The Muse

by Anne Calhoun

  She’d never really done this, totaled up the value of what she wore with an eye to its worth, but after the debacle at Melissa’s party, she’d started to reassess her possessions. The ring was a signature piece, custom-made in the twenties by Cartier at her great-grandfather’s request¸ for her great-grandmother. The provenance made it worth far more than the value of the stones, and she had a dozen pieces of similar quality and historical value in boxes in her dresser, more in a vault. Her mother had a hundred pieces like that, acquired over decades of familial wealth, handed down from her mother’s side of the family. Would they also be seized by the government and sold?

  She twisted the ring on her finger. There would be an FBI escort at the offices this morning, and she no longer pretended they weren’t sizing her up on every level. She looked at the ring, tilting it so the faceted stone caught the light. There was no point in pretending she wasn’t Arden MacCarren. The ring was legitimately hers, worn every day since her twenty-first birthday. Including today.

  After texting Derek, she poured coffee into a travel mug, then waited by the front window until the SUV pulled up. The press must have gotten wind that something was up, because a wedge of photographers were all but lurking by the head-high wall protecting the steps to her front door. She slid on her sunglasses and hurried down the stairs.

  “Morning,” Derek said as he opened the low wrought-iron gate for her, then put his body between her and the photographers as she trotted to the idling vehicle’s rear passenger door. Unflappable, her Derek. She could have kissed him.

  “How did they know I was going out?” she asked.

  “I don’t think they did,” Derek replied. “Daria Russell just moved in down the street. They were staking her out and saw me drive by. They’ve probably memorized the plate number.”

  “Two birds with one stone,” Arden said with a sigh. “Poor Daria. First Ryan Hamilton, now me.”

  “What’s the schedule?” Derek asked.

  “We’re meeting the FBI at the foundation offices,” she said. “Home after that.”

  “You got it,” he said and rolled down Ninety-second Street.

  The shouts and flashes were muted by the big vehicle’s soundproofing and tinted windows. Steadfastly ignoring their shouts, Arden sipped the coffee, felt her heart rate trip and stutter, then start to race. She pulled out her phone and once again tried the New Zealand number she had for Garry. The phone rang seven times, then eight, then someone picked up.

  “Hello?” It was a rough male voice, not unlike Garry’s, but she couldn’t be sure.

  “Garry?”

  “Arden?” he said.

  Relief swept through her, leaving her dizzy. “Garry, where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “Out with the sheep,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I just got back last night. Sorry. I haven’t talked to anyone in over a month.”

  “Did you read my emails? You know what happened, right? Dad and Charles were arrested for running a Ponzi scheme out of MacCarren.”

  “I skimmed them.”

  Silence. “Garry? Did I lose you?”

  “I’m here.”

  New Zealand had changed her already quiet brother. “Garry, you have to come home. I need you here.”

  A pause. Arden was so used to the rapid-fire pace of her life that Garry’s silences to process things seemed like they belonged to another geologic era. “It’s got nothing to do with me,” he said finally.

  “Garry. You are a MacCarren. I need you here. Mom needs you here. She’s a walking zombie. Neil says they’re going to go after the foundation. Whatever Dad and Charles did, we can’t lose the foundation, too.”

  Silence, but this time it was freighted in a way that sent a spear of sheer terror straight through Arden’s bones. “Oh my God. Did you know? Is that why you left?”

  “I didn’t know,” he said. “I knew something wasn’t right. It was never right, the way they were. But I didn’t know what they were doing.”

  Another dizzying wave of relief spiraled through her. “Look,” she said. “The FBI has been asking me every five minutes if I’ve gotten in touch with you. They want to talk to you. I think you’re too low priority for them to send someone to New Zealand to escort you back here, but I’m not going to lie to them. We’ve talked, you know the situation. Pack a bag and book a flight home.”

  “Mom won’t send the jet for me?”

  She blinked in astonishment. “Garry. Read the emails. We don’t have a jet anymore. The government impounded it the day of the raid. If you have any friends left who will loan you a private jet, by all means, ask them to send it for you, but I wasn’t allowed into Melissa Schumann’s baby shower on Saturday. Remember Melissa? She lived with us after her mother found out her father had knocked up both the nannies?”

  The silence this time was tinged with shock. “Okay,” he said, and she finally heard the Garry she used to know. “Give me a few days. I need to handle some things here before I leave.”

  “Soon, Garry, sooner rather than later you need to be on a plane,” she said. “I have to go. The government has some crazy idea that the foundation was somehow connected to the scheme. I’m trying to keep them from confiscating that, too. Call me when you’ve made arrangements. I’ll send someone to the airport for you.”

  The paparazzi had abandoned the foundation offices, for now. Clustered outside the door but flagrantly not talking to one another were Neil, speaking into his phone; Special Agent Daniel Logan, clutching a cup of coffee and looking as bland as it was possible for a six-foot, whip-lean man to look; and her assistant, Emma, who was texting and sneaking covert glances at the two men.

  Derek double-parked, turned on the flashers, and walked around the hood of the car to her door. Arden heard him give a sharp whistle to get Emma’s attention. “Open the door.”

  Emma snapped to, unlocked the building’s door, and when she opened it, Derek opened the car door. Arden was out, across the sidewalk, and into the building with a grace and speed that would have made her mother proud. She took the stairs to the second-floor offices and unlocked them herself.

  The room was an open floor plan, modeled after the trading floor she was used to. Her desk was in the middle of the space, with Emma’s to the right. Three glass-walled conference rooms lined the windows overlooking Hudson Street. The room smelled musty, and dust had gathered on the surfaces. She set her bag on her chair and turned to face the people who’d followed her up the stairs.

  “Good morning, Agent Logan. How can we help you?” Arden said to Special Agent Logan, as if she hadn’t run into him in his wife’s shop, as if he hadn’t walked through the front door of her family estate wearing a gun and a bulletproof vest. Reality tilted slightly, and she tightened her grip on the back of the chair.

  “I need the foundation’s financial records,” he said, and handed what she assumed was a subpoena to Neil. He opened it and began reading.

  “For which dates and accounts?” Arden said.

  “All of them,” Logan said.

  Arden looked at Neil. They’d talked about this in the shattered days after the raid. He’d looked through them, Arden had reviewed them, but they weren’t about to hand over anything until asked. Neil nodded.

  “Emma,” Arden said quietly. Her assistant sat down at her desk and started transferring files from the foundation’s servers to a memory stick Logan handed her. Arden also sat down and started pulling grant applications. Turning over the records didn’t affect the foundation’s operating schedule. The process was all online, requiring documentation that had to be checked before a decision was made to fulfill the grant. She would ask Emma to do that from home and see if they could answer some of the immediate requests in the interim.

  While Emma waited for the files to transfer, Arden looked around the office. The walls were lined with pictures of the lives changed through the foundation’s work. While many nonprofits like theirs chose global initiatives, Ard
en’s mother and Arden both chose to focus on problems closer to home. Inner-city education, health, hunger, homelessness were all topics near and dear to her mother’s heart. The great-granddaughter of a settlement house founder, she’d learned to consider her work a continuation of her family’s legacy.

  The photos on the walls were of inner-city kids clutching schoolbooks and notebooks. Teens with college-acceptance letters and stars in their eyes. Families growing their own food in gardens started in neighborhoods where obesity rates soared due to lack of access to fresh vegetables and fruits. Asbestos and lead-paint-removal projects shouldered up against pictures of her mother, Arden in the background, with the politicians claiming responsibility for clean air and water legislation. MacCarren Foundation had done good in the world, decades of good.

  She couldn’t lose this. If she faced facts, MacCarren was gone. But the foundation could live on, could be the legacy that redeemed their name.

  “All done,” Emma said. She gave Arden a quick look, then offered the memory stick to Agent Logan.

  “Thank you,” he said gravely, gave them a small nod. “I’ll let myself out.”

  “How’s Aunt Lyd?” Neil asked after he left.

  “Not well, but I finally reached Garry. He’ll be home in a couple of days.”

  “That’s good news,” Neil said. “I’ll call you later. I’m due at a deposition.”

  When he’d left, she turned to Emma. “I’ll contact our outstanding requestors and update them on the situation. In the meantime, I’d like you to take some of the off-cycle grant requests home with you and do the due diligence on their supporting materials. The ones that pass muster, please send me for review.”

  “About that,” Emma said. “I’ve found another job.”

  So that’s what her assistant had been doing with her paid two-week vacation, as well as flying somewhere she could get a deep tan. A flush stood high on her cheeks. She wore vintage Chanel ballet flats and a Trademark shift dress, and the gold medallion with her initials on it. Arden had a similar necklace, with her own initials, back in her jewelry box. The daughter of one of her mother’s friends, Emma was working for the foundation to gain experience and firm up her connections. Arden often hired the daughters or sisters (and in one very memorable, successful case, the son) of friends for that very reason. She’d been in a position to gift favors, and did so happily.

  “I see,” Arden said. “May I ask where?”

  Emma glanced down at her outfit.

  “Ah. Well, fashion really is your first love,” she said. “It was time for you to move on, anyway. You’re ready. You’ll do well there.”

  She’d chosen a good time to leave, when Emma still had people’s sympathy, but not staying so long people began to doubt her. She always asked the departing assistant for a recommendation for her replacement, a schoolmate, a friend at loose ends with a drive for philanthropy, a sister or cousin. This time she didn’t ask.

  Emma worked her keys off the ring, then handed over her employee badge. Her computer was already sitting on the desk. She’d come prepared.

  “Thanks,” Emma said awkwardly. “I learned a lot from you.”

  “I’m glad,” Arden said. “I wish you all the best.”

  She stayed in the empty office the rest of the afternoon, tidying things, gathering what she needed into boxes and onto her computer. She sat at her desk and drew the office as it was, empty, quiet, desolate, and wondered what would become of her if she lost this, too. The sun was setting when she texted Derek to meet her out front; she’d have some boxes to transport. He carried them down the steps and stacked them in the back of the SUV, then escorted her into the backseat.

  “Just stack them in the foyer,” she said when they arrived at the town house. “I’ll carry them upstairs. Thank you.”

  He stacked the boxes neatly along the wall where Seth usually propped his bike. Arden made a mental note to move them.

  “Why haven’t you quit?” she said baldly. “Emma did today.”

  He looked at her. “I’ve worked for your family for a long time,” he said finally. “I was in your dad’s security detail when you had the panic attack at work.”

  “I remember,” she said. She’d done without a driver before the panic attack, no security at all. Just a doorman and relative anonymity. But after that, after her heart started to race while she was driving, after crossing a street made her light-headed, using a driver made sense. Protected her. Derek was preternaturally quiet, big, and faded into the background. He protected her without seeming to protect her.

  “I’ve seen a lot over the years. You can’t work this close to people and not see things. Your dad usually forgot we were around. You don’t.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. The few friends she had left meant the world to her now. The ones who stayed by her through this. “Thank you,” she said, wondering at the helplessness of the words. They meant everything and were overused to the point of meaninglessness. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some help getting the boxes upstairs?”

  “No,” she said. “I can manage them. Enjoy your evening. I don’t think I’ll need you tomorrow.”

  “Just text me if you do. Arm the security system when I leave,” he said, and closed the front door behind him.

  She keyed in the code to set the system, then wondered when she’d next leave the town house. She traded her suit for faded jeans and a tunic. Fall was here, the highs barely reaching the sixties, darkness claiming the day earlier and earlier with each passing week.

  The records were all in paper form; shifting the foundation’s process to paperless technology was on her list of things to do in the upcoming off-cycle, so she spent an hour carrying the boxes into the dining room, poured herself a glass of wine, and opened the one labeled off-cycle requests. Emma was efficient; they were stacked in the order received and complete, with the incomplete requests at the back of the pile. Only after she was halfway through did she think to check the submissions in-box.

  Request withdrawn.

  There were several, no, a dozen, nearly twenty in the in-box. All polite, thanking the foundation for the consideration, but given the “uncertainty,” they’d prefer to find funding elsewhere. Uncertainty. Instability. Current situation. Like the MacCarren Foundation was a third world country the State Department had issued a travel warning for.

  New first order of business: sort through the applications to find the ones still willing to ask her for money. She did that and ended up with basically even stacks, one of withdrawn requests, the other still interested, or at least who hadn’t actively withdrawn their request. She considered the files, and for the first time, wondered whether she should admit defeat.

  No. Admitting defeat would mean giving up the last vestige of the life she had, the influence and good MacCarren money could do in the world. Right now it felt like all she had left.

  The town house’s solid walls and sound-deadening windows muffled most outside noise. She could hear her own breathing, the shallow inhales, the huffed exhales. The sturdy rope of her life’s work she’d planned to cling to through the coming months now as tenuous as a cheap string.

  Something about the angles of the files, stacked somewhat haphazardly, interested her. She got out her sketchbook and drew the files and her open laptop, practicing the vanishing point, letting her mind drift as twilight absorbed the light in the room. She was checking out, and she knew it, thinking about what she’d draw to put in the end-of-class show, rather than the shambles her life had become. But the computer and files, each nearly pristine, gave her only surfaces to draw, lacking a depth to draw her deeper into the subject, into herself.

  Her phone vibrated beside her. She glanced at it, and saw a text from Seth on the home screen.

  You home?

  “Ask and ye shall receive,” she said with a little laugh.

  Yes. Why?

  Look out your window.

  S
he set her pencil in the sketchbook and closed it, then walked over to the wall of windows in the front formal reception room and peered through the edge of the drawn curtains to look down on the street below. The paparazzi were still there, although fewer in number. Manhattan was still there, something she didn’t take for granted. Bewildered, she scanned the people on the street, and picked out Seth, almost out of her range of vision, leaning against his bike, messenger bag slung over his shoulder, his helmet in one hand, phone in the other.

  I see you. She sent the text. He looked up, but didn’t wave. She appreciated the discretion.

  Dinner?

  I’d like that.

  Any recommendations? I don’t know this neighborhood.

  She didn’t want healthy. She wanted junk food, pure and simple.

  Marco Polo does a decent pizza.

  He clapped the helmet on his head and buckled it one-handed, then disappeared down the street. The sun set while he was gone, and the photographers called it a night as a group, walking in the direction of the buses running down Fifth Avenue. In a couple of minutes, the street was empty. Seth was still her secret.

  She tidied up the files, and had opened a bottle of wine when the doorbell rang. She opened it to find Seth leaning against the doorjamb, a pizza box balanced on one hand, the helmet dangling from the other. He looked at her through his eyelashes, a smile curling one corner of his mouth. It took a moment for the shoe to drop—the sexy smile, the pizza in his hand, his ability to adapt on the fly to whatever role-playing game suited the moment—but when it did, laughter riding a very fine line between amusement and hysteria pealed from her throat. She choked it back, because all she needed was a picture or video of her laughing going viral. Arden MacCarren, enjoying life while thousands suffer.