was as pale and smooth as an egg, and her eyes had a slight fixed brightness. She’d had a little work done, I realized. Fillers for sure, maybe a little Botox, though if I’d had a different mother, I might not have known. It was really good work. Subtle, which meant pricey, and also very effective. She was probably close to my age.
“We have something else in common,” Roux said. “We’re both one-percenters.”
I shook my head. My parents lived in a zip code that was one-percent-adjacent, but I hadn’t truly been a member of the Smith clan for years now. Davis and I lived solidly middle class. I did have close to three hundred thousand dollars left from Nana’s trust, but it was sitting quietly in a bank in Boston, waiting. It was more than a lot of people had, but it hardly put me on a par with billionaires. As for Roux, the only financial assets I’d seen were the red car and her designer wardrobe. And her expensive face.
I shook my head. “Hardly. We’re comfortable. . . .”
“I mean we’re both divers,” Roux said, gesturing over her shoulder at my pictures, and I got it. She meant the one percent of people who scuba.
Half the tension I’d been hiding ran out of me, and I felt a twinge of something that was akin to disappointment. Suddenly I wanted to laugh at myself. Was that all this was? Every afternoon Luca had asked me about scuba: how to get certified, what it cost, how long it took. He must be driving her crazy at home. She was here to ask about lessons for her kid, and I needed to calm my ass right down. Roux liked to stir up trouble, but it was my own uneasy guilt weighting the conversation.
Oliver was busily throwing his toys off the bottom shelves now, checking to see if gravity still worked. Rattle Bear, teething keys, soft cloth books, he grabbed them one by one and let them fall. I had a lot of toys stored there, enough to hold him for a few minutes. Long enough to work out scuba lessons. I walked over and sat down on the end of the other sofa, catty-corner to her.
“So Luca is serious about it, huh? Divers Down does an open-water class at least once a month, and I’m back teaching now. I think it’s a great idea, especially since you dive already.”
Her face didn’t change. Her body stayed in the same shape, legs crossed, leaning back, one arm draped comfortably along the sofa. Even so I felt a shift in her. A flex of muscles tightening under her skin.
“When did you talk to Luca about diving?” she asked.
“All week,” I said. “Every day he has another question.”
Her arm dropped, and she leaned slightly forward. “Luca was here?”
She didn’t know her kid was at my house? Not that I minded him anymore. He didn’t seem to have romantic or even sexual designs on Maddy, though I worried about how gone she was on him. He was charming, and twice I’d invited him to stay for dinner, though he hadn’t taken me up on it.
“Yes. He comes home with Madison after school.”
“Luca homeschools,” Roux said, tight. That surprised me. Homeschooling didn’t seem to fit Roux’s demographic, but then what did? Her brand-new shiny car didn’t match her peeling rental house, her expensive clothes and her equally expensive face did not belong in our neighborhood. She got up and walked away from me, over to the picture window, picking her way through Oliver’s mess. He was still pulling toys off the shelf, examining or mouthing or shaking each before dropping it, babbling quietly to himself.
“Do you work afternoons?” I asked, curious how she hadn’t known her kid was at my place in those hours.
She shook her head, impatient. “That’s when I’m at the gym.”
She’s at the gym two-plus hours a day? I thought, but looking at her body silhouetted against the picture window, I believed it.
“Maybe he just didn’t mention it. It’s all pretty innocent,” I said, very offhand and dismissive. I liked it, this reversal, me cool and her a little on edge, but at the same time I hoped I hadn’t landed him in hot water. I’d come to like the kid. “I’ve kept a close eye on them, believe me.”
“He’s hanging with your stepdaughter,” Roux said, almost a question.
That made me laugh. “Of course. He’s not here to learn how to keep his colors bright