A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

some opinions on them. And stretching is healthy. But maybe I was mistaken—”

“No,” I said. I didn’t love the idea of ruining someone’s life for Nevertheless’s agenda. But from what Libby had overheard, I had until shortly after Caroline’s gala to prove I was worthy of the back room, where they’d probably devised this plan in the first place. “I’m very opinionated.”

“Excellent. Come meet me and Vy tonight at eight, and we’ll fill you in.” She listed an intersection in Brooklyn Heights as the meeting place. “And maybe don’t wear anything too flashy.”

I looked down at myself. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” I said, then paused. “Wait, why?”

“You’ll see,” she said, and hung up.

TWENTY-ONE

When I arrived at the corner, on a residential street full of lovely brownstones, I stood there for a moment, at a loss. Had I been stood up? Then, Vy and Margot materialized out of the darkness. Vy wore a men’s knit hat pulled down over her pale hair, gloves on her hands, even though it wasn’t that cold.

“Jillian, hi,” Margot said. Vy gave a curt nod.

“Hey,” I said. “Pretty street.”

“Mm, isn’t it?” Margot replied. “Let’s take a little walk.” Weird way to do an information exchange, but hey, there were worse places to wander than this manicured neighborhood.

She turned and began to stroll down the block of impressive houses as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Vy and I flanked her. “So we found one of the judge’s mistresses,” Margot said, staring straight ahead. “A recent one. And as we suspected, she told us that he pressured her into an abortion.”

“What a scumbag,” I said.

“Ah, but he paid for it, like a true gentleman,” Margot said in a dry tone as she turned down a narrow alley, lined by tall wooden fences shielding backyards from view. (Backyards, in New York City! We were in the lap of luxury now.) The glow from the streetlights didn’t reach in here. Vy walked slightly ahead of us, examining the fence slats, as Margot kept talking. “We’ll just need to find the check receipt from that procedure, though the mistress suspected that he might have a few other shady payments hidden away in his file cabinet, so let’s keep an eye out for those while we’re at it.”

“I’m sorry, while we’re at what?”

Vy stopped and tapped lightly on the fence in front of her. “This is the one.”

“Oh,” Margot said, looking me in the eye. “His mistress told us he keeps his records in his home office.” She indicated the brownstone, looming up from behind the fence. “He brought her here once. Wanted to fuck her on his desk. She walked us through the layout. We thought if you were going to write the article, you might like to help with the research.”

“So, breaking and entering?” I asked, my mouth dry. “Are you joking?”

“If you’d rather not help out, feel free to go,” Margot said. Vy grabbed the top of the fence, which came to her eye level. She shook it, checking its sturdiness.

“It’s stable,” Vy said. “Ready?” They both fixed their eyes on me, cocked their heads, and said nothing, waiting for my response.

This was a crime. It was also a test. To gauge my devotion, see whether or not they could trust me. Either that or they were setting me up for a fall. I swallowed. “I want to help.”

“Excellent,” Margot said, smiling, then pulled two pairs of gloves out of her pocket. She handed one to me. “Here, put these on.”

Vy lifted a long leg up onto a horizontal slat, then pulled herself over the top of the fence in a single movement, like a great stallion leaping a hurdle. Margot climbed after her, delicately. I followed, hoping that I wouldn’t impale myself on a fencepost.

Somewhere during the time that I was hoisting myself over in my ungainly way, the reality of what we were doing sank in. “What the hell,” I said when my feet touched the ground in the judge’s small, tidy backyard. “Do you even know if he’s home? Or if he has cameras?”

“Don’t freak,” Vy said.

“He and his wife are out to dinner,” Margot said. We walked up the steps to the judge’s back door. Vy began picking the lock with a credit card as Margot went on. “Caroline and Libby are eating at the same restaurant to keep an eye on him.” Libby was in on this too? I hadn’t thought of her as serious competition until now. “And if he’s bringing his mistresses around to his home office, I doubt he has cameras.”

Vy turned the knob, and it swung open. “How do you know how to do that?” I asked.

Vy just shrugged. “Most locks aren’t that strong. More for appearance than anything. If someone wants to get in, they’ll get in.” She loped inside. Taking a deep breath, I crossed the threshold into the judge’s home.

I was too nervous to stop and drool over the place. Besides, there wasn’t much to drool over, anyway. It had good bones, but the decorator had clearly just gone to a Crate & Barrel and shouted, Bring me your finest selection of beige! I followed Vy and Margot down a hallway and into a home office, done up to look like a library. There was a filing cabinet in the corner. Vy picked the lock on that too, this time using a paper clip she’d grabbed from a bowl on the desk. Next to the bowl, a bust of some old lawyer or philosopher—very ancient Greek—scowled at me. Margot, meanwhile, sprawled in the desk chair, looking at the pictures and knickknacks on display in a casual, curious manner, as if she’d been invited over to tour a friend’s place.

They were so calm about it, so practiced. Not how they would be if it were their first time bringing about a person’s destruction. More than ever, as Vy flipped