by Sara Shepard
And maybe the rest of them could too.
32
A few days later, Aster and Mitch walked into her parents’ town house, past the dining room to the slightly less stuffy living room. To Aster’s surprise, the latest edition of People lay on the coffee table. Practically the entire magazine was about her family. She sat down on the yellow silk couch and flipped through it, even though she’d already read the whole thing cover to cover. Several times.
There was a story, of course, about their standoff with Julia. An exposé on Julia Gilchrist’s past—apparently she had a degree from MIT, but she’d also spent several years as a stripper. How reporters found this stuff, Aster would never know.
Julia’s husband, Greg, had come forward with an interview of his own—it had been odd, he’d said, that Julia wanted to get back together with him out of the blue, as they hadn’t spoken in years. “My guess is that she wanted to get closer to the Saybrooks,” Greg was quoted as saying. “She must have been planning to attack the rest of the girls at the wedding. It’s truly unbelievable.”
“You shouldn’t be looking at this,” Mitch murmured, brushing his fingers against Aster’s leg. When she didn’t reply, he sighed and flipped the page to the next story. Next was a two-page spread on Poppy. When he turned the page again, he gasped. “What’s she doing in here?”
There was a picture of Elizabeth Cole looking glamorous in a black sheath dress, high heels, and red lipstick. “Saybrook’s Insider Tells All,” read the headline.
Aster reread the first paragraph.
Sometimes, a story about a dynasty can be better told by someone close to the family, and Elizabeth Cole, head of private client relations at Saybrook’s Diamonds, has just that inside look. The widow of Steven Barnett, once the second-in-command at Saybrook’s, Elizabeth has witnessed private, personal family moments that few others will ever see, and now she’s ready to share her stories with the world in her new book The Curse of Plenty: My Life with the Saybrooks, out this fall.
Aster rolled her eyes. “I know. How typical. She has to make everything about her.”
Mitch snorted. “No one will buy that book. I’ll hack into Amazon and give it zero stars.”
Aster leaned over and kissed Mitch in response. He pulled her legs up onto his lap, and she sighed, nestling into his chest and closing her eyes for a brief moment of peace. People would buy the book, she knew that. People bought anything with her family’s name on it, good publicity or bad. But surely Elizabeth would be fired for writing a tell-all, right? Aster felt a little excited. That meant she would get a new boss.
She reached for the magazine again and flipped to the next page, which contained a story about Danielle. The image of her was a candid from her days at NYU, probably submitted by one of her classmates. “The Secret Daughter” was the headline. But there wasn’t a single quote from Danielle; the reporters had built the piece around the public details of Julia’s confession on the bridge, and little else. As far as Aster knew, Danielle hadn’t said a word about anything.
She pulled out her phone and composed a new text. I saw the story in People, she wrote.
A few moments later, Danielle texted back. Ugh, I know. Disaster.
Actually, you look good, Aster replied. And they aren’t too mean.
She and Danielle had been talking a little since the standoff, mostly in texts and e-mails. Aster didn’t know what it meant or where it would lead, exactly; she still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around the fact that Danielle was her sister.
In one of their first conversations after Julia attacked them, sitting at the police station before they gave their statements, they’d rehashed that night five years ago when Danielle had come to Aster on the beach. “Why didn’t you just tell me who you were?” Aster asked her.
Danielle shoved her hands into her pockets. Her cheeks were still stained from crying, and her nails had been bitten to the quick. Aster was amazed she was even coherent—if her mother had just tried to kill her, Aster would be a complete wreck. “Your dad said not to say anything, but I thought you’d figured it out,” Danielle said. “I thought that’s what you were fighting with your dad about. And then, when you rejected me, I just figured . . . well, you didn’t want me to be part of your family.”
“I thought you guys were sleeping together,” Aster repeated.
Danielle nodded. “I get it now. The look on your face when you put it together . . .”
Aster took a sip of the bitter-tasting coffee one of the officers had poured for her. “Do you remember when we’d sneak to that bar on the other side of the island? Finchy’s?”
Danielle’s expression grew wistful. “Of course.”
“And all those guys were like, Are you sisters? And we would pretend we were?”
Danielle bit her lip. “Yeah.”
“I used to fantasize about you being my sister,” Aster said quietly.
Danielle made a small, pained noise. “I did too. And when I found out . . . I was so excited. That’s why it hurt so much, when I thought you’d rejected me.”
There was a cough from the back room, pulling Aster out of the memory. Her father opened the den door, clad in a robe and slippers even though it was three in the afternoon. His gray hair stood up in peaks, and there were bags under his eyes. Her stomach clenched.
“Aster,” he said in a sticky, mumbling voice when he saw her.
Mason’s downfall had been so fast, moving at the same whirlwind pace as everything else, and Aster hadn’t had time to really decide how she felt about her father. He’d quietly stepped down as CEO of Saybrook’s, and Natasha’s mother, Candace, had taken over. The idea of him losing everything brought tears to her eyes, but so did the idea of him hiding an affair with Julia . . . and hiding Steven’s death . . . and hiding that awful secret about the company. He’d felt like a stranger to Aster for so long. Where was the father she’d known as a child, the warm, encouraging man who’d help her through anything? Was he still in there somewhere? It was why she had asked him to meet with her today. It was time he finally answered some questions.
“Will you come into my office?” Mason asked quietly, his tone subdued.
“Sure,” Aster said, sliding off the couch.
She looked back at Mitch. He reached out and squeezed her hand. She bent down and gave him a quick kiss. “Thank you again for coming,” she whispered. When she pulled away, Mitch looked as surprised and delighted as he had when she’d first kissed him at the rehearsal dinner. Aster would never, ever get tired of seeing that expression.
Her father’s office looked the same as it always had, the guns on the walls, the hunting gear dangling from hooks, that elephant staring glassy-eyed at nothing. But her gaze landed on other things too. Like a cotton-ball snowman that had lived at the top of the shelf for years and years. She didn’t remember making it. Was it Corinne’s or Danielle’s? And what about that picture of Mason cradling a swaddled baby girl? Was that really Aster?
Mason sat down at his desk. He looked much less substantial in his chair. Suddenly Aster felt nervous. Here they were, face-to-face; and for the first time, they both knew everything.
“How is your time off going?” Mason asked. Saybrook’s had given Aster two weeks of paid vacation, calling it “medical leave.”
“Fine,” Aster mumbled.
“Have you seen your mother?”
Aster fiddled with the cuff of her jacket. Naturally, Penelope had left the house immediately once the news about Mason’s affair came out; she was staying with her sister in Connecticut. She had remained centered during the whole thing, poised to a fault. She didn’t even have a comment about Mason’s predicament. Then again, maybe she was too angry to comment.
“Yes, I’ve visited her,” Aster said stiffly. “She’s doing fine.”
Mason nodded. Then he swallowed and looked at her. “I’ve really missed you, Aster. I’ve done a lot of thinking about how I failed you. I was supposed to be there for you during the imp
ortant times of your life—especially that summer. Instead I let myself be distracted by things that shouldn’t have distracted me. I just want to say I’m sorry.”
For a moment Aster stared at him, slack-jawed. “You’re sorry?” she snapped. “You think that’s going to solve these problems?”
Mason’s mouth opened and closed, like a fish. “I—”
“You ditched me that year,” Aster pointed out. “You just dropped me like I didn’t matter. Because you had to cover up the Danielle situation, and you had to deal with Julia and all your other secrets.”
“I was trying to keep things together,” Mason said. “Everything was spinning out of control. I didn’t know what to do.”
Aster turned her palms over, unsure of how to respond. “How did you find out about . . . the Nazi thing?”
After a long moment, Mason sighed, folding his hands. “Dad told me, back when I became CEO. He downplayed it, though. Only when Geoff Browne came to me did I realize the extent of what had happened.” He shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “There were still stones in our collection from that time. But how was I supposed to know?”
“But instead of coming clean, like Browne wanted, you paid him off.”
“Yes.” Mason’s gaze flicked back and forth.
“And you thought it was over, but then Steven Barnett poked around where he wasn’t supposed to, right? He’d been close with Papa. He knew where to look.”
Mason nodded. “He was being groomed to be the next president. He was looking over financials, considering our next moves. He saw that I’d liquidated a lot of company stock and started asking questions. I refused to tell him, which angered him. If he was going to be the next president, he said, he had to know. ‘Well, then,’ I told him, ‘maybe you won’t be the next president.’ And we named Poppy instead.”
Aster nodded. It matched Julia’s story.
“But then Barnett figured it out anyway and came to me the night of the party.” Mason glanced at Aster. “He made all kinds of threats. The worst of it was that earlier that night, I had seen him with you. I thought he was going to apologize for taking advantage of you. And instead he threatened to ruin me. I don’t know what sent him over the edge.”
“He didn’t take advantage of me,” Aster said, pushing aside the feelings of guilt that rose at her father’s story. None of us are truly innocent, she thought sadly.
Mason folded his hands. “Well. It doesn’t matter. His mind was made up.”
“What would you have done if Julia hadn’t killed him?”
Mason sighed. Suddenly he seemed decades older. “Honestly, Aster, I don’t know.”
“But then Julia came to you and told you what she did.”
“That’s right. But I would never have killed him.”
“And what about Poppy?” Aster asked. “Where did she play into this? Because Elizabeth Cole was sure Poppy killed him.”
“I got a hysterical call from Poppy, shortly after Julia told me what she’d done. It was probably—I don’t know.” He looked up. “Midnight? Poppy had walked down to the marina and discovered Steven in the water. She was panicking, wanting to call the cops, but I talked her down. I told her to leave Steven where he was.”
“Leave him?”
Mason hung his head. “I know it wasn’t right. But his body would be discovered eventually. And I couldn’t help worrying that if she was the one who found him, Poppy might look guilty—and it might bring more unwanted attention to the family. To make sure, I paid off the coroner to punch up his blood-alcohol level.”
Aster covered her face. “Oh my God.”
“Poppy was always asking questions,” Mason went on in a hollow voice. “She never believed Steven drowned. And then, not long after that, she found the same blip in the financials that Steven had. Only, when she asked about it, I told her the truth. She was family, after all—I knew I could trust her. Poppy wanted to come clean, though. She wouldn’t let it go.”
Aster let out a breath. That explained that threatening e-mail she’d found in Mason’s deleted files. Then she thought of something else. “So what was the deal with the stolen jewels?”
Mason twisted his mouth. “She found out the extent of the jewels that had been stolen and realized, like I did, that some of the old pieces were still in our collection. She tracked down their owners’ ancestors. And then she checked the jewels out of the vaults and returned them to the original owners without asking. Obviously, this raised all kinds of red flags with audit and security—they had no idea who those jewels belonged to or what Poppy was doing. She was trying to force my hand, make me come clean. But I managed to cover it up.”
Aster groaned. “Dad, why didn’t you just come clean?”
“I wanted to,” he said, and sighed. “But I wasn’t sure if the business could endure the blow.”
“So it was all about the business, then. That was more important to you than anything else.”
She met Mason’s gaze. He looked away guiltily. Without Aster’s mother in the town house, the place was oddly quiet—no classical music in the kitchen, no sounds of her voice as she talked on the phone. The place felt like a tomb.
She glanced at Dumbo, his trunk extended, his huge, bell-shaped ears fanned wide. All of a sudden she pitied her father. He’s a coward, she realized. And he had been, his whole life. All he did was scurry around making excuses and covering things up. Transferring money to cover up old family sins, supporting illegitimate children, supporting Aster’s partying lifestyle for years to keep her from telling her mom about Danielle. If that elephant had actually charged Mason, he would have run screaming.
“You used to be my hero,” she said softly, feeling tears come to her eyes.
Mason’s chin wobbled. “I loved when you thought that.”
She felt tears run down her cheeks. “I’m sorry I turned you in, Dad.”
And with that, Mason rose from his chair. Aster stared at him through blurred tears as he walked toward her and knelt down. His skin smelled like sleep. “Aster,” he said firmly. “You did the right thing.”
As he wrapped his arms around her, a sob rose in her chest. He wasn’t supposed to be hugging her right now, and she wasn’t supposed to hug back.
And yet she couldn’t hate him. Even after all this, he was her father.
Then Mason pulled back and looked at her. “The mistakes I’ve made are mine to pay for, and I can’t fix that now. But what can I do to fix . . . you? What do you want? You can stop working at Saybrook’s. You can go back to your old life.”
Aster blinked. “Just like that?”
She stared out the window at the building tops across the street and considered the prospect of no longer working. Waking up at noon, scanning Twitter and the party blogs to see what was happening that night. Taking off for weekends to far-flung islands to booze it up and dance all night and talk about nothing.
It all felt oddly far away. She hadn’t gone out in weeks. Clarissa hadn’t called. Though Aster was still on a group text that got sent around every early evening, throwing out hot spots for the night and gossiping about people they knew, her other party friends hadn’t asked how she was, either. Thinking about it, what did she really miss? The thrill? This month had been full of enough thrills to last a lifetime. And it was clear her friends didn’t miss her. The city was full of fabulous socialites, after all—and heiresses who’d foot the bill.
“You know, I don’t know if I even want my old life.” And as soon as she said it, she realized it was true. “I’m keeping my job,” she said firmly.
Her father cocked his head. “Well. Good for you.”
“But actually. There is something you can do.” Aster stared at him closely. “I want Danielle to be part of our family. For real.”
Panic flickered across Mason’s face. He swallowed hard. “Do you mean . . .”
“I mean making her feel like she’s one of us. You’re her dad. And now she has no mom. I just think . . .” Aster close
d her eyes. “I just think we should.”
Mason was quiet for a long time. “All right,” he finally said. “You do what you think is right.”
Aster left her father’s town house a few minutes later, feeling scooped out and emotionally drained. She held Mitch’s hand as they walked down the sidewalk, knowing he was waiting to hear what had happened. But she wasn’t ready to tell him quite yet. They walked block after block in peaceful silence, past the dog walkers who wrangled six dogs on split leashes, past other beautiful town houses and co-ops with marble lobbies and stiff-postured doormen. The air felt fresh, the day new. Aster felt new too—strangely reborn. A hopeful feeling she’d never experienced before filled her. She felt in control of her destiny, suddenly. She felt . . . right.
She pulled her cell out of her bag and called Danielle. “H-hi,” Danielle said shakily when she answered, as if she wasn’t sure whether Aster meant to call or if this was a pocket dial.
“Hey,” Aster said in a strong voice, pausing at the corner to let a line of cabs sweep by. “Want to come to dinner with me tonight?”
“Really?” Danielle coughed on the other end. “Are you sure?”
The light turned green, and Aster pulled Mitch’s hand across the street. “Of course,” she said. “I’m positive.”
33
One week later, dressed in a trench coat and a floppy hat that covered most of her face—both to avoid the sun and to give her at least a little privacy—Corinne pushed through the Bendel’s revolving door and looked around. A salesgirl swept up to her immediately.
“May I help you, miss?” she asked, her gaze dropping to the six carry-alls in Corinne’s hands. Then she looked at Corinne again, and her eyes widened. “Oh! You’re . . .”
Corinne angled past her toward customer service. Yes, she was Corinne Saybrook, the woman who’d almost died on the eve of her wedding. Yes, she was also the woman who’d called off the wedding to Dixon Shackelford, the heir to the Shackelford Oil fortune. All she wanted was to return her gifts in peace and crawl back home to hide. She was annoyed that she even had gifts to return, after all the trouble she’d gone through to direct everyone to donate to charity. They’d all seemingly come from Dixon’s side of the family, as though they knew she was going to call everything off and would have to slink to Bendel’s, tail between her legs.