June (18 page)

“Oh,” she said, turning quickly at the top of the stairs, “Mrs. Deitz mentioned you might have pictures of a party the
Erie Canal
people threw at Two Oaks toward the end of filming? It sounded like quite an event.”

“I was there,” he said. “Diane DeSoto asked me to hold her gloves. But I’ve never been much for crowds. I didn’t stay long.” Mr. Abernathy’s small, square shoulders rose up to his ears, then slumped down with his exhale. “People throw out everything. I can’t rightly remember who was taking pictures that night, but even if I could, I doubt they’re still in existence.” He gripped his cane tightly, his ire ignited by people’s stupidity, and he looked sad as she descended the stairs.

She kept her mouth shut for most of the drive home, until the stupid GPS urged them into the outskirts of St. Jude. They were only moments from Tate and Hank, and Cassie couldn’t stop herself. “That was rude.”

Nick glanced over at her, then back to the road.

“You should have turned your phone off. And you definitely shouldn’t have answered it.”

“It was an important call.”

Fury uncoiled itself inside of her. “More important than that old man? More important than finding out what happened to my grandmother? I thought you were here to help me.”

“I’m here,” he said briskly, “because it’s my job.” His jaw tightened. “Some of us have them, Cassie.”

What nerve.

That night, Cassie’s back was a damp pocket of sweat against her sheets. Her thirst did battle with her bladder. Two Oaks was restless too, creaking and moaning, rattling and shifting. It liked having a person in every one of its beds, and proper dinners taken at the table, and the sound of laughter rafting through the front windows. But something wasn’t right yet—all was not as it was supposed to be. The tall, golden-haired girl, for example—she was good at what she did, goodness knows, Two Oaks was grateful someone had finally thought to mop—but she was perfunctory in her gestures, doing only what must be done. In its heyday, Two Oaks had considered itself the kind of house that inspired its people to greatness, but everyone inside it now seemed to just be getting by.

Cassie flopped and tossed in her hot bed, incensed anew every time she thought of Nick’s smug little face, and his dig at her about how “some of us” had jobs. Also, he’d been dead wrong to take that phone call. Did these people truly believe they had more worth than the Mr. Abernathys of the world? That they could waltz into someone’s life expecting her to give up her DNA? Two could play at that game. She would make them wait even longer for the test, even though she had to admit that, so far, they’d turned up no evidence of an affair. And how was it any business of Nick’s whether she had a job? What if she did have a job? That would teach him. Okay, fine, she didn’t, technically. (“Well, what’s your endgame?” he’d sniped—she could see him so clearly in her mind’s eye, and she sat up in fury.) She savored the fantasy of letting slip that she was a very important, highly paid corporate attorney. Or a doctor! A research doctor. A research doctor with a specialty in infectious diseases. She finally found sleep with the taste of sweet, juicy victory upon her tongue.

Did she dream? Maybe. When she opened her eyes to the bright room, she realized that, for the first time since she’d moved in, she couldn’t quite put her finger on where she’d gone in the night. Surely she’d been somewhere inside these four walls, surrounded by strange souls. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to place herself back inside the dream she must have been having, but her mind was a black, empty drum.

She strained to hear voices. She knew they would already be awake, even though it was murderously early on the West Coast. People who judged you for not having a job invariably woke before the sun. She pressed her feet into the floor, baptized in new wrath at the promise of Nick’s expression when he caught her trudging down the stairs still in her pajamas. Being judged in her own home! It would not stand.

She found them in the kitchen. The women were in their yoga outfits, and Nick, of course, was on his device, one bare elbow—unsheathed from his dark blue button-down—resting on the rickety table. She frowned at it like it was a bad dog.

Tate was reading a Deepak Chopra paperback. Hank was standing on a chair before one of Cassie’s kitchen cabinets, scrubbing with a wet rag. The sum total of the food Cassie had possessed before these people arrived—a can of green beans, two cans of tuna fish, and a pickle jar with one perfectly good specimen still floating inside—was in a stack by the recycling bin. She lifted the camera to her eye and took a picture.

“Good morning!” Hank chirped when she heard the click. Nick gave a start, a small wave without eye contact, then scurried into the pantry and then the dining room, all while still on his phone.

Tate closed her book as Cassie crossed to the chair Nick had just occupied, realizing that the linoleum tiles of the kitchen floor were a good ten shades lighter than they had been when she’d turned in. Mopping! Damn Hank and her industry. But the smile Tate offered Cassie actually seemed to warm the room, melting even Cassie’s icy mood.

Cassie wondered if this was her new normal—Two Oaks full of successful, busy people who awoke at dawn. The full repercussions of what she had proposed were finally settling in: these people would stay until they found something that would prove or disprove an affair, at which point she’d give them her DNA. She hadn’t much considered what that proof would look like. Or why she wanted it. She’d half-expected they’d just steal from her hairbrush and do the test on their own, but that didn’t appear to be on the agenda. She should find herself a lawyer. She really should. But, despite Hank cleaning like a maniac only a few feet away, ponytail swinging as the sponge squeaked and scrubbed, unpleasant as the previous evening’s interaction with Nick had been, Cassie had to admit that Tate was an oasis, and that, as a whole, the last few days had been, well, better than most of the days in the months preceding them.

“Espresso?” Tate asked, pushing her Prada glasses atop her head.

Cassie noticed the shiny silver espresso maker over Tate’s shoulder, on the countertop beside the stove. Where had that come from?

“Hank, make her an espresso?” Tate asked, a command masked as a question.

“Of course!” Hank enthused. She hopped off the chair and snapped off the yellow gloves she’d brought home from the grocery store the day before, slapping them down over the sink. She crossed the kitchen and spooned beans into the grinder, which purred at the press of the button.

Cassie caught a glimpse of Tate’s serene face again. It wasn’t Tate’s fault—or even Hank’s—that Nick had been a jerk. “Sleep okay?” she asked, like a hostess was supposed to.

“Like the dead,” Tate insisted with a calm smile.

“That mattress is ancient,” Cassie said. “And I should have vacuumed.”

Tate smiled indulgently.

“My room is so pretty!” Hank had gotten the third bedroom, the one Cassie liked least. It was the darkest of the bunch, and scratching animal sounds filled the walls at night.

Hank crossed back to the sink and filled a shot of water, then poured it into the reservoir at the top of the espresso maker. Her hands worked quickly, next filling and tamping the beans into the brew group. Cassie had pegged her as a former yoga teacher, but maybe she’d been a barista in another life. Once Hank slid the ground beans into place, she pressed another button and placed a small white espresso cup—also new to Cassie—under the spout. Back at the sink, she snapped on her gloves and crouched before the undercounter cabinet. She was like a hummingbird; Cassie wondered how many calories she had to consume to keep this up all day.

“Does every bedroom have a fireplace?” Hank asked. The cabinet under the sink was a time capsule of toxic cleaning products and rags furry with dust, and Hank wrinkled her nose, which Cassie had come to learn was the closest she got to expressing disgust.

“Yeah,” Cassie said, resenting that a proper grown-up like Nick probably knew the details about the fireplaces: the kind of tile inlaid around each one, and where the wood in the mantelpiece hailed from. She had no idea.

“What’s…this…?” Hank asked, pulling an unidentifiable brown wad into the light.

“It’s not a rat, is it?” Cassie asked coolly.

Hank shrieked and dropped the wad into the garbage can. Cassie leaned over it and raised an eyebrow. It was a piece of rusted steel wool; she’d known that all along. “Nah, not big enough.”

Tate tittered. Hank scowled. Cassie beamed.

The espresso announced its arrival with a tapered tinkle. Hank attended to it, bringing the hot nectar to Cassie’s right hand as though there was nothing she’d rather do in the whole wide world. It wasn’t the worst thing to have a personal chef / housecleaner / errand girl at your beck and call, even if the food was mostly low-carb and practically vegan, and you risked permanent blindness from the wattage of her overused smile. Cassie thought of last night’s dinner—the red peppers stuffed with a mixture of quinoa and spices, the homemade baba ghanoush and hand-ground flaxseed crackers—and she smiled apologetically at Hank.

Hank abruptly clapped her hands together. “Whole Foods delivered at six a.m.!”

“I thought you went to Pantry Pride yesterday,” Cassie said, thinking of the many bags Hank had been unloading onto the kitchen table when Cassie and Nick had returned from Mr. Abernathy’s. There wasn’t a Whole Foods for at least a hundred miles; Cassie wondered about the cost of the delivery alone.

“Pantry Pride is great for basics,” Hank said with her signature nose crinkle. “But it just doesn’t carry the kind of selection we’re used to. We needed specialty items—quinoa flour, baby kale, heritage grains. And of course we mostly eat organic.” Her pert little shoulders shuddered in a delighted shiver. “I can’t wait to make you my tofu loaf.” She practically skipped out to the pantry, and, just like that, Cassie was back to wanting her dead.

Tate returned to the Deepak Chopra, pulling her glasses down to the bridge of her button nose. She looked mussed, morning-like, but nothing like a real person actually looks first thing. Cassie took a sip of the espresso and nearly fainted; she hadn’t tasted anything so good in months. She wondered how long her pride would win out over asking Hank to make her breakfast.

Hank reemerged with two Whole Foods bags filled to the brim and disappeared for another load. June would be appalled to see Cassie sipping a hot beverage while Hank worked alone. So Cassie contritely followed Hank through the pantry and into the dining room.

The morning light pressed rainbows through the clear, beveled glass that was set into the dining room’s back door. A dozen paper bags lined the mahogany table. Nick had been in there on the phone, but now he was leaving, heading into the foyer, without a glance back. Apparently he was avoiding her today.

Cassie went to lift one of the bags.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hank said.

“I’m happy to help.”

Hank shook her head, trying to take the bag Cassie was lifting. She reminded Cassie of a child grabbing for a toy. “It’s my job.” These people were obsessed.

Cassie followed Hank back into the kitchen bearing a hard-won bag filled with more kale than she had eaten in the last ten years. She set it on the counter. The kitchen looked as it had before her parents’ accident, before the house had gotten lonely; spick-and-span in a country way that Cassie had never been able to achieve on her own. She opened the refrigerator, already, to her eyes, full, save for the bottom left crisper drawer, which held a Ziploc of film cartridges. She held them up and waved them at Hank, back with another load. “I’ll get these out of your way.”

Just then, Hank tripped, spilling half her bag—plums, avocados, apples—across the kitchen floor. Cassie rushed to help her, but Tate sighed, wiggled her manicured toes in their flip-flops, and waved Cassie away. To Hank, she said, “We’ll get out of your hair so you can whip up those blueberry quinoa pancakes you promised.”

“Ready in twenty!” Hank called from her hands and knees as they headed into the servant hallway and out to the foyer. Did Cassie imagine a touch of desperation in her voice?

In the hallway, Tate turned to Cassie and rolled her eyes. “She can be so intense.” Cassie nodded in annoyed agreement, even though she wondered, Wasn’t Tate mostly the reason Hank was like that? The poor girl hadn’t meant to spill the produce on the floor. But then, it was Hank’s job; Hank herself had been eager to point that out.

In the front parlor, Nick was off the phone. “Well, she said yes.” But he didn’t look particularly happy about the news.

Tate replied crisply, “Damn right she said yes.”

“Who said yes?” Cassie asked.

Nick smiled at her, a brief, perfunctory smile, as though she was a stop sign or a pair of pants, something neutral and inorganic. She decided she was going to walk away from him first, as soon as she found out what they were talking about.

Tate gestured to the couch, but Cassie crossed her arms and held her ground.

“You said you wanted answers…” Tate began.

“And Jack’s papers will definitely be here today,” Nick said, all business to Tate. “They apologized for the delay…”

“But the truth is it sounds like you struck out with the older generation. And Hank and I went through the house yesterday and found very little. And the lawyers have already been through Daddy’s papers once. I don’t imagine we’ll find anything new…”

“And given”—Nick cleared his throat—“that you’ve made it clear you refuse to relinquish your DNA until we’ve turned over every rock, and given that we, each of us, have lives that cannot be permanently put on hold”—everything about Nick that Cassie had found appealing seemed to disappear as he talked in this snippy, businessy voice; she had half a mind to slap his cheeks to try to rouse the real Nick in there, sputtering for breath—“well, I believe it best to cover our bases.”