Page 11 of You'll Be Sorry

She’d established her design business. Built a perfectly adequate life and then, quite unexpectedly, made eye contact with a handsome man grinning at her from across the room.

Initially, she’d held Theo’s good looks and charming smile againsthim. No way the contents inside could measure up to that level of packaging. His background didn’t help. Third-generation Boston money. The kind of wealth that guaranteed a life of comfort and ease, attending the right private schools, golfing at the right country clubs, vacationing at the right hot spots. Even when Theo “went out on his own” with his personal investment firm, his father had seeded the venture with a five-million-dollar investment, quickly followed by additions from uncles, cousins, and prep school classmates.

No wonder Theo exuded the kind of confidence Raquel associated with movie stars and Saudi princes. Whatever he wanted, he got. It had pissed her off.

She hadn’t wanted some entitled nepo baby chasing after her. She had bigger dreams, higher ambitions. A woman who grew up learning firsthand the importance of a carefully cultivated façade made for a naturally brilliant interior decorator. She didn’t just know what pieces worked together and how color affected the mood of a room; she understood how every piece of furniture, standing lamp, hanging canvas also said something about the homeowners themselves, even if they didn’t realize it.

Very quickly, she’d built up an impressive roster of clients, wealthy families who didn’t simply love her, they depended on her. Whatever bad, upsetting, stressful thing was going on in their ivory-tower worlds…nothing like a Raquel redesign to set it right.

From the very beginning, Raquel had had two things working in her favor.

She had a talent for creating magic.

And she had an aptitude for spinning lies.

Some days, she honestly wasn’t sure which one served her better.

And Theo, well, Theo proved he had his own tricks up his sleeve, including an aptitude with numbers, a genuine work ethic, and, even more mysterious to Raquel, a big heart. When he smiled, he meant it.When he asked about hopes and dreams, whether hers or his clients’, it was because he fully intended on making them come true. And he did, over and over again.

If Raquel could appraise any situation with emotional distance and ruthless cunning, then Theo was the giant golden retriever, smashing through all best-laid plans, only to somehow, miraculously, create something even more marvelous out of the chaos. She cursed him about twenty times a day. And loved him desperately.

Now, here they were.

Before they’d even closed on this house/money pit/quixotic adventure, Raquel had developed a plan. First step, deal with the practicalities—electrical wires destroyed by rodents, a burst pipe that had taken out the basement furnace, a badly leaking roof. This whole project was foolish enough without having to endure no light, heat, or water.

Raquel hired the contractors from afar, then deliberately stayed away, receiving updates via texted photos and FaceTime calls. Let the gossip begin.

Then, her and Theo’s official arrival, when they spent the first twenty-four hours scrubbing the lower level to within an inch of its life and hastily assembling a perfectly respectable living room. Neighbors would come. The curious, the suspicious, and even the genuinely welcoming. It was important they see immediate progress. The mysterious new couple hadn’t just purchased the terribly neglected, horribly infamous Dixon house; they’d already made it their home. They were that good.

Of course, that led to another adage—appearances can be deceiving.

Now, climbing the stairs, Raquel could feel her and Theo’s carefully crafted illusion slipping away, as each step brought them closer to graffiti-covered walls and violently destroyed rooms.

Downstairs had been largely spared the wrath of time and teenagesquatters, whereas upstairs…This was the real deal, a true testimony to the senseless damage booze-fueled kids could unleash upon their environment. Shattered sheetrock, gaping floorboards, bathrooms where fixtures hadn’t just been ripped off the walls but in some cases tossed through a neighboring window. Not to mention stripped copper pipes and a bird’s nest of rodent-chewed electrical wires.

Looking at these rooms, you had to wonder what kind of people thought it was even possible to save such a long-neglected, highly abused structure. Looking at this space, you had to wonder if the couple who’d purchased this home hadn’t lost their minds.

Final step, landing in the middle of the hallway where there was nothing else to see but the carnage spreading out before them. Professionals would probably require most of a year to put this to rights. Theo and Raquel were giving themselves six months.

Theo squeezed her hand.

“You okay?” he asked, per usual.

“Of course,” she replied, as always.

His gentle smile, letting her know she could fool the entire world but never him.

She loved him, she thought again. She loved him madly, deeply, completely, in a way she thought she’d never experience and wasn’t even capable of. He terrified her. He soothed her. He pushed her to be better, but accepted her just the way she was.

Now…

Raquel didn’t know what was going to happen next. And for the first time in her life, she didn’t find that liberating. She found it lonely.

“Do you think they knew?” she asked softly, standing outside the row of bedrooms that once contained four Dixon children and two Dixon adults. “Had a faint inkling that something terrible was about to happen? That in a blink of an eye, the world as they knew it would end?”

“For their sake, I hope not.”

She nodded even as she shivered.