Debbie walked out of the room and slammed the door behind her. She was fuming in a black rage when she got downstairs, found Jack in the living room of their apartment, and told him what had happened.
“Do you realize I told her that one of them had stolen it, and not only does she not believe me, she doesn’t care. I think she’s losing her mind.”
“Or reclaiming her independence. Personally, I’d prefer it if she was senile. And the old man has been telling her to open her doors wider. I heard him. We’re never going to have the influence we did before, if she does that. We’ve been the only voices in her head for fourteen years since her boy died, and her only friends. Talk about ungrateful. What do we do about the box now?”
“Hang on to it, sell it, whatever we want. It won’t do us any good to put it in one of their rooms. She forbid me to search their rooms with you. She trusts them. Shit, a week ago she didn’t even know them. Now they’re her best friends.” Jack took a long swig of bourbon from his flask then, and Debbie held a hand out. He handed it to her, and she finished the rest.
“I want to get those bastards out of here,” Jack said with a venomous look. “She won’t listen to us again until we do.” She was slipping through their fingers, and they both knew it. For fourteen years, they had had control of her, and now suddenly she was slowly moving back into the world, and once she did, it was over for them, and everything they loved about the job would be ruined.
* * *
—
Meredith was still angry after Debbie left the room. She sat thinking about it for a minute, asking herself if she thought one of her current guests had stolen the Fabergé box, and she couldn’t imagine it. She didn’t want to believe it of them, but she couldn’t think who else it would be. And no one else had been in the house except Jack and Debbie since the earthquake. None of their day cleaners had come in, and they were all longtime employees too. The box had to be misplaced somewhere, put away for security. It was the only possible explanation, and she trusted Jack and Debbie implicitly.
She was still thinking about it when the phone on her desk rang. Debbie usually answered, but she didn’t, so Meredith answered it herself, sounding distracted, and she was stunned to hear her daughter’s voice on the line. They hadn’t spoken in at least two months. Kendall never answered her calls, and even when Meredith left her a voicemail, she didn’t return the call, or waited a month to do so. She’d been planning to call her the night of the earthquake, but her last two calls to her had gone unanswered. Kendall called her when she felt like it, at her own convenience.
“Kendall?” she said, sounding surprised. The phones hadn’t been working right after the earthquake, except for cellphones, and now full service had been restored.
“Mom? Why didn’t you let me know you were okay?” She sounded annoyed not to have heard from her mother.
“Our Internet was down at first, and the house lines didn’t work. I could have called you on my cellphone, but you never pick up anyway.”
“You could have sent me a text,” she said practically.
“True. And you could have called me. I pick up when I see your number.” Unlike Kendall, when she saw her mother’s.
“If Jack and Debbie don’t get it first. I always think they don’t give you my messages.”
“Why would they do that?” She knew Kendall didn’t like them. Meredith had always suspected she was jealous of how close her mother was to them. But they had always been there for her, and Kendall never was.
“Are you okay? Is the house okay?”
“A lot of broken glass, but this house is solid, nothing major broke, some of the paintings fell down and the frames broke. We don’t have full power yet, but hopefully we will in a few days, or maybe in a week or two. It was a huge shake-up and quite frightening. I have six of my neighbors staying with me, and two little kids. Their houses took a harder hit than mine did, and are pretty severely damaged, so I invited them to stay here.”
“Your neighbors? Do you even know your neighbors?” Kendall sounded shocked. Her mother, the famous recluse, had neighbors staying with her?
“I didn’t until the earthquake, but I have room for them, and they’re very nice. Arthur Harriman, the concert pianist, lives next door, and he’s one of them.”
“Isn’t he blind?” Kendall sounded amazed by everything her mother was saying to her.
“Yes, he is. He has a young man living with him to help him, but he’s busier and livelier than the rest of us, at eighty-two.”
“I was worried about you. The coverage on TV looked awful, fires burning out of control, the bridges damaged and closed, people buried under houses.”
“I’m fine. How are you? We haven’t spoken in a while.”
“We’re fine. I’ve been worried about Julia. She dropped out of school, and is trying to be an actress in L.A. Dad has seen her a few times. She’s been very difficult about it. I think she wants to follow in your footsteps.” Kendall didn’t sound pleased about it. She still blamed everything on her mother, and never on Scott.
“Or your father’s.” Kendall never blamed him for his career, only her mother.
“I want to come out and see her one of these days.”
“Why don’t you come to San Francisco when you do? You haven’t been here in ages.” Kendall hadn’t, and she still didn’t want to. It had depressed her profoundly every time she did. Her brother’s room was still intact, her mother hiding from the world. Jack and Debbie, who acted as though they owned Meredith. It was too much for her.
“Maybe you could meet us in L.A.?”
There was a long silence at Meredith’s end, and then she answered. “Maybe I will. I’d like to see Julia.”
“She looks a lot like you.” So did Kendall, but she never acknowledged it. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right. I was afraid you might be hurt when we didn’t hear from you.” But it had still taken her several days to call her mother. Her instinct never was to just reach out and call her.
“It was very unpleasant, but I’m fine. Actually, I’m volunteering at a shelter for the people who lost their homes, or can’t get into them because they’re damaged. The city is going to be a mess for a long time.”
“I’ll let you know if I go to L.A.,” Kendall said to her in a gentler voice. “Julia says she’s not ready to see me yet. I think she’s afraid I’ll try to talk her out of an acting career.”
“And will you?”
“I tried, but she says it’s the only thing she wants to do. I’d rather she was here in New York, going to school, or in a sensible job, but that’s not what she wants. Dad thinks she has talent, and he’s arranged a few auditions for her.”
“That’s nice of him,” Meredith said coolly. She still didn’t like hearing about Scott, or even the mention of his name. “I see that his last two films did extremely well,” Meredith said generously.
“He won an Oscar for both of them, which is pretty amazing,” Kendall added. Meredith had won an Oscar at the height of her career, but Kendall had never been proud of her. She hadn’t gotten the mother she wanted, a normal, ordinary bourgeois mother who wasn’t a movie star. They had both been unlucky. Meredith had a daughter who never wanted to talk to her, but at least she had called to make sure she was alive. “Take care of yourself, Mom. It’s probably still dangerous, with things falling. It sounds like a lot of people got hurt.”
“I was never in danger,” Meredith said gently. And Jack and Debbie took good care of her, which she didn’t say to her.
“I’m glad,” Kendall said. “I’ll call soon.” It had shocked her that it had never occurred to her mother to get in touch with her after the earthquake, and say she was okay. Kendall hadn’t tried to call her for the first few days either. It was sad for both of them that their relationship had deteriorated so severely over the years. They both hung up feelin
g nostalgic, remembering the old days when Kendall was young, and Justin was still alive, before everything changed and Meredith’s world fell apart. Meredith was still sitting at her desk, staring into space, thinking about it, when Ava stuck her head in the door and asked if she was ready. It woke Meredith out of her reverie.
“Sorry. My daughter called from New York. I forgot to call her to tell her I was okay. It never occurred to me,” she admitted, feeling guilty. All it did was tell them how far they had drifted apart in the last fourteen years. And she barely knew her granddaughter, Julia. Meredith recognized that some of it was her fault. She had disconnected from the world, and everyone in it, even her daughter. Maybe Arthur was right, and it was time to reconnect again. She almost felt ready to.
She grabbed a denim jacket and put sneakers on, and took the pile of clothes to donate, and two minutes later she was out in the hall, where Ava and Tyla were waiting for her.
“Where are the children?” she asked Tyla.
“They’re with Debbie, she said she’d make cookies with them, and Arthur is going to give them another piano lesson.” Tyla smiled and Meredith wondered if it was worth risking her husband’s fury to work at the shelter, but Tyla seemed to think so and was taking a stand.
They drove to the Marina and spent the day there, each one at their assigned tasks. Meredith was sent to the children’s room again, to entertain them and give their parents a break. She read them stories, put them down for a nap, and fed them lunch with the other volunteers. Tyla was at the first aid station, and Ava was in the kitchen this time, helping to make soup in enormous vats, and washing pots afterward. They all looked tired and rumpled by the time they drove back to Meredith’s home again.
“I’m exhausted,” Meredith admitted. Several times during the day, she had thought of the Fabergé box, and tried to imagine any of her new friends stealing it. She just couldn’t. It didn’t compute. Even for Peter, who had no money to speak of. They all seemed like honest people, and stealing something of value from her home seemed so out of character. She couldn’t imagine it, and was sure it would show up at some point and prove her right, especially to Debbie, who thought them all profiteers and thieves, out to take advantage of Meredith. She appreciated how protective Debbie was of her, but in this group, she was sure it wasn’t necessary.
All the men came home shortly after they did, and looked just as tired. Peter had run into Charles Chapman at the OES office, and had invited him to dinner, and hoped Meredith wouldn’t mind. She didn’t, and was happy to see him when he came. Even Andrew seemed more subdued that night. He had dealt with a steady stream of emergencies at the hospital, and didn’t comment when Tyla told him she had gone back to work at the shelter.
Debbie had prepared a simple meal of pasta with basil from the garden, and she’d defrosted steaks for those who wanted them. Meredith noticed that Charles and Arthur were engaged in a long conversation, and he and Peter seemed to have made friends. Then over coffee, Charles came to sit with Meredith. She had talked to Tyla and Ava all through dinner about what they’d seen and done that day at the shelter. It was exhausting, but invigorating to be helping people.
“How are you faring with your hotel here?” Charles asked her with a warm smile. “Arthur has been trying to talk me into going to his concert in Shanghai in November. He almost has me convinced. Are you going?”
She laughed. “Shanghai is a little extreme for a woman who’s officially been a recluse for fourteen years.”
“It might do you good. And it would be interesting. He’s playing at a new concert hall there. He certainly hasn’t slowed down. He’s also playing in Paris, Hong Kong, and Sydney this winter. My life is embarrassingly dull compared to his. I hear you’ve been working at the shelter in the Marina.”
“It feels good to be doing something to help.”
“I think you’re already doing quite a lot here.” He smiled at her. “We’re hoping that this part of the city will have power by next week.”
“We’re lucky we have the generator,” she said. “And I’ve gotten used to battery-operated lanterns all over the house.”
“Certain parts of the city won’t have power back for at least another six months,” he said.
“There seems to be so much reconstruction to do,” she said thoughtfully. “Some of the people at the shelter have lost their homes, and have no earthquake insurance. It costs a fortune, so most people don’t have it.”
“The city will be hurt for a long time,” he said. “We’re swamped at OES.” They were still digging people out of the rubble, and the financial district was a shambles with many people still trapped in office buildings. Rescue teams were working frantically to get them out before they died. The stories on the news were still fraught with drama every day. “I’d love to take you to dinner sometime, when the restaurants get going again. How does that fit in the life of an ‘official recluse’?” he teased her a little and she laughed.
“A week ago, it wouldn’t have,” she said, “but that seems to be changing. My neighbors have gotten me out from behind my walls.”
“That’s lucky for me.” She noticed that he was watching Debbie as she worked in the kitchen cleaning up. She hardly spoke to Meredith that night, after their conversation about the Fabergé box, and Charles said something to Meredith, when she walked him through the courtyard to let him out the front gate. “I feel a little odd saying this to you, but I get a funny vibe from your housekeeper. I saw her looking at you strangely tonight. She doesn’t seem too happy about your guests.”
“She’s not, and neither is her husband. They’re not used to houseguests. Admittedly it’s been a big group, although they’re all very easy, and Will and Daphne are adorable and well behaved. Actually, I had a run-in with my housekeeper this morning. She’s convinced one of them stole a valuable object from the house. I just don’t think that’s possible with this group. I think the object she thinks is stolen is tucked in a drawer somewhere. They’re very protective. They’ve been through a lot with me. They’ve been with me for fifteen years and have been the mainstay of my existence for most of it, my only friends. They worry about people taking advantage of me, or chasing me because of who I am. That’s not the issue here. These people all needed help and a place to stay, and they’ve all been respectful and discreet, but of course it’s more work for Jack and Debbie than when I’m alone in the house.”
“This may sound strange, but some people who live in other people’s houses as a way of life often try to take control of them at some point, and isolate them. The tables turn, and suddenly the employees are running the show. It sounds odd, but it has happened to some very capable, intelligent people. Be careful, Meredith. That woman looked daggers at me several times, and she was almost seething when she watched some of your guests. How much do you trust them?”
“Totally,” Meredith said without hesitating.
“Maybe they took the missing object and are trying to point the finger at someone else,” he suggested, and Meredith looked shocked.
“They would never do that. They had flawless references when I hired them, and they’ve never done anything that concerned me in fifteen years.”
“Just keep your eyes open,” he said as gently as he could. He thought that something about Debbie was almost frightening, Meredith was more vulnerable than she realized, and at the mercy of whoever worked for her. They could influence her, or isolate her without her realizing it, steal from her cleverly, or even hurt her. She wouldn’t be the first famous person it had happened to. There was something about Debbie and her husband that had struck him viscerally from the first time he’d seen them and Jack had let him into the house. They almost seemed to feel that it was their house as much as hers.
“I’m sure they’ll relax again when my guests leave.”
“When do you think that will be?” he asked her.
“
When their homes are up and running, and safe again. They all had considerable damage, but their houses aren’t ready to fall down. They’ve been calling construction companies all week. I think Joel is meeting with his contractor on Monday, and Arthur has someone coming to assess the damage later in the week.” She hesitated for a moment, and then told him something else. “I’d like to keep Tyla and the kids with me as long as possible. Since we’re talking about following our instincts, I think Andrew can be a very different man from the charming doctor we see at dinner. He’s very hard on Tyla. I’ve overheard him say some things to her I didn’t like, and their little girl says he hits her. If she needs help, I’d like to keep an eye on things for as long as I can.” Charles nodded as he listened to her, sad to hear what she said, and touched by how concerned Meredith was about her, after only knowing her a short time. And he agreed with her.
“It’s funny, I have the same feeling about him. Underneath the smooth exterior, I think he’s a very angry guy.” Meredith nodded and unlocked the gate, and Charles hugged her. “For a recluse, you seem to have a good eye for the people around you.”
“I used to,” she said quietly. “I might be out of practice, but don’t worry about Jack and Debbie. Trust me, they’re good people. I would trust them with my life.”
“I hope you’re right.” He felt concerned for her now, he liked her, and he also realized how alone she was. She had one daughter, whom she wasn’t close to and never saw, three thousand miles away, and no one else, except the couple he didn’t trust.
Neighbors Page 10
