Page 195 of Love Me in the Dark

I couldn’t lose Eleanor, too.

But everything was not okay. Not by a long shot. Our parents were missing in action, I was woefully unprepared to care for a teenager, Eleanor had lost her private school tuition and thus her placement—and the same for me at Columbia, although Icould care less at the moment about that. All of my friends had deserted me, including Jason Lancaster. Clearly, he had gotten what he wanted, and he had moved on.

Our princess-perfect lives had imploded on a magnificent scale, and I didn’t know how to stop the devastation as it continued to spin out. All we could do was survive it.

Grabbing my wallet, I headed back to where the manager waited.

“Try this one.”

With an irritable press of his lips, he slid the card through the handheld machine he carried. A second later a beep registered the grim verdict: declined.

I took the card and handed him another, sweat beginning to break out across my forehead. “This one.”

“Miss—”

“Just try it!”

He swiped it, eyes on me instead of the machine. “Declined, also.”

“Damn it, I don’t?—”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises, miss.”

No. Nononono?—

“Please don’t do this.” I cast about for some solution. “Give me a few hours to figure something out. I’ll come up with?—”

“Miss Tiernay.”

Something in his voice stopped me, a note of finality. Or maybe it was the resolute expression on his face, all but masking the tiny bit of sympathy I could still glimpse in his eyes.

“I’m very sorry, but I have a boss, and he’s aware of your family’s…predicament. There’s nothing I can do. You have one hour to gather your belongings and vacate the premises.”

I swallowed. Giving him a faint nod, I closed the door, or maybe he did—I’m not sure which. Then Eleanor led me to the couch, where I sank down, put my head in my hands, and cried.

Eleanor waited patiently until I was done and then handed me a tissue and my inhaler. “I’ve already packed our things. You just need to make a circuit to make sure I didn’t miss anything. There’s some mail in the kitchen.”

I drew on my inhaler and blew my nose. “I don’t know where to go, Lens.”

“We’ll figure it out. Don’t we have an uncle somewhere?”

“I think he’s a creep.” Vaguely, I remembered Mom telling me something about her brother being a lech and a drunk. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though.

Eleanor had the same thought. Her shoulder lifted in a shrug. “So, we’ll stick a chair under the doorknob until we have another option. Our trusts should be coming due soon. Let’s actually swing by Jerry’s office first—see if there’s anything we can draw on for lodging. Make sure we’re doing everything right.”

For a moment I stared at her. Then I wrapped an arm around her thin frame and pulled her to me in a hug. “God, I love you. You know that? I seriously won the sister lottery.”

“Yeah, yeah. Ditto. Let’s get out of her before that little man comes back.” She stood and grinned at me. “I already stole all the shampoo and stuff. Towels, too. I figured if the card was declined, there was no way they were gonna get us for it.”

An unwilling bark of laughter escaped me. “Okay, that’s funny. I think they deserve it.”

“Hell, yeah, they do. Anything else you want to take?”

I looked around the posh suite, my sense of equilibrium returning. It was tempting…so very tempting…to strip it bare. To take everything, the way everything had been taken from us.

In the end, though, I walked into the kitchen and picked up my stack of mail and a single teaspoon from the utensil drawer.

I smiled as I slid it into my back pocket. It was a small thing; that spoon. Maybe it would be missed; maybe it wouldn’t. I would know, though.