I wanted to laugh. Then cry. Then poke this guy’s stupid eyes out.
“How do you know her?” he asked. But he’d flipped the card over and wasn’t even listening. “Oh, wait,” he crowed. “There’s a note on the back. ‘Darling, I miss you and love you. Please do come. Edgar isn’t well.’” His smile faded a fraction. “Huh,” he said.
I felt like someone had slapped me. Like I couldn’t get a breath.
“Give it to me,” I whispered hoarsely.
He handed the invitation over.
I thought I heard the kid shriek from the pool, but I wasn’t sure because my heart was pounding so hard. I read the note once, twice, barely seeing the words.
“Who’s Edgar?” he asked.
I ignored him, stuffed the invitation and the envelope in my bag, and grabbed my phone, knocking one of the bottles of water off the table. Its contents glugged out onto the hot deck, but I left it there. I needed to do something—call someone, make plans—but I couldn’t think what that would be. I wondered if I was going to be able to make it back to the room.
“I have to go,” I said. My voice sounded shaky. Like it was coming from somebody else’s body.
“How do you know Frances Ashley?” he said.
“I don’t,” I yelled over my shoulder and fled.
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 1
There had been three nannies who’d come before Fay—and they’d all left on good terms, Mrs. Murphy assured her over the phone. The previous girls simply hadn’t been able to adjust to life on Bonny.
Fay thought if she could adjust to the diner, she could adjust to practically anything, especially a four-star hotel on a private island. To her, Ambletern sounded like heaven, and the child like an angel. Fay could write the previous nannies, if she wanted, but there really wasn’t time. The Murphys needed the position filled right away.
The bus ticket from Norwalk to St. Marys cost her $24.50, which was almost exactly what she had left in her bank account.
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Two
Back in the dark suite, I tiptoed between the sleeping bodies to the bathroom. After bolting the door, I stood, trembling all over, and read and reread Frances’s note. There were no specifics about Edgar. Nothing that gave any clues as to his condition. I flipped the invitation and propped it against the mirror.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR
FRANCES ASHLEY’S
BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2016
EIGHT O’ CLOCK
43 CENTRAL PARK EAST
RSVP [email protected]
The party was tomorrow night, the day of my mother’s birthday. Same as always. But this time she hadn’t mailed it the requisite six weeks ago to the house I was renting in LA.
I thought of the last time I’d seen Frances. The way she’d looked when I’d said that last awful thing about Graeme and me. Her face had dissolved somehow, become a puddle of melted wax. All at once, I didn’t recognize her. Fear had risen in my throat. Maybe regret too. I wasn’t sure.
“Mom—” I’d said, then stopped. There was no going back, not even if I apologized. Somehow I knew. She’d started down the hall to her bedroom. I considered calling her back, but didn’t. I’d meant what I said, and she knew it. We both knew it.
If I’d found her birthday invitation in my mailbox six weeks ago, I would have tossed it in the trash without opening it. So she’d had it hand delivered. Whether it was smart on her part or just plain stalkerish, one thing was clear: Edgar was sick, and Frances wanted me home.
My lungs felt constricted. I retrieved my phone from my bag and looked up flights to New York. There were a few first-class seats leaving first thing in the morning and arriving in New York that evening. I booked a seat, then ordered two bouquets at Frances’s favorite florist on the Upper East Side—one of hydrangea, the other, pink peonies. I showered, then sat on the toilet, yanking a comb through my hair and ordering myself not to cry.
I had to send all my positive energy—what was left of it—to Edgar.
I pictured his twinkly eyes, headful of swoopy silver hair, still handsome in his eighties. He’d been my mother’s agent since the beginning. The only constant in my chaotic life. The story went that he had found the manuscript for Kitten buried in the slush pile of his ancient, fusty literary agency, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. He’d plucked my mother from obscurity and, in a blink, turned everyone’s fortunes around.
Edgar called me Pip and brought me rose macarons. He met my Omnia girls once. When I was just a kid, I overheard him confront Frances and tell her she was wrong to ship me off to boarding school and camp and the overseas leadership programs. He said she would regret her decisions one day, when she was alone. She didn’t listen, but I loved him for trying. In fact, I just loved him in general. He was the only family I had.
My phone echoed in the marble bathroom. The call from Omnia. God bless, finally. I adjusted my towel, cracked my knuckles, then jabbed at the screen.
“Hi,” I said.
“Meg. Hello. Good time to talk?”
“Absolutely. Great time.”
I closed my eyes. I’d seen Frances charm reporters countless times when she needed to, when the questions got a little too uncomfortable. The easy laugh, the knowing twinkle. I’m a professional liar, darling. Whatever story I tell you, you’re going to believe. (And then she would go on about the psychology of story, narrative transportation, or some such literary gobbledygook, and everyone would fall into a worshipful trance.)
The director was already knee-deep into her spiel, talking about how the Pearce School girls up in Harlem had really taken to my French and Italian classes and commending me on the most highly attended sessions in the program. If only she’d known how woefully unprepared I’d been when I started. That my grab bag of go-to phrases for the teens to translate had mostly consisted of double shot, kickass deejay, and my friend needs to vomit, please.
I made the appropriate noises, and she segued into a description of Omnia’s new direction. An expansion of the after-school program necessitated a new push in fundraising. I tried to focus, but her words were battering me like waves—restructuring, refocusing, reassessing community partners—making a spot throb directly behind my right eye. At last, she paused for a breath, and my brain started to catch up.
“You gave the job to someone else,” I said, pressing the area around my eye socket.
“Yesterday.”
I was quiet.
“Look, you’ve been really great with the girls,” she said. “But everyone agrees that instead of coordinator, you’d be better suited to fundraising. With your . . . extensive contacts.”
“My contacts.”
“In the publishing world. We’d like to offer you the head of fundraising, Meg.”
“I don’t have contacts in the publishing world,” I said numbly.
Just Edgar.
“I feel like I’ve just blundered,” she said carefully. “Did I overstep?”
“No. It’s just . . . I’m not that close to my mother,” I said. “Not lately. Not for years.”