“I’m not sure I understand,” Mina said, hearing something flinty come into her voice against her own best judgment. “I’m worried I’ve missed something.”
The woman was, to a startling degree, so much like the daughter, Zo?. Mina wondered if people saw her Jaime in her own face. Whenever she saw Alexandra Barker, Mina thought of the summer years ago when their daughters had been thrown together at a local day camp. She was sure, in retrospect, that Zo? Barker had made Jaime’s life a living hell every single afternoon that summer; it was the first year Jaime had started to gain weight, had metamorphosed from a pleasantly round-cheeked kid into someone who was clearly to develop into a softer, sturdier young woman. And there was little patience around here for that, for a Long Island Italian set of boobs and hips. But Mina could remember showing up on the final day, sitting in the swampy late-afternoon heat at an outdoor basketball court, yammering on about how excited her daughter was that her basketball team had advanced to their “division finals.” She’d felt, she remembered, an almost embarrassing degree of pride, watching her daughter dribble up and down the court slowly, her face bursting with unimpeded elation each time she made a basket. And foolishly she’d thought she might share this feeling with the other mothers. That they might be finding themselves consumed with that same sense of wonder, building up inside them so they felt it like a physical pressure threatening to push out from their cheeks, their hands, their entire bodies, erupting with love for the women their daughters would become. But Alexandra had interrupted to say, Zo? was chosen to play in the All Star Game. This had been treated, liberally, as a relevant contribution to the conversation. And then again, maybe bragging, sure, Mina had mentioned that Jaime’s team might win the championship. And Alexandra had stared at her, had actually pushed her sunglasses up onto her head, drawing her strawlike hair back from her face, exposing her eyes, their incipient crow’s-feet. That, she had said to Mina, is not the All Star Game. She wasn’t chosen for the All Star Game, was she?
Alexandra finally let out a harsh chuckle.
“Well,” she said, “I think the smart money says we should all be lying low for a few months, at the very least. We’re ahead of the curve, really. Deborah here is going to have a mob on her hands next week, trying to do this very same thing. I just think it’s so sad, you know, that we all have to apologize for our way of life. Just because one family has made some serious mistakes.”
Mina wondered if she was ever going to get any smarter, any better at playing along in her own life. Of course it was about Isabel; of course she should have trusted her initial instincts. But they didn’t want to gossip. They didn’t so much want access to the information she had. At least not yet. No; they just wanted to know whether she even had it.
“God,” Suzanne said, “I’d love to know who Isabel’s hired to do this for her. I mean, I assume she can’t be showing up at Bergdorf herself.”
“She can’t be showing up anywhere,” Alexandra said, putting a smug little flip on the final syllables. “I assume she’s holed up in that house for the foreseeable future.”
Mina could feel the woman’s eyes, but she’d turned back to the dress, letting the material pass between her fingers like water from a faucet.
“That’s what bothers me the most!” Suzanne had regained her footing. “She just gets to hide away until it blows over! I mean, to be returning things here. You know, Deborah, I’m sure you must know this about me, I always shop downtown Greenwich whenever I can. You know how important it is to me that the store supports all our local causes. It just feels so unfair to be doing this here.”
“It won’t blow over,” Alexandra said. Her voice was gaining ground, cutting through the air-conditioned hush.
Mina cleared her throat, trying to sound neither anxious nor angry.
“Suzanne,” she said, “I hate to put you out, but I’ve really got to be getting back. I’ve got a gym session at the house at three.”
“I just hope she knows that,” Alexandra continued. “She can’t just sit and wait for him to bully everyone into forgetting it. Though I know that’s worked for her in the past.”
“Alex,” Suzanne began, her voice almost strong enough to constitute a warning, but Mina interrupted her.
“As I said, so nice to see you both,” she said. “But I’ve really got to go.”
Deborah was already in motion, spiriting the box away somewhere beneath the counter, taking Suzanne’s trembling hand between hers and nodding like a metronome at everything she said. And then Alexandra was stalking ahead of them, and Mina was following with Suzanne, and they were all three of them totally exposed, was how she would later think of it, when Lily stepped out from behind a display of evening gowns.
Alexandra probably didn’t recognize Isabel’s nanny. But there was something so brazen in the girl’s stance, in how close she planted herself to their path, that all three of them sputtered briefly, almost stopped where they stood. Mina felt the muscles in Suzanne’s arm go tense, cling to the bone, and she knew Suzanne had recognized Lily.
Mina tried to make eye contact, but Lily wasn’t looking at her. Her eyes were on Alexandra Barker. Even once they’d descended to the ground floor, emerged onto the street, Mina felt certain Lily was still watching them.
NINE
Lily fed the meter, so intent on casing her surroundings that she actually dropped a quarter in an attempt to fumble it into the slot. She left it where it had fallen and turned south on the Avenue.