“That’s an unfortunate choice of words. As her father, I need to know, is she doing a lot of drugs, drinking a lot? Is she sleeping around, with a lot of boys? The doctor says that’s bad for her self-esteem.”
Sleeping around with a lot of boys seemed to be quite good for Kate’s self-esteem, but that wasn’t the point.
“Mr. Eastman, you’re asking me to inform on your daughter.”
“I’m asking you to help me help her. Think of it as an act of friendship.”
“I don’t think she’d see it that way,” she said.
“Kate doesn’t always know what’s best for her.”
“I’m sorry, I wish I could do what you’re asking, but I don’t feel right spying on Kate. That’s not what friends do.”
He sighed, and signaled the waiter for another round of drinks. Only once they’d come, and he’d taken a long pull on his second scotch, did he speak.
“I admire your integrity, Jenny, really I do,” Keniston said.
He was probably buttering her up. But she liked the feeling of having this important man admire her, so it was difficult not to fall for it.
“I would never ask you to go against your principles,” he said. “The problem is, if you don’t help me, Jenny, I’m afraid Kate might do something very foolish. I’m afraid she might harm herself. If you could just see your way clear to helping me out on this one thing, if you could find it in your heart to keep me in the loop, I would be very grateful. I don’t mean money. I would never try to bribe you. I know you’re an honorable person. I recognize that what I ask is a bit of an uncomfortable undertaking. You would be putting yourself out. I would consider it my duty and my privilege to repay you someday, in whatever form is of most use to you. Advice. Introductions. A first job out of college, if that would be of interest.”
“Of course. I would love to work for you after college.”
“Very good then. Shall we shake on it?”
He held out his hand. Jenny hadn’t intended to agree to inform on Kate, but Keniston Eastman’s hand—and his job offer—exerted a magnetic pull.
“I can’t. I shouldn’t,” she said, with some difficulty.
“I promise she’ll never find out.”
“Sir, if there was anything truly wrong, I’d tell you. But I’m not comfortable calling you up and saying, oh, there was just a guy in Kate’s room, or she smoked pot, or—you know, stuff like that.”
“What if we were to touch base by telephone once a week, and you give me a general picture of how she’s doing?”
“You mean, give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down? I could do that.”
“If I have follow-up questions, I’ll ask, but you can decline to answer if the subject is too sensitive. If we do that, I’ll feel reassured, and you don’t need to feel that you’re betraying Kate’s confidence. All right?”
Keniston’s hand hung there, waiting to be shaken. What he proposed was so much less drastic than reporting on Kate’s every move that Jenny felt obligated to agree. It would seem churlish not to, after his hospitality in New York, and his taking an interest in her career. She wanted to work for him after college, so much. This would put them in regular contact. She could always say no to ratting Kate out over boys or drugs or that sort of thing. He’d just said so, hadn’t he?
Jenny reached out and shook Keniston Eastman’s hand. The look of relief in his eyes gave her a moment of queasiness. She was working for him now. They had an arrangement. He would have his expectations. Jenny liked to do a good job, to please the people in authority. When Keniston started asking sensitive questions, as he surely would, was she really going to refuse to answer?
13
The Eastmans had a house in Jamaica, an old plantation owner’s spread, perched in the lush green hills to the east of Montego Bay with breathtaking views of the sea. Kate thought of it as her house, since the stepmonsters never visited and didn’t give a crap about it. For Kate, it was the place where she’d frolicked with her mother as a child, but Victoria would sell the house in a heartbeat if she could find a buyer. Luckily, she couldn’t, since the snowbirds had long since departed Jamaica in favor of more fashionable isles like Anguilla and St. Bart’s. The house had been in the Eastman family since early in the previous century, ever since Kate’s great-grandfather took an interest in a cane plantation and rum factory at the tail end of Prohibition. Later generations of Eastmans decided the alcohol business was too low-class, and sold the family interest and rolled the money into a beach resort that had been quite chic for a time, back in the heyday of James Bond and martinis and such. Then the socialists came to power in Jamaica and threatened to nationalize everything, and Kate’s grandfather let the resort go for a song. Somehow through thick and thin they’d held on to the house, and Kate had taken to saying that Keniston should give it to her as a twenty-first-birthday present, that she would go live there and care for the place and start a bed-and-breakfast or something. She would never actually do that—Kate, changing the bedsheets of strangers?—but she hated the thought of losing a house that held precious childhood memories.
Spring break was coming up and nobody had plans yet. Kate was sick of the wretched, endless winter, and tired of the fishbowl life of Carlisle, where she felt constantly watched and spied on. Keniston always seemed to know what she was doing—how? Getting on a plane to anywhere sounded good right now, but getting on a plane to Jamaica would be paradise. One night, as she sat with her roommates and Griff Rothenberg over the unappetizing remains of tacos in the Commons, she idly mentioned her desire to visit her house. She wasn’t serious, but Griff glommed on to the idea instantly.
“I’m game. Let’s go,” Griff said.
“I was just daydreaming,” Kate said. “The house is closed now. The caretakers would have to open it.”
“So, that’s nothing, right? Taking off the dust covers and turning on the air-conditioning? Why does your dad pay them if not to be able to do that on a whim?”
“I don’t even know if the pool is filled.”
“Call and ask.”
“All right.”
Kate had her qualms. Griff was getting so possessive lately. She had no interest in a vacation where the two of them played house for a week and he became even more convinced that Kate was his girlfriend. She was obsessed with that gorgeous, moody townie boy Lucas, whom she’d barely seen since that night they had sex in his car near the icy river.
“No need to worry about a plane ticket,” Griff said. “My dad’s flying to the Caymans next week. We can hitch a ride on his plane.”
“The house is in Jamaica,” Kate said.
“Jamaica and the Caymans are right next door to each other, babe. I can ask him to add a stop for us,” Griff said, with a puppy-dog eagerness on his handsome face that Kate found cloying.
“Free vacation?” Aubrey said. “Can I come?”