Last Night by Rice Luanne

Author:Rice, Luanne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2024-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

26

Hadley felt nervous, waiting for Genevieve to arrive at the hotel, so when the suite’s doorbell rang, she hesitated before answering. Kate, sitting on the sofa, noticed her reluctance and answered the door.

“Genevieve?” Hadley heard Kate ask.

“No,” a woman’s voice said. “I’m Jeanne Gladding, Maddie’s attorney. Hadley, I am so sorry about your sister . . .”

“Double mistaken identity,” Kate said, leading the lawyer into the living room. “I’m Kate Woodward. This is Hadley.”

Hadley stood to shake the woman’s hand. She looked about fifty, with shoulder-length brown hair and low-key makeup. She was dressed in black pants and a double-breasted black blazer over a starched white blouse. On her lapel was a pin, the enamel painted with Maddie’s whale-and-swan motif. Her battered brown leather briefcase looked as if she might have had it since law school, and she set it on the coffee table when Hadley gestured for her to sit down.

“Hadley, I can’t imagine what you must be feeling. Maddie adored you—we spoke about you often. I know how close you were,” Jeanne said.

“We were,” Hadley said.

“I wanted to come as soon as I heard. This might sound strange, but when someone dies, the family so often gathers together, and I feel like her family,” Jeanne said, her voice breaking. “She was so much more than a client. I waited as long as I could, wanting to give you time for yourself, but then . . . I had to come.”

“Thank you,” Hadley said.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t.”

“I considered her a dear, dear friend,” Jeanne said. “And I think she felt the same about me.”

Hadley felt drawn in by Jeanne’s warmth and obvious grief, but also a little sorry for her. She knew Maddie had several lawyers that handled various issues in her life, but she had never heard her mention Jeanne’s name before. She figured Jeanne was no different from many of Maddie’s other fans. Her paintings drew people in, made them feel like she was speaking directly to them through the images. Essays had been written about Maddie’s ethereal work, studies done on ways it affected viewers.

One psychiatrist had published an article in the Hanover Journal of Neuroscience about how her images had entered the collective unconscious. Strangers often thought they knew Maddie better than her family did—and felt closer to her than she did to her actual friends. Several patients with Cluster B diagnoses grew angry when Maddie didn’t respond to their emails, phone calls, and letters. Some threatened suicide when she ignored them; others promised to hurt her or the ones she loved.

Several fans with disorders that manifested in auditory hallucinations believed that Maddie—or the subjects of her paintings, such as the whale—was speaking to them directly, giving them orders that ranged from self-harm to violence against others.

Hadley doubted that Jeanne’s wanting to feel close to Maddie approached those levels, but still, she felt that the lawyer was feeling something that Maddie wouldn’t have reciprocated.

The midday sun cast silver light on the beach and ocean.

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