“What, like Ehrlich?” Mr Gansey laughed gently at some private joke. “Let this be a lesson to us all.”
“Ehrlich’s an outlier,” Mrs Gansey replied. They clinked their glasses together in a mysterious toast.
“What have you put in already?” Helen asked. There was danger in her voice. Unidentifiable to non-Ganseys, but enough that their father frowned at her.
Gansey blinked up. “None, yet.”
“I can’t remember the timing for these things,” Mrs Gansey said. “Soon, though, right?”
“Time got away from me.” It was the simplest possible version of theoretically I am to die before it matters so I used my evenings for other things.
“I’ve read a study on gap years,” Henry said. He smiled at his plate as Mrs Gansey placed it before him, and in that smile was an understanding that he was fluent in this language of subtlety. “It is supposed to be good for people like us.”
“What are people like us?” Gansey’s mother asked, in a way that suggested she enjoyed the idea of commonality between them.
“Oh, you know, overeducated young people who drive themselves to nervous breakdowns in the worthy pursuit of excellence,” Henry said. Gansey’s parents laughed. Blue picked at her napkin. Gansey had been rescued; Blue had been stranded.
Mr Gansey saw it, though, and he caught the ball before it even hit the ground. “I would love to read something from you, Blue, on growing up in a house of psychics. You could go academic or you could go memoir, and either way, it would just be fascinating. You have such a distinct voice, even when speaking.”
“Oh yes, I noticed that, too, the Henrietta cadence,” Mrs Gansey said warmly; they were excellent team players. Good save, point to the Ganseys, win for Team Good Feeling.
Helen said, “I nearly forgot about the bruschetta; it’s going to burn. Dick, would you help me carry it in?”
Team Good Feeling was abruptly disbanded. Gansey was about to find out why he was in trouble.
“Right, sure,” he said. “Can I get anyone anything while I’m inside?”
“Actually, if you’d bring back my schedule by the Ellie-furniture, that would be great, thanks,” his mother said. “I need to call Martina to make sure she’s going to be there in enough time.”
The Gansey siblings headed inside, where Helen first removed the toast from the oven and then turned to him. She demanded, “Do you remember when I said, ‘tell me what kind of dirt I will find on your brodude friends so that I can spin it before Mom gets out here’?”
“I trust that’s a rhetorical question,” Gansey said. He garnished bruschetta.
Helen said, “You did not get back to me with any information on that front.”
“I sent you clippings of the Turk Week pranks.”
“And yet you failed to mention that you had bribed the headmaster.”
Gansey stopped garnishing bruschetta.
“You really did,” Helen said, reading him effortlessly. Gansey siblings were tuned to the same radio frequency. “Which one did you do it for? Which friend? The trailer park one.”
“Don’t be insulting,” Gansey replied crisply. “Who told you?”
“Paperwork told me. You’re not eighteen yet, you know. How did you even manage to convince Brulio to write that document for you? I thought he was supposed to be Dad’s attorney.”
“This has nothing to do with Dad. I didn’t spend his money.”
“You’re seventeen. What other money do you have?”
Gansey looked at her. “I take it you only read the first page of the document then.”
“That’s all that would open on my phone,” Helen said. “Why? What does the second page say? Jesus Christ. You gave Child that warehouse of yours, didn’t you?”
It sounded so clean when she put it that way. He supposed it was. One Aglionby diploma in exchange for Monmouth Manufacturing.
You probably won’t be around to miss it, he told himself.
“First of all, what has he possibly done to deserve such a thing?” Helen demanded. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Indignation cooled his voice. “Because friendship isn’t worthy enough?”
“Dick, I see you stretching to stand on the high ground, but trust me, you’re failing. You don’t just need a morality ladder to get there, you need a booster chair to put the ladder on. Do you understand what an incredibly bad position this puts Mom in if this stupidity of yours comes to light?”
“It’s not Mom. It’s me.”
Helen put her head on its side. Ordinarily he didn’t notice the age difference between them, but just then, she was very obviously a polished adult and he was a – whatever he was. “Do you think the press would care? You’re seventeen. It was the family lawyer, for God’s sake. Example of family corruption, et cetera, et cetera. I cannot believe you wouldn’t at least wait until after the election to do it.”