Edgewater (11 page)

“Hey,” I said.

Charlie leaned toward me and kissed me hello on either cheek, very breezy and European, and his lips on my skin made my cheeks heat up. He smelled good—like, really good. Fresh and citrusy like a bergamot orange. Voices buzzed around us, “Charlie, Charlie,” whispered under people's breaths. If he noticed, you couldn't tell.

I introduced Charlie and Lennox. “Nice to meet you,” Charlie told her.

“You, too,” Lennox said. I could feel her enthusiasm, like a horse at the starting gate raring to go. “Is it all right that I tagged along tonight? Lorrie said she was coming out, and I thought it'd be fun. I didn't realize what a big-deal party this would be.”

She didn't realize? Liar.

“Any friend of Lorrie's is a friend of mine,” Charlie assured her. “Welcome to our humble home. Come on in.”

We stepped through the metal detectors that were set up on the front porch. These were not your everyday, gray airport metal detectors. They were painted a soft white, almost an ecru, and they blended in, as well as possible, with the house's columns and window frames. I handed my purse over to the man in a suit and tie who was reaching for it. He had a little earpiece behind his ear. A hired guard, or maybe even a Secret Service agent. He snapped open my purse to look inside. It was also on loan from Harper's closet, and I deeply regretted leaving the house without removing the loose tampons swimming around in there.

Lennox was stepping through an adjacent metal detector, handing her purse over to another man in a suit. Mine was handed back, but hers wasn't. “Miss, I see you have a cell phone in here.”

“Yes, of course I do,” Lennox said.

“The Copelands are requiring that all devices that can take pictures or be enabled to post onto social media not be brought onto the premises unless you have a press pass. It was stated plainly on the invitation.”

“Hey,” Charlie said, sticking a hand out. “I'm Charlie Copeland. I'm the son of the people who hired you tonight.”

“I know who you are, sir.”

“Call me Charlie, please. What's your name?”

“Philip.”

“Philip, good to meet you. I agree with you that this girl
looks awfully suspicious, but I assure you, she's harmless, and I don't mind if she brings her phone in. She promises not to use it, right?” He looked at Lennox.

“Sure, of course not,” she said quickly.

“All right?” Charlie asked. He leaned toward Philip. “I'm trying to make a good impression here.”

As if he had anything to worry about where Lennox and I were concerned.

“All right,” Philip said. He handed Lennox her purse—phone and all. Charlie ushered us forward, into a foyer as big as a wedding hall. The floor was patterned marble, and several gilded chandeliers hung down from a frescoed ceiling. Standing below, it looked three-dimensional, and I couldn't imagine that the Sistine Chapel itself was any more awe-inspiring. The back wall was a window that stretched up two stories. Sliding panels at the bottom were thrown wide open, and the crowd was moving toward them, headed outside. Charlie kept getting intercepted by people wanting to say hello and tell him it was good to see him back in Idlewild.

Lennox steered me toward a waiter with a silver tray of drinks balanced precariously on one hand. “That's a poppy in his lapel,” she told me.

“So?”

“It's the Copeland family flower,” she said. She nodded toward the cocktails on his tray, which looked a bit like liquid candy. “Pick a color, any color.”

I reached for a glass of red, but the waiter pulled the drinks back from me. “Miss, I'm going to need to see some ID.”

“Sorry. Never mind.”

“You, too,” Charlie was saying to an older man with a much younger blonde on his arm. “It was great to see you both. I'll see you around.”

The three of us finally made it outside, onto an expansive deck featuring a human-size chessboard at the center. Guests were milling about on the black and white squares, resting the butt ends of drinks and appetizers on the crowns of giant king and queen game pieces. Lennox moved toward the railing. “Look,” she said. “That guy in the orange tie over there by the pool—that's the Speaker of the House!”

“Wow,” Charlie said. “You've done your homework.”

“I read the
Washington Post
every day,” Lennox said. “And I have my own blog—Capitol Teen. You can look it up.”

“Between you and me, the Speaker's a total asshole,” Charlie told her.

“Really?” Lennox leaned over the rail again. I did, too—to see if there was anyone out there I had to avoid.

“Oh my God,” Lennox said. “I see your mom. Oh my God, she's looking right at us!”

Julia Copeland
was
looking right at us—well, right at Charlie. Tall and slender, she was wearing a sleeveless white dress that showed off her sculpted arms. Four thick gold necklaces were layered around her neck, and her blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. She looked as perfect and symmetrical as the Eiffel Tower. People were reaching hands out toward her. She would reach back and give them a squeeze or occasionally lean in for a hug or an air kiss. She was mesmerizing to watch.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “We've been spotted.” His mother came up the stairs, a woman in a navy suit at her heels. Lennox
grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. This was the moment she'd been waiting for; one of the moments, at least. I could practically hear what she was thinking:
Now I get to shake the hand of the next First Lady.

“Charlie,” Julia Copeland said when she reached us, leaning in toward her son and taking the opportunity to sweep his bangs from his forehead. “I've been looking for you.”

“I've been with my friends,” Charlie said.

“I thought you said you hadn't invited anyone,” she said.

“Surprise,” he said.

A few steps away a crowd had gathered in parentheses around the two of them, people trying to look oh-so-casual, as if they just happened to be standing right by that very spot.

Julia looked Lennox and me up and down, then looked back at her son. “Aren't you going to introduce me?”

“Sure,” he said. “Lorrie, Lennox, please meet the Famous Talking Julia Doll.”

“Charles, please,” Julia Copeland said. She took a step toward us and shook my hand, then Lennox's. “Good to meet you, girls.”

“It's nice to meet you, too,” I said.

“Thank you so much for having us, Mrs. Copeland,” Lennox said. “I've actually seen you speak before—at the Rally for Women in DC last year. My entire American Government and Law class attended. You were so inspiring.”

“That's kind of you to say.”

“I'm excited to see your husband tonight, too.”

“Unfortunately, he was called away. No such thing as a holiday weekend when there's a bill on the floor.”

“But I thought . . . I thought the Senate wasn't in session right now.”

“Julia!” We all swiveled our heads. “Julia!” A woman rushed toward us; well, rushed as well as she could on five-inch strappy sandals. Beth-Ann Bracelee had the same ones in multiple colors: Yves Saint Laurent.

The woman in navy bent toward Julia's ear and whispered helpful information: “That's Jill Whitley-Ford. Platinum sponsor this evening.”

“Don't go anywhere,” Julia told Charlie. She raised her hand to wave.

“Julia!” Jill Whitley-Ford said, pushing Lennox and me out of the way. She grasped Julia Copeland's arm.

“Jill, what a pleasure to see you again.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Jill Whitley-Ford said. “And this gorgeous young man?” She looked up at Charlie adoringly. “My daughter's still in elementary school, but I'm reserving you right now. Sloane is all yours in about ten years, okay?”

“Gross,” I whispered to Lennox.

“The Senate's not in session right now,” Lennox whispered back.

“What?”

“It's not in session. There can't be a bill on the floor.”

“You look simply divine, Julia,” Jill said.

“This old thing?” Julia Copeland flashed a glorious smile. “I just threw it on.”

Jill threw her head back and laughed, as if it was the funniest and most original joke she'd ever heard.

Charlie stepped away from them and grabbed my hand.
“Now's our chance,” he said. My palm felt slippery against his, which was as cool and dry as a piece of paper. I grabbed Lennox's hand with my left, and we raced down the steps. Hundreds of guests were mingling on a lawn as vast and well kept as the rolling fairways of the club's eighteen-hole golf course. Charlie led us to the catering tent set up by the side of the tennis courts. He told us to wait while he ducked inside.

Of course Lennox was dying to look inside, and she did. “An assembly line of food prep is going on,” she reported back.

“Behind the Scenes at the Copeland Compound,” I said into an imaginary microphone. “By Lennox Sackler-Kandell.”

“Stay tuned for an in-depth interview with Charlie Copeland himself,” Lennox said. “When he talks about his father's run, his own summer plans, and how much he loves Lorrie Hollander in that dress.”

“Now you sound like a tabloid,” I told her, my cheeks warming. “And you don't even know him. You can't tell what he loves.”

A few minutes later Charlie reemerged, a big box in his arms. Lennox and I followed him even farther away from the house and the lawn and all the action, into the woods on the property. It occurred to me that if I didn't have Lennox with me, this would be getting a little too close to a scene out of some teen horror flick: Girl meets boy, boy seems too good to be true, girl gets all dressed up in a sexy dress and learns that when someone seems too good to be true, he usually is; in the middle of the fabulous party he's brought her to, he leads her into the woods and, well, everyone knows the end of that story.

Charlie stopped at a big oak tree. Steps spiraled around the trunk. “Here we are,” he said, gesturing upward. I looked up,
and there, partly hidden by branches, was the biggest tree house I'd ever seen, its girth expanding well beyond the tree. The corners of the house were on wooden stilts, built to blend in with the trunks of the trees surrounding it. Up we went to a wraparound deck. “After you,” Charlie said as he pushed open the door. Lennox and I stepped inside, into a large room designed to look like the interior of a log cabin. I remembered something I'd read years earlier, in elementary school: Abraham Lincoln had been born and raised in a single-room log cabin. Though I doubted Abe's childhood home had been so spacious and well-appointed, with thick Oriental rugs and built-in bookshelves. The trunk of the tree went through the center, from floor to ceiling, with a custom bench built around it. Charlie deposited the box of food on a large round table. “I've been up here a few times since we've been back in Idlewild, and it's totally secure. I tested all the floorboards.”

“Why are you back in Idlewild?” Lennox asked.

Maybe she didn't have a press pass, but the journalist hat was on.

“It was always my mom's favorite place,” Charlie said. “We haven't been back in years, but she had some work she wanted to do here, and I think she finally wore my dad down. I guess marriage is about compromise, right? Anyway, if we weren't back, I wouldn't get to hang here with you.”

“I think it's great,” I said quickly, afraid that Lennox would have a bunch of follow-up questions. But her cell phone buzzed.

“Oh God, it's Nathan,” she said.

“Her ex,” I told Charlie.

“Is it all right if I answer?”

“Of course,” Charlie said. “Consider this the safe house.”

Lennox pressed a button and held the phone to her ear. “Hey there.”

Charlie turned to me. “You hungry?”

“Sure,” I said.

“God, Nathan. It's not like that at all, and this is exactly why.” She paused. “Just hold on a sec. Actually, I'll call you back.” She dropped the phone from her ear and turned to Charlie and me.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Fine, fine,” she said. “I'm sorry, guys, I know this is super rude, but would you mind terribly if I step outside, just so I can call him back? I promise I won't take any pictures or post anything.”

“Go on,” Charlie said. “I'm really not worried about it.” Lennox went out to make her call, and Charlie turned to me. “How long did they go out?”

“Not long,” I said.

“Tough breakup?”

“For him, I think. Personally, I wasn't sad to see him go.”

“Oh, no?”

“He was so possessive of Lennox. When he couldn't get her on the phone, he'd text me to check up on her. It was always so excessive. Plus, he used the word
literally
wrong. When he said it, he almost always meant
figuratively
.”

“I heard they changed the definition of the word so it really means both now.”

“Yeah, Lennox said that, too. But that kind of thing would normally have driven her crazy—that they changed the dictionary to accommodate people who were saying things wrong. I never understood what she saw in him.”

“People are complicated,” Charlie Copeland told me.

“Yeah,” I said. “So . . . I brought money with me, to pay you back for the other day.”

“Oh, please,” Charlie said. “You don't really think I was serious about that being a loan, do you?”

“I don't want you to pay for my gas,” I said.

“We're talking about sixty bucks,” Charlie said. “It's nothing.” I knew sixty dollars wasn't nothing to a lot of people. Right then, it wasn't nothing to me.

“But—”

“I believe the words you are looking for, once again, are
thank you
.”

My cheeks burned. He didn't even know about the moment with Lennox in the car, that the money was really hers, and he wasn't the only person I was indebted to. “Thank you,” I said.