I knew the reaction I should have had to this, the normal reaction anyone else would have had—I should have been pleased. I should have doodled Dalton’s name in the corner of my notebook during trig, or talked endlessly to Drew about how sexy I found his eyes or whatever.
Instead, I found myself edging away. If Drew brought up Dalton, I would become quiet, showing no more enthusiasm than a noncommittal shrug. At dinner sometimes, I would make it a point not to talk to him or glance his way. In class, if Dalton volunteered a point in discussion, I would raise my hand and heatedly argue the exact opposite point of view. It’s like I wanted him to hate me.
I knew that was crazy, because the truth was, I liked Dalton. He was smart and kind and popular. I saw the way the other girls looked at him, and I was not blind to their sudden coldness to me when it became obvious that Dalton liked me. And I was attracted to him, too. I liked kissing him in darkened hallway corners or behind the boys’ locker room after soccer practice. I liked unbuttoning his jacket and sliding my body against his, warm body to warm body. But for some reason, I felt the need to hold myself back. To hold him at arm’s length when I could.
Dalton’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket and checked his screen.
“It looks like my mom is running a bit late,” he said. “She asked if it’s okay if she meets us at your father’s office.”
“Sure,” I said, shrugging.
His mother had been anxious to meet me, he said. I guess he had told her we were dating. When she’d heard we were coming into the city for the day, she had asked if she could take us to dinner. Dalton had suggested I invite my father as well, sort of a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone type of thing, since he had yet to meet my father. I had debated making up some lame excuse about my father’s being out of town. To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing him.
I hadn’t seen my father since before the school year started—since before Uncle Hank had shown me those pictures he had found hidden underneath the floorboards of my parents’ bedroom. I didn’t know how to reconcile all of the things my mother’s family and Claire had said about my father with the man I thought I knew.
I didn’t know if I could look at him the same way now. Surely, the instant we were in the same room together, he would know that I had betrayed him—that I had gone digging into his past, that I knew things I shouldn’t know, that I harbored ugly doubts about him. How could we ever be the same after something like that?
But, in the end, I had agreed to the dinner and invited my father. If I was ever going to get to the bottom of what had happened to my mother, I needed to start asking my father some questions. And I had decided that the best place to start was with Jake Griffin. After seeing those photos in my mother’s case file, it seemed obvious that my mother’s disappearance was linked in some way with Jake. I just needed to find out how, and if my father was somehow caught up in it, too.
My father’s office was on the top floor of a glassy skyscraper downtown. We had called ahead and so there were passes waiting for us at security on the ground floor. Rosalind, who had been my father’s secretary for as long as I could remember, greeted us at the elevator. She was a stout woman in her fifties; she was the type of person who was all sunshine and rainbows when she liked you, but all snark and bite when she didn’t. When I was a child, I’d seen her make grown Wall Street men cry. Or, at least, tear up.
“Rosie,” I said, giving her a hug.
She laughed and hugged me back. “Don’t say that too loudly,” she said. “You’re the only one who can get away with calling me that, and I don’t want anyone getting it into their head that that nickname will fly around here.”
Like they would dare cross her.
“And who’s your tall and handsome friend?” Rosie asked.
“Royce Dalton,” Dalton said, extending his hand and smiling. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Charlie speaks very highly of you.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Rosie said, shaking his hand. She looked at me and winked. “He’s a keeper,” she whispered.
Rosie let us into my father’s office and went to get us waters. Apparently, my father was finishing up in a meeting across town and was running a little behind.
My father’s office was large and sparsely decorated. Something about the sparseness was supposed to make it edgy and modern, but to me it just felt cold and unapproachable, which maybe was part of the point. He had a corner office, so two sides were windows that looked out over the city below. In the middle of his office was a steel-framed desk and his computer. On the other side of the room were a black leather love seat, two armchairs, and a liquor cabinet.
Dalton sank into the couch and I stood at the window, looking out over the city. From this high up, all of the buildings looked almost small.
“Your father has good taste,” Dalton said.
“Yeah,” I said. I turned back to his desk and the bookshelf that sat along one wall. There were lots of pictures of my father. Pictures with clients and important people. Pictures with some of his old friends from school—there he was sailing with Freddy Heinz, there he was golfing with Matthew York. But there was only one picture of my father with me and Seraphina. We were at the beach by our house on Martha’s Vineyard. Seraphina must have been about seven. She was perched on my father’s shoulders. I was standing next to my father, leaning into him; he had his arm around me. I was wearing one of my father’s old Columbia sweatshirts, which was way too big for me. I had worn holes into the sleeves that I hooked my thumbs through.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” I heard a familiar voice say behind me, and I turned to see my father in the doorway, dressed in a suit and overcoat.
He came in and set his briefcase on his desk.
“Charlotte, so good to see you,” he said, and he wrapped an arm around me and planted a kiss in my hair. He smelled faintly of tuberose blossoms, the scent of his favorite cologne from Barneys.
“You too,” I said, a little stilted and breathless.
“And you must be Charlotte’s friend,” my father said, taking several long strides across the room to shake Dalton’s hand.
Dalton rose from the couch, his hand outstretched.
“Royce, sir,” Dalton said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope you don’t mind, my mother is running a bit late, I’m afraid, and she likes to make an entrance.”
“Well that’s certainly a fine introduction to give your own mother.”
We all three turned toward the door and saw a woman standing there, finely dressed in dark linen trousers and a delicate cashmere sweater and a thick wool coat. On her arm she toted a boxy Birkin bag. There was something impressive, awe-worthy, about the way she carried herself, though she was of average stature. It was strange, but as attractive as Dalton was, I had always expected his mother to be a great beauty. Instead, I could pick out some of the features that, so attractive on Dalton’s face, made his mother plain—the strong, square jaw; the wide nose; the tall forehead. There was something else that was vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“I meant it as a compliment, I promise,” Dalton said with a smile. “Charlie, Mr. Calloway, may I introduce my dear mother—”
“Margot,” my father said hoarsely.
“Oh,” Dalton said, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were acquainted.”
Mrs. Dalton strode forward—there was something masculine, commanding, in her gait—and kissed my father on the cheek.
“Alistair, dear, it’s been too long,” she said. “And this must be your daughter Charlie,” she said, turning her attention to me. Her eyes were appraising, looking me up and down. “My stars, if she isn’t the spitting image of her mother. Please, dear, call me Margot.”
She held out her hand and I took it, even though my heart was stuttering in my chest at the mention of my mother. No one ever brought her up in front of me. “You knew my mother?”
I asked.
“Yes, I knew Grace,” Mrs. Dalton said. “Your father and I went to school together—at Knollwood, and then Columbia.”
And it clicked then, why she seemed familiar. I hadn’t met her before, but I had seen her. Margot was the girl in the photograph—the girl stripped naked, her body marked up in red. But she had that same steady, unabashed gaze as the girl in the photograph, as if you, and not she, were the one who had been stripped bare.
“My, Knollwood seems like a lifetime ago now, doesn’t it?” Margot asked my father, turning back to him with a smile. “Can you believe we’re old enough now to have children there? We’re old geezers, I’m afraid.”
It took a moment for my father to answer. He seemed frozen in thought, dazed.
“Yes,” he said. “I have a hard time believing it myself.”
“Well, I hope we all like Italian food,” Margot said, looking at each of us in turn and smiling. “I’ve made reservations at Osteria da Luca.” She looked pointedly at my father. “That used to be one of your favorite spots, if I’m remembering correctly,” she said.
My father only nodded.
“Superb,” she said. “I have a reservation for seven thirty.”
She tilted her wrist up to check the time. The sleeve of her coat fell slightly and revealed the white-gold band of her watch. It was beautiful—the watch face was pearl white, surrounded by a dozen yellow diamonds that sparkled and caught the light. Dalton’s mother had good taste.
“That’s pretty,” I said. “Barneys?”
“Hm?” Margot asked.
“Your watch,” I said.
“Oh, no, family heirloom,” Margot said. She dropped her hand and the arm of her sleeve fell down and covered her watch. “I have a car waiting for us downstairs,” she said. “Shall we?”
There was something off with my father. At the restaurant, I stole glances at him over my dinner plate. He was uncharacteristically quiet. I wasn’t sure what had affected him so much—had Eugenia told him about the conversation we’d had at homecoming? Had Uncle Teddy broken my confidence and told him about the pictures that Uncle Hank had found at the lake house? Was he angry with me? Or was it Margot’s presence that had unnerved him? And if so, why?
Whatever it was, I couldn’t let it get in the way of what I had come here to do. I cleared my throat and dug my fork into the pile of risotto on my plate.
“I joined the school newspaper,” I said.
“The Chronicle?” my father asked, for the moment at least breaking out of his reverie. “Charlotte, that’s great.”
He smiled and I felt the warmth of his approval surge through my blood.
“I’m working the Features beat right now,” I said. “I just pitched this article on the urban myths surrounding campus.”
“That sounds interesting,” Margot said.
“It is,” I said. “There’s this one myth I’m looking into right now. It’s kind of a ghost story. There’s this boy—an old Knollwood student—who haunts campus. Supposedly he killed himself or something; the details surrounding it are really vague.”
“Oh yeah,” Dalton said. “Crosby swore he saw him one night when he was”—he paused and looked around at my father and his mother—“um, coming back from studying. At the library. Scared the stuffing out of him.”
I looked over at my father.
I swallowed and then went on. “I’ve been looking into it to see who it might be linked to, and there are only two students who died at Knollwood in the last century. It turns out that one of them was at Knollwood at the same time as you. His name was Jake Griffin.”
My father paused in sawing his knife through his steak.
“Jake Griffin.” Margot said his name slowly, as if she were having trouble placing him. “Oh yes, I remember. That was so tragic. Happened my junior year, if I’m remembering right.”
“So you knew him?” I asked.
“Yes, we were on the student council together. Jake was a really sweet kid.”
“Did you know him, too?” I asked my father.
“Not really,” my father said. “He wasn’t in my year.”
Not really? My mind flashed back to the “In Memoriam” page in the yearbook—the snapshot of my father and Jake Griffin with their arms around one another, beaming at the camera. Jake Griffin and Alistair Calloway. My father was lying.
“But I thought I saw a picture of the two of you together in the yearbook,” I said.
My father didn’t answer.
“You and Jake were on the tennis team together, weren’t you?” Margot asked.
“I don’t remember,” my father said. He wasn’t looking at me or Margot. “As you said before, all of that seems like a lifetime ago.”
“But there’s a picture of the two of you together in the yearbook,” I said again. I wasn’t going to let it go. I wanted answers. I needed answers. “The two of you are standing together in Healy Quad, looking very friendly.”
“Where did you say this ghost of yours pops up?” Margot asked, cutting in.
“Usually around the old upperclassman dormitories at night,” Dalton said.
“I’m afraid your ghost can’t be Jake Griffin then,” Margot said.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Because Jake Griffin didn’t die on campus,” Margot said.
“He didn’t?” I asked.
“Margot, please, this isn’t really suitable dinner table discussion,” my father said.
“Please, I want to hear,” I said. If he wasn’t going to give me any answers, maybe Margot would. “For the article,” I added.
“It’s school-related, Alistair,” Margot said. “I’m helping her with her homework.”
My father sighed and went back to sawing at his steak with a renewed vigor.
“They found him in the ravine off Spalding River,” Margot said. “Apparently, he got caught cheating, went up to the Ledge, and jumped. The poor boy drowned. They found his body a few days later.”
“That’s awful,” Dalton said.
“Yeah, it really hit campus hard,” Margot said. “Knollwood is a family, and Jake was one of our own. But I think it’s easy to forget when you’re not there, and you’re not in the grind of things, how much pressure you kids are under to perform. Knollwood is a tough school; not everyone is cut out for it.”
Something about Margot’s words made me dizzy. It was difficult to breathe.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to go to the restroom.”
“Are you okay, dear?” Margot asked. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
I stumbled out of the booth and tried to keep my legs steady as I walked, then ran, from the table. In the bathroom, I locked the stall door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
The photographs in my mother’s case file of Jake and my father and Margot and their friends. They had been taken at the Ledge. How had I not recognized it before?
It was all coming together. All the variables were starting to add up:
First, there was that photograph of my father with Jake on Healy Quad.
Then there was my father’s denial that they were ever friends.
Next, the stolen exam—which hadn’t made sense to me at first, because according to everyone, Jake had been a terrific student.
Finally, there was the clearing above Spalding River from which Jake had allegedly jumped.
All of these clues added up to one thing: Jake had been in the A’s. He had been an initiate—like me. And of course, my father, Margot—they had been A’s too, I was sure of it. Some of those pictures from my mother’s case file—those were their initiation pictures, like the ones Leo and I had taken in the back of Ren’s car.
What if the stolen exam had been Jake’s ticket, and he had failed? He had been caught cheating. Facing expulsion, he had gone up to the Ledge above Spalding River. The only question was, was he alone? Had he jumped of his own volition, or was he forced to his watery g
rave below?
Twenty-Six
Grace Calloway
Fall 1999
I leaned against the stall wall until the room stopped spinning. At least I hadn’t thrown up. That would have been the pinnacle of my humiliation—kneeling on the porcelain tiles of the bathroom of the Carlyle Hotel in my Oscar de la Renta evening gown as the sharp-tongued wives of the Upper East Side overheard me heave my lunch into the toilet. By the time I’d reentered the party, half the crowd would have heard that I had an eating disorder and the other half would have been vehemently proclaiming I was an alcoholic.
I hadn’t wanted to come out tonight at all but it was the Calloways’ annual charity ball and Alistair was giving a speech. Earlier that evening, as I’d fastened his tie for him in our bedroom, he’d practiced his speech, going over all the lines, noting where he would place emphasis and where he would pause for laughter or applause. I had thought about saying something then—telling him I wasn’t feeling well, mentioning that it was probably best I stay home—but things had been so tense lately between us, and I hadn’t wanted to cause another fight.
Barely five minutes after arriving, he had wandered off to talk with colleagues and socialites in low-backed evening gowns and I had been left, once again, by myself. I’d caught a whiff of the warm salmon-puff appetizer trays the waiters were proffering around the room, and my stomach had turned. I’d headed straight for that bathroom stall.
But I couldn’t hide in there forever. I took a deep breath and exited the stall. I stood at the sink and held my hands under the cold running water. My pallid complexion stared back at me in the mirror. I looked as awful as I felt.
They called it morning sickness, but I felt it all day long.
I’d discovered I was expecting two days ago, sitting alone on the bathroom floor, three empty water bottles and five sticks with five plus signs lying next to me. I hadn’t told anyone yet, not even Alistair.
I heard a toilet flush and a stall door open. I glanced behind me in the mirror and my heart stuttered as I caught her reflection—Eugenia.
All These Beautiful Strangers Page 27