Chapter 1 - Tears at the Marble SinkImogen had her hands on the edge of the sink and was looking down at the drain, breathing through her mouth, when Mrs. Aldcott came in.
She was seventeen. Sheâd come back into the kitchen to put cold water on her face and get herself level again, and instead sheâd ended up gripping the counter with mascara running down both cheeks while the party kept on through the doorway behind her, the lights strung along the beams, the chandelier, women in sequined dresses, the low steady noise of people who arenât worried about anything.
âI canât do this,â she said. She didnât mean to say it where anyone could hear. It came out at the sink, to the drain, and then Mrs. Aldcott was standing in the doorway with a champagne glass in her hand, and her husband a step behind her, and all three of them were looking at the girl.
The house belonged to the Aldcotts, who had money from something to do with buildings and other peopleâs money, and who put on a charity gala every December that the society pages called the event of the season. Diane Aldcott ran the actual machinery of it, the staff and the flowers and the catering, all the work that goes into making money look like it costs no effort.
The catering company was small and family-run and short two servers that night because of the flu going around, which is how Imogen came to be working a job she was three months too young to legally hold, covering a shift for her mother. Beatriz Reyes had built the company out of one van over fifteen years into something that could staff a party for two hundred, and sheâd done it alone with a kid at home, working the nights and the weekends, gone for more of Imogenâs childhood than either of them liked to add up. Two servers down and the seasonâs biggest contract riding on the night, Beatriz had been near frantic, and Imogen had offered. Iâll carry trays, Mom. How hard can it be.
That was four in the afternoon. By ten she knew how hard, though not for the reason sheâd figured.
It wasnât the work that broke her. Carrying trays was tiring and dull and entirely survivable.
What broke her was a call she took on her break, out in the cold by the vans with her coat pulled over the serverâs vest. Her mother had phoned from the commercial kitchen across town, prepping for the next dayâs job, and somewhere in it she let go of something sheâd been sitting on for weeks. The business was in trouble. The kind where this account, the Aldcott account, was the thing keeping the lights on, and where if it didnât turn into the renewal they were counting on in January, that was the company. Fifteen years, gone.
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Imogen stood in the immaculate marble kitchen, her brown apron soaked with water, sobbing into her hand as Richard Aldcott stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder while Diane Aldcott stared at her with a cold, searching expression.
âWhatâs wrong with you?â Diane asked, her voice dropping into a sharp, unsympathetic edge. âIf youâre going to collapse, do it where our guests canât see you.â
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