“What do you mean?”
“I mean, have you ever had a certain time of day or night that you carry around inside you? That defines you.” His gaze still went beyond her, but now it was far beyond, past the ballroom and the people and the confines of the club. “Midnight. Give or take fifteen minutes. I wake up at midnight and”—he shook his head slightly—“sleep is just gone. I lie there and I watch the shadows on the ceiling. Then I run.”
“Where?”
“On the sidewalks. Sometimes on the beach.” His eyes were glassy, and now she read more into the faint redness at the corners, telltale signs of sleeplessness. He didn’t say which beach he meant, and it chilled her to think of him driving to his family’s ruined house, walking down the wooded path in the dark to reach their private strip of sand. “By two o’clock, I’m home, and I can sleep again. But for those two hours”—he swallowed, trailing off—“I burn.”
A little after midnight. The click of a door latch, a studying silence, two muzzle flares each—and then the fire, devouring trails of gasoline to the bedrooms, engulfing beds where bodies already lay still and ruined. Pearl had gone from hot to prickling with gooseflesh.
“It’s like—inside me—it’s always midnight.” His speech came faster, forcing it all out before some internal circuit breaker cut him off. “At least it ended for them, eventually. For me, it just goes on. The fire’s always there.” He was quiet. When he spoke next, he sounded almost uncertain, as if completely unaccustomed to asking for affirmation. “Does that make sense to you?”
She thought of Dad, trying to drown the fire in alcohol, not seeming to realize he was feeding the flames, revisiting that night every time he’d had one too many. “Yes.” She swallowed hard, seized by an overwhelming need to comfort, to fix things. “What happened isn’t your fault.”
“Then why am I being punished?”
“Because you miss them.” There was honest confusion in his eyes. She moved on impulse, squeezing his arm with her free hand. “They were your family.”
Her touch seemed to rouse him from his state, and he looked down at her hand, then out at the floor again, where it seemed they’d danced through at least two more songs, and people were applauding again. “I wish it were that simple.”
She spent the next two hours at Bridges’s side. He was stiff at first, seeming to expect Tristan to join them, but he never came back to the table; nobody commented. Gradually, Bridges relaxed, and he took Pearl out onto the dance floor at least four more times, got her something to eat, tried to coax her out of the pensive state she’d been in since her dance with Tristan.
Reese didn’t return to the ballroom. Pearl kept looking, and she kept meeting eyes with Indigo instead as the girl circulated hors d’oeuvres and champagne; it was impossible to tell whether she was keeping watch over Pearl or the boys.
At ten, the band took a break so the club general manager Gene Charbonneau could claim the mic. He wore a tux, his heavy-jowled face flushed, thinning hair combed over from a side part. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you would please turn your attention to the auction tables, it’s time to begin the bidding. . . .”
Akil kicked back, stuck his left foot on the empty chair next to him, draping one arm over the back of Hadley’s chair as he played a game on his phone.
Two assistants brought items up one by one to a table by the podium. Gene gave a brief description of each piece, took bids as people raised their paddles. There were oil paintings, a sunset cruise for two around the bay, curio cabinets, a Bakelite penny bank featuring a clown and a mechanized seal that flipped a coin into the slot. People were bidding well up into the thousands, more than Pearl would’ve thought possible.
A set of four blown-glass vases with a distinctive swirl pattern came on the block; there was a faint stirring in the crowd. Gene hesitated, continued, “Bidding starts at fifteen hundred.”
The vases ended up going for nearly twice that. A few more items came and went. It wasn’t until a Swiss clock appeared that the same table broke into whispers again, one woman sounding most adamant: “Yes, it is, I know it is—”
The bidding went quickly. Pearl shifted, crossed her legs from one side to the other; there was an odd feeling in the room now, a rising tension. From the corner of her eye, she noticed someone leaning against the wall near the lobby doors, arms folded. Tristan. As she watched, he straightened slowly and left the ballroom.
Gene was sweating visibly under the lights, looking like there was nothing he’d rather do than take his jacket off. “Next, we have an unusual conversation piece. Really fine work here, and a subject I know we can all appreciate.” A large peaked box covered with a dust cloth was brought to the table. Gene pulled the cloth away, and there was an audible intake of breath.
It was a dollhouse, but more than that: it was the club. Two and a half stories high, covered in white clapboards and dark green shingles, complete with a front porch with filigreed gingerbread, flagstones set into the molded grass at the base. “This is by an unknown artist.” Gene circled the miniature. “Donated anonymously, and I can tell you that we here at the club were tempted to keep it for ourselves. It opens like so”—he pulled at an invisible seam, and the house split in two on brass hinges, revealing a cross section of the club’s interior—“and you can see that each room has been decorated true to life, right down to the wallpaper.” He flicked a hidden switch, and there was laughter and applause as electric light fixtures burst to life in all the rooms.
Akil was sitting stark upright, his phone forgotten, staring at the house. “What the hell.”
“Bidding starts at seventeen hundred. Remember, folks, this is for a good cause.” In the crowd, a paddle shot up.
Akil pushed back from the table and made for the door, followed by Hadley, hurrying to keep up.
Bridges glanced at Pearl, and they went out into the lobby together, which was deserted, and finally onto the porch, where they found Akil and Hadley leaning against the railing. Hadley’s hand rested gingerly on his back. “What?” Bridges said.
“That was Cassidy’s.” Akil rubbed his face. “Joseph’s, too.”
“The house?”
An engine turned over, and there was a flash of halogen headlights as a car pulled out of the lot and approached, stopping at the curb. It was the Bentley.
No one moved. The window powered down and a slice of Tristan’s face was visible in the dash glow. “I’m going out on the water,” he said. “Are you coming?” There was an edge to his voice Pearl had never heard before.
Bridges shared a look with Akil. “What about the girls? We can’t—”
“Bring them.”
Fourteen
“DID YOU DO it, man?” Akil faced Tristan as they drove. “Did you give their stuff away?”
“Some of it.”
“Why?”
Tristan reached down, raised a bottle from the floor. Vodka, with a pattern of migrating geese on the glass. He took a drink, handed it to Akil. “You know how it is. You’ve got to deal with these things.”
In the backseat, Pearl felt Hadley stiffen beside her; they were Quinn’s words, from the day of the regatta. Had he overheard the whole conversation? Pearl remembered all that had been said, the insensitivity of it, the flippancy she’d ignored while busy trying to pump the girls for information.
Akil drank, swore softly, looked out the window. “I saw them working on that house. Out in the garage. Cassidy was trying to get Joe into all that little stuff she liked.” He was quiet. “I gave her shit about it. Said dollhouses were for kids.”
“Miniatures,” Tristan said, “are for people who need the illusion of control. A world where they get to decide everything.”
On Pearl’s right, Bridges sat silently, tie loosened, hand open on the seat. He took the bottle as Akil passed it back.