And then it was all kaleidoscoped, as if Zo? and Chip and Wyatt were there, too. Every snide comment Madison had ignored since September, every time she’d reassured herself that no one else knew as much about this as she did. The pity she’d felt for all those other, lesser people. Those rubberneckers who were interested only in the scandal, not in the truth. And Bob D’Amico always told his daughter the truth, didn’t he? He wasn’t really the man everyone said he was.
Madison ran at her father, but Amanda’s father caught her by the crooks of her elbows. She managed it, though, before Jake lifted her entirely up, off the ground. Before her arms buckled and he brought her back down to earth with a harsh groan, her heels hitting the floor. She got it done, first. Madison spat at her father, at his feet.
“You’re disgusting,” she said. “You disgust me.”
She wrenched free from Jake, who seemed to know that it was time to stop holding her. The spit—an impressive amount, considering how dry her mouth had been since she came into this room—gleamed on the floor, like something radioactive spilled in an unusually elegant lab.
In the corner, Erica bent over Jim, as if he really had been punched and now needed nursing. Madison stared at her, willed her to look up, but the woman did nothing. Either she refused to meet Madison’s eye, or it didn’t even occur to her that maybe she should.
“Madison,” her father growled, leaning forward, suggesting that he might try to stop her. She didn’t look back at him and so she never knew if he was begging her, finally, or just angry. All she saw, in the mirror, was a brief flash of Isabel in her black dress, cutting him off with one arm.
“Absolutely not,” her mother told her father. “Leave her alone. Absolutely not.”
They were all silent, even Isabel, as Madison left the room.
HAD YOU BEEN at the Bruce Museum’s annual benefit that year, during the very first public season of the financial crisis, you would have missed most of the action. It would be hard to tell later, from the way the stories were constructed—it would be hard to see any image but the two men prone, pummeling each other on the dance floor as the entire gathered party stood and looked on in horror, beneath an April moon. But that wasn’t what happened.
If you had been there, you would have been pushing a frisée salad around your plate, avoiding the warm nuggets of goat cheese, at about the moment Bob made his aborted lunge at Jim. But you would have been quite aware of the two most noted absences, the empty places at the D’Amico table. And so you would have seen—everyone saw—the moment they all came bursting up from the house. You would have seen, first, Jake Levins—and why was he there, you might have asked your neighbor, this wasn’t really his scene, was it? You would have seen Isabel D’Amico, like a deathly angel in that dress, a bit severe for springtime, her movements slow and deliberate. She would not look toward the party. You would have seen Mina Dawes bolt from her table, rushing across the lawn, nearly tripping over her dress, to follow Isabel.
By now the murmurs were spreading, and all eyes were on the house. Bill Welsh, droning his welcome speech up on the dais, would falter. Everyone would pretend not to look toward the house and the unpleasant surprises it kept emitting, like smoke from an ailing car engine.
Finally, you would have seen another, unfamiliar blond woman, and the entire gathered group would, as one body, question and then recall her name, and why she might be there. She would emerge from the lower level and linger, uncertain as to which exit strategy was best—and how appropriate, one of the Goldman husbands would later crack, as he told his version of this story.
You probably would have missed the daughter. She would have left the party already, without anyone seeing her, or knowing where she’d gone.
LILY ARRIVED AT THE WELSH HOUSE EARLY, as expected, and negotiated with the parking attendant. He agreed to let her park over by the garage, so she wouldn’t block any latecomers. Who was he kidding, she thought. None of these people would have dared to show up late.
She had just settled in to wait when Madison came around the side of the house, pulling the Abbott kid by the hand. Lily got out of the car.
“Mad,” she said, “what happened? What’s going on?”
“Oh,” Madison said, stopping short. “You’re here.” She said it without surprise. The boy stopped with her, looking not at Lily but at Madison’s shoulders, her chest, letting his eyes roam across her body as she spoke.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” Madison said, her voice rising as if she’d been energized by the word. “Exactly. We’re leaving.”
Chip Abbott slid his arm around her waist, a pretty brazen gesture given that an adult was standing right there. He smiled at Lily. She saw a cramp move through Madison’s body, the split-second decision to fight an impulse to push him away. Lily stepped forward in alarm.
“Madison,” she said. “You can come home with me. Come on, I’ll drive you right now. I’ll come back later for the twins.”
They all stood there waiting, comically backlit by the floodlights that lit up the carport. Madison slouched so that her hips jutted forward, her shoulders sharpened and curled as if to protect her breasts.
“Don’t worry, Lil,” Madison said. “I won’t do anything they wouldn’t do.”
Chip snorted in involuntary appreciation, then bowed his head politely when Lily glared.
“Just come home,” Lily said. “Whatever it is, we can talk about it.”
But Madison shook her head with a vague gesture, her eyes already wandering away from Lily’s face, up to the trees and the dark driveway beyond the house.
“I’m fine,” she said. She took Lily’s hand and looked right at her again. “God, Lily, you look like you’re going to cry.”
Lily shook her head.
“I wish you’d come back with me,” she said. “Now.”
Madison reached out and began to rub Lily’s thumb with hers in just the same way Lily did for the boys, when they couldn’t sleep.
“I don’t know,” Madison said. “They should be worried. I don’t want to sound spoiled, but they should be at least a little bit afraid of me. If they even notice I’m gone.”
Then she turned back to Chip and he took her hand. They moved away together, almost trotting down the hill toward the front gate. Chip gave a quick salute to the guard standing at the top of the drive, and Lily saw with dread that he knew this house, knew its systems and knew that they would be ignored in favor of letting him do whatever he wanted.
“Lil,” Madison called back once, before disappearing down the hill. “You should show them to my mom. The stuff we talked about. You should show it all to my mom. Let her figure it out.”
Lily cursed under her breath, looking back and forth from the guard to the creepy man in the tuxedo at the front door. It had to be that something had happened with Bob; Madison had looked too scattered, too removed from her own limbs, for it to be something less than that.