Eugenia had taken my union with Alistair even harder than Teddy had. The Thanksgiving after Alistair and I were married, she’d disinvited us to the family festivities, and the Calloway Christmas card had arrived with Alistair’s head cropped out of the photo. Her anger had only started to thaw when Teddy married a pretty girl by the name of Grier Greymouth a few months ago at the Vineyard. The Greymouths were old money; they had made their fortune in shipping. Grier’s mother was a friend of Eugenia’s, and Eugenia had arranged the match. Grier was currently getting her doctorate in psychology at NYU, which was one of her many accomplishments that Eugenia liked to spout on about—that, and her shiny hair and her blue ribbons in dressage.
As for the rest of Alistair’s family, Alistair’s father paid me no more or less attention than he had previously, Teddy had stopped speaking to me altogether, and Olivia had moved to Paris after graduating from Vassar. She was working at an art gallery on the Seine and living with a morose-looking expat thirty years her senior.
Eugenia grimaced when she saw me, which was not an unusual reaction from her.
“You’re sweating like a pig,” she said as she joined me at the sink. She rummaged in her clutch and handed me a blotting paper, which was the kindest gesture she’d shown me in years.
“Thank you,” I said, pressing the paper to my forehead.
“Really, dear, you do look terrible,” Eugenia went on. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I think I might have caught a stomach bug,” I said. “I feel a little nauseous.”
Eugenia inched away from me as she washed her hands. “Yes, well, you should probably go home and lie down,” she said as she reached for a hand towel. “We don’t want you getting everyone else sick if you’re contagious.”
I could see the horrors projecting in her mind—her event taking down half the Upper East Side with the flu, me patient zero.
“I think I will,” I said. “Will you tell Alistair, when you see him?”
“Of course, dear,” Eugenia said. “You just go on home and get some rest.”
I cut a beeline through the ballroom to the coat check in the entrance hall, but there was no one there. The coatroom girl was probably taking a smoking break. It was past the time that people were arriving and too early for anyone to be leaving. I checked my watch, wondering how long she would be.
“Leaving already?”
I turned to see Teddy standing in the dark hall behind me, a glass of scotch in his hand.
“I’m not feeling well,” I said.
“Alistair will be disappointed,” Teddy said. “He hasn’t even given his big ‘Look at me, look at me’ speech yet. I hear he’s gotten so good at it, he can fit his entire cock in his mouth.”
Teddy leaned against the wall. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“I should be getting back,” I said, stepping away from the coat check window.
Teddy mirrored my movement with his own, taking a step so that he was blocking my path.
“I thought you said you were leaving,” Teddy said.
He was too close to me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“You look very pretty tonight,” Teddy said. He reached out and ran a finger down my bare forearm. My skin erupted in goose bumps. “Look how you still respond to my touch,” Teddy whispered. He came even closer, so he was whispering into my ear. “I remember the way I used to play your body like an instrument, the way I’d make you moan. I bet he doesn’t do that, does he?”
I stood very still. I glanced behind him, down the dark and quiet corridor to the ballroom, the bright white lights of the chandelier, the clatter of dinner plates being laid out.
“You should get back to your wife, Teddy,” I said. “She’s probably wondering where you are.”
“My wife,” Teddy said with a laugh, and took a sip of his drink. “My wife. Your husband. Look how grown-up we sound with our permanent attachments.”
“You’re drunk,” I said.
“Yes,” Teddy said. “I am. But that doesn’t make any of it less true. Just a tad more pathetic maybe.”
“Yes, it is pathetic.”
Teddy turned. There was Alistair, standing behind us in the dark hall, his hands in his pockets, watching us.
“Like I’ve told you time and time again, pace yourself,” Alistair said, coming toward us. He casually took Teddy’s glass of scotch. “You don’t want to end up making a fool of yourself.”
“Always playing big brother,” Teddy said dryly. “You should take a night off. You look tired.”
“Go find your wife,” Alistair said, his voice like ice. “And leave mine alone.”
For a moment Teddy just stood there, looking at Alistair with all the malice he’d accrued over the years, his shoulders squared. Teddy was taller than Alistair; he had at least six inches on him. But Alistair was broader in the shoulders, more sturdily built. I could feel the tension between them and I wondered for a moment if this would be the point where things boiled over and Teddy unleashed that hatred he never tried too hard to hide. But after a moment, Teddy seemed to think better of a fight and retreated back toward the ballroom. We watched him go.
“What was that all about?” Alistair asked me pointedly, as if somehow it were my fault.
“How should I know?” I said.
“Do I have to worry about the two of you now?” he asked. “Sneaking off to whisper to each other in dark hallways, all alone?”
“I didn’t initiate it,” I said. “I was getting my coat.”
Alistair raised his eyebrows, and I realized I was still coatless.
“I was trying to get my coat,” I amended my statement. “I was trying to leave and he cornered me.”
Alistair looked hurt. “You were leaving?” he asked. “You weren’t going to stay for my speech?”
“I don’t feel well,” I said.
“That’s convenient,” Alistair said.
“It’s not convenient,” I snapped, louder than I’d meant to. My voice carried down the hall and people seated at the nearest table turned to look. I lowered my voice to a fervent whisper. “It’s not convenient to be dragged to an event you don’t want to go to when you’re dizzy and nauseous and tired. And it’s not convenient when the person you came with abandons you at said event, and the only time he speaks to you is when he’s accusing you of something you didn’t do. None of it, Alistair, is convenient.”
I couldn’t go back in that room and sit with those people and pretend like everything was fine. I turned and stumbled down the hallway toward the lobby, my coat be damned.
Alistair followed me out onto the cold New York sidewalk.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair said. “I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
“I know,” I said. “You never mean to.”
The late nights at the office, the conference calls on the weekends, the way his attention was always on some new project, none of it was done to purposefully hurt me.
“You knew this was who I was when you met me,” Alistair said.
“It’s not just about you anymore,” I said. “And it’s not just about me, either.”
Tears stung the back of my eyes. This was not how I wanted to tell him, standing on a cold New York sidewalk, at odds with one another.
“What are you talking about?” Alistair asked.
“I’m—” My voice fell away. I rested my hand on my stomach. “I’m pregnant.”
Alistair was silent. He looked like he’d had the wind knocked out of him.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”
I didn’t know how he would respond. Our first pregnancy had resulted in a miscarriage near the end of the first trimester. I’d been devastated by the loss, and I suspected Alistair was too, but he’d never been one to openly talk about his emotions, even with me.
Now Alistair bridged the gap between us and wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t know what to do with this unant
icipated display of affection, so I slid my hands underneath his suit jacket and around his waist. He held me close, like he hadn’t held me in a long time.
“You’re happy?” I asked.
“Of course I’m happy,” Alistair said, kissing my hair. “Aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t separate how I felt about my pregnancy from how I felt about Alistair and me. I’d never felt so much distance between us as I did now.
“I don’t feel well,” I said instead, which was true.
Alistair took off his suit jacket and draped it around my shoulders. “Let’s get you home,” he said, and he moved toward the street to hail a cab.
As he held open the door for me, I tried to give him back his jacket.
“Keep it, it’s cold,” Alistair said.
“But your speech,” I said. He couldn’t give his speech in only his shirtsleeves. Eugenia would throw a fit.
“It’s fine,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll be home in a bit,” he said.
At home, I took a warm bath and sat on the living room sofa in my pajamas eating saltines and nursing a ginger ale. I watched the evening network dramas transition into late-night talk shows. I woke up at midnight, infomercials glowing on the screen. I turned the television off and went to bed alone.
The next morning when I woke up, Alistair was there. He was already dressed casually in jeans and a sweater and he came into the room carrying a steaming bowl of oatmeal. He set it down next to me on my nightstand.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” he said. “I made you some oatmeal with brown sugar—thought it might be easier on your stomach than an omelet. You should eat.”
I blinked up at him and rubbed the crust from my eyes. “How late did you get in last night?” I asked.
“Eat quickly and get dressed,” he said, smiling. “I want to show you something.”
I could only get down a few bites, and then I felt queasy. I hurried to the bathroom to dress.
As I dressed, Alistair called down to have the valet pull around the car. It was waiting for us at the front door. I ducked in to the front passenger seat and leaned my head against the cold glass window.
“Where are we going?” I asked Alistair as the car pulled away from the curb.
“It’s a surprise,” he said, taking my hand and holding it. He gave me a reassuring smile. “A good surprise,” he said.
We drove for over an hour, until the high-rises faded away and then the suburbs and we entered flat, open land. I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When the car jostled to a stop, I woke up. I glanced out the window, but all I could see was trees.
“Come on,” Alistair said, opening the door. “We’re almost there.”
I took his hand and let him lead me. I had the uncanny feeling that I had been there before, but I couldn’t place it at first, and then, I saw the lake. Langely Lake.
We walked for several minutes without saying anything until we came to the tree house that Jake and I had built together when we were children. The place where Alistair and I had first made love.
Alistair stopped and turned to face me.
“I know you’ve been unhappy,” he said. “And there are a lot of things I can’t change about our lives. But maybe there’s a middle ground.
“This was our beginning,” he said, motioning around him to the lake. “And it’s going to be our beginning again. I’m going to build a house for us here. Not just a house—a home. And we’re going to fill it with our children, our family. This will be our place, away from everything else. When we come here, it’ll just be us.”
He looked so earnest. It was as if he thought by sheer will and determination, he could hold us together, fill in the cracks, keep things from falling apart. And I wanted to believe him. Oh, how desperately I wanted to believe him. So, I didn’t say anything. I just reached out and took his hand.
Twenty-Seven
Charlie Calloway
2017
Dalton and I got a late start back to Knollwood the next day. Margot called ahead of us to the school to let them know we’d miss the nightly curfew check, and the administration had reluctantly consented, stipulating that we had to check in with our dormitory supervisors first thing the following morning. On the drive back, I leaned my head against the cold glass window of the front passenger seat, closed my eyes, and feigned a headache. I was too shaken by my revelation about Jake to hold up a conversation with Dalton. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. It was like everything suddenly was clicking into place—here were the connections I had been looking for, the connections I had felt were there all along, lying just beneath the surface, waiting for me to uncover them.
But then, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I was wrong. I mean, would the A’s really kill someone? Even if a recruit did fail a ticket, even if a recruit threatened to expose the A’s, was that really worth . . . murder? Sure . . . the A’s could be dark and twisted and cruel. But murder?
And, most importantly, I didn’t know how to make this fit with my mother’s disappearance. So Jake and my father had known each other at Knollwood; they had been in the A’s together. Maybe my father even gave Jake the ticket to steal the exam. Jake got in over his head, got caught, was threatened with expulsion, and killed himself because he thought his life was over. What could that possibly have to do with my mother’s disappearance a decade and a half later?
Just when things had seemed like they were clicking into place, they fell apart again. The answers that I had been so sure of in the restaurant now seemed flimsy, ridiculous. No, it still didn’t make any sense.
“Here, take this,” Dalton said.
I opened my eyes and saw that he was motioning to a bottle of water in the center cup holder.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the bottle. “I don’t know that hydration is the problem, though.”
Dalton smiled. “No, silly,” he said, leaning across my seat and opening the glove compartment, his other hand still on the steering wheel. “That is to wash down this.”
He dug out an orange pill bottle from the glove compartment and shook it at me. I read the label. Prescription painkillers.
“Where’d you get those?” I asked.
“Some leftover treats from my foot injury last year,” he said, closing the glove compartment and refocusing on the road. “You know, from when the idiot from Xavier tripped me during semifinals.”
I vaguely remembered Dalton hobbling around on crutches last spring, a gaggle of sophomore girls tripping over themselves to carry his books. “Thanks,” I said, taking the pills.
“I’m glad I got to meet your father,” Dalton said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“But I feel like I didn’t really get to know him,” Dalton said. “He seems like one of those people who, I don’t know, it’s difficult to crack the surface of.”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I busied myself with taking the pills and washing them down with a big gulp of water.
But I wanted to tell him he didn’t know the half of it.
We went straight to the Ledge when we got back to Knollwood. Harper made a sour face when we arrived together. We were the last ones there, and I hurriedly texted the pictures Leo had taken of me and Mr. Andrews to Ren, while the rest of the A initiates piled their items onto the hood of Crosby’s car.
Despite yesterday’s events, I felt a little relieved, a small sense of accomplishment, because I had done it. Two down, only one item left to go. I was practically an A. I looked across the circle and met Leo’s eyes.
We’re almost there, I wanted to say.
I glanced around the circle to find Drew. I wanted her to share in this moment. I couldn’t wait to stay up late together when we got back to our room and hear her story about what it took to steal old Mr. Franklin’s trig exam. But my gaze swept the circle and I couldn’t find her. My heart skipped a beat. I glanced down at the hood of Crosby’s car, searching for Mr. Frank
lin’s exam—but it wasn’t there either.
It was only then that I realized—Drew hadn’t made it.
Twenty-Eight
Grace Calloway
June 2007
“Say ‘cheese’!”
The flash went off, and then Charlotte held the digital camera carefully, looking at the screen to see the picture she had just taken of her sister next to her in the backseat.
“Why do people say that—‘say cheese’?” Charlotte asked.
“Because it forces people to smile,” I said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. Next to me, in the driver’s seat, Alistair was talking into his Bluetooth headset. We had left the city in the early afternoon to beat the weekend traffic. It was officially summer now, and most people we knew were headed to the Hamptons, but we were headed north to our house on Langely Lake.
“Why do people always have to smile in photographs?” Charlotte asked.
I reached in my purse at my feet to grab my lip balm. “Because photographs are about capturing a moment so you can remember it, and when you look back at a picture, don’t you want to see yourself smiling and happy?” I asked.
“You look so dumb, Sera,” Charlotte said, reaching the camera across the seat so her sister could see it in her booster seat.
“Don’t call your sister dumb,” I said, glancing at Charlotte in the rearview mirror.
She looked like me. My mom had shown me pictures the other week of me at Charlotte’s age and it was uncanny, really, the resemblance. The same wavy dark brown hair, the wide-set gray eyes, the curve of our cheeks. She looked like me, but she was so much like Alistair. She was tough and headstrong and possessed a confidence and a composure that seemed otherworldly in someone so young.
Now, when I looked at my daughter in the backseat, I found myself wondering if there was any of my likeness in her character.
Seraphina reached out and grabbed the strap of the camera from Charlotte and then flung it hard against the side of the door.
All These Beautiful Strangers Page 28