The Darlings (30 page)

“No, son. I think more of you,” she heard. She moved closer to the door, the edge of her ear grazing the wood.

The voice was muffled, and gruffer than she was used to, but it was unquestionably her father's.

“You do what's right for your family . . . ,” he was saying, “You do it even if down the road the rest of the world is going to chastise you for what you did. I told you son, we're the same. I had a shitty father growing up, too, and as soon as I was able I took one look at him and said, ‘That's not the kind of man I want to be.' And I haven't been. I provided for my girls. I've given Merrill and Lily the world. The fucking
world
. They're going to call me greedy: the media, the lawyers, all of our so-called friends. Starting tomorrow or Monday. Maybe for the rest of my life. But they won't get it. Greedy? I was
selfless
. One hundred fucking percent . . .”

Merrill recoiled from the door, her heart racing. Unable to think, she began to put one foot in front of the other, heel then toe, silent against the carpet, until she had retraced her steps back up the stairs and into their bedroom. Only when the door was shut behind her did she allow herself to burst into tears.

Her father's words swirling in her head, she became a firestorm of motion, pulling clothes from drawers, folding, packing, pushing things deeper into her suitcase . . . she couldn't slow down long enough to think through what exactly she had heard, or what he might have meant . . . but she knew she didn't trust him.

They're going to call me greedy . . .

Her father was going down. She was sure of it. He was sinking like a stone, and if she didn't get them out of there, he would take Paul with him.

Paul found her outside on the gravel drive, packing up the car. When Merrill looked up and saw him, she shook her head, frustrated, and hunched her shoulders against the cold. The engine was running to defrost the windshield, and King was riding shotgun, lulled asleep by the seat warmer. He was breathing in that labored canine way, his body twitching periodically as if in the throes of a dream. The dogs could sense the tension in the house. They had been cowering all weekend, as they did when a storm was coming. King hadn't strayed more than ten feet from Merrill since yesterday.

“You okay?” Paul said. “I thought you were still sleeping. Why didn't you come find me?”

“I was going to. I just need to get the hell out of here.”

“Did you pack up everything?”

“Yes. You can go check but I'm pretty sure it's all in the back.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Yes,” she said simply. She slipped into the passenger seat and shut the door. Paul followed her lead. He wanted to go get his scarf—
it's just hanging in the foyer
, he thought—but was afraid she might leave without him.

Inside the car was quiet and a little cold.

“Do you want to say good-bye?”

“No. I just want to go.”

Paul nodded and slipped the key into the ignition. The car lurched slightly forward as he shifted it into drive. His hands vibrated against the hum of the steering wheel, but he couldn't take his foot off the brake.

“What's going on?” he said, biting his lip. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“This is my fault,” she said. Her voice was hollow. She looked straight ahead, her eyes boring holes into the side of the house. “I forced all this on you. We're out here every weekend; you're working for the family company; we spend all of our time with my sister and my cousins and my friends from Spence. We live in an apartment that looks exactly like theirs, for chrissake. I did this, Paul. I did this to both of us.” She took a deep, quaking breath. “I never even asked you what you wanted.”

“All I've ever wanted was to be with you.” He released his seat belt and reached across the car to kiss her. When she didn't look at him, he kissed her shoulder instead, and pressed his nose against the quilting of her olive-colored coat. “I love your family,” he said, because he wanted to believe it, and saying it might make it so.

“I love my family, too. And I know Dad loves us . . . but this . . . he betrayed Mom for sure. What he did to Lily and me might be just as bad, in a way . . . Nothing we have is real. He raised us believing that all of this was ours.” She gestured at the house with a sweep of her arm. He knew she meant all of it: the house, the apartment, the city—everything. “That it would
always
be ours. It never even occurred to me that everything could get taken away from us. It certainly didn't occur to Lily—” Her voice broke. She knew she was working herself up, but she couldn't help it.

“No one will blame you for any of this, Mer. Whatever your father's done, those are his choices, not yours.” Paul paused. He wasn't sure if he should say what he was about to say, but
hell with it
, he thought,
it just might make her feel better.
“And he made those choices because he loves you. You know that.”

“I'm angry at Mom, too, you know,” she said. “We're all so worried about her because of what Dad's done. But did she know? Maybe she did and she just didn't care. She wanted us to have everything so badly. That's Mom. More is more. ”

“Isn't that what everyone wants for their kids?”

Merrill made a muffled snorting sound, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Paul fished a tissue out of his coat pocket and offered it to her. It was wilted and old, but it was all he had.

“Thanks,” she said, snuffling her nose into it. “I'm sorry. I'm losing it. I just mean that we all should take some responsibility here. In our relationship, I certainly should. We could have done things differently, you and me. We still could; we're different from them. We don't need as much.”

Paul chuckled. “Not sure I have much of a choice there.”

She smiled a little. “Well, good,” she said. “Let's just get away from here for a start.”

They drove in silence most of the way home, fingers intertwined. There hadn't been any traffic, and they made remarkably good time. As they reached the edge of the city, a light snow began to fall, coating the tops of the buildings with a thin film of white. Even Queens looked beautiful.

“I want you to talk to David Levin,” she said, breaking the silence. “Tell him you're willing to work with them, if they can promise you a deal.”

“Are you sure? You have to be sure about this.”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm sure. I don't care what you promised Dad or what Dad wants from you. Okay? But I'd like to go with you.”

“Okay.” They didn't say another word until they were home.

FRIDAY, 9:10 P.M.

“I
found Scott Stevens!” Marina exclaimed when Duncan finally called her back. She realized that she sounded giddy, perhaps overly so for so small an accomplishment. It wasn't like Scott Stevens was in the witness protection program. But still, she found her own resourcefulness satisfying, and she was flying high from her first experience with investigative journalism. “I met him actually, in person. At his office in Connecticut.” She grinned against the phone.

The search for Scott Stevens had begun badly, in fits and starts. The woman who had answered the phone at the SEC had been of no help. The SEC had no forwarding information for him on file, she informed Marina rather crisply, then hung up the phone. A name search on the Internet turned up nothing; or rather, it turned up so many things that the search was fruitless. Marina tried to modify the name with “attorney” or “lawyer” or “SEC” but nothing. It seemed like a simple task: Get Duncan the contact information for Scott Stevens. How could she fail so quickly?

She almost gave up, but then decided to call her cousin Mitchell. He was the only lawyer she could think of, and the type of cousin who was nerdy and eager and grateful to be included. Marina guessed that Mitchell might have access to resources at his law firm that she didn't, and also that he'd be in the office even though it was the day after Thanksgiving. She was right on both counts.

Mitchell was the cousin Marina's parents made her invite everywhere because he had no friends of his own. He sat behind her and her friends at the movies, with his own bucket of popcorn. He trotted alongside her on foot, his backpack bouncing against his fat-padded back, as she biked slowly around the neighborhood. His grades were perfect. Marina thought he was exactly the type to become a lawyer.

It took Mitchell only eleven minutes to find that six Scott Stevens were currently admitted to practice as attorneys in the United States. Of those six, only one was a member of the D.C. Bar. There was no contact information listed for him, Mitchell told her apologetically, but his profile also showed that he had been admitted to practice in the state of Connecticut in 2006. Right around the time the Scott Stevens she was looking for had been forced out of the SEC's D.C. office. Armed with this information, Marina returned to the Internet. It wasn't long before she came across a listing for Stevens & Cohgut, LLP, based in Greenwich, Connecticut. She went ahead and called, just to be sure it was the right Scott Stevens before she got Duncan involved.

It threw her off a little when Scott Stevens answered his own phone.

“Stevens and Cohgut.”

“I'm looking for Scott Stevens,” she said nervously.

“This is he.”

“The Scott Stevens who used to work at the SEC?”

“Who is this?” he said, his voice now gruff and guarded.

Marina was quiet. She hadn't thought through what she would actually say to him.

“Fantastic!” Duncan said. “Where is he?”

“Out in Greenwich. He has a small legal practice, just general corporate stuff. He started it after he left the SEC.”

“That sounds dull. You actually met him?”

Marina paused. It had occurred to her only after the fact that Duncan might not appreciate her zealous proactivity. What was done was done, though. She took a deep breath.

“I did,” she said, as confidently as possible. “I got the sense over the phone that he wasn't going to talk to a reporter he didn't know. So I asked if I could come out and meet him. I said it was urgent.”

“And he met with you? How did you get out to Connecticut? Where are you now?”

Marina was in her father's office now, in sweatpants. They were old and faded, the Hotchkiss
H
barely discernible on the upper thigh. She had taken them from a drawer in her old bedroom and they smelled faintly of pine and mothballs. Her hair was tied back in a messy bun. It had been a long day. She had walked all the way up to midtown to borrow Mitchell's car. By 3 p.m. she was on I-95, driving as fast as the law would allow out to Greenwich. She had told Scott Stevens she could be there before 5 p.m., which was, he said, the latest he liked to be in the office on a Friday.

She had planned to drive back to the city after meeting with him. But instead, she had sat in the parking lot, behind the offices of Stevens & Coghut, watching the sun dip behind the trees. She called Duncan again, but he didn't answer. Then she called her mom.

“I'm on my way home,” she said, when her mother answered. “I hope that's all right.”

“Of course it's all right, darling!” Alice exclaimed. It was nice to hear such exuberance in her mother's voice. Marina felt wanted. “This is your home, too. Are you staying the weekend?”

Marina hadn't yet made up her mind, so she ignored the question. “I'm in Greenwich now,” she said. “But I should be there soon.”

“Your father and I just had dinner, but we have leftovers. I'll have them ready for you when you get here. Can't wait to see you.”

Marina drove the whole way in silence, radio off, so she could think. She thought so clearly in the car, even in traffic. Some of her thorniest problems had been solved while driving. There was something particularly soothing about the road home to Connecticut. Maybe it was the gentle familiarity of the route's details: the shape and color of the signs, the distances between exits. The way her body reflexively knew when to shift and turn, out of instinct and not recollection. New York felt so chaotic and noisy sometimes, and her apartment was crammed with roommates and their things. The car gave her space to be reasonable. It was her suburban upbringing, perhaps. Driving was like riding a bike: You learned young and never forgot. Tanner and his city friends had never really acquired a taste for driving. As a consequence, Marina ended up chauffeuring him out to his house in Southampton any weekend they were together, even though the car was his. She didn't miss that.

Even though the leaves were off the trees now, the drive up the Merritt Parkway was still a pretty one. She tried to think whether she knew anyone still out here, besides her parents' friends. The lawns grew bigger as she drove farther out of the city, the trunks of the trees more solid. Twice, she saw a column of smoke rising from a backyard where someone was burning leaves or had a fire in the fireplace. It was peaceful. She thought about what it would be like to live here again. What would people think of her if she moved back home with her parents? It would only be for a little while, while she was studying for her LSATs, maybe, or after her lease ran out in January. Would anyone even notice? She wasn't sure.

The reality of it was that she had been living beyond her means in New York, carrying on with the subconscious assumption that she would soon be Mrs. Tanner Morgenson. All the girls she knew lived that way. New York was ungodly expensive. Marina paid just over half her salary for her shared walk-up apartment on Orchard Street; it was the cheapest she could find that was reasonably clean and on a well-lit street. What was left had to be carefully apportioned for food and utilities, then for cab fares and new clothes and all the things that dating required of her. God forbid if she were to get sick or break the air conditioner. She couldn't afford unforeseen expenses like that. Every single month was a juggling act. Her credit card was sometimes maxed out, her checking account periodically overdrawn. At twenty-two, there was a sport to it, making it all come together. But she couldn't live that way forever. She could either wait for a white knight to come and rescue her, or she would have to learn to fend for herself.

She caught herself. This wasn't how she had been brought up. She was supposed to be a self-sufficient woman. Why else had they sent her to Princeton?

There was a practicality to Richard and Alice, but they were also tenderhearted parents. They wanted her to be her best self, they always said, to do what made her truly happy. Had she taken the job at
Press
for the wrong reasons? Had the parties seduced her? Was it the cachet? Or the proximity to the gilded class? Perhaps all of these things. But as she drove out to Greenwich to talk to Scott Stevens, she felt an effervescence that she knew she would never feel about law school.

“I drove myself out to Greenwich,” Marina said to Duncan. “It's on the way to my parents' house, and I figured he would be more willing to talk to me in person. I told him about David Levin. Not a lot of detail, just what you told me on the phone this morning. I thought his story might resonate. Also, I fibbed a little.”

“Fibbed how?”

“I told him Alexa Mason and I were family. I just thought it might, you know, help him get comfortable.”

Duncan smiled against the phone. “And is he? Willing to talk?”

“I think so. He was nervous at first, really nervous. But he asked for your contact information, and also for the person at the attorney general's office that David and Alexa were talking to. I don't have that name—I'm sorry—so I told him he could get it from you. He said he needed to think about it, but that he would call you directly.”

There was a long pause. Marina's stomach flip-flopped. “He remembers David from the SEC, by the way,” she added quickly. “He said that David was a good man and a good lawyer. He seemed upset that this is happening to him.”

“Did he seem to know what you were talking about?”

“Yes, right away. I could see it in his face.”

When he didn't answer, she said, “Duncan, I really hope I did the right thing. By coming out here, I mean. I just wanted to be helpful.”

“My dear,” he said quietly. “You have been spectacularly so.”

Marina felt a rush through her whole body and she shivered. They shared a quiet moment, each reflecting on what it would mean if Scott Stevens could corroborate David Levin's story. The tide was turning, slowly, in their favor. She relaxed into the sofa, rubbing her feet against each other.

“Are you out at your parents' house now?” he said, after the moment had passed.

“I am. But just for the night. I'm planning to drive back early tomorrow morning. So if I can be of use—”