Chap­ter 20

God, that was humil­i­at­ing.

I’m still reel­ing from the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of Enzo reject­ing me while I’m wait­ing for Cecelia to fin­ish her tap-danc­ing class. My head is throb­bing, and the tap­ping of lit­tle feet in uni­son com­ing from the dance class­room isn’t help­ing mat­ters at all. I look around the room, won­der­ing if any­one else finds it as annoy­ing as I do. No? Just me?

The woman in the seat next to mine final­ly gives me a sym­pa­thet­ic look. Based on her nat­u­ral­ly smooth skin, with no signs of a facelift or Botox, I’d esti­mate her to be about my age, which makes me think she’s not pick­ing up her own kid, either. She’s one of the ser­vants, like me.

“Advil?” she asks. She must have a sixth sense to notice my dis­com­fort. Either that or my sighs are giv­ing her the mes­sage.

I hes­i­tate, then nod. A painkiller won’t get rid of the humil­i­a­tion of the hot Ital­ian land­scap­er turn­ing me down, but it will ease my headache at least.

She reach­es into her big black purse and takes out a bot­tle of Advil. She rais­es her eye­brows at me, then I put out my hand and she shakes two lit­tle red pills into my palm. I throw them back into my mouth and swal­low them dry. I won­der how long it’ll take them to kick in.

“I’m Aman­da, by the way,” she tells me. “I’m your offi­cial tap-danc­ing wait­ing-room drug deal­er.”

I laugh, despite myself. “Who are you here to pick up?”

She flicks her brown pony­tail off her shoul­der. “The Bern­stein twins. You should see them tap dance in uni­son. It’s some­thing to behold—speaking of pound­ing headaches. How about you?”

“Cecelia Win­ches­ter.”

Aman­da lets out a low whis­tle. “You work for the Win­ches­ters? Good luck with that.”

I squeeze my knees. “What do you mean?”

She lifts a shoul­der. “Nina Win­ches­ter. You know. She’s…” She makes the uni­ver­sal “cuck­oo” sign with her index fin­ger. “Right?”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, every­one knows.” She shoots me a look. “Also, I get the feel­ing Nina is the jeal­ous type. And her hus­band is real­ly hot—don’t you think?”

I avert my eyes. “He’s okay, I guess.”

Aman­da starts dig­ging around in her purse as I lick my lips. This is the oppor­tu­ni­ty I’ve been wait­ing for. Some­body I can pump for infor­ma­tion about Nina.

“So,” I say, “why do peo­ple say Nina is crazy?”

She looks up, and for a moment I’m scared she’s going to be offend­ed by my obvi­ous dig­ging. But she just grins. “You know she was locked up in a loony bin, right? Every­one talks about it.”

I wince at her use of the term “loony bin.” I’m sure she has some equal­ly col­or­ful terms for the place where I spent the last decade of my life. But I need to hear this. My heart speeds up, beat­ing in sync with the tap­ping of lit­tle feet in the oth­er room. “I did hear some­thing about that…”

Aman­da clucks. “Cecelia was a baby then. Poor thing—if the police had arrived a sec­ond lat­er…”

“What?”

She drops her voice a notch, look­ing around the room. “You know what she did, don’t you?”

I shake my head word­less­ly.

“It was hor­ri­ble…” Aman­da sucks in a breath. “She tried to drown Cecelia in the bath­tub.”

I clasp a hand over my mouth. “She… what?”

She nods solemn­ly. “Nina drugged her, threw her in the tub with run­ning water, then took a bunch of pills her­self.”

I open my mouth but no words come out. I have been expect­ing some sto­ry like, I don’t know, she got into a fight with some oth­er moth­er at bal­let prac­tice over the best col­or for tutus and then had a melt­down when they couldn’t agree. Or maybe her favorite man­i­curist decid­ed to retire and…