“Hmmm.” Laila had seen this with most of her cousins’ friends, who were not exactly welcoming to outsiders. She’d met various members of the twins’ circle; she had naively thought that because she now dressed as they did, lived where they lived, and was a blood relative of two of their own that they’d be accepting. But after a few cursory questions, they ignored her entirely. “Her brother seems nice,” she ventured.
“Ugh, isn’t he so hot?”
Laila shrugged.
“Oh, shut up, I saw you.”
Though Nora smiled, there was an edge to her voice. Had Laila overstepped by flirting with Cameron? But he’d flirted with her. What were the rules? A moment later, the waitress rescued them from their awkward silence by swooping in with another round of drinks, and they at last gave her their order.
“So, do you think you want to become a literary agent like Liberty?” Nora asked, gracefully changing the subject.
Laila shrugged. Liberty’s job was respectable—though she worked much too hard—but to be one of the assistants toiling away? She’d watched Daphne and Kim eating their sad little lunches at their desks. They were so bright-eyed and determined; they thought they could be Liberty someday. Was Laila the only one who saw that they could not? Because Liberty did not exactly need the money, she chose only projects she adored and then poured her whole heart into them, ensuring that they would meet their full potential, whatever that may be. Her instincts—unclouded by the desire to chase either trends or cash—were razor sharp, and others could not help but respond to her authentic love of her work, to be infected by her enthusiasm. It was a rich woman’s paradox: she didn’t need the money, so she didn’t chase it and was therefore followed by it everywhere. If there was anything Laila wished to learn from her cousin, it was this, her ability to move through the world uncompromised. She was envious that Liberty had something she loved so much: a guiding star.
“I don’t know—some of it is pretty dull. Reece’s job seems like more fun, actually.” Laila had to begrudgingly admire her cousin’s friend, who was glamorous and well connected. Her job seemed to consist of going to parties and hanging out with varying classifications of celebrities.
“Maybe she would hire you,” Nora mused.
“Maybe.” Laila wondered why the sudden interest in her finding a job.
“Or I guess you could go back to your old job. Plenty of dentists in the city. I love mine; maybe he’s looking for someone.”
Laila was mortified by the suggestion. The scraping, the picking, the rinse-and-spit, the scrubs with little animals on them; none of this fit with her new life. She wished that her cousins didn’t know a single detail of it, though of course they hardly knew much of what there was to know. And thank God they’d never actually met Betsy.
“No, not that. That was just . . . it was practical.”
“Yay! The food is here.” Why this sudden focus on work when just the other day Nora had been complaining about Laila’s abandoning her to go to the office on a day she was feeling blue?
“Well, you’ll find something,” Nora said with a smile. “I’m just going to be so busy for the next few months with my new cochair.”
“Operation Smile? That’s so exciting!” Laila had not yet heard the download from the luncheon; she only knew that Nora had been incensed when she realized that her table was miles from Lydia Hearst, who had ostensibly invited her. But perhaps things had progressed.
“No,” Nora said, making a face as though Laila had just asked her something absurd. “Dark Dining! We’re going to have this fabulous dinner, and everyone is going to wear blindfolds, well, not everyone, some people will get these special glaucoma glasses. It helps the blind!”
“Oh, well, that sounds great too,” Laila said. She found it hard to keep track of Nora’s efforts at branding herself as a socialite, or a philanthropist as she insisted on calling it. It seemed to consist of going to very boring dinners in very expensive gowns and being photographed. Laila had not yet been invited to any of these events, which she was secretly relieved by; they seemed rather out of her league, and furthermore, deeply silly.
On the way back to the apartment, Laila’s spirits were temporarily buoyed when she noticed that she had several new text messages on her phone. Her heart lurched at the thought that one would be from Cameron. But alas, the messages were not from him. One was from Cece, Reece’s junior coworker whom she’d bonded with, inviting her to a party that Tuesday night. The other was another message from Tom Porter making an attempt to solidify plans. There was a reading he thought she might be interested in the following week at the KGB Bar; would she like to go? Perhaps have dinner after?
Laila quickly accepted both invitations. She could not count on her cousins alone: if she was to embrace this new life and truly leave behind the old one, she needed to let her roots deepen; she needed something to hold her here. She needed Frederick. She’d asked Liberty about meeting him, but he seemed to still be perpetually traveling despite being in his nineties.
“But he does know about me?” Laila had asked her cousin, trying not to sound pleading. “I mean, he knows we’ve reconnected?”
“Yes, of course, I’ve told him all about you.” This she said smiling, taking Laila’s hand reassuringly.
“But he doesn’t want to meet me?” her voice sounded small.
“He will, Laila. It’s hard for him. You know he had this falling-out with your father—God knows why—and he died before they could ever make amends. It’s been hard on my dad too, I know. But once he meets you, he’ll love you like we all do.”
Of course, Laila did know why Frederick had fallen out with Gregory. It was there in the notes and mementos that her mother had kept for all of those years. She hoped never to have to so much as mention their existence. Bringing out these sad little keepsakes would be, in its own way, mortifying. She hoped that with a little time, all of the family’s doors would open for her. But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t break them down if she needed to.
Cameron Michaels had owned two pieces of real estate in Manhattan: a small one-bedroom in the Financial District around the corner from his office that resembled a hotel room—this was where he worked out in the building’s well-appointed fitness center, came from the office for a quick shower before client dinners, and sometimes slept during the workweek—but his home was a town house on West Eighth Street, all three floors of it. He was elated to be back in New York; to be able to enjoy it. London had been fine, suitably far away to let the girl fade from memory, so that he could return fully restored to himself. He had a number of friends already living there for various reasons, and he’d had a pleasant enough time with them, enjoying Shoreditch House and the proximity of Saint Tropez and Paris; he’d packed in weekend jaunts and treated the whole thing as his own little European tour. But he’d missed his home.
“You know,” he said to his younger sister now, as they lounged side by side in the Adirondack chairs on his back terrace, “I think I might renovate the kitchen this winter.”
“Oh? Because you do so much cooking in there?”
“No, but if I’m ever going to have a family, I need a better kitchen, more counter space. Maybe a breakfast bar.”
“Excuse me?” Reece nearly spat out her beer, her sunglasses sliding off her face as she sat upright. Her brother was only thirty-six; she was shocked that the idea of a family had even crossed his mind.
“What’s wrong with a breakfast bar?”
She gave him a look.
“You’re so shocked I want a family? I don’t mean tomorrow, but you know, someday.” Cameron was somewhere between annoyed and amused at his sister’s reaction, though he knew he’d earned it. He’d cut a wide swath through their friends and acquaintances both here and in London. He’d always tried to be kind to these women, or so went the story he told himself. He always meant well. And there seemed to be a limitless supply of enthusiastic partners, making the very idea of finding the right woman all the more el
usive. Perversely, he envied his friends who were less good-looking, less charming, but found themselves happily coupled because a woman truly willing to love them had come along; simplicity was its own kind of privilege. But he had returned to the city with renewed determination. A good woman would set him to right, as his father had said many times when talking about his own bachelor days and how meeting Elin had flipped a switch in him. Cameron knew he was often attracted to women who brought out the worst in him: wild, destructive women who took him to the edge of himself. But too many of these pairings had ended in catastrophe. They were behind him now.
“Ah, I see,” Reece said, settling back into her chair. “So in, like, the next ten or fifteen years or so.”
“No,” he said laughing. “More like two to three. I think you’re confusing my timeline with yours.”
“Ha! I’ll have to get my shit together sooner than that, brother. I am, in fact, a woman, remember?”
“A woman who could have any man she wants. And he’d be a lucky bastard too.”
“Eh,” Reece said noncommittally. Cameron worried that his sister emulated him too much in her dating life. Unfair as it was, she was right that she couldn’t get away with it for as long as he could. The world would wait forever for a wealthy bachelor to decide he wanted to settle down. Reece was beautiful but intimidating too, and thirty-two now. Her options would become limited as the years passed in a way that his would not. And he saw how she defined herself by her single status: it wouldn’t be easy to let go of that independence, though he suspected she’d want to someday. He dreaded to think of her with someone who did not deserve her; the very notion sent a bolt of fury through him.
They sat in companionable silence for a moment while Cameron tried to determine how to broach the topic of Liberty, who’d been on his mind every moment since the previous weekend. He was glad to be with his sister; he felt as though he was stepping back into his old life fully revived.
“So what do you think of the new Lawrence?” Reece asked.
Cameron was dismayed that she was bringing up the sexy cousin. She’d come on to him full force that night. Ordinarily, he might have gone for it. He got the sense that, had he wanted to, he could have had her right there in the bathroom of the nightclub; could have pushed her up against a wall like some degenerate cheating on his wife with a desperate diner waitress. The idea of such seediness thrilled him—in his overly polished life, these fantasies added a touch of the exotic. But Laila was not just a hot stranger; she was Liberty’s cousin. So when she pressed up against him, grinding her pelvis against his in the hallway of the club, barely obscured from the rest of their group, he’d gently separated from her and diverted her attention by telling her that he’d love to see her again sometime; in his lust-spiked panic he’d said something abominably cheesy like “show you around town” and asked for her phone number. Like any good huntress, she’d diverted her attention to the long game once she’d seen it was a possibility.
He’d known he wouldn’t call her, of course, and he hoped she wouldn’t be too hurt. That could backfire if she was important to Liberty.
“She seems sweet. The poor thing has been through a lot, I gather.”
Reece sighed. “So everyone keeps reminding me. I just . . . there’s something about her that puts me off. You know? She gets my hackles up for some reason.”
“Stand down, little sis. She’s twenty-five; she’s a kid.”
“She just seems . . . climb-y.”
“Well, she’s new here. We’ve never had to go through that. It’s lonely living in a new place. I went through it in London.”
This wasn’t completely true; he’d slipped into London with ease the way that any of their cohort did when on a stint in the European capitals. But he’d ached for New York too. Cameron had considered it his exile, and his relief at its being over was acute.
“Okay, okay. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Liberty is doing well in her work, it seems,” he started awkwardly. His memory of seeing her for the first time in several years was vivid and it rose up in him now, catching in his throat. She’d been wearing a simple black dress that hung on her elegantly; she’d drunk little and left early, sometime after dinner. She had sharpened into a beauty that was reminiscent of her mother, Petra, but somehow less ostentatious too, and all the more enthralling.
“That girl is kicking ass,” Reece said. “I’m so proud.”
He was a little surprised that his sister didn’t immediately see through him. But how could she understand the different light in which Liberty suddenly appeared to him, when he’d never shown interest in her before? Of course he’d noticed she was beautiful, but now he could sense some depth, some fragility that stirred him even if he didn’t know its source. Had she changed, or had Cameron’s senses refined themselves at last? Was it simply growing up that had finally revealed her to him?
“She’s looks so much like Petra, but I daresay she’s even more beautiful.”
Now Reece turned slowly sideways in her chair, pushing her sunglasses atop her head to look her brother in the eye.
“What?” he said, though of course he knew. He squirmed under his sister’s gaze.
“Cameron, no.”
“No what?”
“Liberty. No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’? Why ever not? I would have thought you’d be happy.”
“That you’re going to try to break my best friend’s heart? If she’ll let you, which no one is saying that she will.”
Cameron crossed his muscular arms firmly over his chest. Secretly, he was pleased at his sister’s resistance. He was always in search of a challenge to rise to. “That is really unfair, Reece, and hurtful. What makes you so sure I’d break her heart?”
This she answered with a simple incredulous glare.
“Haven’t I just been telling you that I’m ready for a change?” He wanted to explain, as he mounted his defense, how he had forsaken Laila offering herself on a platter. But he sensed that this would not help matters. Reece had always had a fiery streak—as a teenager, she’d been in a constant battle of wills with their mother, who had always been indulgent of Cameron. But it wasn’t often that she’d openly questioned her brother. She’d worshipped him as a kid, as had all of her friends, including Liberty. And now, while his back was turned, it seemed his little sister had come into her own.
“Give me a chance here, Reece. Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“Listen,” she said after a long pause, “if you’re going to pursue Liberty, I can’t stop you. But what I ask is that you’re sure that she’s who you want to be with before you do. Why don’t you spend some time getting to know her again? You’ve been gone for years.”
“So, what . . . be her friend?”
“Why not? If you can’t be her friend first, then you don’t mean her well. Cameron, listen to me: if you make an honest go of it, and things don’t work out, okay. But I swear, if you go into this all cavalier and hurt her, I will never forgive you for it. I’m serious.”
The bar raised, the prize made more valuable, Cameron felt himself being galvanized. “I think you’re not giving Liberty nearly enough credit, let alone your poor brother, who I had no idea you had such a low opinion of, thanks very much.”
She let out a long sigh, reaching out to put her hand on her brother’s arm. “Just do this for me. Cameron: get to know her again first. It will be best for you too, and I love you both too much to see either of you hurt.”
Cameron did not now confess his fear, for he knew Reece wouldn’t tolerate it. What if he spent all this time with Liberty, fell madly in love with her—which he, in that moment, felt a deep certainty that he would do—and she wanted nothing to do with him romantically? What then? He was unaccustomed to failure, romantic or otherwise, and the possibility of it loomed larger in this case. He’d missed out on the thousand tiny rejections his peers had experienced, those disappointments that made the possibility of
out-and-out heartbreak more palatable, less daunting. Cameron had everything except resilience. He’d never needed it.
“Okay. I’ll do as you ask. Only because I love you so much.”
She rolled her eyes and smiled at him.
“And because I need to set a good example. So that you, dear sister, might be encouraged to someday take some worthy man as your husband.”
“Shut up.” She laughed, taking a last sip of her beer as the sun dipped behind the trees.
The Wednesday after the Soho House party, Laila came into Liberty’s office to confess that she had a date with Tom Porter the next evening. She’d worn her mother’s pendant for the first time since arriving in New York, hoping it would bring her luck.
It was a busy day in the office; Liberty had two books at auction, one with a debut novelist who tended toward the hysterical. Every time the phone rang she jumped—would it be one of the editors with deal news or the author again, wanting to know if she could make just one more tiny change to the manuscript? And still, she’d noticed the pendant right away.
“What is that necklace? It’s gorgeous!”
“Oh, this.” Laila’s fingertips went reflexively to the smooth, cold lacquer of the pendant. “It was my mother’s.”
“It’s stunning. May I see it?” Liberty asked.
Laila was surprised but handed it over, and slid into the small leather armchair that faced Liberty’s desk. Her older cousin didn’t seem nearly as into fashion as her younger brother and sister, and she dressed plainly for work—pencil skirts for meetings, dark jeans otherwise. But now that she thought about it, Laila had seen her with some unusually lovely bracelets and earrings on occasion.
Liberty held the pendant in her palm, mesmerized. “Do you know where your mother got this?”
Laila shrugged and shook her head. The piece definitely stuck out among her mother’s belongings, and she’d worn the necklace often, but she’d never told Laila where it had come from.
“It looks nineteenth century to me,” Liberty said, peering at it. “You should have it appraised,” she added, handing it back to Laila, who secured it once again around her neck.
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