I wouldn’t have had to befriend Mrs. Belfort.

I wouldn’t have to hide away in El Dorado.

I would be me. Poor and content and myself.

Stop whining, Jesse. Self-loathing isn’t so bad when you settle into it.

“Hi, Imane! Is this a good time?” I dumped my backpack in Mrs. Belfort’s foyer.

“In the dining room.” Imane, her housekeeper, bowed her head, clearing the way for me.

I walked over to the royal blue dining room, complete with high golden arches, red curtains, and a bronze chandelier. A French provincial dining set that could fit no less than thirty diners graced the center of the room. I saw Mrs. Belfort sitting at the end of the table, all by herself, clad in an emerald satin dress with a gold neckline, bright red lipstick, and a hairdo from the movies. She stared at the empty chair across from her, all the way on the other side of the table, willing it to fill itself with her late husband, Fred. My heart shriveled inside its bony cage, every beat burning against my ribs.

“Mrs. B?” I whispered, not too loud to startle her.

She ignored me. “Fred, do try the oysters. They’re marvelous.”

Fred didn’t respond, because he wasn’t there. For the sake of argument, the oysters weren’t there, either. Mrs. Belfort had had lunch hours ago, I’m sure. Probably in the form of a soup or casserole her cook, Ula, made for her.

Your one and only friend is drifting, a little voice inside my head tsked. I’d like to believe that voice was the old Jesse. That she still lived somewhere inside me, and was a constant companion. Which, of course, was monumentally pathetic.

Roman Protsenko slipped into my mind again.

Snowflake.

I remembered the intensity of his gaze as he’d looked at me. It dripped sex, even if his words were completely innocent. I appreciated his proposition. I even half-believed him about not wanting to get into my pants. But I didn’t do socializing, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start now. Not with him, and not at all.

“Mrs. B,” I repeated, stepping deeper into the room and pressing a hand over her back. “Let’s go outside and look at the rosebushes. Maybe take a walk in the maze.” She hadn’t agreed to go in there for months now.

Juliette Belfort jerked away from me and looked up. Her face was marred with experience and heartache. The most fatal disease in the world was time, and her tired expression was proof of that. Juliette had two children. Both Ryan and Kacey lived on the East Coast, and she wasn’t hot on joining them in the cold. Not that they ever offered. Mrs. B had brittle bone disease, so she usually wore three layers of clothes whenever she was out and had her thermostat set somewhere between a bonfire and hell. “Jesse, I can’t spend time with you today, sweetheart. I’m having lunch with my husband.”

At least she remembered my name this time. Mrs. Belfort wasn’t always clear. That’s why she had a full-time nurse, a housekeeper, and a cook. That’s why she didn’t understand why I kept declining meeting her sweet nephew, who was around my age, for a blind date.

I stopped telling her the skinny on my situation, because she would ask all over again the next day.

I don’t date.

I don’t do boys.

I’m The Untouchable.

And Mrs. B would always reply—stop being so afraid of love. It can’t kill you!

Only it had.

“Is it okay if I wait until you guys are finished?” I mustered a weak smile, inwardly begging for her company. She shrugged, sipping tea from the fine china next to her. “Suit yourself.”

I returned to the foyer and plopped on an upholstered bench, digging out a book from my backpack and riffling through the free hugs pamphlet some girl handed me on the street last time I visited Mayra. I smiled at the irony as I stared at the words, not really deciphering any of them.

Why did Bane want to hire me? I was about as customer friendly as pneumonia.

Had he heard about my story?

Stupid question. Of course he had. Everyone in town heard a version or two of my story. I was the town’s slut. Jezebel. The whore of Babylon. I’d asked for it, so they’d given it to me.

Emery Wallace was the poor victim. And I was the leg-spreading witch.

Maybe Bane thought I was going to put out easily.

Or perhaps he really did pity me.

It made little to no difference. The only thing I had going for me was that, despite everything I’d been through, I wasn’t the charity case he tried to make me. I didn’t need his mercy, or job, or affection. I didn’t.

Crap, I hope Mrs. B will spend some time with me today.

I read a few pages, willing Bane out of my mind. Sometimes Mrs. B was clear as the August sky. I confided in her, more often than I’d like to admit. It was easier than talking to Mayra, my therapist, because Mayra always took notes and made suggestions. Mrs. Belfort very rarely remembered our conversations.