“Did you see him?”
Lily waited, long enough, she hoped, before she offered her reply. “No, I didn’t.”
“This wouldn’t normally matter,” Isabel said.
“Of course.”
“I just don’t want to overreact.”
“No, I understand.”
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Isabel said, her perfect Chiclet teeth chewing away at her bottom lip. “It’s been too easy, with her. I’ve tried not to bother her, to see if that might keep her from striking back. If it seemed like I was giving her some slack, some space to process all of this on her own, without me all over her.”
Bullshit, Lily thought. To attribute agency and wisdom to Isabel’s indifference toward Madison that winter was one step further than Lily could sympathize. She’d sympathized with Isabel for years. The preteen trance she always fell into around this woman, how badly Lily wanted her employers to like her, had made it easier to shrug off the things Isabel didn’t do for Madison. Lily had told herself for years that not every mother was warm, not every mother tickled and hugged. Her mother didn’t, for one. And Isabel had been smart enough, hadn’t she, to hire Lily. Lily was warm with the children, in her place, and Isabel was still a good mother, of a sort.
But that was different. That was temperament; this was neglect. Ignoring your daughter, ignoring her pain. This was how bad it had to get before Isabel did anything. Lily had to literally stop doing her job.
She tried to keep one part of her mind on Jackson, back in her bedroom. You can’t be angry right now, she told herself. You’ve squandered that.
“Bob wanted to put a car on her,” Isabel continued. “At all times. I thought that was outrageous. But if he finds out that she’s in the city by herself, refusing to talk to us, he’ll lose it, he’ll kill me.”
“He might know where she is.”
Something like a smile flitted across Isabel’s face, but she didn’t bother to respond.
“He might have an idea,” Lily said, “of what to do—if we ended up in this situation. He might have already thought about this.”
Isabel ignored her a second time. She gathered the chopped flower stalks from the sink and threw them in the trash, each gesture made without urgency.
“I’ll get the security guys on the phone now. I wasn’t dealing with the new people directly at first, but I’ve spoken with them a few times now. I’ve got all the numbers.”
“Okay,” Lily said. Isabel ran a hand through her limp hair. She hadn’t ever started to dress differently, really, since all this had started, but someone who saw her as often as Lily did could see the tiny false notes. There was a coffee stain on one sleeve of her crisp white shirt, and a faded spot of something peach colored—a makeup stain?—at the collar. Her hair was still thick and something to envy in its many shades of blond, but it had lost its luster somehow, as if Isabel had styled it the day before and then partied all night, brushing it back repeatedly from her face in a film of alcohol sweat.
“I can do it,” Lily said. “I can call them.”
“No,” Isabel said, already turning to her phone, squaring her shoulders as if to hide its screen from Lily. “Here’s what you can do for me. Call Mina. She’ll be good here. Then let the guys in, when they arrive.”
“Mina?” Lily began, but Isabel left the room, the door swinging behind her as if in grief at her swift departure.
TWENTY-NINE
Madison stood beside Hugh at the bar, ignored for several moments longer than she believed it had taken him to feel her there.
“Hi,” she said. “I wanted some water, too.”
The bartender came back over and set down a shot glass. Madison drifted back slightly, conscious of the lights above the bar on her face, but the bartender didn’t seem to register her presence, her age. The bar was crammed; she’d had to all but crawl to make her way up to him.
He looked down at her.
“You want one?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes on his. He whirled a finger in the air, and the bartender brought over another before winking and gliding away. They clearly knew each other.
Madison took the shot. It was whiskey, bad whiskey. He looked at her again, his features spreading out across his face, less pinched.
“You like picklebacks?”
“Yes,” she lied. Or maybe it wasn’t even a lie, how would she know? He made another indecipherable gesture toward the bartender, who soon returned with four shot glasses, two of them filled with a murkier liquid. Madison liked the way the lights behind the bar illuminated the alcohol in the shot glasses, as if you were drinking something more special than what you could drink at home. That made sense, though. It was another reason to come to a place like this; to tell yourself that something you could find absolutely anywhere was special, worth fighting your way toward.
“Jack’s a big fan of these,” Hugh said. “He got me into them and now, like an idiot, I’m always drinking them.”
She watched and followed his lead, choking through her nose when she realized the name had been only literal; it was just a shot of pickle juice.
Hugh looked at her again. They’d performed some required ritual and now they were allowed to talk. She waited for his pupils to go soluble, for the corners of his mouth to slacken. She waited for the shift she knew so well.
“I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said. “You guys seem bright. You’re lovely. It’s just been a long day, and they should know better.”
She nodded.
“You work on the Street?”
He smiled, letting his eyes move down her body to her hands, her elbow propped on the bar, then back up to her face again.
“My father works in finance,” she said, feeling the words beneath her feet like a swaying tightrope. They were impossible not to say. It was like reciting a spell; if she mentioned it first, if she controlled their conversation, then it couldn’t go anywhere too terrible. Then he wouldn’t figure it out.
“Yes,” he said. “I work on the Street.”
“Bank? Hedge fund?”
“I work at a bank,” he said. He didn’t say which one.
“Trader, or banker?”
“Banker,” he said. “I work in fixed income, do you know what that is?”
She nodded. She thought it had something to do with bonds—her father had muttered the name of his former head of fixed income several times during their last late-night talk. Her father’s bank had been known primarily as a bond shop, at least before. She knew that part not from her father but from reading Jake’s columns.
She pushed the thoughts of Amanda from her mind. She didn’t want to think about Amanda’s opinion of any part of the afternoon thus far.
“Anyway,” he said. “I should apologize for being so rude back there. I just—it’s been a strange few months. And then, being in here, you know, it can seem like nothing’s changed. The younger people don’t really know the difference, maybe.”