The Bad Twin

by Avery Scott

  Despite her flights of fancy, she had a practical side as well. When the girls were little, she was the one that worried about appointments and bedtimes and school assignments. Now that they were grown women, she made sure that the bills were paid, that clothes were washed, and that the house was scrubbed often enough to avoid becoming condemned. Abby was the one who remembered birthdays, attended funerals, and swept off her elderly neighbor’s sidewalk when it snowed. She baked condolence casseroles, helped friends move and gushed about online baby pictures no matter how many posts new parents made.

  She was the good twin.

  Gabrielle was a different animal entirely, and people adored her for it.

  The twins’ natural beauty was usually enough to draw stares, but Gabrielle amped up her assets to the extreme, commanding everyone’s attention as soon as she walked into a room. A push-up bra, mini-skirt and stilettos were her uniform. The outfit might be cliché, but it was a classic for a reason. Gabrielle was careless and vain, but still retained a disarming sweetness and childlike enthusiasm that made her impossible to hate. She wasn’t evil, merely mischievous, and had a way of making her admirers feel like they were in on the joke. She was naughty, and men were dying for her. The only thing holding Gabrielle back from a lucrative career as a trophy wife was her attention span. Gabrielle went out with a different man every night. Sometimes she saw two in the same evening. Abby assumed that was what had happened the night before: After spending the night with a handsome stranger, Gabrielle slipped away, only to capture another heart on the way to breakfast.

  “I’m talking about the guy in the limo. I’m surprised you didn’t milk your date for an extra meal. The least he could have done was set you up with those little bottles of liquor that limos in the movies have. God knows I could use a drink.”

  “He’s not my date,” Gabrielle said, pulling a box of stale corn flakes out of the cabinet. She poured a bowl and splashed some milk on top before explaining. “He’s my boss.”

  Abby opened her mouth to fuss at her sister for leaving the milk carton out on the counter, but her brain seized on the last word. “Your what?”

  “My boss,” Gabrielle said, her words muffled as she chewed a mouthful of cereal. “Hudson Quinn. He’s supposed to be some sort of big shot. He does a lot of deals in Europe. Anyhow, I met him at Tosca, that new bar over in the Village. By the way, I don’t think they are going to last long. The place was full of social-media whores glued to their camera phones. I didn’t see anybody who was really anybody there. By next week, it’s going to be packed with tourists, and after that it’s going to be a ghost town. I told Jeni Faraday that-”

  “Gabrielle!” Abby snapped, annoyed that her sister had wandered away from the point. “You were telling me about your so-called boss.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Gabrielle swallowed another spoon full of cereal and then washed it down with a swig of milk, straight from the carton. “He was over in the corner with a bunch of guys in suits. I think they were the owners. Anyhow, I was standing outside with Jeni to smoke, and he came out onto the sidewalk to take a call. I could overhear part of the conversation. He was trying to use the translation app on his phone and kept saying, ‘I don’t speak French!’ louder and louder. You know the way people think that if they scream something, you’ll magically understand what they mean? Jeni looked at me and was like ‘You speak French, don’t you?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s all Grand-mère used at the house’, but I didn’t want to be some weirdo and get involved. Only, this poor guy looked desperate, so I intervened. It was some lady in Paris trying to schedule a sales meeting. I think she could speak English if she wanted but was pissed off about the time difference. He called her in the middle of the night in Paris time you know.”

  “And that turned into a job offer?” Abby couldn’t help looking skeptical.

  “He’s legit. I went back to his offices. I met his secretary and filled out forms and everything. Trust me, our money problems are over.”

  Abby was unconvinced.

  Chapter Two

  “Where are we, anyhow?” Hudson Quinn asked his limo driver through the partition window as the car pulled away from the curb. He had enjoyed the view of the leggy blonde walking to her house, but now his attention was being pulled in another direction. Still, God really outdid himself with that one, Hudson thought, allowing his mind to wander back to his assistant for a moment longer, savoring the sway of her bottom as she sashayed to the door.

  “I believe we are in Clinton Hills, sir,” the driver replied in a monotone voice. “West Bedford, some call it, just south of the 278.”

  Hudson squinted out the tinted windows with interest. He made the driver wait until the girl was safely inside before the car pulled away from the curb. Hudson turned his attention to the surrounding streets, densely packed with brownstones and condos. There was nothing remarkable about them. However, the leafy boulevard where he dropped off his new assistant was an anomaly. The middle of the street still featured wood-framed fully detached dwellings. While most of them were in varying stages of decay, the land underneath them had to be worth a fortune. “For Sale” signs already dotted a few of the lawns. It was a shame. This had probably been a great neighborhood when it was built. If he squinted his eyes, Hudson could almost see the sturdy oak trees that once stood along the sidewalks and the generations of children that learned how to ride their bicycles on the street. It probably wouldn’t cost too much to fix the assortment of cottages and bungalows up again, but single-family housing wouldn’t bring much of a profit. It might be possible to add in a few apartment blocks above the shops on the corner without losing the street’s character. He had read an article about a rehab project in Seattle and toyed around with the idea of pitching a similar project to his father. In the end, however, he abandoned the idea. Quinn Holdings didn’t build neighborhoods or grow businesses. They bought distressed companies and real estate at a low cost, stripped away the usable bits, sold those for a profit and then threw the rest away. Hudson looked at the street again, this time thinking like his father: It probably wouldn’t cost much to tear the houses down and sell the lots. It would be easy money.

  Hudson’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the display. “Unlisted.” His father. If Hudson had voiced his thoughts about the real estate project aloud, he would have sworn that the old man had him bugged. Walker Quinn’s timing was always uncanny. Hudson wasn’t sure why, but he hesitated a minute before pushing “Talk.” Something about making his father wait, even if just an extra second or two, was satisfying.

  “Why aren’t you answering your damn phone?” Walker Quinn bellowed down the line without bothering to say “hello.”

  “If I didn’t answer, then who are you talking to?” Hudson couldn’t help himself.

  “Smart ass,” the old man shot back, and then chuckled. “What’s your ETA back to the office? I want to go over the Svenson package and total up the O’Reilly numbers again.”

  “I’m stuck in traffic over in Brooklyn. It’s going to be at least an hour.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you then.”

  “Dad- it’s almost six-thirty now.”

  “So? You working half-days all of a sudden?” He laughed as if he hadn’t used the same line nearly every time that Hudson left work before ten PM.

  Hudson sighed and reached into the minibar for some bourbon. He didn’t bother with a glass of ice and took a swig directly from the tiny bottle.

  “I’m worried about you, dad,” Hudson replied in what he hoped was a patient tone. “We’ve got a whole team working the Svenson deal, and the O’Reilly numbers are already set in stone. You need to get a life.”

  “Get a life? Look who’s talking,” the older man snorted. “Fine. We can push those to the back burner. Paris is more important, anyhow.”

  Paris. Hudson groaned inwardly and braced himself for another lecture. Quinn Holdings’ plan to buy out Marché d’Été, a French chain of neig
hborhood grocery stores, had become something of a fixation for the elder Quinn. In Hudson’s opinion, the amount of money they were preparing to pony up for the company assets was borderline insane. If it went through, it would be the largest deal in Quinn Holdings’ history. They stood to make a profit, of course, but not more than they could make in smaller deals. Perhaps his father had a sentimental side? Marché d’Été combined the convenience of a modern grocer with the charm of European market stalls, and they’d had steady growth for generations before a sharp decline over recent years. The shops were typically located on or near the central square of medium-sized towns and featured standard canned and frozen goods, intermingled with farm stands and local artisan bakers. The company motto roughly translated into “The best of old and new” and they had a passionate following.

  Too bad Quinn Holdings’ plan was to rip them apart.

  Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on whose side you were on) Marché d’Été had overextended their credit. That fact, added with a couple of bad investments meant that the entire company was in real danger of going under. We heard they were looking for investors, so we reached out.

  Quinn Holdings had a very particular business model that emerged during World War II. In official company literature, the business began life as an “aluminum and metal provider.” Hudson knew that was a very polite way of saying that his grandfather, Holden Quinn, got his start in junk.

  Junk, as in junkyard.

  Hudson had never personally known such humble beginnings himself, but he knew the family story by heart. The original mission was to haul away old, broken, forgotten things and strip them down to essential components that were still in demand. The profit margins were unbelievable if you knew what to look for and didn’t mind getting your hands dirty to get it. It didn’t take long to realize that the concept worked on more than just old cars once you had a little capital built up.

  Walker Quinn, Hudson’s father, jumped into the family business with real estate deals before he even finished high school. He figured out quickly how irrational people could be about hanging on to tired old houses and abandoned churches. He didn’t bother with outright purchase agreements. Instead, he got in the distressed mortgage business, offering landowners “just enough rope to hang themselves,” as he liked to say. When his customers couldn’t make their monthly payments, he offered a lowball buyout. It worked almost every time.

  Marché d’Été was an example of the next evolution of Quinn Holdings. Instead of parceling off the company’s land, they were after its suppliers. In addition to their relationships with bakers, butchers and olive oil extractors, the company had exclusive production and distribution agreements with some of the hottest winemakers and artisans in Europe. The licensing fees alone were worth tens of millions. It was almost unbelievable that the Fougere family wasted their time running shops.

  Hudson felt the beginnings of a headache. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss world domination tonight and he really didn’t want to go to Paris in the first place. He didn’t understand why the Fougeres couldn’t come to them instead.

  “We have time to talk about Paris tomorrow,” Hudson said.

  “Do you realize that we have less than a month until we make our pitch? You don’t know what it took just to get Mr. Fougere in the room. If we hadn’t gotten lucky with his wife’s skiing accident, he would have told us to pound sand.”

  “She almost died, dad. Don’t you feel a little bit bad calling an accident lucky?”

  “Everything is a matter of perspective. Don’t start getting soft on me now. I need you on your ‘A’ game.”

  “I will be. Have I ever let you down before?”

  “You’ve barely put any effort into this and-”

  “I hired a new assistant,” Hudson blurted, hoping to cut his father off with the diversion. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed and possessing a body that defied belief, his new assistant was definitely diverting. In fact, “distracting” was probably a more apt description.

  “You did what?”

  “I hired a new assistant.”

  “Oh? What happened to the old one? Did you break up?”

  “I fired her, dad,” Hudson shot back through gritted teeth. “She was never my girlfriend.”

  “She might have been confused about her position description, especially after you started fucking her at the office.”

  Walker Quinn had a tendency to say exactly what he was thinking. Hudson unbuttoned the collar of his shirt and forced himself to take a deep breath before replying. He already knew that hiring Braelynn as his personal assistant had been a colossal mistake. He didn’t need his dad to rub the error in his face. It was just the latest in Hudson’s long list of screw-ups.

  “Braelynn was confused about a lot of things,” he replied as calmly as he could manage. “But she’s moved on. I think you’re going to like the new girl. She’s French. At least, her family is French. She’s fluent, and she’s very focused on the job. I brought her on to assist with the Marché d’Été deal. She already helped me on a phone call with Fougere’s office this afternoon. He absolutely loved her.”

  There was a beat of silence.

  He probably doesn’t have a witty comeback when I get something right, Hudson thought bitterly.

  “Well, that’s…a step in the right direction,” Mr. Quinn said very slowly. “I guess we can discuss it in the morning if you really need a night off.”

  “Sounds good,” Hudson said, anxious to get off the phone. “If there’s nothing else?”

  “I just wish…” Walker Quinn stopped himself from finishing the sentence.

  “You wish what?”

  “Nothing, son. Goodnight.”

  The line went dead, but Hudson stared at the receiver. He was haunted by the sudden silence. His father didn’t need to speak the words he was thinking aloud. Hudson already knew what the other man wanted to say, what Walker Quinn always wanted to say, but had held inside for more than a decade.

  “I wish that Colin was here.”

  Hudson’s skin went cold when he thought about his perfect brother, the one who always anticipated what his father wanted before he even asked, who charmed the clients and who always made the right decisions. Colin should be here, but he wasn’t.

  It was Hudson’s fault.

  Chapter Three

  “Hello? Am I speaking with Helen Willoughby? This is Abagail Levesque. You interviewed me last week for the sales position? I was just calling to follow up and to let you know that-”

  “I’m sorry, Miss...Lee-Vest?”

  “Luh-Veck,” Abby corrected automatically. Americans almost never pronounced her last name properly.

  “Yes, well…Ms. Levesque, I’m afraid that the position has already been filled.”

  “But-! I-!”

  “Thank you for applying. We should have some more openings in the near future. We’ll keep you in mind.”

  “Please, just-”

  Abby stopped talking when she realized that the line was dead.

  She sighed heavily and picked up a pen, drawing a thick black line through the name, “Westcott Industries,” and tried not to think of the long list of black lines above it. She had been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a new job for more than three weeks. It seemed there wasn’t a huge demand for entry-level fine arts majors with a background in data entry and fast food prep at the moment. She was past the point of discouragement and nearing desperation.

  “Things are going to get better soon,” she forced herself to say aloud. There were still three names on her list, and she had an interview with an insurance company at the end of the week. Something was bound to pan out. Petit à petit l'oiseau fait son nid, as Grand-mère used to say: Little by little, the bird makes its nest. She needed to be patient. Something good would happen eventually. She was not going to lose the house. She just didn’t quite know how she would manage it yet.

  Abby stared out the window into the backyard. The sky was gray and dreary to
match her mood. It looked like rain would start at any moment. Deciding to take a break, Abby rose from her chair to put the kettle on for tea. Once she had a strong, hot cup of darjeeling in her hands she’d feel better prepared to log on and tackle the job search some more. She only made it halfway across the room before a knock on the door interrupted her progress.

  Abby didn’t have to look through the peephole to know who it was. The mailman never knocked before sliding their letters through the slot in the door, and her neighbors were either hipster strangers who slept until the afternoon or elderly holdovers who wouldn’t venture out of their houses under the threat of rain. There was only one other person who would be calling. It was Mr. Saint.

  Grand-mère Bette was a complicated woman. “Quirky” was the polite way to explain it. “Complicated” or “Difficult” was another term that one might use. She had never fully adapted to life in her adopted country, maintaining a steadfastly European practice of shopping every morning for fresh groceries. With rare exceptions, she refused to patronize any business she couldn’t walk to. One of her least endearing eccentricities was a pathological fear of banks. Her savings account was under the mattress, in the medicine cabinet, crammed in the back of a half-eaten box of cookies, and in a hole in the stuffing of the sofa. The list of hiding places was infinite, meaning that the family never knew quite how much money they had. The amount was dependent on Grand-mère’s ability to remember all the places where she had squirreled her cash away or dumb luck in finding a stash that she had forgotten. As a consequence of her mistrust of banks, she sought financing from less “traditional” sources. After Grand-mère’s death, Abby was horrified to discover that the mortgage on the house was in the form of a personal loan from Mr. Albert Saint.