“Who is she?” Madison said again. No one replied. They acted as if she hadn’t even spoken. And so, fine, she thought, fine. She left them there. She went to look for Chip, Amanda, anyone.
She had seen the blond woman before, even before she saw her out front. She couldn’t remember where. The man with her was Jim McGinniss, her father’s former right-hand man, which did not make any sense at all.
LILY SPENT THE EARLY EVENING in the kitchen with a celebrity gossip magazine. It could be worse, she thought, she could nanny for one of those poor bastard’s families. She tried and failed not to think about how the party must be going, ignoring the temptation to open a bottle of wine. What would she say if they came home early? It should have been enough, getting caught back in December, Bob’s clear disinterest in ever reminding her that they’d caught each other. His certainty that they’d keep each other’s secrets.
But it wasn’t enough, of course, and that was what the experience had taught her. Misbehavior, wrongdoing, becomes both the appetite and the food; it creates a space for itself and then demands more and more to keep its desires sated.
She’d been thinking this way ever since her conversation with Madison the week before. Whether Bob locked his study when he left for his mystery afternoon “jogs.” Whether Madison had really seen him hide a key to a desk drawer, and whether that meant much of anything.
Her phone danced on the tabletop, jerking over the uneven knots in the wood. It was Jackson, again. She hadn’t spoken to him in several days, but he’d called four times since this morning.
She grabbed her keys from the glass dish on the counter. She wasn’t due to fetch the boys for another hour at least, but she couldn’t sit here alone in the house anymore. Every surface in the house looked like the temptation to touch, open, read, remember. And that wasn’t her choice to make; it was Madison’s.
She went outside and got into the car.
“HOW HAS IT BEEN?” Amanda asked.
“I’m not sure,” Madison said. They were moving through the crowd together, making looping, directionless arcs around the bar. At one point Madison saw Jake and Lori, standing alone at a cocktail table, fretful and conspicuous. She linked Amanda’s pinkie with her own and steered her off into another current through the crowd. Whatever had changed, in the way she felt about Amanda and her abandonment last summer, it felt far too rickety and circumstantial to survive a conversation with Jake Levins. If he was too chicken to apologize to a fifteen-year-old girl, well then, that was fine. He didn’t get a cheek kiss.
Madison briefly cased the bartenders, wondered which one would be likeliest to serve her. All around her, everything looked and sounded only almost like a party. There were peals of laughter that sounded more like shrieks. The lime glow of the pool beckoned, its underwater lights distorted by ripples, the perpetual harassing whisper of its waterfall. The lanterns in the trees and the greenish moon low in the sky, together, cast unnatural shadows on the faces.
Madison wandered, with Amanda, closer to the dinner tables grouped around the dance floor. The microphones up on the dais would later be used to thank everyone for doing the exact same things they’d done last year, and the year before that.
Amanda kept peering furtively at the faces in the crowd; Madison couldn’t imagine why.
The centerpieces were so much simpler than usual that they felt showy. Some general green frippery surrounding what was ultimately just a large glass bowl, deep and round, filled with water and one single floating gardenia. Madison breathed in that smell, the gardenias, felt it settle within her. And so when she saw him it was almost as if she’d summoned him, called him to her with a secret whistle.
Zoë and Allie and Wyatt were moving across the grass, and Chip dawdled behind them, his hands in his pockets, extending his legs slowly with each step. She didn’t think she had ever seen him in a tux before.
“You’re not really supposed to be over here yet, D’Amico,” Wyatt said amiably, in greeting. “They’ll make an announcement for dinner.”
Allie gave Madison a jerky hug, her elbows hitting the soft parts of Madison’s torso.
“When did you get here?”
“Ages ago,” Madison lied.
“Your whole family?” Zoë said this without moving any part of her face but her mouth.
“Yes,” Madison said. Allie let her gaze flit from Zoë to Madison with tangible unease.
Wyatt turned his back on the party and showed Madison the inside pocket of his jacket. He had a flask tucked against the patterned fabric of the lining, which matched his vest.
“You want?”
Chip was studying the crowd with effort, clearly seeking an excuse to walk away.
“I’m good, thanks,” she told Wyatt.
“You guys both look so pretty,” Allie blurted out. “Amanda, I love your dress! I can’t believe you’re here, I thought your mom hated these things. My mom always says your mom is way too smart for the rest of us.”
“Well, ladies,” Wyatt said, and Madison was actually impressed by the smoothness of his intervention. “No one seems very excited about my flask! Levins, I remember you knocking ’em back like a champion at Halloween. Come on. Do a shot with me.”
Amanda ignored him. Chip still hadn’t looked at Madison. As she watched him, she caught sight of her again, the blond woman from outside.
Too late, she felt Zoë turn to follow her gaze.
“Oh, right. That’s the woman your dad fired, isn’t it?”
The words were still in the air, ready to be ignored by all six of them, when Zoë turned to Amanda.
“Do you think that’s her?” she said. “Madison, she told you how she saw your dad in the city with some woman, right? She told us about it at Halloween. God, Amanda, you were so hammered, do you even remember any of this?”
Then, without the announcement Wyatt had promised, the adults had begun to move. The crowd came in a mass across the wide lawn, dozens of women picking their way across the grass in their stiletto heels, balanced unsteadily on their husbands, who always seemed to move a few beats faster. Madison looked for her parents and didn’t see them.
“I have to go,” she said, but Chip was already leaving. He didn’t turn back, but Wyatt did. He slid his right arm around Madison’s waist, his fingers fumbling at her hip.
“My parents bought a few,” Zoë was whispering to Chip. “They auctioned off all of it, my mother had a field day. Her mother collected so much amazing stuff.”
Madison wanted to follow them, to grab Zoë by the roots of her fake blond hair and force her to say that again, say it louder, hand her the deejay’s microphone and have her say it up on the dais for everyone to hear as the party sat down to dinner. But Wyatt’s hands were still at Madison’s waist. Her dress was cut on the bias, and all she could think was that his fingers would leave the fabric crinkled, that it would be obvious someone had grabbed her dress with his sweaty hand.
“Don’t mind Abbott,” he said. “You know what he’s like, you know he’s always going to be looking for someone who’s on his level. Who wants to do the things he wants to do.”
She blinked at him for a moment, unseeing, reluctant to understand. Wyatt pulled back from her, his brow furrowed with malice or concern, or both.
“Look,” he said, “it’s none of my business. I just wanted you to know that I know he was a jerk, that’s all. He can be a jerk, right? And you shouldn’t feel like it’s because of anything else, like you’re too damaged for him right now or whatever. That wasn’t it.”
His hands were on her again.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying,” Wyatt said. “You got good reviews. If you ever want to, like, move on to the grown-up stuff, I’d be down.”
He contorted his face, his mouth closed, his tongue pushing lewdly against the inside of one cheek. His hands were still on Madison’s hips, and she reared back to put her own hands to his shoulders. She was ready to shove him, hard. She wanted to see hi
m flat on his ass, on the ground below where she stood.
But Amanda moved in, put one hand over Wyatt’s, squeezed his knuckles.
“Not a good idea,” she said. “When you sober up tomorrow, I think you’ll agree with me.”
“Fuck off, Levins,” Wyatt said, cheerful and unruffled. He turned and began to thread his way through the dinner tables, hands in his pockets.
“By the time he gets to his mother, what do you want to bet he’s not ‘totally wasted’ anymore?” Amanda said.
“What?” Madison said, and Amanda’s smirk faltered.
“Look,” she said. “Obviously I never meant to say anything to Zoë about it, I mean that’s obvious, right? I just didn’t know if I should—I didn’t even see anything. I just saw him in the street with that woman. That’s it.”
Most people had filtered toward the tent, for dinner, but there were stragglers enough still to keep the bars mobbed. The waiters with their silver trays of untouched food were filing back into the house, the party’s staging area, to get ready for the next part of the job.
“It was that blond woman?” Madison said. “The one who’s here? She used to work for him. You saw them together and you just . . . decided not to tell me?”
“Madison, come on,” Amanda said again. “What do I know about any of it? It was probably nothing.”
“Please don’t talk to me,” Madison said. “You should go find your dad. Find your own table.”
MINA AND ISABEL WERE SEATED, waiting for the others. Mina tucked her evening bag into her lap, and Tom appeared at her elbow with a tumbler in his hand. Her champagne was nowhere in sight.
A uniformed staff member of some kind, a middle-aged Hispanic woman who avoided eye contact with anyone else at the table, brought the boys to their seats, presumably at Isabel’s request. Madison came next, arriving in a flurry—playing with her hair, kissing the boys, making sure they were both situated in the grown-up chairs and could reach their forks and knives, their water glasses. She looked up at Mina, expressionless, and then looked down at her lap. Mina could see that she was taking that moment to draw herself in, to keep the face expressionless. When she looked up again, though, her eyes fixed on something over Mina’s shoulder, back toward the house.
Whatever it was, it was gone by the time Mina craned her neck.
“Madison?” she said. “Everything all right?”
Tom settled himself heavily in his chair.
“Where is he,” he muttered. He touched Mina’s hand and then looked at her intently in a way she could not interpret.
“Isabel,” he said, without looking away from Mina. “Jim is here, too.”
Isabel held herself erect, waiting for him to say more.
“McGinniss?”
Tom nodded, sucking his ice.
“Where’s Bob?”
“I don’t keep track of your husband, Mrs. D’Amico,” Tom said. Mina looked at the boys, who didn’t appear to be listening to anyone but each other. Her husband couldn’t seem to decide whether he was Isabel’s protector or her primary detractor, and what had seemingly begun with solicitous concern had in the span of two seconds become something darker, nasty.
“All right,” Mina said, trying to pitch it so her voice would be audible to Tom but still lose itself in the tinkling and rustling from neighboring tables. Isabel was looking back at the house, scanning its many heaped stories and their darkened windows. She bit her bottom lip.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Mina said. She could feel her husband radiating heat just beside her. Their bodies were touching at the elbow, at the thigh.
“I don’t know where he is,” Isabel said. “Where would we look?”
“He just ran down that staircase,” Madison said. “There’s a ballroom down on that level of the house, by the pool. He just went down there.”
Isabel looked at her daughter, but Madison hadn’t taken her eyes off the twins.
“We’ll both go,” Mina repeated uselessly.
“No,” Isabel said. “Just watch the boys for a minute.”
She stood and left the dance floor, darting back across the lawn. Mina glanced at the neighboring tables without turning her head, and she could see that everyone was rigorously focused on their own conversations. Which meant that most of them would have been paying close attention as Isabel D’Amico walked away from dinner.
Tom sucked his teeth, and Mina whirled on him.
“What?” she said. “I thought she’d done absolutely nothing to deserve this. Sweetheart.”
Tom stared at her for so long that she worried she’d need to get the twins out of the way, to another table. Madison mattered less. If she was paying attention, she’d already seen everything from Tom that Mina would have liked to keep private.
But Tom set his jaw and turned unexpectedly to the boys. He cut Mina off with his entire body, inching his chair away from her. He peered at the twins, dubious.
“You’re really going to eat this food?” he asked them. Matteo gave him a robust nod.
Madison stood up and pushed away from the table.
“Madison, I don’t think—” Mina hissed, but what power did Mina have to keep this girl from following her mother? Madison lifted her dress with an elegant flick of the wrist and hurried across the lawn. From a few tables over, Jake Levins’s daughter, too, jumped to her feet. She raced after Madison, moving with longer strides.
Isabel had already vanished somewhere beneath the house. Mina tried to think of something she could do, any single thing that wouldn’t make the overall situation worse. She turned to the twins. They gazed back, impassive. They didn’t ask her any questions. Later, that would seem most chilling. Their lack of surprise at having been brought here, propped up, and then abandoned. This is what they expect, she thought. This is all they know to expect from him, from her. What are they going to learn from this? Later, when they understand that they were a part of this, what will they think was the point?
“You know Jim’s here with that girl,” Tom said, mumbling now. “That Erica girl they fired.”
Mina put her napkin on the table and began to stand up, but Tom locked his fingers around her wrist.
“No,” he said.
She froze, hovering above her chair, neither seated nor walking away.
“It’s not—it’s not about her,” Tom said. “I’m not unsympathetic, Min. I’m just, telling you. Trust me, for once. Don’t follow them. He is not your problem.”
“She’s my friend,” Mina tried, but her husband’s grip tightened.
“You want to lie to me all year,” he said through his teeth, “keep me in the dark, like I’m your idiot kid. That’s fine. I can look the other way. But right now, that’s not your husband. That’s not your problem. You sit down and you eat dinner with these little boys.”
He kept his hand around her wrist, and he put his other hand to her lap, her thigh. He knocked her purse to the ground.
“MADISON,” AMANDA CALLED, as she tried to close the last few feet left between them. “Please let me explain. I wasn’t trying to keep a secret from you.”
They had already reached the staircase, which led down to the lower level of the house, to the rooms by the pool.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said. “You should have had all the information. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I know that, Madison, I know.”
Someone had mentioned a ballroom down here, Amanda remembered now, at that excruciating party. She could hardly believe that she’d actually come here willingly that night. But I guess I did it again tonight, she thought. And then Madison opened a door tucked into the side of the house, and they were in a darkened room with polished maple floors and a mirror that ran the length of one wall.
The only light came from a single sconce at the far end, placed to illuminate the staircase that led back up into the house. A group of people stood in the middle of the room.
Amanda wanted to reach for Madison’s hand, but that was no way to communica
te anything. Holding hands achieved nothing. And besides, she knew now, with a certainty she’d avoided all year, that hers wasn’t a hand Madison would ever seek out again.
Twenty minutes ago, standing with Madison and trying desperately to intuit what her friend needed most, Amanda had seen this woman in the crowd and thought, it’s the yoga pants woman. She had needed no time to shuffle through recollections in her head, no time to think of faces she might have forgotten. She recognized the face as soon as she saw it. She knew it was the woman she’d seen in the city, with Bob.
Now that woman was facing them, standing with an older guy at her side. Amanda knew from her father’s past wrath that this was the former COO, that he’d once been Bob’s second in command. Two other people were facing them, their backs to Amanda. And then they became aware that someone had come into the room, and turned, and Bob and Isabel were staring at Madison.
There was a suspended quality to the silence in the room. Everyone’s hands looked uncomfortable in the spaces around their bodies.
“Why are you down here,” Madison said, hurling her voice at her father with something almost like a cough.
“Mad, get out,” Bob rasped. He was watching Jim McGinniss and the other woman, as if they might try to use Madison as a diversion, and escape.
“Madison, go back to the table.” Isabel was watching her husband.
“No,” Madison said. “What’s going on?”
Jim laughed, the sound echoing, eerie. He turned to Bob and raised his palms to face the ceiling.
“You wanna keep going with this?” he said. “In front of your kid?”
“This?” Bob said. “What is it we’re doing here, Jimbo? Do we call this extortion, harassment, or just bad behavior?”
Hearing him somehow made Amanda feel more frantic; it wasn’t enough to be controlling her own emotions if Bob D’Amico couldn’t control his. He had the power to change everything about the room, right now, but she didn’t think he understood that. He didn’t look like he understood anything now; he looked like a snarling dog, held back by a choke chain. Even though Isabel wasn’t so much as touching him.
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