“It’s better this way,” she said. “You’ll see. Grandmother is so much stronger than me. She has things to teach you.”
She had been so sad for the last year. She hadn’t even bothered to hide the empty bottles of vodka in the bedroom, leaving them for the maids to clean up each morning. Outwardly, Eric’s mother was as beautiful as ever. But a light had shined in her eyes once. Eric realized now it wouldn’t reappear.
“I’ll see you when you return,” she said softly. “We’ll make a proper goodbye of it then.”
She watched apathetically as Garrett hustled Eric into his coat and out the door. The air was full of “see you soons” and “in a few days.” But when Eric turned, just before the door closed behind him, he caught a glimpse of Heather falling forward in the chair, face crumpling into her delicate hands. He wasn’t sure if the wail that sounded after the locks clicked was a distant siren or his mother.
Inside Grandmother’s Rolls, he turned to the old woman angrily. But before he could speak, Celeste spied the coin hanging around his neck.
“Take that off at once,” she ordered, holding out her hand.
Eric’s face screwed up in confusion. “What? No! It’s mine, Grandmother.”
“No, it belongs to me,” she said. “If you recall, Garrett offered it to me at the funeral, not you. In fact, it belonged to my husband, who gave it to your father.” Her hand beckoned insistently. “I offered it to a child mourning his father. But you are not a child any longer, Eric. Give it back.”
Eric’s eyes shone fiercely, glittering with rebellion. His entire life, everyone had been telling him what to do. At least his father used to jump in, shield him from the worst of it. He had taught him how to break the rules as much as how to obey them. Taken him to play catch in the park when he was supposed to be learning how to fence. Gotten pizza or Gray’s Papaya for dinner instead of eating coq au vin at the penthouse.
Dad would have let him keep the necklace. Eric was sure of it.
But Dad was gone. And his mother had let Eric go too.
There was no one else in his life but Grandmother, whose sharp, unwavering expression told him she, out of all of them, wasn’t giving up.
So, with a deep sigh, Eric unclasped the coin from around his neck and dropped it into her waiting palm. Maybe one day he’d find the courage to fight her. But today was not that day.
Present
Eric paged through the now-worn journal for what had to be the hundredth time. It was amazing how beat up the small black book had become in just a few days since his mother had given it to him. But when there was nothing to do but pore over the thing, he had practically memorized its strange, fragmented contents.
It was the journal his father was probably never supposed to keep. He had read the others, the ones intended for public record, the way all the de Vrieses kept papers to be stored eventually at endowed libraries or in state historical records. They were a “family of record,” as his grandmother used to say. Everyone was taught to act like it.
It was a habit that, even in his years apart from the clan, Eric had never been interested in breaking.
But unlike those records, which represented history written by its victors, this journal was something different, almost reading like a supplement to those more official histories. Its entries were chronological, but there were often months, even years between them. It was full of clues that historians usually sought between the lines of standard sources. Coded phrases that others would have read as non sequitur comments or the idiosyncrasies of a rich, frivolous man. But Eric suspected they masked secrets that his family would have wanted to hide. As such, they were infuriatingly opaque.
April 22, 1982
Johnny’s been tapped to make croutons. Three days of fighting, and I still don’t know if it was worth it. Did he know I wouldn’t have walked away otherwise? It’s better to keep him close. He doesn’t like being pushed out.
Tapping for croutons—that was obviously in reference to Janus, which tended to be shrouded in Caesar salad references, or something like it. The timing was right. In 1982, Jake de Vries would have been approximately twenty-two—a senior in college. But Johnny…was that who Eric thought it was? John was such a common name, that he couldn’t know for sure. But why else would his mother have given him the journal? The investigator had determined that Carson had also attended Princeton, just like Eric’s father. Had he been tapped there too?
August 28, 1983
Picked up Heather by the lakes. She was crying—I don’t want to even ask what J did this time. I should let her go, but I can’t. She deserves more than what he can give her. She deserves more than me too, but I’m determined to be better for her, no matter what Mother says.
Eric kept coming back to that one again and again. As far as he knew, his parents had met sometime in college, when his father was a senior and his mother just a freshman. She teased him about it incessantly—that he spent his weekends traveling to Princeton during those years instead of partying in New York as a young man. The stories had charmed a young Eric.
But if all that was true, who was this J? The one who hurt her?
September 8, 1983
Dad died today. He knew it was coming, apparently, even if the rest of us didn’t.
No one brought salad to the wake, but they asked me to toss some almost immediately. Johnny wouldn’t eat. I won’t pretend it didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t a surprise either. Poor guy can’t catch a break, or so he thinks.
Again with the salad references. Eric thought he understood that some. None of the Janus members had come to the funeral, but maybe his father had been summoned to a meeting? Something like that. But he didn’t understand why Johnny, whom he suspected was Carson, was so upset. What hadn’t he received?
There weren’t any entries after that for a while. Jonathan de Vries’s death from an aggressive lung cancer wasn’t something Eric knew much about, but he knew it was sudden. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, given the man was a lifelong smoker and cigar connoisseur. But anytime the subject came up when Eric was a child, someone changed it—even faster if his grandmother happened to be in hearing distance. The gap left in the family was still evident, even more than thirty-five years later.
May 11, 1985
Heather is pregnant. Bad timing, of course, with her graduation coming, but I’m over the damn moon. Maybe it’s just the thing to put all this ugliness behind us. Maybe Johnny can finally forgive the past and move on.
Again with the Johnny. What past? What had happened?
But that wasn’t the only interesting thing about the entry, which basically marked Eric’s own conception. His parents had also gotten married in 1985. A perfect June wedding. His mother had always played off the simple wedding at St. Mark’s as their own choice—neither of them wanted the fancy affair that no doubt Celeste would have desired. But she was also pregnant, a fact that had been skated over his entire life. He had once wondered how much of their marriage occurred to right that social wrong. But there was something gratifying in seeing just how, well, dedicated his father really was to the two of them.
January 8, 1986
Heather did famously. Strong girl.
Eric is a solid little brick. The doctors say he can’t see anything yet, but he knew who I was when he looked at me. Gray eyes, just like his mother’s. I swear he has my hands. How could someone this small own so much of us already?
J offered me his wishes, but I wonder if it’s to make sure I’m going with him to Suwon. He’s nervous about the Russian deal. I just wish it wasn’t happening now. I hate to leave Heather and the boy so soon.
Eric brushed a finger over the entry—one of the few written testimonies of his father’s devotion on the day of his birth. He’d spent this last one with Jane during visiting hours, wishing to God he had some means of bribing the Rikers guards for some conjugal time with his wife.
His eyes lingered on the words before dropping to the final sentence
. What deal with the Russians? What was his father and the mysterious J doing in Seoul at the end of the Cold War?
Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to find out. There were only two entries left intact, as several pages had been ripped out of the book near the end, and they were nearly two years apart.
January 30, 1987
All the transport between Hwaseong and Goseong is in place. Honestly, if it wasn’t Johnny asking, I wouldn’t be anywhere near this. But I don’t know what else to do. He just can’t seem to let her go, even with this new racket with the airline. Those girls seem like trouble too.
But Heather is worth it. I’d blow up the planet for her and Eric, much less a few Ruskies.
Was the airline the same one Jane’s mother and her friends worked for? The dates lined up, just a month or so from when Jane was likely conceived.
But there was nothing more than a final entry, written in a much more jagged print, almost like Jacob didn’t want to be writing it at all.
December 27, 1989
Home, home. Heather won’t talk to me for missing Christmas, but it couldn’t be helped. We had to clean things up. Everything’s gone to hell now that the Soviets are done for. J thinks Gorbachev can still pull the country back together—he won’t forgive me for thinking otherwise.
The ships, the trucks, everything is back where they should be.
J and I are done for good.
After reading the last cryptic lines again and again, Eric finally set the book on the visitors’ table with a smack. The words meant no more to him now than they had two days ago. What had ended the strange friendship, fraught as it was with animosity? What in the hell did it have to do with DVS and the fall of the Soviets?
Eric turned to the door of the visitors’ room. He needed to talk this through with someone. What in the fuck was taking them so long? He’d been in the courthouse jail all fucking day while the lawyers played courtroom tennis. Was he going back to Rikers tonight or not?
His suit—the one Jane had brought him during her last visit—fit poorly. Too baggy around the waist. He had undoubtedly lost weight over the last two weeks. The food at Rikers was fucking disgusting. The coffee was the worst of all.
The door opened, and Eric lurched in his chair. Fucking hell, he was a jumpy mess.
“What’s going on?” he barked before everyone had even filed inside. Levi Gellert, the primary counsel on his defense team, followed by Skylar and Brandon, posing as counsel but really there for moral support, and the bailiff.
And one person…one person still missing.
What if it had gone terribly? What if, by some fucked-up chance, he had been sentenced to years and years away, without even saying goodbye to his wife?
“She’s still not back?” Eric demanded. “Jesus Christ, Skylar, does she even know the trial is happening?”
Something deep in him deflated. He knew it was unfair, but a part of him hoped that Jane would choose him over her lying, emotionally abusive mother. Because really, that’s what Yu-na was, in his opinion.
Skylar sighed. “She knows, Eric. We’ve been in contact for the last few days. But she still hasn’t found Yu-na. I just spoke to her, and she was at a doctor’s office. Getting—getting the ultrasound done.”
Eric stiffened. “She’s at the doctor without me too?”
Again, unfair. But good God, couldn’t the woman wait for him for anything?
Skylar took a seat in front of him next to the other lawyer. “Eric, you know she wants to be here. She’s just trying to do the right thing.”
Eric sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm himself. It didn’t work. So he did it again. And again. “Crosby,” he said finally. “We’ve been friends a long time. I like you. You know I do. But I swear to God, if you don’t stop defending her decision to run off like an idiot without anyone there to help her, I’m going to—”
“You’re going to stop it right there, chief.” Brandon cut in front of Skylar, with a dangerous tone Eric recognized. He recognized it because the same possessive emotions that powered it were pumping through his veins right now. It was primal, this feeling. Fucking terrifying the way it wouldn’t abate.
Which was why, of course, Eric didn’t hold back. His chair legs screeched on the linoleum as he stood up in a rush. “Stop what, asshole? Stop asking completely reasonable fucking questions? Stop wanting the right to know where the fuck my wife and unborn child are? Jesus fucking Christ, Brandon! You’re telling me you wouldn’t be losing it if Skylar ran off with Jenny and you were locked up?”
“Eric,” Brandon said through gritted teeth, trying and failing to maintain calm. “Man. Breathe. Just breathe, and tell us what you want, all right?”
“What I want? What I want?” Before he could help himself, Eric lunged over the table at Brandon, and just managed to snag his tie before the big man could jump out of reach. “I want to get the fuck out of this rat trap and find my fucking wife! THAT’S WHAT I WANT!”
The two men seethed at each other—Eric for want of control, Brandon trying desperately not to react the way he was trained. Eric knew he was playing with fire. Brandon had been raised on the streets. He was seriously tempting fate here—when it came to fight or flight, Brandon would always choose the former.
“Careful, brother,” Brandon said, his tone walking the line between compassion and threat as he unwound Eric’s fingers from his tie. “It’s not me you’re mad at. Remember that.”
Eric sucked in a breath, and as the new oxygen flowed into his overheated brain, he found he was able to let go of the silk. Like he was releasing a lifeline, he slumped back into his chair and fell forward to cradle his throbbing head in his hands. He was going crazy in here. He really fucking was.
“Please,” he begged. “Give me some good news. Tell me I can get the fuck out of here.”
“You can get out of here.”
At the sound of Levi Gellert’s voice, the three of them all turned to face the oddly calm attorney.
Eric sat up, unsure if he was imagining it. “I—I can?”
Levi nodded. “Everything is finished.”
Eric turned to the bailiff. “I’m free to go?”
The large man simply nodded.
Eric was done with words. He was done with waiting.
He jumped up, and without another word, strode out of the room, the bailiff jogging behind to escort him out properly.
“Eric! Eric, where are you going?”
He didn’t know who called the words. Whether they were male or female. His lawyer, the police, or his friends. Nor did he answer. Because all he knew was that he needed to get out. He needed to find transportation.
He needed to find his wife.
Part II
Couplet
“Jetstream”
I floated on the jetstream
A pillow
A mist
And flew within your thoughts
’Til I wondered if you existed
At all.
But the dawn, it called,
An echo
A gleam
And I heard your voice cry out for me
And followed it, a flame
Snuffed.
Out.
—a poem from the journal of Eric de Vries
10
2009
“We can’t stop fighting.”
I pushed my black and white polka-dotted glasses up my nose. Skylar was staring gloomily out the window of our apartment. Outside, the first real snow of the year was falling on the fire escape, and with her knees pulled up to her chest, perched on the sill in her preferred oversized lounge clothes, she looked more like a Dickensian child than a Harvard law student.
“You and Patrick?” I set my textbook down on the coffee table. These conversations were becoming as predictable as the moon’s cycles.
She turned with sad green eyes. “Yeah. He’s…he says it’s me. He says I invent reasons to be upset with him.”
I scowled. “Well, that�
�s textbook gaslighting if I ever heard it.”
“What’s gaslighting?”
“It’s…”
I tapped my lip with my pencil, trying to remember how my dad described it. It helped sometimes, having a father who was a shrink. He gave me a vocabulary for these things pretty early, although one of the most awkward conversations of my life was his version of the sex talk a month before I left for college. Well, that one was less about sex, which I already understood, and more about men. And some of the things that they could do to make women stay in terrible relationships. His greatest fear for me, he always said, was that I would settle for someone who would convince me I was worth anything less than the best. That I would stay when I didn’t have to.
As cringe-worthy as I’d found that conversation, that’s how I learned about gaslighting. Dad really was before his time in so many ways.
“It’s when someone tries to make you feel crazy,” I said. “Unstable, hysterical, etcetera. Like everything you think is all in your head.”
“Why’s it called gaslighting?” Skylar wondered.
“Hell if I know.”
But she had already pulled her phone out to check Wikipedia. “It says here it started with a play written in the forties called Gaslight. A husband convinces his wife she’s crazy by manipulating things in their house. Like turning down the gaslights.” She set her phone down. “I don’t think Patrick is doing that. He just gets frustrated with me. I guess I’m taking this long-distance thing harder than I have to.”
“Or he is and he’s projecting his fears and missteps onto you. Why else would he constantly be accusing you of cheating when you practically live like a nun?”
The Love Trap (Quicksilver Book 3) Page 9