suddenly wondering what else she had missed about her best friend. “We could contact the police. Tell them she’s disappeared and—”

  Mrs. Ling shook her head. “She left a note.”

  And it was her handwriting on the page. Hazel had deciphered enough orders scribbled in Sadie’s unique chicken scrawl to dispel any doubt on that score.

  “Did she take any money?” she wondered. The answer was no. Nothing from the house. “Clothes? Makeup?”

  Sadie rarely went a day without gluing on a pair of false eyelashes.

  “Not that I could tell… Do you want to take a look?”

  Hazel didn’t, not particularly, but she could think of no solid reason to refuse. With Mrs. Ling to lead the way, they ventured toward the rear of the house. Sadie’s bedroom door was open. Hazel recognized the beads that dangled from a clothes hook before she saw the vast collection of fedoras and ankle-breaking pumps arrayed on a shelving unit within.

  “She stopped wearing them,” Mrs. Ling explained, unprompted. “When she said she was engaged.”

  An ivory tulle and satin dress hung from on the back of the door. Hazel remembered seeing it in a shop on one of their many expeditions into the realm of cake tastings and dress fittings. It seemed like a lifetime ago that they’d been planning her wedding.

  “I didn’t know she already bought the dress…” Why didn’t you tell me, Sadie?

  And if this was one secret she’d kept, what else was there?

  Keenly aware of Mrs. Ling’s eyes on her, Hazel paced a slow circuit around the room. A few tattered paperbacks drooped against a stuffed toy on the dresser. Hair clips and plastic jewelry jostled for space in the bottom of a cookie tin. Sadie’s make-up brushes still bore traces of pink and white, stuffed together like a bouquet inside a ceramic cup.

  “Nothing seems out of place,” Hazel acknowledged. Sadie hadn’t left in a hurry. The bed was neatly made, the clothes in her wardrobe showed no signs of abuse.

  More importantly, it didn’t appear that Sadie had packed before taking off.

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” Mrs. Ling pressed.

  “Yeah…” It was good that Sadie hadn’t planned this, but even a quest for inner peace still required things like clean underwear and lunch money.

  A phone rang in the other room. Mrs. Ling stiffened, her eyes wide. She bolted down the hall faster than Hazel could catch up. She made it as far as the bedroom door before Mrs. Ling’s voice echoed through the house.

  “Hello? Sadie?” Fragile hope trembled on her lips. “Oh—oh, sorry…”

  She switched to incomprehensible rapid-fire Mandarin, but Hazel could tell by the tone that she wasn’t speaking to her daughter. She veered back into the bedroom, gaze bouncing over the cracked paint on the walls, the faint silhouette of fluorescent stars on the ceiling.

  Where did you go, Sadie?

  They had known each other since they were children, though they hadn’t become friends until much later. Sadie’s bullish ways had been off-putting, even terrifying on the playground. A year older than Hazel, she had a powerful ascendant over her and an aura of not giving a damn about authority. If she wasn’t in detention, she was out smoking behind the bleachers. And if she wasn’t doing that, then she was cutting class with older boys.

  In their hometown, her antics had swiftly earned her a reputation as a troublemaker, but her family had been given the cold shoulder long before that.

  Hazel saw echoes of that rebellious streak in the pictures stuck to the mirror above Sadie’s vanity. She rested both hands on the back of the padded wooden chair, soaking up the faint, lingering he
at of Sadie’s shoulders.

  For someone who could afford to cut people off on a whim, Sadie’s photo collection revealed an uncanny sentimental side. There were snapshots of kids from Dunby, faces Hazel recognized but couldn’t put a name to, and others that Sadie must’ve met in college.

  Marco and Hazel were among the more recent additions, squeezed into frame beside Sadie in a selfie taken maybe a few years back, when Sadie had first gotten herself a smartphone. The quality of the print confirmed Hazel’s vague recollection. The background was familiar—cheap Formica counters, red vinyl seats—but the people grinning into the camera were as good as strangers. Marco had his arm around Sadie’s shoulder, but he was holding her lightly. Hazel had her cheek pressed against Sadie’s.

  She was laughing.

  Hazel reached out to smooth the bent corner of the photograph. She’d barely touched the matte surface when another slid free of the mirror frame, dropping face-down into the dark end of a nude eye shadow palette.

  A series of digits inscribed onto the back gave her pause.

  Hazel turned the photograph to right end up. She didn’t recognize the sequence, but the first three digits were the area code for St. Louis. She flipped the snapshot over. It was of Sadie and her mother. So probably not her mother’s phone number… Curious, she plucked another photo from the frame. Five-seven-three gleamed in black ink, familiar only because that was the way her parents’ number began. The same was true of any phone line in Dunby.

  Mrs. Ling’s conversation was still going strong in the other room, so Hazel plucked down another photograph. And another. More phone numbers, but not exclusively. Here and there, she found a street name and house number. The thought of Sadie jotting information down someplace other than her smartphone left Hazel confused. It seemed like an added complication—and for what? Mrs. Ling wasn’t the type to rifle through her daughter’s things.

  Sadie had been horrified when Hazel told her stories about her own childhood.

  She couldn’t make sense of the strange, handwritten code strewn all over Sadie’s powder boxes—not until she turned over the last photograph. On the flip side of the toothy grins crammed into frame on either side of Sadie was not a name, but a street address.