On Tuesday, a weird number began calling her; she answered the first time, hoping Jaime was calling from Venezuela. Instead, it was a different collection agency, this time for AmEx. Evelyn had said that they had the wrong number, then briefly quarantined the phone in her refrigerator.
By Wednesday morning, with no word from Camilla or Jaime, Evelyn deduced that something terrible must have happened to Jaime. His grandmother dying, maybe. Even if he hadn’t liked her, he would’ve gotten in touch. She was a fellow houseguest at Camp Sachem and had done the danse d’honneur at the Bal Fran?ais, for God’s sake. Unless Verizon had had some sort of outage when she’d sent the text with her phone number? Had Verizon had an outage? Where was Camilla? She needed people on her side.
These billiard-ball thoughts were angling around her head as Evelyn hurried toward Central Park on the warm Wednesday afternoon. She had gotten nowhere with the Sloan Kettering associates committee, and certainly wasn’t going to get Preston’s help with his mother now, so she had signed up to volunteer for it with the hope that work on the ground would turn into a committee role. Evelyn had been assigned to help pass out water at a 5K run/walk to raise money for the children’s hospital.
As Evelyn picked up tiny paper cups from the setup station, she practically collided with Brooke Birch, also wearing a VOLUNTEER badge, carrying an armful of energy-gel packets.
“Brooke?”
Brooke looked around quickly, but found no obvious exit route. “Evelyn,” she said.
“What are you doing in town?”
“We’re here through the wedding. At the end of June.” Brooke was looking past Evelyn’s head.
“That’s fantastic. So nice of you to volunteer.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” Brooke said.
“Hey,” Evelyn said quickly. Her unanswered messages for Camilla and Jaime were nagging at her. If she was slipping, she needed more stability. More friends. The pictures in the social pages were good, a very good start. She wasn’t quite secure yet, though. She needed allies. “Have you seen much of Camilla while you’ve been in town?”
“Honestly, Evelyn, I’m pretty sure you know we’re not exactly on the best of terms. How was the Bal? Did you have fun as Camilla’s assistant or whatever that was?”
“Look,” Evelyn said softly as she stacked paper cups. “I don’t really know what Camilla was doing with the Bal, but I didn’t mean to—I didn’t want to take your place.”
“It’s fine.”
“It was kind of nuts, the way she cut you out of it. I wanted to say something at the time, but I wasn’t sure what to do.”
Brooke started to walk away. “We don’t really need to talk about it, okay, Evelyn? You’ve known Camilla for, what, two minutes? Congratulations, you get to be her new best friend.”
Evelyn walked after her, a calmness settling over her. She thought of her father, standing in his office and putting a paperweight on a stack of court documents. The secret to settlements, he had said, is to find out the essence of what’s important to the other party and make sure they believe they’re getting it.
“I love your ring, by the way. I didn’t get a good look at it when we met,” Evelyn said. “Did Will pick it out himself?”
Brooke halted her militant walk. “He did.” She let one of the gel packs drop and didn’t pick it up. “He actually got the idea for it from a ring my grandmother has that I’ve always loved.”
“It’s so beautiful on your hand. It catches the light so well. So you have your dress already? What does it look like?”
Brooke’s frozen face relaxed a bit. “Oh, it’s so pretty,” she said, then paused, and Evelyn gave her an encouraging smile. “It’s strapless, then fitted at the bodice, with a mermaid back and a train.”
“In ivory?”
“True white.” Brooke’s voice almost trilled.
“Gorgeous. That will look great with your skin tone.”
Brooke smiled, and Evelyn, who knew from fake smiles, thought it was a real one. Evelyn inquired about the bridesmaids’ dresses, and Brooke, releasing the energy packs into a big bowl, began describing their grosgrain trim. Evelyn reached out and touched Brooke’s hand. She knew what Brooke wanted to hear. Of course she did. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about Camilla. Well, not about Camilla, but about the Bal.”
Brooke’s voice was kinder now. “That’s Camilla, right? I’ve thought about it so much, and it’s just, like, she was so patently jealous that I was getting married and she wasn’t. It’s like, sorry I’m happy and not totally dependent on you.”
“She seemed to be a little upset by the idea that you were engaged.”
“I can’t believe she said that to you.”