Kiran’s hand on Jane’s tattoo is a comfort.
“She was diving from a Venezuelan vessel with an international crew of divers,” says Mrs. Vanders, “and she understood what she’d found. She had a hunch that one of her university colleagues would be able to advise her on what to do about it. So she came back aboard, told no one else in her group what she’d found, and called him. A few days later, she told her diving party she’d been hired for another job, then crossed over onto a highly equipped salvage vessel, American, passing as a mining ship, that came along to pick her up. Magnolia brought them to the wreck and, when they asked her to, helped them salvage it. A nuclear missile. Cryptological information. It was a jackpot.”
“Why would she do that?” Jane whispers. “Why would she keep it secret? Why not just tell everyone on the Venezuelan ship what she’d found?”
“She didn’t know what to do,” says Mrs. Vanders. “She had enough imagination to know it was a political discovery, and relations between the USA and Venezuela were suffering at the time. She did what she thought best.”
Mrs. Vanders swipes a small black object—a walkie-talkie—from a nearby table and tosses it to Patrick, who’s strapping on his own gun. “Send that down to Ivy-bean,” she says, nodding at the dumbwaiter. “Then I think you should take the long way down, Patrick, to give us an extra eye on the party. You’ll have to take the aboveground route across the lawn anyway, with the art.”
“She wouldn’t,” Jane says. “My aunt wouldn’t have lied to me like that.”
“You were seven,” Mrs. Vanders says. “She couldn’t just come back and tell you all about it, no matter how much she wanted to. It’s exciting work, once you’ve started. It’s important work, and those who do it are paid according to the risks they take. Your aunt had bank accounts in the Caymans and in Switzerland that we can help you access, now that you know the truth. This is why I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since you came to Tu Reviens. Your aunt made me promise that if anything ever happened to her, I’d help you access her bank accounts.”
Jane doesn’t care about bank accounts. All she can think of is seven, seven. She pushes toward the stairs.
“Magnolia also asked me to pass on a message,” Mrs. Vanders says to Jane’s back. “‘Tell my niece to reach for the umbrella,’ she said. She thought of you always, and she wanted to get out. Magnolia was never suited to the work. She came to hate it. She hated to lie; none of us likes to lie. She was going to retire, and we were going to help her.”
Kiran has taken Jane into the warm fold of her arm and is helping her to the stairs. Jane is shivering. “Leave her alone, Vanny,” Kiran says. “You’d think, the way all of you talk, that no one who’s been lied to has any right to feel betrayed.”
*
It’s surreal to be spat back into the party. Jane sticks to Kiran, who’s in a strange, elated state. It’s easy to be her shadow. I’m not entirely certain I’m awake, thinks Jane.
Kiran takes Jane’s arm as they move around the ballroom, whispering bright, cutting remarks in her ear. “Look at all these people,” she says. “I wonder how many of our family friends became our family friends so they could get invitations to the galas and come visit their real friends. The servants! Is anyone ever who they seem?”
Yes, Jane thinks. We are. You and I, Kiran.
“Think of our guests,” Kiran goes on. “Can you believe it about the Okadas?”
“No,” Jane says, not really paying attention.
“Colin is too much of a dildo to be a political operative,” Kiran says, “but Lucy St. George could have hidden depths, given the whole private investigator thing. Don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Charlotte,” Kiran says, stopping to consider.
“Charlotte?” Jane repeats obediently.
“My stepmother. She was redesigning the house.”
“Was she?” says Jane, suddenly remembering she never wished Ivy a proper good-bye. Wasn’t this the kind of trip that killed Ivy’s parents?
“But has anyone told you the details of how Charlotte mysteriously disappeared?” asks Kiran, scanning the dancers in the ballroom as if Charlotte might suddenly appear among them. The music is suffocating. Jane rubs her ears. “Could she have been a spy?” Kiran says. “She vanished into thin air, just like the Panzavecchias seemed to, and just like your aunt.”
“My aunt didn’t vanish into thin air,” says Jane. “She froze to death in a blizzard. Someone called me from the Antarctic Peninsula. And Ivy told me it was real.” Reach for the umbrella. What the hell does that mean, Aunt Magnolia? I’ve reached for all the stupid, pointless umbrellas. Why?
“I wonder where they send people,” Kiran says. “Where on earth could two infamous adults and three infamous children live and never be found? It would have to be someplace either depressingly isolated or depressingly crowded.”
Jasper appears through the shifting crowd then, comes to her, and leans against her feet. Jane wonders if it means Ivy and the kids have departed through the tunnel in the cellar.
“They’re right, you know,” Kiran goes on, her eyes following her brother, who’s managing a sort of half dance, half conversation with both the male and the female FBI agent at the edge of the dance floor. “Ravi isn’t suited for the kind of work Espions Sans Frontières does. He’d be livid about the secrets they’ve been keeping from him. Like the secret trapdoor in the cellar, and the underground tunnel to the ramble. We played hide-and-seek in that cellar. They were always so hard to find. I wonder how young they were when they were initiated into the secret of the hidden passage.”
Jane rubs Jasper’s side, not responding.
“He’s too honest,” says Kiran, then rolls her eyes as Ravi stoops and whispers something into the ear of one of the FBI agents. “And he’d blow a fuse about the art. He’d never forgive Vanny. I mean literally, never.”
“What about you, Kiran?” says Jane. “Are you going to join them?”
Kiran is capable of an impressive range of unpleasant smiles. “It depends on whether I can do so without ever having to talk to Patrick.”
“Did you know that this work killed his parents?”
Kiran is stunned. A wave of something—comprehension, horror—passes across her face before she’s able to build her wall back up again. “No,” she says. “I did not know that.”
“Ivy told me.”
Ravi appears suddenly, pushes between Jane and Kiran and wraps an arm around each of them. “Hello, beautiful darlings,” he says. “Having fun?”
“Not like the fun you’re having,” Kiran says dryly.
“I’m going for a walk,” Ravi says. “You’ll have to stay here and be the representative Thrash.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Kiran says, slurring her words ever so slightly. “I’ll go with you if that’s what I want to do. You can’t boss me around. Where are you going?”
“Bratty twin sister,” Ravi says fondly, kissing her on the forehead. “To the bay in the ramble. The lovely FBI special agents have been asking me about alternate places for boats to dock. They want to see if someone could’ve snuck the art off the island that way.”
Instantly, Jane’s weariness flares to panic. Ivy! Grace and Christopher! They’re waiting for their pickup at that bay. “Kiran?” she squeaks, but Kiran talks over her.
“Both of the FBI agents, Ravi?” she says. “Seriously? Do they know what you’re up to? Or do they actually think you guys are going to look for clues in the dark? Do you have a preference between them?”
Kiran is just barely swaying against her brother’s chest. Kiran, Jane realizes, is pretending to be drunk.
“The answer to all your questions is, I don’t know yet,” says Ravi, grinning. “Not knowing is part of the fun.”
“I’m going with you,” says Kiran.
“Like hell you are,” says Ravi.
“I am,” says Kiran. “It’s fun to ruin your things.”