**Chapter 55**
**Ray's POV**
A few days passed before Betha declared it was time for step two.
She called me on a Tuesday morning with the energy of someone who had been awake since five planning something she was very pleased with.
"I did research," she said, before I had fully said hello.
"Good morning to you too."
"Anika has a routine," she continued, entirely unbothered. "Every Thursday she goes to Belmont Club. You know it?"
I did know it. Belmont Club - one of the most exclusive private clubs in the city. Golf course, bar, restaurant, the kind of place where old money went to remind itself it was old money. Members only. The kind of membership that cost more than most people's apartments annually.
"I have a membership," I said.
"Of course you do," Betha said. "I'll send you the address anyway. We go Thursday."
"We," I repeated.
"We," she confirmed. "I'm coming with you."
"Betha, Anika knows your face -"
"She won't recognize me," she said, with a confidence I found immediately alarming.
"Why won't she recognize you?"
A pause.
"I'll send you a video," she said, and hung up.
---
The video arrived four minutes later.
I watched it twice.
Then I called her back.
"Betha."
"Yes?"
"You're dressed as an old woman."
"A rich old woman," she corrected. "There's a difference. The wig alone cost me two hundred dollars."
I looked at the screen again. She had - somehow, genuinely, through what I could only assume was a combination of costume expertise and sheer force of personality - transformed herself into a convincing elderly aristocrat. White wig pinned under a hat. Pearls. A coat that belonged in a different decade. Reading glasses on a chain.
"Can you actually act like an old woman?" I said. "Or are you just going to be Betha in a costume?"
A deeply offended silence.
"Ray Lether," she said, "I once acted as a pregnant woman in active labor in front of corporate security guards and not one of them questioned it for a single second. An old woman is nothing. Do not insult me."
I thought about this.
She had a point.
"Fine," I said. "Thursday."
---
Thursday arrived.
Betha met me outside Belmont Club in full costume - wig, pearls, coat, reading glasses, a handbag that probably cost more than the wig. She walked toward me with a slightly hunched posture and a shuffling gait that was either very good acting or genuinely concerning.
I looked at her for a long moment.
"Seriously," I said.
She looked up at me over the reading glasses. "Oh darling," she said, in a voice approximately forty years older than her actual one, "don't you worry about your old mother."
It was disturbingly convincing.
"Can you maintain that for an entire afternoon?"
She straightened slightly and said in her normal voice: "I once fake-labored for twenty minutes in a lobby. I can do this. Stop asking."
I offered her my arm - because apparently this was my life now - and we walked into Belmont Club together.
---
The interior was exactly what Belmont Club always was - dark wood, leather, the particular hush of a place that had decided ambient noise was beneath it. The golf bar ran along the back, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the green, afternoon light coming through in long gold bars across the polished floor.
I found a table with clear sightlines in every direction, ordered wine, and settled in.
Betha installed herself two tables away with a cup of tea and a newspaper and proceeded to become a completely different person. She held the paper at the angle of someone whose eyesight required significant adjustment. She sipped her tea with the unhurried deliberateness of a woman who had been sipping tea in rooms like this for seventy years and had strong opinions about the temperature.
It was genuinely impressive.
I drank my wine and waited.
Fifteen minutes.
Twenty.
And then - the particular shift in the room that happened when Anika entered somewhere.
She was wearing a golf outfit that had been designed by someone who understood that the purpose of a golf outfit was not exclusively golf. White. Fitted. The kind of thing that made every other person in the room aware of her arrival whether they intended to be or not.
She moved through the bar with the ease of someone who came here regularly - greeting two people, accepting a kiss on the cheek from someone elderly and important-looking, scanning the room with those green eyes that never fully stopped calculating.
They found me.
Something crossed her face - surprise, then something else. That something else was what Betha had predicted and what I needed to work with.
She came over.
"Small world, Ray." She sat down across from me without being invited, with the confidence of a woman who had never needed an invitation. "We keep meeting like this."
"We do," I agreed.
"Are you a member here?"
"For years," I said.
She smiled - that particular Anika smile that was warm on the surface and something else entirely underneath. "I never saw you here before."
"I travel a lot," I said. "I haven't been in a while."
She leaned back in her chair, entirely comfortable, entirely at home. Then she leaned forward again - slight shift, deliberate - and said: "You're alone?"
"Just enjoying the afternoon," I said.
Her hand moved across the table and settled on my thigh with the casual confidence of someone who had done this before and expected it to work.
And in my head - immediately, involuntarily - I thought:
*I am in an actual horror film.*
*This is a horror film and I am in it.*
*Betha owes me so much for this.*
"Are you sure you're alone?" she said, her voice dropping slightly.
"Actually," I said, "I came with my mother."
Anika blinked.
And from two tables away, a white-haired elderly woman in pearls and reading glasses lowered her newspaper, pushed back her chair with considerable authority, and crossed the bar toward us with the shuffling purposeful energy of a woman who had something to say.
She arrived at the table.
Looked at Anika.
Looked at where Anika's hand was.
Then she moved Anika's hand off my thigh with two fingers - delicate, precise, the way you move something that doesn't belong somewhere - took Anika's seat, and said:
"Who is this, my son?"
I pressed my lips together very hard.
Anika stared.
"I -" she started.
"Don't mind me, darling," Betha said, in her elderly voice, settling into the chair and picking up my wine glass to examine it. "I'm just his mother. Carry on."
Anika looked at me.
I managed, with significant effort, not to laugh.
"Anika," I said, keeping my voice entirely even, "this is my mother."
Anika looked at the white-haired woman across from her.
Then back at me.
"Your - mother," she repeated.
"Mm," I said.
A silence of very specific quality.
Then Anika said, with careful dignity: "I should let you enjoy your afternoon."
She stood.
Straightened her golf outfit.
And walked away with the composure of a woman who had decided nothing had happened here and was going to commit to that decision fully.
I watched her go.
Then I turned to Betha.
She was already out of character - reading glasses pushed up, shoulders shaking, her real laugh fighting its way out from under the elderly woman performance.
"Your face," she said, barely audible. "When she put her hand on your -"
"Don't," I said.
"You looked like you were being haunted."
"I was being haunted."
She dissolved completely, the newspaper sliding off the table, the pearls swinging as she leaned forward with her whole body shaking.
I looked at the ceiling.
Then, despite everything, I started laughing too.
The bar around us maintained its dignified hush with great effort.
We did not particularly help.
---
When we had both recovered some semblance of composure, Betha straightened her wig and picked up her tea.
"She'll be back," she said. Certain. Back to business.
"You think so."
"You just became a challenge to her." She sipped her tea. "Anika doesn't walk away from challenges. Next time she'll try harder." She set the cup down. "And next time - you let her."
I looked at her across the table.
At the white wig and the pearls and the reading glasses and the face underneath all of it that was Betha Kelman being completely, entirely herself regardless of what she was wearing.
"You're enjoying this," I said.
"Enormously," she confirmed.
I shook my head.
"Step two complete," I said.
She smiled.
"Step two complete."