Nell hears the hubbub from the top-floor landing. Halted at the door under the blackbuck, her father is shaking hands with the old O’Brennan in pearls while a small crowd forms around them.
“Quite decent of you,” the woman is saying.
She can hear her father apologizing for not attending the memorial service, can hear him explaining about flight times and time zones, but she notes that he’s scanning the room out of the corner of his eye. When he sees her, he makes no pretense of heading right for her.
Living in Italy agrees with him. He moved there right after her mother died, and he’s never come back. Nell visits him annually. Dressed in a sharp suit with a sumptuous Charvet tie, his deep tan speaks to the afternoons he spends playing mixed doubles on the courts at the American Club.
“You’re looking quite groovy,” Baldwin says, coming up to him now. Compared to the sea of baggy khakis and clodhopper shoes in the room, her father’s snappy lace-ups look like something from another planet. And Nell knows that his clothes are only one of the many things that have grated the Quincys about her dad. Being younger than her mother, he’d been made out to be an opportunist, some kind of gigolo—an efficient double insult to both Nell’s mother and to him, despite his independent money, his degree in classical civilization from Yale.
Her father ignores Baldwin, stepping back to take her in with a paternal CAT scan. He’s frowning, and she knows he’s about to comment on the lint-covered, shapeless sack dress she’s wearing. He’s always liked glamour. But instead he eyes the necklace.
“New?”
Before she can answer, Baldwin, who Nell didn’t realize was still hovering, butts in. “Mother left her that.” He stands between them, refusing to move off, blatantly attempting to control this interchange. Nell’s unaccustomed to this much of Baldwin’s focus. She notes that he’s deduced exactly what the necklace is, despite claiming to have never seen it before.
“Did she now?” her father says.
Nell fumbles with the cords. How can her dad make her feel like she’s twelve years old again? “What else did she leave you?” he asks.
“A bottom-line guy, concerned with the nitty-gritty,” Baldwin booms to the room. He’s always thought her father was grabby, lack of evidence being no obstacle to opinion. “Not like old Nell, here. You can rely on Nell.” She wonders how much Baldwin’s had to drink, or if this is just his usual bonhomie, goosed by unaccustomed strong emotion. She figures he’s excused either way at his own mother’s wake.
Her father’s eyes narrow. “First a drink, I think,” he says.
“Wet the old whistle after all that travel.” Baldwin follows him off to the flower room, pattering in his ear. Even from across the room, Nell can see her father stiffen when Baldwin puts a hand on his back, pushing her dad along like he’s under house arrest. The crowd parts for them, some giving her father nods, most pretending they don’t see him.
“He’s always been like that, hasn’t he?” Pansy says, materializing at Nell’s elbow. “I thought for sure he was a movie star when I was little. I remember being so surprised when I found out you guys lived in Oregon and not Hollywood.”
“Clearly it skipped a generation.” Nell waves down.
“Yes, well, glamour sometimes does that,” Pansy says in a breezy way that hides the knife inside.
Her dad returns with a hug for Pansy, whom he’s fond of, she of the stature and presence. And so Nell’s a bit surprised when, with only the merest effort at polite conversation, her father puts a hand on her arm, right above the elbow, and says, “Come with me.”
He leads Nell into a small office off the front hall, lined floor to ceiling with gun racks. The guns have all been auctioned off, and now the racks hold fishing rods, umbrellas, and tripods for cameras. Everything from the racks to the Palladian fretwork is lacquered in an ancient dull green, the ceiling stained gray from cigars long since smoked.
“You’re here,” Nell says when he closes the door.
Her father crosses the faded Turkish carpet, a squat glass in his hand, which he puts on the windowsill while he forces the sash up, flaking a good amount of ancient green paint in the process. Her father isn’t afraid to adjust things, adjust Quincy things, to his liking. Then he flaps his suit jacket out behind him and sits down on the window ledge like some exotic bird.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” she says.
He takes a sip of his drink and grimaces. “I forgot how vile this is.”
“Used to a nice Barolo?”
“Not this,” he says, lifting the glass, but setting it down a good three feet to his side. “This.” He gestures around the room and then rummages in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Don’t start,” Nell says. Her father’s view of the Quincys is familiar and frankly unsurprising; the dislike is mutual. But something about being named executor, the days she’s spent here, the necklace around her neck . . . she doesn’t want to be the outsider, not today.
“Who’s starting?” He pulls out a pack of thin cigarettes and a silver lighter engraved with his twisting monogram.
“You’re smoking?” Nell says, horrified, though the irony is not lost on her. She’d love one right now. But even without him here, there’s no way she’d light up inside the house.
Her father, though, doesn’t have these compunctions as he lights his cigarette, adding to the gray haze on the ceiling. “She made me stop when we got married. We both did. And we agreed we could start again when we turned seventy-five. Young enough to still enjoy it and old enough not to care. I’m just starting a little early.” She notes his pack is an Italian brand. “It killed her.”
“Yeah, cancer. So how can you do that to her memory?”
“Not this,” he says, flourishing the smoke in front of his face. “This.” He makes a generous arm sweep. “These people. Their secrets and expectations. Killed her just as sure as this”—he puts the smoke between them, at eye-level—“will kill me.” He slides over, as if he’s rethought rejecting his drink, and picks up the glass again. “God, I can’t wait to see her again.”
“See her again?” Nell asks. Already her father’s penchant for drama and flair is grating on her.
“I have returned to the Church,” he says after a sip. “You really have no choice in Rome. It’s incredibly soothing. But I meant at night. I only rarely see her in my dreams anymore.”