Life and Other Inconveniences

by Higgins, Kristan

  Third thing—I don’t have much to do here. It’s been three weeks, and aside from that fabulous, fabulous trip to New York, I watch the aforementioned wild demons, swim in the heated pool, do yoga with Gigi sometimes and reassure my mother that I’m fine. I’m a little bored. It’s nice to be bored in paradise. I’m not complaining. Life at Sheerwater has been pretty incredible, I’m not gonna lie. Living in a house with a name, a cook (even a bad one), a driver (Charles is super nice), a pool, an ocean view . . . incredible is the exact right word.

  I’ve discovered stuff I didn’t know existed. A heated towel rack so I don’t catch a chill getting out of the soaking tub (soaking tub, another richie-rich thing). My closet has revolving racks. There are warming drawers in the kitchen, a cold storage pantry, a dry goods pantry (who knows?), and a fridge just for wine. There’s a wine cellar. An outdoor kitchen and bar by the pool, because one must have that, mustn’t one?

  Every day since we got here, I’ve had this tingly feeling in my stomach, like coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. I just wish Mikayla, Jenna and Annabeth could see this. Especially Mikayla, who always managed to work how much money her parents had into every conversation. I’ve been posting on Snapchat and Instagram here and there. Let them see.

  I try not to think about them, but I have too much downtime. My father is busy working, though he took me to a construction site the other day (not really my thing, but it made him happy to introduce me around). Mom is taking every client she can get through the interwebs, and when she’s not, she’s trying to oh so subtly take my mental health temperature. Gigi works every day in her office and takes a nap every afternoon from four till five. I take care of Donelle and her toe, but she’s kind of addicted to the Home Shopping Network, so I limit my time there. Helga hasn’t said a word to me since the first night, so I think our bonding is pretty much complete. I hang out at Jamilah’s house as much as I can, but as nice as she is, I don’t really want to push it there. I mean, I’m a stranger, and she and my father are separated, so having me taking up space might not be her happy place.

  She’s really cool, though. I asked if I could take a selfie with her and the boys, and she said, “Of course, honey!” and put her arm around me. It was a nice picture, though my skin looks like goat cheese next to theirs.

  Anyway, I need a project, and finding out what happened to Sheppard is a pretty big one. And I might even ask Jamilah to help me, since she works for Google, and Google knows everything about everyone.

  A project would be good.

  I honestly didn’t know how I would’ve gotten through this summer if we hadn’t come here. Mom said mean girls “harbor a deep sense of self-hatred and low self-esteem.” Gigi called them coyotes. I liked that better.

  But I still get a lump in my throat thinking about them. I know I shouldn’t miss them, but I miss them anyway. Not the coyote version . . . the old gang. The four of us. I’d give a lot to time travel back to last summer, which was the happiest, best, funnest time of my life.

  I don’t know what happened. I seriously don’t. One week, we were the same as we always were. The next week, I was out. Little things, like them all getting to lunch first and already engrossed in conversation when I got there. It used to be that Jenna and I walked together, since our lockers were on the same hall. All of a sudden, she was already gone. Annabeth and I always sat together on the bus, but then her mom was driving her. No explanation.

  In a blink, the three of them were different people. Annabeth seemed to feel at least a little guilty, but by the end of week one, she’d gotten over it. She always took orders.

  I just didn’t see this . . . alienation . . . coming. I didn’t see the meanness, and I feel so stupid. In some ways, it had been there all along . . . Jenna with her funny-but-mean comments about Mr. Stebbins and his hairpiece. Mikayla with her obsession over designer clothes and “jokes” about Lissandra, who had been her best friend in middle school. Annabeth, who’s always been such a follower, had stopped wearing purple because Mikayla told her it was an ugly color.

  I just didn’t think it would happen to me. I never dreamed I’d be jumped by my three best friends in the bathroom. I knew it was over by then, but even so, I didn’t expect it to be so awful. I cried so hard on that bathroom floor I thought I would break.

  And still, I miss them. My mom would die if I admitted that. She’d talk for days about how what I was feeling was normal, and okay, and everyone had these experiences, and the important thing was to learn from them. Don’t get me wrong; I love my mom, but her double duty as shrink and mother can be hard to handle.

  Genevieve, though, she understood. In the car going down to the city, I found myself telling her everything. She didn’t give me any advice or quote Psychology Today articles at me. Instead, she asked me some questions. How were my grades? (Stellar.) Was I getting recruited by any colleges? (A little? Stanford had been sending me e-mails about visiting, but didn’t they do that to everyone?) Had I been singled out for any academic awards? (Yes . . . Chemistry and Trig Excellence Awards.)

  “But that’s how it always was,” I said. “I tutored them. I’ve always been the dork of the group.”

  “Dear, don’t use that word. It’s so pedestrian. You’ve always been the intellectual of the group. The one who’s being recruited by the finest colleges. The one with flawless skin and remarkable eyes.”

  Mikayla had posted a picture of me on Snapchat with the caption tinted contacts make u look like an alien. Except I didn’t wear tinted contacts. Remarkable was a nicer way of thinking of it.

  “Your former friends are jealous, Riley dear. Last year, you weren’t a threat, since college wasn’t looming on the horizon. Last year, you hadn’t blossomed, I imagine. This year, they see you as you are—superior. Therefore, they’ve banded together like a pack of mewling coyotes, sensing that you’re the timber wolf in their midst, and trying to make you feel like a rabbit instead of what you are.”

  I liked the way she called me dear. And timber wolf. Yes, I liked timber wolf a lot.

  “Did anything like that ever happen to you?” I asked.

  It had. She told me all about it, admitting she’d been a bit of a snob herself at Foxcroft. (I snorted . . . How could you avoid being a snob at a place called Foxcroft Academy?)

  “I wouldn’t have classified myself as a coyote,” she said, “but looking back, I can see I never really gave some girls a chance. Which is different from turning on a friend, mind you.”

  “Were you ever . . . cut out?” I asked. I thought she might think it was a rude question, but she tipped her head, considering.

  “After Garrison—your great-grandfather—died, my friends would visit, or invite me to lunch, but I was never invited to anything to do with their husbands, or anything with couples.”

  “Because you were gorgeous and single and loaded,” I said.

  “Gorgeous and widowed and well-to-do, dear. Choose your words more carefully. They make such an impact. But yes.” She took a pair of sunglasses from her purse and put them on. “When I founded my company and began garnering a lot of attention, some of the other, more established designers became catty. A few started a whisper campaign about the treatment of my workers, or claimed I’d stolen their designs, or called me an imposter with too much time on her hands.” She paused. “Once, Giuliana Camerino got up and moved when I sat next to her at a fashion event,” she said. “It was quite hurtful at the time. And quite a public snub. It made Page Six.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  She lowered her sunglasses and looked at me. “I excelled,” she said, arching her eyebrow.

  I smiled. She was kind of awesome, this Genevieve London person.

  I didn’t want to like her too much, because of how she stranded Mom way back when and suggested an abortion. But I understood. Mom had been eighteen. Genevieve knew life was going to be hard, and s
he wanted to give Mom a way out that didn’t involve supporting her (and me).

  And my mom was the best. The youngest, the prettiest, the smartest and nicest mom of anyone. I knew how hard she worked to get through school, and it made me proud. She was so cute when she went into the city to her office, asking me if she looked okay, what jewelry she should wear.

  My mom was kind of perfect, to be honest. Overprotective and a little heavy on the advice, but hey. At least she cared. She was my best friend, and hardly anyone had a mother like that. Maybe that wouldn’t have happened if we’d stayed here on the Sheerwater tit, so to speak. Maybe Genevieve knew what she was talking about.

  And maybe—though I knew better than to ask—maybe she’d leave my mom some money. It’d be nice to have Mom be able to breathe a little. When she’d finished her PhD, Pop and I bought her a leather satchel from this really cool boutique in Wicker Park, and she cried when she saw it. She didn’t have a lot of nice things, and she never seemed to mind, but seeing how Gigi lived . . . well.

  Anyway, back to Sheppard. When I’d mentioned doing some research the other day, I knew I hit a nerve.

  So far, I’d done the following:

  1. Did a Google search for people who suspected they’d been force-adopted.

  2. Asked Gigi for a saliva sample (you should’ve seen her face). We used three different testing companies. You never know. Maybe Sheppard was out there, looking for her, too. Gigi said she had already given a DNA sample way back when, but now it’s kind of a fad, so more people might be doing it. And why not, right? She has plenty of money.

  3. Read all the old articles on Sheppard’s disappearance. They didn’t say much . . . just that he was missing, and it rained two days later, which didn’t help. There were no persons of interest in a kidnapping. No suspicious vehicles reported, no leads, nada.

  I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to be Sheppard. I mean, there’s not a real good outcome in his case, is there? I listen to enough true crime podcasts to know he’s probably dead. I remember being seven . . . second grade, Mrs. Schoenberg, my teacher, dressed like a duck on Halloween, and Mom had made me a chick costume that year, and it felt so special, matching the teacher. That winter, we had a big snowstorm, and school was closed for days. Pop and Mom and I went sledding at Caldwell Woods, and we got cocoa after.

  It was easy being seven. Seven was a nice age. You could read by yourself, but you were still little.

  I hope Sheppard didn’t suffer. I hope he wasn’t molested. At best, he was kidnapped and raised by some person who just really, really wanted a kid.

  I don’t think the odds were in his favor, though.

  I planned to go out to the woods near Birch Lake, where he’d last been seen. And I wanted to go through his room, but only if Gigi gave me the okay.

  It would be awfully nice to have someone to do this with. A friend, even if just for the summer. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be in the over-seventy crowd, or these stressed mothers lugging bags from Whole Foods into their gorgeous houses.

  I saw a boy about my age at the library, but he had headphones on and we did that awkward thing where just as we made eye contact, I looked away. Boys were way too hard, unless they were gay. Couldn’t really see going up to him and saying, “Hi! Are you gay? No? Okay, never mind.”

  I sighed.

  “Honey?” My mom poked her head in my room. “You coming down for cocktail hour?” She pulled a face.

  “Yes, I’ll have a martini,” I said. “Extra dry.”

  “Or a Shirley Temple. Or water. Or milk.”

  “Or formula,” I said. “I was just kidding. I’m gonna change first, though.” I paused. “Is anyone else coming? Anyone under fifty?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Anyone else?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Come down with me so Gigi can’t criticize my clothes.”

  I looked her up and down. Jeans and a boring blue oxford. “You could use a little pizzazz,” I said.

  “Don’t you start,” she said, hugging me. “One fashion critic in the family is enough.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Genevieve

  After my talk with the wretched Paul, I spent some time in my office, Googling suicide options under the guise of assisting Beverly with some issues on next year’s spring line. The truth was, Beverly hadn’t e-mailed me since I brought Riley down to the city, and I felt snubbed. She was supposed to update me twice a week.

  Then again, we hadn’t put anything in writing. It was really a courtesy, and we both knew it. The only thing Beverly wanted from me was my name. When we’d been in the showroom, she was lovely. But when I asked her if she’d like a few sketches for next year’s fall line, she gave me a look and said, “I think our team has everything well under control.”

  At least Riley had been in the dressing room and didn’t hear.

  I was no longer relevant to the company I founded.

  How many meetings had I granted Beverly to explain my corporate culture, my aesthetic, my hopes for the company? I was proud to have hired her myself out of a very distinguished pool of applicants. Obviously, I’d wanted a woman to take over, and I was doubly proud to pass the baton to an African American woman. One of the stipulations of selling the company had been that I’d choose my successor. The board of directors was wild about her, and profits were higher than ever.

  I supposed I hadn’t expected her to make the company so much hers. I didn’t blame her; I admired her. She’d been president of the company for fourteen years; the business was thriving.

  But Genevieve London Designs was founded because I’d needed something to walk alongside the Missing. It was founded after I’d crawled out of the cedar closet, so weighted down with grief over my son and husband that I could not even stand. My first designs were sketched in the middle of the nights when I woke up, terrified that Garrison was dead, then stunned when I realized it was true . . . and Sheppard was still out there, unfound. I shoved the Missing aside to do research on leathers and hardware and lining. I toured vacant factories in Newark, wanting my products to be made in America. I started a training program for craftsmanship for at-risk youth at Newark high schools and offered a job to every one of them who finished.

  I had been a visionary.

  Now I was just an old woman who was no longer needed at the company that bore my name, Googling articles on the best ways to die.

  Would Dr. Pinco prescribe me something on which I could overdose? He was clever, that one, and so far had only given me sleeping pills five at a time. How could I ensure that I wouldn’t simply do more damage to myself and end up exactly where I feared I’d be—a vegetative state, tied to a wheelchair or hospital bed in a nursing home? Cutting my wrists sounded ghastly, but if I had enough gin in my system, could I do it? It would be better than a gun, wouldn’t it?

  Drowning seemed to be my top choice. A few seconds of panic—ten? twenty?—then surrender. Drowners (who survived, obviously) describe a warm feeling of acceptance. One man even said it was the most wonderful feeling he’d ever experienced. A “lovely sense of peace,” he’d said. I could use a little of that.

  Also, drowning could be passed off as accidental, so that if I took out a life insurance policy, the suicide clause wouldn’t be invoked, and I could make Riley the beneficiary. I clicked around on Google for a few minutes. Unfortunately, insurance for a person my age only covered burial costs, and I already had that under my current plan.

  If people thought it was an accident, Emma wouldn’t have to experience another suicide. Not that I felt she would mind, really. It was one thing when she was eight and her mother was young and healthy. She had loved her mother. I don’t think she’d flick an eyelash toward my corpse, frankly. One would think I’d locked her in the basement those ten years. So far, she and I had avoided any intimate convers
ations, which was both a relief and a burden. I supposed I had to say something to her eventually. She’d been quite nosy about my health.

  When I read the obituaries, which becomes quite a habit as one ages, I lingered over the descriptions of the final moments. Surrounded by her family, so-and-so went home to her Heavenly Father or After a courageous battle, so-and-so died peacefully at home, her family at her side.

  My preferred death would be simply a massive stroke or heart attack, the way Garrison had gone. In that scenario, I’d die here. Maybe even in that same Adirondack chair, looking out over the Sound. Perhaps in bed, wearing the pink silk pajamas with black polka dots. Minuet would be cuddled at my side, looking mournful. No. I didn’t want my dog to suffer.

  There it was. The sum of one’s life. I didn’t want my dog to suffer any grief, since my other son was a wastrel. One granddaughter wouldn’t mourn me, and the other wouldn’t know I was gone. My great-granddaughter barely knew me. Donelle would be sad, but she was so matter-of-fact it was hard to picture her saying more than, “Welp, you had a good run, Gen. See you on the other side.”

  The person I really wanted holding my hand as I breathed my last was, of course, Sheppard.

  Where was he, my little boy? Was he alive? Did he remember the days with me, with us, the love and adoration that infused every moment of his first seven years? Did he feel betrayed and abandoned? Had he cried for me to help him?

  The Missing bit down hard, its teeth still razor sharp.

  God had failed me. You promised, I thought. You promised I would see him again, and You lied.