Chương 4
August
She folded the card and slid it beneath the room-service menu.
Owen bit into a croissant. Flakes fell onto the front of his shirt.
“This is better than the fancy food,” he said.
“What fancy food?”
“Last night.”
“You ate three rolls.”
“They were small.”
Despite herself, Mara smiled.
Owen smiled back, then immediately looked uncertain, as if happiness might be inappropriate.
Mara reached over and brushed pastry from his bow tie.
“It’s okay to like the croissant.”
He nodded.
She drank the coffee. It was too strong and already cooling.
At eight, her phone began to fill with messages.
Some came from friends who had attended the dinner and left before dessert. Others came from foundation employees who claimed to have heard that there had been an accident. Eleanor Vale sent one line.
We should speak before this becomes uglier.
Julian called eleven times.
Mara let every call go to voicemail.
The first message was furious.
“You had me arrested in my own grandfather’s house. Do you understand what you’ve done?”
The second was controlled.
“Mara, we both know last night got out of hand. I’m not proud of my reaction, but your behavior before it happened matters too.”
The third was almost tender.
“I love you. Owen loves me. Don’t destroy our family over ten seconds.”
She stopped listening after that.
At nine-fifteen, Vivian called.
Mara considered ignoring her, then answered.
For several seconds, neither woman spoke.
“I sent the police the original file,” Vivian said.
“I know.”
“They copied it in front of me.”
“All right.”
“I didn’t post anything.”
Mara looked at Owen, who was watching cartoons with the volume low.
“Were you planning to?”
“No.”
“Were you planning to show it to people?”
Vivian exhaled.
“I don’t know what I was planning.”
“You were smiling when you started recording.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because Julian was being cruel, and I thought it would be funny.”
There was no defensiveness in her voice. That made the admission worse.
Mara sat on the edge of the second bed.
“Funny for whom?”
“I don’t have a good answer.”
“Try the bad one.”
Vivian was silent.
“For us,” she said finally. “For the people at the table. We make entertainment out of whoever is most uncomfortable.”
Mara looked toward the window. Morning traffic moved along the highway below, ordinary and dense.
“Did you know he would touch me?”
“No.”
“Did you know he frightened Owen?”
Vivian hesitated.
“I knew he didn’t like having a child around.”
“He proposed to a woman with a child.”
“Julian likes the picture of things.”
Mara’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“You knew that too.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Would you have believed me?”
Mara opened her mouth, then closed it.
Vivian gave a small, humorless laugh.
“That wasn’t an answer. Sorry.”
“No,” Mara said. “I might not have believed you.”
“I should have tried anyway.”
In the background of Vivian’s call, a dog barked. Someone asked whether she wanted coffee.
“Mara, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Daniel Rusk has a copy.”
Mara sat straighter. “Who is Daniel Rusk?”
“He was at the dinner. Gray tuxedo. He works with a gossip site, though he pretends he’s in private equity.”
“How did he get it?”
“I sent him the first six seconds.”
The room seemed to narrow.
“You said you didn’t post anything.”
“I didn’t. I sent it before August came in. I thought Julian had smashed your face into the cake as some horrible joke and that you would slap him, and—”
“And what?”
“And it would be scandalous for a day.”
Mara looked at Owen again.
He was no longer watching the television. He was watching her.
“Can he release it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you stop him?”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“I will.”
Mara ended the call.
At nine-thirty-eight, the first clip appeared online.
It lasted six seconds.
There was no sound. It showed Julian’s hand at the back of Mara’s neck, the white cake collapsing, and several guests recoiling. The clip ended before Owen ran to her and before she removed the ring.
The headline called it an engagement prank gone wrong.
By ten, the clip had been reposted thousands of times.
Mara turned off her phone.
She washed Owen’s hair first, though it did not need washing. He sat in the bathtub wearing hotel shower caps over both hands and made two plastic cups float across the surface. Mara knelt beside him, still in the sweater from the night before.
“Can we go home?” he asked.
She poured water over his hair.
“Not to the city house.”
“Our apartment?”
They had given up their apartment four months earlier, when Julian insisted it made no sense to pay rent while the family’s East Seventy-Second Street property sat half empty.
“We don’t have that apartment now.”
“Where are my dinosaurs?”
“At the house.”
Owen’s lower lip moved.
“We’ll get them.”
“Will Julian be there?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
Mara reached for the towel.
“Because I won’t take you there unless I know.”
After Owen’s bath, she washed the remaining frosting from her own hair. It took three rounds of shampoo. White icing dissolved around her feet and disappeared down the hotel drain.
She kept thinking of August’s face when she asked whether Julian had hurt anyone before.
Not surprise.
Calculation.
At noon, Mara called Nina Patel.
Nina had been her roommate after college and remained the only person Mara trusted to tell her when she was behaving foolishly without enjoying it.
She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?”
“A hotel.”
“Which one?”
Mara told her.
“I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
“You’re at work.”
“I have a car and a deeply flexible relationship with corporate responsibility.”
“Nina.”
“I’m leaving now.”
May you like
Nina arrived with two duffel bags, a phone charger, children’s clothes, and a grocery sack containing apples, crackers, peanut butter, and a bottle of wine.
“I didn’t know whether this was a wine situation,” she said, setting it on the dresser.
