The Long-Lost Jules

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  But still, honestly, why me?

  Chapter 12

  For the next week or so, Kali and I settled into an uneasy truce in my shoebox flat. I assured and reassured the shaken girl that the pub incident was just a random attack, one of those things that happen in big cities, and I gave her a can of Mace, which produced the first smile I had ever seen on her.

  Predictably, she slept till noon every day but then set off on self-guided walks around London, armed with nothing more than a map of the tube and the hundred pounds I doled out, per our agreement. She had an uncanny sense of direction, it seemed; one long glance at the complex web of tube lines on the map, and she had it mastered to a degree that I had failed to achieve in my three years in the city.

  I wondered. She clearly had some kind of gift. Was she good at math, perhaps? Geometry? But when I asked her, she assured me that while she wasn’t as bad at math as she was at English, she was still too dumb for the honors and AP classes that her twin sister flourished in.

  Well, we had that in common.

  Mercifully, she was even less inclined toward casual conversation than I. So we ate our dinners in near silence, and she spent the rest of the evening buried in her iPhone. I gave her a tube of bacitracin for the infected eyebrow, which she took without comment. There was no sign of drug use at all; I began to wonder if she had ever used drugs, or if that was just part of a persona she had adopted.

  Perhaps we had more in common than anyone would have thought.

  Although I had dozed through the required psychology class in college, even I recognized the symmetry between Catherine Willoughby’s resentment of the orphaned baby who was forced upon her and mine at taking in Kali. But at least Lady Mary was, presumably, an adorable baby, while Kali was a greasy-haired, multipierced teenager with a sullen manner and an iPhone addiction.

  I would have to do something with her eventually, but I had no idea what. My mother finally deigned to pick up the phone and told me in no uncertain terms that Kali was not welcome at home. She had been kicked out of her exclusive high school, and they had no intention of taking her back. Warren was on antidepressants, and Kelley could not be distracted from her all-important college applications. Kali was my responsibility now; it was about time I showed some family loyalty.

  Leo disagreed, vehemently. He called me the day after the attack in the pub basement to order me to send Kali away to safety. “Aren’t you afraid?” he asked when I refused. “Do you really think you should have a child come to stay when you’ve just been attacked?”

  “Maybe it was a random attack,” I offered. “It happens.”

  “It’s not a ‘random attack’ when the attacker is telling you to ‘stay out of it,’” he retorted. “And by the way, what exactly was he telling you to stay out of? What have you gotten yourself into?”

  “I don’t know!” I snapped, angry that it was the truth. If I knew, then I would know how to keep myself—and, more importantly, Kali—safe.

  It couldn’t be Sheikh Dull Boy, but Leo was right: It wasn’t random.

  Was it possible that Leo himself had set me up? He was the only person in the world who knew in advance what pub we would be at, and when.

  Unaware of my thoughts, he went on, “Don’t you think you have quite enough to do just taking care of yourself right now?”

  Absolutely. And that was all I ever had to do. Take care of myself. Being responsible for another, helpless human being was appalling.

  So I answered, with some heat, “Jesus, don’t you think I know that?”

  “Well, then send her away, for God’s sake.”

  But where? And how? Unable to formulate a response, I simply hung up.

  At work, I vacillated between irritation and absolute fury. Kristen the Younger, who had a keen sense of status despite her tender age, refused to give me some documents on Sheikh Abdullah that I needed to write my monthly status report. “I’ll have to check with Kristen R. on that,” she said, giving me a slightly pitying smile. Kristen R., when applied to, explained very sweetly and kindly that those documents were on a need-to-know basis now.

  Our Friday-morning meetings always started with an icebreaker, devised by Audrey. Dimpling, she announced that this week’s idea was to have everyone say what was most fun about working at Atlantic Bank.

  “I’ll start,” she said. “The most fun thing for me is working with all my peeps here.”

  Everyone clapped. I flipped to my Stupid Jargon list at the end of my notebook and added “peeps.” Good God, Audrey was even older than I was; did she really think that talking about “peeps” would make her twenty-five again?

  Kristen R. thought it was Friday trivia nights at the pub.

  Matt B. liked Bow Tie Fridays.

  Kristen T. loved visiting with her clients in Dubai and Antibes.

  Jake M., Kristen P., and Matt S. voted for Field Day, and I flinched at the memory. Last year for Field Day, we had done hot yoga and a marathon barre class led by our own Kristen P. I, who had never taken a ballet or yoga class in my life, was the class clown. My legs tangled hopelessly, and Kristen P. had to rescue me from a too-grand plié that threatened to end in an ungainly tumble. My pirouettes were the stuff of comic legend. Then we feasted on quinoa, sprouts, and a special treat: carob brownies that tasted of nothing other than wallpaper paste. It took me days of fish and chips to erase the bitter flavor from my mouth.

  Kristen P., also dimpling, loved Wednesday barre classes with “the girls.” I could not imagine anything more boring and pointless than ballet.

  When my turn came, the table quieted. Everyone knew I didn’t have any fun at work. “Working with the team,” I said woodenly.

  Pause. I cringed to think how my father would view mousy Amy, how I wished I could be my fearless self again—but I needed to make this job work. And so I needed to be mousy Amy.

  Then Audrey said, “Ohhhhkaaay. Let’s move on to shout-outs and high fives. A big shout-out to Kristen R. for all her great work on the FBI mess.”

  More clapping.

  Kristen R. smiled. “And a high five to Kristen S.”—Kristen the Younger, I interpreted—“for all of her support on that. She’s off to a great start here!”

  Kristen S. smiled too. “Right back atcha! Big high five to Kristen R. for being such a great mentor!”

  I added another check mark next to “mentor” on my Stupid Jargon list and took another sip of Diet Coke. So far, the list included:

  • Let’s tease that out

  • How can we leverage that?

  • I teed up the idea

  • Do we have bandwidth?

  • Let’s take a deep dive

  • Let’s ideate on that

  • Granular

  • Mentor

  • In the weeds

  • Ping

  • Let me noodle on that

  • Do they have skin in the game?

  • Let’s socialize the idea

  • Peeps

  Every time I heard one of the phrases, I added another check mark to the list and had to take another sip of my Diet Coke. By the end of our Friday meetings, I was always desperate for the bathroom.

  After what seemed like eons, we were finished, and the weekly exercise in self-congratulation came to an end. I took one last look around the table and marveled once again at the young, beautiful faces, slim bodies, and überarticulate self-confidence of my colleagues. How narcissistic was Audrey, exactly, that she hired only mini-mes?

  Except for me, of course, and I knew that was all Bob the Bear’s doing. Damn him, anyway.

  Back at my desk, I composed an urgent email to my friend Rosie.

  I know you and Bob said I had to leave IDC and settle down in London, but please, please, Rosie, say I can quit this job! They’re killing me.

  She wrote back almost immediately:

  NO NO NO. We talked about this, remember? Bob said you were taking too many risks out in the field. After that incident in Chechnya, he said you wer
e going to get yourself killed and he couldn’t allow you to stay. It’s for your own good. And the money’s pretty good too, right? Be sensible, for once in your life.

  I bit my lip, then typed:

  But I survived Chechnya, didn’t I? And I wound up doing a lot of really good work there. I’ll be more careful, I promise. I’m begging you, Rosie . . .

  Again, her response was immediate and unequivocal:

  NO NO NO!

  I was aching to get away. Being mousy Amy at Atlantic Bank was doing my head in, as the Brits would say. All my life, I had reveled in the freedom of hopping on a boat or a train or a plane to some new place, some new challenge, whenever the impulse struck. My father and I had once jetted off on an hour’s notice to Hawaii, where he had heard that fifty-foot surfing waves were developing off the coast. Years later, after three weeks working in postearthquake Nepal, I disappeared myself to a mist-shrouded mountain resort in Bhutan, trekking alone higher and higher into the hills to lose my memories in a simple exercise for survival.

  But I was trapped now. I didn’t want to take Kali on what I wanted desperately to be a solo adventure, and I couldn’t leave her behind.

  Still, I couldn’t send her on her way either. I too had been despaired of (at long distance, thankfully) by my mother. I too had been an indifferent student who mastered the art of doing just barely enough work to scrape out a B minus, which was perfectly fine with my father. I drank too much, partied too much, took too many risks, both with my father and without him. For my sixteenth birthday, when we were living in Amman, I went skydiving with my father in a rattletrap old DC-6 that should have been mothballed years before. It struggled so mightily to get airborne that my father suggested we stick our legs through the fuselage and pedal.

  That night, he went out with his lady friend of the moment while I snuck into the hotel suite some friends had taken over so we could drink bootleg alcohol. Sunday afternoon was for my father again, when we nursed our hangovers and sampled Asian delicacies such as bat soup and fried tarantulas, washed down with snake and scorpion wine.

  No wonder I slept through English Lit on Monday morning.

  Then, of course, everything changed with my father’s death, at the beginning of my sophomore year at UCLA. Overnight, I transformed myself into the most conscientious student on campus. I changed my major to Russian studies and developed my casual knowledge of the language into near fluency; I stayed up all night studying rather than partying; and I shot straight into the high-stress, high-stakes career that I had chosen. While my former classmates were partying in Silicon Valley, I was getting dysentery in Myanmar; while they were minting money at Goldman Sachs, I was running from terrorists in Chechnya. My lighthearted college pals disappeared from my life as I formed the deepest bonds of my life (post-Dad) with my IDC workmates. We were making the world a better place.

  So Kali stayed. I would have to do something with her eventually, but I had no idea what.

  Chapter 13

  At the Friday meeting two weeks after Kali’s arrival, Audrey decreed that the icebreaker would be fun facts, and that we should each tell one about ourselves.

  Kristen R.: “I’m an identical twin. I have a sister who looks just like me!” The other Kristens squealed. I thought, Another Kristen in the world? God help us all.

  Jake S., who was the scion of a great New York Jewish dynasty that had built half the museums and synagogues in the city: “My grandfather speaks only Yiddish.” Everyone shrieked with laughter.

  Kristen the Younger, dimpling: “I absolutely idolize Kristen R. I want to be her when I grow up!” Big hugs all around.

  Audrey, also dimpling: “I love you guys! I’d rather be with my peeps here than with my fam!” More hugs.

  Matt B.: “I once ate a fried beetle.” More shrieks. I thought of eating tuna eyeballs and bird’s-nest soup with my father and smiled to myself.

  Me, after much thought: “I really like London cabbies. They usually speak English.”

  Embarrassed silence for poor, boring old Amy.

  I amused myself thinking about how they would react if I told a real fun fact: I climbed to Everest Base Camp for my twelfth birthday. Or: I got buried by an avalanche when I was skiing off-piste with my father in Switzerland. Or perhaps: I was in Aleppo when Assad’s forces bombed it to smithereens.

  Again I thought about begging Bob to take me back but knew he wouldn’t. Only he, Rosie, and I knew I hadn’t left IDC willingly. I had left at Bob’s insistence, and he had wangled me the job at Atlantic. And now I couldn’t think what else to do. I wasn’t independently wealthy, was notably lacking in a whole lot of marketable skills, and had an odd résumé. I couldn’t screw up this job too.

  That afternoon, as my colleagues bantered and squealed about their weekend plans, it occurred to me that there had been no Leo sightings since our lunch at the pub. Kali had asked after him several times, her hero worship obvious, and I found myself angry with him for inspiring such devotion and then abandoning poor Kali.

  Besides, there was the whole Jules thing.

  So I texted him.

  Where have you been? Have you given up on finding Jules?

  Paris, and no.

  Kali misses you. I realized that he might take this as flirtatious, but it was too late—I had already pressed SEND.

  I miss her too. You up for an outing Saturday? Sudeley Castle?

  Why? What’s there?

  It’s KP’s home.

  A spark of interest flared. It would be fun to see Katherine Parr’s home, especially in Leo’s company. It wasn’t the getaway I yearned for, but it was certainly a diversion.

  OK, I texted back.

  Kali would be delighted, I told myself.

  Kali whistled with admiration when Leo pulled up in his smart Audi.

  “Why were you in Paris?” I asked him, realizing how little I knew about his life beyond his obsession with Tudor queens and a woman named Jules. And that he had seemed to be reaching for a gun in the pub basement.

  I hadn’t had a lover in two years, and this seemed possibly long enough for me to have gotten over my PTSD—or whatever it was that had gripped me since Chechnya. Maybe Leo would do. He seemed like a man who would know what he was doing—an absolute must in a lover—but not a threat in any way.

  Or was he?

  Then again, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get to know him a little better—and to figure out why he had connected me to the long-lost ancestress of a queen.

  Now that I was considering him as a potential bed partner, I scrutinized him more closely as he, with an apology, rolled down the windows. He wore khakis that might have fit him well a thousand washings ago but now hung limp and creaseless on his tall frame. His button-down shirt was rolled up to the elbows, revealing surprisingly muscular forearms (plus), but the ancient shirt had also been washed out to a rather nauseating shade of brown (minus).

  Still undecided, I waited with interest for his answer.

  “I was there for business . . . and family.”

  “Oh, right, you have two sisters living in Paris.”

  Kali leaned forward. “You have two sisters?”

  He half turned to smile at her. “Four, actually.”

  “No shit.”

  I sent Kali a warning glance, and, surprisingly, she closed her mouth.

  “What kind of business?” I persisted.

  He hesitated. “Um . . . family business.”

  His hesitations and stammers seemed to come and go, I reflected. Maybe it was all an act.

  “What kind of family business?”

  “Uh, why do you want to know?”

  “Why don’t you want to tell me?”

  “Sacrebleu,” he said. “This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”

  I smiled sweetly at him, enjoying his discomfort. It wasn’t easy to discomfit Leo.

  “My stepmother—Evelyn, I mean—said Amy was always asking questions,” Kali volunteered. “It drove her crazy.”
<
br />   This time, my look at Kali held pure poison, but she went on, undeterred. “Evelyn said Amy was her father’s daughter, and he was a nut case.”

  “He was not!”

  “Was too. Evelyn said he was constantly putting you in dangerous situations, and she could only pray you didn’t take after him—”

  “It would be an honor to take after him! My father was a . . .” I stuttered, my tongue twisted with anger at her sacrilege. “You didn’t even know my father! He was a hero! He was the best father I could have had! He took me on adventures; he was my best friend; we . . .”

  Leo cleared his throat. “My family is in the art business,” he said.

  I had almost forgotten he was there; it took a moment to compose myself. “So why is that such a deep, dark secret?” I asked him.

  “It’s not a deep, dark secret!”

  “Then why are you being so dodgy about it?”

  He heaved a great sigh. “I’m not being dodgy. I’m the only one who’s not in the family business, and it’s complicated.”

  I thought about that for a minute. I had followed my father, the international consultant, into the “family business,” just as he would have wished. “What kind of art business?”

  “We own galleries.”

  “Where?”

  “Paris. Other places.”

  “Do I have to drag every detail out of you?” I demanded.

  “Oh, for . . . Look. My family specializes in dealing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European art. A lot of impressionists and postimpressionists.”

  “Wow,” I said. This was not what I had expected. But then it was no more unexpected that he would love candy-pink Renoirs than that he would yearn for long-dead queens, I supposed.

  “Ooh, could you take us to Paris?” Kali squealed, suddenly sounding like a very normal, unpierced teenage girl.