And Then Everything Unraveled

by Jennifer Sturman

  There was yet another pause, and when Charley spoke next, it sounded like her teeth were clenched from the effort it took to control her temper.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll feel her out over the weekend. If she still seems to be having difficulty coming to terms with everything, then I’ll take her to see someone. Will that satisfy you?”

  Patience—and by now I was positive it was Patience, because who else could it be?—must have eventually agreed, because the topic changed to logistics for the weekend in Southampton. But I was no longer paying attention.

  I knew it was wrong to listen in on private conversations, but I was glad I’d heard what I’d heard. Because there was no way I could ask Charley for help now.

  In fact, I shouldn’t even have let her know I still thought T.K. was alive, and I definitely shouldn’t tell her anything about my search for her. It would only lead to daily sessions with a child psychiatrist or something like that. And it sounded like Patience was all ready to haul me off to whichever insane asylum was the mental institution of choice for the offspring of New York’s power and social elite.

  The truth was, if I were my aunts, I’d probably be thinking along the same lines. To them, I must seem as deluded as the alien abduction and polar pirate people.

  But I wasn’t deluded. I couldn’t explain it, not rationally, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel it. And I did feel it—with every atom in my body.

  I didn’t care what everyone else thought.

  T.K. was still alive. She had to be. And I knew I’d find her.

  But it looked like I was going to have to do it on my own.

  Ten

  I opened and shut the door to the loft again, this time with a gentle slam, and Charley’s voice softened to a murmur. A moment later, she emerged from her bedroom, looking so worry-free that I almost wondered if I’d misunderstood her end of the conversation. But I didn’t know how else to interpret what I’d heard.

  Regardless of what she might be thinking about my mental state, Charley definitely approved of my taste in ice cream. She scooped big helpings into bowls for us both, and then she insisted on a detailed account of my day. So I tried to look as worry-free as she did as I told her all about Mr. Seton and Natalie and the welcome I’d received from the Flying Monkeys. And while I carefully excised any mention of static-filled messages from unknown numbers, epiphanies, or satellite photos, I did tell her about Quinn—not that there was much to tell.

  Charley still found it incredibly exciting, and she wanted to role-play what I should say when I saw him next. “Guys love talking about themselves,” she said, spooning out more java mocha fudge. “What is Quinn into?”

  “Did you miss the part where I completely choked in his presence? Besides, according to Natalie, he’s not into anything,” I said. And I explained about the Apathy Alliance.

  “He’s a teenage boy—they’re every bit as insecure as teenage girls, and usually more so. The apathy thing is probably just an act.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure.

  Over the next few days, I did catch the occasional glimpse of Quinn at school, but I didn’t get a chance to try out any of Charley’s suggestions. Every time I saw him, he was holding court on the stairwell landing, and the Alliance minions around him functioned like a human force field.

  Meanwhile, I was spending every free moment scouring the Web for information about T.K. and the Polar Star, but I didn’t come up with anything new. I’d e-mailed the bloggers who’d posted the satellite photos, but I hadn’t heard back, and “Out of Area” didn’t call again. The only other messages I got were from Erin and Justin. And, of course, from Charley, who was determined to do the entire guardian thing right and make up for any early missteps.

  This mostly meant including vegetables in whatever we ordered in, since she’d quickly abandoned any pretense of knowing how to cook, and a single attempt to help with my homework made it painfully obvious that she was just as clueless as I was when it came to science.

  And that wasn’t the only thing we had in common. We liked the same magazines and music and TV shows. We even used the same brand of toothpaste and drank the same kind of soda. By Friday, it felt like I’d known Charley my whole life, and like there’d never been a time when we hadn’t eaten takeout together while watching teen movie classics, which was rapidly becoming our standard dinner routine. She did go out one night with a Swedish guy named Lars, but otherwise evenings were as tame as they’d been at home.

  Either way, it was a relief when the weekend finally rolled around. Even if you didn’t plan on staying long, starting a new school wasn’t the least stressful thing. And even if two days with Patience, her husband, and the Flying Monkeys wasn’t what I’d choose if I had any choice, I was looking forward to sand and ocean.

  According to Charley, that was just about all I could look forward to. As soon as I got home from school on Friday, we set out for my grandparents’ house in Southampton. My grandparents wouldn’t actually be there—they spent most of their time in Palm Beach—but from what Charley had told me, I wouldn’t be missing much.

  “I still think I was adopted,” she said from behind the wheel of her Mini Cooper. She drove well but way too fast, and she took special joy in cutting off drivers of big SUVs, considering it part of her personal effort to lower carbon emissions. She had that in common with T.K., if nothing else.

  “Reggie—his full name is Reginald Phineas Baxter Truesdale, and he’s even the Fifth, if you can believe it, because who wouldn’t want to keep a name like that going—anyhow, he’s not the most spontaneous guy,” said Charley. “When the weather’s good, he plays golf at his club in the country. When the weather’s bad, he plays squash and backgammon at his club in the city. And no matter what the weather’s like, he drinks a lot of scotch.”

  My grandmother didn’t sound any better. “You know the phrase ‘nature abhors a vacuum’?” Charley asked. “Well, Adele Kittredge Truesdale abhors a vacuum, too. Since Reggie hardly talks, Old Addie has to fill the void.” I didn’t think Charley would appreciate my pointing out that Old Addie seemed to have passed this trait along to her youngest daughter since it argued against her whole adoption theory.

  Anyhow, it turned out that New Yorkers’ idea of the beach was actually most people’s idea of a suburb near the ocean. The town of Southampton had a lot of upscale boutiques and cafes, but once we passed through the commercial district we ended up in a neighborhood of tree-lined streets and shingled houses. Only the faint taste of salt in the air hinted at the Atlantic nearby.

  As Charley drove on, the trees shading the streets began to get taller and the houses started getting bigger and fancier. Then you couldn’t tell anymore since high green hedges started hiding the houses from view. Finally, at the very end of a dead-end street, she swung the car through a gate that was almost hidden in the highest set of hedges yet. “Home sweet home,” she announced. “At least, one of them.”

  A long gravel drive stretched before us, curving into a wide loop in front of the house. But calling it a house would be like calling Godzilla a sweet little gecko. The design was traditional—silvery-gray shingles with white-painted gables—but it was the size of a city block.

  There’s a crazy amount of Internet money in Silicon Valley, and a few of the tech billionaires have gone sort of nutty finding ways to spend it, but most people are pretty understated. There are a lot more hybrids than Ferraris, and the same aesthetic tends to apply to houses.

  This, on the other hand, was totally out of sync with “less is more.” I’d known the Truesdales were wealthy, but it was still way beyond what I’d expected.

  “Cozy, isn’t it?” said Charley. “Wait until you see the place in Florida. It has a fountain. With cherubs.”

  “How—?” I started to ask. But even T.K., who believes that every question deserves an answer, doesn’t think it’s polite to talk about money.

  Charley must have guessed what I wanted to know. �
��It all goes back to the first Reginald Phineas Baxter Truesdale.”

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  Charley parked the car to one side of the drive, slipping it into a narrow slot between a Mercedes and a BMW. “You really want to know?” she asked. “Most Truesdales don’t like to be reminded of the roots of the great Truesdale fortune.”

  “Why? Was he a slave dealer or a bootlegger or something like that? Or—oh my God, was he in the Mafia?”

  She laughed. “That would definitely explain a lot about Patty. No, Reggie One was a coal tycoon in the nineteenth century. He pioneered new ways of strip mining—you know, when you slice off the top of a mountain to get at the coal, rather than going to all the trouble of digging for it? And while he was at it, he also pioneered new ways of abusing his workers.”

  “Oh,” I said, digesting this as we retrieved our overnight bags from the car. “That sounds sort of evil.”

  She gave a wry smile. “We’re descended from a long line of evil people.”

  Suddenly, T.K.’s passion for all of her causes made sense like it never had before. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with trying to help people and save the planet and everything, obviously, but she did get carried away sometimes. Now I wondered if she was also trying to atone for her family’s past.

  A man in a white shirt and dark trousers met us at the front door. At first I thought he was Patience’s husband, but his name was Frederick, and he was sort of like a butler. He offered to show me to my room, but Charley thanked him and said she’d take care of it herself.

  She led me up a polished staircase and down a long hallway. Everything was carefully informal, with lots of cotton fabrics and wicker, but it still managed to look fabulously expensive. “Frederick would’ve put you in a guest room at the other end of the house, but I want you close by for moral support,” said Charley.

  “Will I need moral support?” I asked.

  “You’ll be fine. I’m the one who’ll need help. Now, I thought you might want to stay in your mom’s old room. But only if you want to.”

  She tried to say this casually, but I could tell she was worried that mentioning my mother might upset me. And I wasn’t sure how to play it. How was I supposed to react if I’d “come to terms with everything” and didn’t still think T.K. was alive? Like her room would make me sad? Or like I’d want to stay there, because it would be a point of connection?

  “Um, I guess that sounds good,” I said, deciding to go with ambivalent, which was easy since it was close to what I actually felt.

  The room was a couple of doors down from Charley’s, and she seemed relieved when I didn’t burst into tears on the threshold. “We have fifteen minutes or so to get settled before dinner,” she told me. “I can come get you when it’s time to go downstairs. Or maybe you should come get me? I don’t think I can handle another lecture on punctuality from Patty, and you’re much better at it than I am.” This was true, but only because just about anybody had to be more punctual than Charley.

  After she left, I set my bag on a low upholstered bench next to the window, which looked out on the beach and the ocean beyond. The sun was just starting to set, and the light was all gold and glimmery on the water. It was hard to believe that less than a week ago I’d been at Ross’s Cove, at the exact same time of day but on the opposite coast.

  I didn’t have much to unpack, so I spent the time exploring T.K.’s room. Somebody—and I knew it couldn’t have been my mother—had decorated the room in pastels and chintz, but it was still as uncluttered and impersonal as a hotel, like anything that had ever belonged to T.K. had been packed away. The only thing I knew for sure was hers was a stack of Outward Bound brochures I found in a desk drawer.

  T.K. had gone on a bunch of Outward Bound programs when she was younger. She’d liked them so much that she’d been threatening to send me for years, describing it as “an important opportunity to acquire self-sufficiency.” I knew I could always fake appendicitis and get myself medevaced out if she insisted on packing me off to the wilderness, but fortunately it never came to that.

  I’d mostly blocked out her rapturous descriptions—I mean, could using leaves as toilet paper really be such a thrill?—but flipping through the brochures reminded me of something: One of her trips had been a six-week camping excursion in Alaska. The brochure for it was right there in the stack with the others.

  It read like the script for a horror movie, but I found all of the breathless guarantees about teaching Arctic survival skills (“Learn to identify edible lichen!”) strangely comforting.

  Dinner was served precisely at half past seven in the dining room. This was the first I’d seen of Patience, Jeremy, and the twins since we’d arrived, but the house was so big it was possible they had their own wing.

  According to Charley, Patience and Jeremy had met in law school and immediately recognized each other as soul mates. They even worked together, doing something complicated in the intersection of law and finance.

  Jeremy looked just as blond and highly strung as Patience, but they were both nice enough at dinner. Jeremy was on the quiet side, which might explain how Grey came by his own conversational grace, but Patience asked me lots of questions about school and my impressions of New York so far.

  She didn’t eat much, so she had plenty of time to talk, but it was more like she was trying to make me feel at home. Maybe to her, convening this family weekend was part of fulfilling her responsibilities. And I had to admit, I kind of admired her no-nonsense directness, though I could see how it might be an annoying quality in a sibling. She said what she thought, without trying to sugarcoat it or hide her motives, and she was usually on target even if she wasn’t tactful.

  Gwyneth and Grey were nice enough, too, if by nice enough you mean speaking when spoken to with as little animation as a person could have without being in a coma. I was next to Gwyneth, and by accident I’d reached for her water glass when we first sat down. As a result, I learned the hard way that what looked like water was actually straight vodka. Judging by how Grey sipped from his own water glass, I had a feeling it’d been filled from the same bottle.

  “Delia, who is this Thaddeus J. Wilcox person?” Patience asked over the raspberry sorbet we had for dessert.

  “Thad? He’s like my mother’s right-hand guy at TrueTech,” I said.

  “I’ve been trying to reach him all week and he hasn’t returned any of my calls. You do own the majority of TrueTech’s shares now, and it’s never too early to start laying the foundation for the future. Temperance was quite explicit about this Thad person taking the lead on training you. I’m surprised by his lack of follow-up.”

  I was even more surprised than she was. Thad was big on follow-up, and I knew that keeping a low profile wouldn’t keep me safe for long. But it turned out I hadn’t been keeping a low profile, because Patience had been calling to remind him about me. It didn’t make any sense. “He’s probably been swamped without my mother there,” I said, adding a silent prayer that he would stay swamped indefinitely.

  Patience looked like she wanted to pursue this topic further, but Gwyneth, who’d polished off the contents of her water glass between the Chilean sea bass and the sorbet, broke in at just the right moment. “May we be excused?” she asked.

  “It depends,” said Patience. “What are you planning on doing?”

  “A friend’s having some people over,” she said.

  “Which friend?” asked Jeremy.

  “Quinn Riley,” said Gwyneth. “And yes, his parents will be there and no, there won’t be any drinking or illegal activities of any kind.” I could see that her fingers were crossed under the table, but this only registered dimly through the small spasm of brain paralysis caused by the mention of Quinn’s name.

  “Oh, then that’s fine,” said Patience. “In fact, why don’t you take Delia with you? It would be good for her to get to know some of the other boys and girls from the right families.” Then she added, turning to me, “And Qui
nn’s father runs a very successful hedge fund. Energy investments, mostly, but he may do some high-tech. Connections are very important in the business world, and you’re never too young to start making them.”

  “Is that Hunter Riley?” asked Charley. She’d been on her best behavior all through dinner, though I could tell she’d secretly been counting how many times Patience had used the word “appropriate.” But now there was a strange edge to her voice.

  “Uh-huh,” said Grey, thus doubling his contribution to the evening’s discourse. He’d also said “thanks” when his mother had handed him the salt.

  Charley looked at me like there was more to what she was saying than the words themselves. “Delia, I didn’t realize—I didn’t put the names together. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

  Patience gave an impatient shake of her head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charity. That was all ages ago. Delia, go with Gwyneth and Grey and have a good time.”

  I should have been torn. If I was trying to prove how well I was adjusting, then it seemed like I should go. But Charley clearly had something against Quinn’s father. With the exception of her blood relatives and Helga, Charley liked everyone, so this was weird.

  But I’d also been spending a lot of time thinking about what I’d say to Quinn when I saw him next. I’d even sunk to a whole new level of pathetic by practicing in front of the bathroom mirror. So I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to offset my previous stunning displays of idiocy.

  “I’ll go for a little while, I guess,” I said, trying to sound mildly reluctant for Charley’s sake.

  “Okay. But promise to call if you want to come home and the twins aren’t ready to leave yet,” she said, the edge still in her voice.

  “I’m sure the kids can get there and back on their own,” said Patience. “They won’t even have to drive. The Rileys bought the old Aronson house a few years ago. They’re just up the beach.”