…
you didn’t tell me what time Saturday
50
DOE FROWNED AT her phone.
Door you’re not answering
…
Sorry this phone keeps calling you Door
…
maybe if I came to the party it would be a good chance to meet her
You said there could be something in send a product
…
Said a panic
…
autocorrect is killing me softly
You know, the town
“Sagaponack,” Doe said to the phone. And texted not now see u at home.
She heard the shower turn off. Lark was up early. It would be a busy day. Lark would be at the museum installing Dodge’s inflatables, but Doe really had no reason to go and would be in the way. She didn’t want to go home and bump into Shari, and she didn’t like staying here without Lark.
Lark emerged from the shower in a towel. “Hey, sleepyhead.” She bent over and kissed her, lingering so that Doe slipped her arms around her neck. Lark pulled away.
“Don’t you dare distract me, I am a professional person today. Meeting Dodge and the crew at the Belfry.” She stopped to look at her face in the mirror and ran her fingers along her cheekbones. “I need my game face. Do I look as scared as I feel?”
“I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”
Lark turned. “Hey, I do have a sense of my limitations. Rare, but it happens.”
“High five on your voyage of self-discovery,” Doe said with a straight face.
“Brat.” Lark grinned. “But, really? Sure, I’m stressed, but I’m pumped. It’s my first real curatorial gig. I get to run a crew!”
“Is Tobie helping you?”
“No, I want to do it myself. Prove I have the chops. Besides, it doesn’t seem fair if I’m laying her off. I’ve got a whole list of curators to interview in New York.”
“Wait a second.” Doe struggled to sit up. “Are you firing the whole staff?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing yet,” Lark said. “I mean, maybe people will just want to leave if they aren’t comfortable with the new direction.”
“But…they do good work.”
“I know.” Lark sighed. “I feel bad about it. But really, what’s more important is the new direction, so. And you’re the one who told me I’d just have to hire the right people.”
“What about Catha?”
“Daddy thinks she’s useless. If I hire the right curator and a development person, he doesn’t think we need her. Plus he’s lining up this really amazing consultant.” Lark adjusted the towel. “Okay, right now I feel like you’re thinking I’ll fail.”
“Of course not. I think you can do anything.”
“Because I really think I can do this.” Lark hugged herself for a moment, and the bright hope in her face made Doe wish she really believed in her the way she wanted to. It didn’t matter, though. She was here to protect Lark. Lark would have the title, and Doe would make it look authentic to the world.
Lark disappeared into the dressing room. “I’ve been checking the weather incessantly. Chance of t-storms after midnight, so we’ll be fine.” She stuck her head out of the door. “Guess who I forgot to invite to the party? Lucas!”
“Accidentally on purpose?”
“Maybe.” She ducked back inside. “Anyway it’s weird because of course he knows about it, he lives in Orient, plus Daddy invited Adeline.” Lark came out in a pair of shorts and a lemon-colored lace bra. “I just remembered last night because Daddy told me Lucas was coming over this morning for a breakfast meeting. So I quick sent him a text saying, Hey, you didn’t RSVP. You know, pretending it got lost. And so he texts back, I’ll be there, pretending that I didn’t forget. Modern manners, right?”
“A breakfast meeting?”
“Can you imagine, he hates going anywhere before noon.” Lark pulled a tissue-thin T-shirt over her head. “He brought over a painting. Apparently he made this amazing discovery. A lost painting by his father. From, like, the nineties, his best period.”
Doe sat up. “What? How?”
“I don’t know, he cleaned out his mother’s storage unit? Found it.” Lark twisted her wet hair into a bun on top of her head while she hunted for pins. “Pretty big news. I mean, it will be, once it gets out. Lucas is totally into it while trying to act all Oh, this old thing. And get this—it’s a portrait of Adeline. Looking horrific, I must say. Naturally Daddy is thrilled. No way he won’t buy it, it’s a steal. He told me Lucas is asking ten million but Daddy is going to offer eight. Even if something’s a steal, you don’t meet the price if you don’t have to. He says. He still thirsts for revenge on Adeline. He has it on approval right now. So listen to this. Daddy wants me to hang it at the Belfry for the party! Right in that front gallery so that everyone can see it. I mean, it’s a lawn party so nobody will be inside except for staff and caterers. But we’ll light it so it will practically glow. If Adeline comes she’ll have a fit. Not that I want that, but Daddy does. So what can I do.”
“Say no?” Doe suggested, but Lark had disappeared into the closet again.
She came out in a pair of sandals, frowned, and kicked them off. “Daddy is delusional if he thinks that Adeline will come tonight.” She ducked into the closet again and came out wearing fawn-colored boots. “I think this is the end of our families meeting, like, ever again. I liked Adeline fine, but what a relief. No more Lucas for me. Hale Channing swears he stole a pair of Buccellati cuff links from him.”
Doe swung her legs out of bed. Her brain was buzzing. “His mother’s storage unit? How come he didn’t find it before?”
“No idea. Gotta run, angel.” Lark pressed herself against her face and nuzzled her like a sweet pony. “Do you know what, you,” she murmured. “I think this director thing is going to work out. And we’ll be together every day. I’ve never, ever been so happy.”
And then she was gone in a moment, before Doe’s skin had even cooled. The way she did. The way she would do for good one day.
Lucas had crammed everything in the trunk of his car, hadn’t he? Thrown it all away? Unless he’d lied to her? But she’d seen it, she’d seen the empty storage unit, she’d seen him close out the account.
Lucas discovered a painting worth ten million? It didn’t make sense. What would Shari say?
If an asshole sells you a story, why be surprised if it smells?
51
RUTHIE HAD NO choice but to pass the Belfry; it was on the main road, right before the causeway. She tried not to look, but how could she not, when there was a giant inflatable hyena bobbing in the breeze on the front lawn? She pulled over.
Off in the distance she could see Dodge directing his crew. Various piles of plasticky material were laid out on the lawn. She could see Lark Mantis, in shorts and a T-shirt and boots (Boots? It was ninety-two degrees), pointing and suggesting, placing the inflatable sculptures. Ruthie had heard about them, of course. In the back courtyard a bouncy castle looked like a giant, cheerful prison.
Lark was crowding the sculptures. She wasn’t allowing for the right sight lines. Ruthie watched as Dodge walked over, talked to her with one hand on her shoulder. She could tell from here that he was frustrated.
She was about to drive away when she glimpsed a vivid flash of familiar blue.
She slid out of the car. She walked up the lawn unnoticed. She climbed over the knee-high wall.
One small painting in the gallery, blazing clear blue.
It seemed impossible, but there it was.
Lucas. That bastard. That spoiled, careless idiot.
What the fuck was he thinking?
She walked back to her car, feeling weightless and doomed, a passenger in a plane in a long stall.
52
DOE ENDED UP driving int
o the village of East Hampton. She bought an iced coffee and sipped it, window-shopping down Newtown Lane. So many thin white people. So many pairs of white jeans, so many straw hats.
She saw Lucas ahead, jingling his keys, looking at his phone. He hadn’t seen her. She had time to reverse direction but she didn’t. She counted off a couple of slow breaths.
“Look who’s here,” he said. “You meeting your mom for a little lunch? Is there a Hooters I don’t know about?”
“Just killing time before Lark’s party. Sorry she forgot to invite you. I hope you weren’t too humiliated.”
“I heard about you two. Like it will last.” He reached for her wrist and pushed up the long sleeve of her linen shirt, and she stepped back.
“Relax, I just wanted to see if you were wearing a watch.” He studied her over his sunglasses. “Because I’m missing mine. It disappeared after the storm.”
Doe shrugged. “Did you check under the dresser?”
“I saw you looking at it.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t Hale’s? I hear he’s missing some cuff links. Maybe it’s a set.”
“Fuck you, I got it for my graduation.”
“Right. Do you know, the entire time we hung out, all you did was complain about not having enough money? Do you remember that date we had back in July? After the Montauk party?”
She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. He stepped back and raised both hands in a what the hell gesture. “Am I supposed to remember every stupid date we had? Please, I’d like to forget I ever asked you out.”
“When you cleaned out your mother’s storage unit,” she said. “That was me in the passenger seat, remember?”
“So?” Had he forgotten, or he just didn’t care?
“Lark told me that you discovered a painting. A major find, she said.”
“Amazing, right?”
“Lark said you found the painting in the storage unit. Such a big surprise, she said. For me, too. I remember you throwing everything out.”
“Not…” She sensed him searching, his mind adjusting. “She had another unit I didn’t know about. They called me.”
“Same place?”
He nodded and pushed his sunglasses tight against the bridge of his nose.
“Funny,” she said.
“What.”
“That you didn’t know.”
“Not really,” he said, using the bored voice that meant he was about to lie. “My mother was a drunk. She didn’t exactly fill me in on what she was doing.”
“So there were two separate—”
Suddenly he grabbed both her elbows, hard, startling her. He smiled, as though they were playing. A man looked over and he dropped her arms.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he said.
Doe wasn’t afraid. They were right on Newtown Lane. “Remember what happened the last time you grabbed me like that?”
“Yeah. I almost got a scar. So I’m in the mood for payback. Are you hearing me, Dora?”
“I hear you,” Doe said. “Asshole.”
“At least now I know why you were so lousy in bed. A dyke.”
She leaned closer. “I’m the only person who really sees you. So why don’t you back off?”
“You’re out of your league, Beauty,” he said, and moved away with his great assurance, already lost in the happy crowd.
53
JEM’S PHONE
From: Jemma Dutton
To: Dad
Didn’t you and A get invited to that big party at the Belfry
From: Dad
To: Jemma Dutton
Yup, why?
From: Jem
To: Dad
Well r u going
From: Dad
To: Jem
No. Why?
From: Jem
To: Dad
I was thinking you could take me party of the summer etc
From: Dad
To: Jem
Sorry sweetie Adeline doesn’t want to go.
From: Jem
To: Dad
But why
From: Dad
To: Jem
Plus I don’t think Mom would like it.
From: Jem
To: Dad
I would ask her if it’s ok
From: Dad
To: Jem
A is not on great terms with Daniel Mantis.
From: Jem
To: Dad
But they’re good friends right? Saw it in Us Weekly
From: Dad
To: Jem
Yeah right. C’mon sweetie you know what I’m saying.
From: Jem
To: Dad
I really really really want to go tho
…
really really could you ask A please Daddy? I could Instagram it and Meret would see it and diet
…
Autocorrect fail I mean die lol but diet too
…
please
From: Dad
To: Jem
I’ll ask. This one is her call. Talk to your mom.
54
LUCAS DID NOT answer the texts or his phone. His car was not at the house. Asshole. Coward.
Ruthie had lived in Orient long enough to know who to ask. Information was traded and gossiped and shared, and it took her about fifteen minutes and a walk through town to learn that Daniel Mantis was the buyer of the painting and that was why it was at the Belfry.
Mantis was high-profile. He bought, sold, sent pieces to auction. He loved publicity. She would be reading about it in the Times next week.
She had to think, she thought frantically, but it was just a pulse, a beating throb of panic.
* * *
—
PANIC, CALAMITY, STRESS, didn’t matter, you still had to pack your suitcases and get out of the rental.
“How’s it going, Jemmie?” she asked outside the closed door. She knocked. Knocked again.
She gently eased the door open a crack, expecting the bark of Changing! or the more exasperated What?
She sensed the minefield from the door. Jem sat on her bed, earbuds in, texting, disarray around her, clothes tossed on the bed, the floor, drawers half open, sneakers scattered. She hadn’t seen Ruthie, hadn’t heard the door.
None of this was unusual, but. A tide of feeling swamped Ruthie. She felt as though she’d broken through the surface of the sea and blinked away the blur. She saw Jem, maybe for the first time that summer. She saw the tightness and the misery. She saw the long legs and the blue eyes and the hair, but she saw a lost little girl. She saw someone hurt and scrabbling for a handhold.
While she’d been scrabbling herself. Both of them reaching for handholds, when she should have been the one to say, Here. Reach here. Hold on.
All those silent dinners when she let Jem watch a video on her phone, earbuds in, while she sat eating, trying to force food down, thinking her burning thoughts, of the painting, of her house, of Mike and Adeline, of getting it all back, when the center of her life was right at the table with her.
That last year before Mike moved out, he turned into an insomniac. There was one step on the way downstairs—never up, why was that?—that resounded with the crack of a rifle. Deep in dreams, she would hear it and awaken, and Mike would be already gone, downstairs to pace, to stare out a window. She thought he just couldn’t sleep. Instead, he was planning a life without her.
Why hadn’t she ever followed him? Why had she woken, heard the crack of the family breaking, and not fought for them?
Was she missing the crack of the breaking right now?
She crossed the room to touch Jem’s hair. Jem flinched, but maybe that was only out of s
urprise. Maybe she could reach her, right now. Not ignore the crack, the life gone and the life she could make.
“Everything okay?”
Jem took out an earbud. “What?”
“I’m just seeing if you want help packing.”
“No, I’m good.”
“Are you…”
“Am I what.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah. Do you have to be here right now?”
Ignore the insult, keep going. “The thing is…”
Exasperated and showy toss of phone onto pillow. “So there’s a thing?”
“You seem upset.”
“I’m not upset, okay? I’m fine.”
She waited.
“I really want to go to the Belfry party.”
“Oh.”
“At first I thought Daddy and Adeline and Lucas were going and I could go with them. But Daddy and Adeline aren’t going.”
“Lucas is going?”
“Yeah. I can’t go by myself. I asked Daddy and he said he wouldn’t take me. They were invited and everything.” Jem flopped back. “It just sucks because I said I was going. I don’t know, it’s even more ammunition for Meret against me. She’ll say I lied. I don’t want to be a liar on top of everything.”
Ruthie’s heart was bursting. Slamming. Something was happening to her and maybe it was a heart attack but she didn’t think so.
“Mom?”
Leverage. Lucas had something on her, but didn’t he have more to lose? Wasn’t she, right now, the most dangerous person? A woman with nothing to lose?
She’d confront him there. Surrounded by his crowd, he wouldn’t want a scene. She’d make him come up with a story. She’d threaten to expose him. He hadn’t officially sold it yet. Until money changed hands, until the check was cashed, he could take it back. Right there, at the party, he could tell Daniel that he’d changed his mind. If he refused she’d threaten to tell Daniel she had examined the painting and had doubts about it. Daniel would take her seriously. She had worked for Peter Clay.
Could she do that? Threaten and blackmail Lucas?