The Darlings (6 page)

As she flipped aimlessly through the channels, Lily felt her insides grip with a sickening self-conscious tightness, a familiar feeling. Her mind raced furiously through the events of the past few days.
Had she done anything wrong? Had she forgotten to pay the maintenance again? Overdrawn the household account?

Her stomach churning, she whispered, “What's wrong?”

Adrian shook his head and waved her off. “When did you find out?” He asked the person on the other end of the phone, his brow furrowed tightly into a hard V. Then: “Does Carter know?”

Lily's eyes widened, “Know what?” she insisted, louder this time. When he didn't answer, she focused on the muted figures flickering across the television screen.

Uncle Morty's house. Why was it on television?

She turned on the sound.

“Jesus, Lily,” Adrian whispered, and grabbed the remote. He muted it again, and covered the ear that wasn't pressed to the receiver. “All right,” he said to the voice on the other end. “I mean, that's obviously terrible news. Yes, yeah, I understand. I'm going into the office now. I'm with Lily. . . . No, I haven't spoken to him. Have you tried his cell? All right, Sol. Yes, thanks for calling. Talk soon.”

Adrian clicked off the phone and lay back against the headboard.

“Holy shit,” he said.

Lily turned away from the television, still not quite sure what she was seeing, and her entire body prickled with goose bumps. Adrian's perfect tan face was a sickly green. He looked, she thought, exactly as he had the time she had found him lying on the floor in the fetal position, and had rushed him to Lenox Hill with what turned out to be appendicitis.

“That was Sol? What did he want?” Lily said, her voice small, almost inaudible. She wanted to reach out to him but she felt frozen, like a rabbit in the road.
This was it
, she thought.
I knew something was wrong.

“Lil,” he said, and took her hands in his. “He's trying to get in touch with your dad. He wanted to let him know—to let us know—that Morty Reis . . . Uncle Morty . . . he passed away.” His eyes stared straight into hers, strong, alert, alight with adrenaline. “I'm so sorry, sweetness. I'm so sorry.”

Her head shook back and forth in disbelief. Her hand gripped his tightly but she couldn't look up. Tears began to fill her eyes.

“How?” she breathed. “He's still . . . he was young.”

Adrian held her tighter. Her skull was nestled in the crook of his neck, her forehead pressed tenderly against his Adam's apple.

“He killed himself, love. He jumped off a bridge.” He swallowed. “It's horrible, I know.”

She was crying hard now. “Oh, my God!” Her pretty face contorted with pain. “Does Mom know? We have to call her. I want to talk to Mom.”

“Of course,” said Adrian, fumbling for the phone. “Of course.”

The conversation with Ines was short and loving. After a few reassuring words to Lily, Ines asked her to put Adrian back on the line.

“Hi,” he said, nodding solemnly. He listened as Lily went to the bathroom, reemerging with a shining face, damp and pink from scrubbing. “Yes, I understand completely. No, we're fine. I haven't talked to him, no . . . I'll take care of her. Yes, call if you need me. No, no, of course I'll stay with her.”

“Tell her to come over,” Lily panted from the bathroom door, her voice ragged from crying. She hiccupped.

“Lily's asking for you, if you'd like to come over . . . No, I understand. Well, call us once you've reached him.”

After Adrian hung up, he opened his arms and she joined him in bed. He held her quietly for a long time. She didn't ask what it meant for the business and he didn't tell her.

Eventually, their bodies were intertwined and they were kissing fiercely, salt-stained kisses. Lily's face was swollen and ugly from tears and their bodies became wet from sweat and as Adrian pushed himself hard inside her, they both exploded, with all the passion of two people painfully aware of being alive. It was the kind of sex they hadn't had since their honeymoon: raw and unadulterated.

“I love you so much,” he said tenderly when they were done. He kissed her hard on the forehead and saw that she was crying again. “Hey,” he said, pressing his forehead to her cheek. “Hey, now.”

She shut her eyes and shook her head . . .
How could they have just made love? It seemed so selfish, so indulgent . . . and so irresponsible . . . not not trying . . . what a fucking time this would be for her to get pregnant . . . but she had so desperately wanted to feel close to her husband . . . and lying here like this, it was the closest she had felt to him in a very long time . . .

“Are we still ready?” she said, her voice tiny. “No matter what?”

“Of course, Lil,” Adrian said, drawing her body to his. He stroked the soft skin of her back, running his fingers lightly down the curve of her waist in a way that made her shiver. “Of course we are. You'll see, it's going to be fine.”

WEDNESDAY, 12:56 P.M.

T
oby, the neighbor's dog, had been causing problems for years. He was a typical urban mongrel, some sort of pit bull or Staffie, with a squat, spark-plug body and a square mug of a face. His ears had been clipped. They were pinned back to his head in a way that made him look as though he were already running headlong at you, about to lunge for the jugular. You knew Toby's story just by looking at him: Animal Care and Control had picked him up in the projects. A rescue group had saved him, probably when he was a puppy and still reasonably cute. Somehow, he had made it to the Dunns' backyard in Staten Island. Not heaven, exactly, but a quiet purgatory, where he could pass his final dog years pacing and barking and scaring the neighborhood children without the threat of imminent euthanization.

Chris was terrified of Toby, but then Chris was terrified of most things. The previous Thursday, Chris had come home from his after-school program shaking, his face blotchy from crying. At first, Yvonne couldn't get a peep out of him, but eventually she wore him down, plying him with Oreos and Coke. It was Toby, he said, when the snot-soaked tears subsided. Toby had scared him. He had thrown himself against the Dunns' fence when Chris had walked by; he could feel Toby's hot dog breath on his arm, that's how close he got. Yvonne suspected the tears had to do with something else—the kids at school, probably—but she didn't push. Chris didn't like to talk about it when he got bullied. Especially in front of his big brother, Pat Jr. It would only make Pat Jr. angry, which would make Chris even more upset, and no good would come of it.

“They should have that dog put down,” Pat Jr. fumed, draping his arm protectively around his little brother. Pat Jr. was still wearing his football jersey, even though Yvonne had told him to change it before dinner. “Seriously, he's scary as shit.”

“Language,” Yvonne said.

“Sorry, Mom. But it's true. He really hates Chris.”

“That dog hates everyone. He's just a very angry dog.”

“Yeah, well. Joe Dunn's an asshole for letting him off the leash.”

“
Language
,” Yvonne said again, more sternly this time. It was hard reprimanding Pat Jr. when he was standing up for his brother. Her heart softened as she watched them settle into the couch together. The pale freckled skin of the one blended into the other's so that when they touched it was almost hard to see where one ended and the other began.

Pat Jr. wordlessly flipped on the television to the Discovery Channel, Chris's favorite. They had a quiet rhythm, like a couple who had been married for years, like a set of uneven bookends. Though Pat Jr. was nearly twice Chris's size, they were undeniably brothers. Both boys had their father's piercing blue eyes. A blue so brilliant it made you want to squint, like looking straight up into the sky on a sunny day. Irish eyes, Yvonne's mother used to say. Chris might've had an athletic build, too, but all the complications at birth left him warped and small, with a sunken rib cage and legs like spindles. To the rest of the world, Chris would always look sickly. To Yvonne, he was just the smaller of her boys. She tried to treat him the same way she did Pat Jr.—the worst thing in the world for him, she knew, would be for his mother to act as if he were a cripple—but sometimes her heart got the better of her. She would hug him just a little longer; ask him how he was doing more than once in the same conversation; let him sneak a cookie before dinner. She kept the house stocked with all his favorite foods: Oreos and Fruit Roll-Ups and mini microwaveable pizzas.

Yvonne went to muss Chris's hair but he flinched when her fingers grazed his scalp. He was getting older, she reminded herself. Boys his age didn't like to be coddled by their moms. His eyes stayed trained on the television set, focused as a race car driver. Yvonne felt a twinge of love.

She straightened up and headed back to the kitchen, where she had been chopping onions for the pasta. Her eyes stung from them, and she wiped away a tear with the elbow of her shirt.

“Go change your shirt, Pat Jr.,” she said, over her shoulder. “And both of you wash your hands.”

“I washed my hands already!”

“Your shirt then. No jerseys at the table.”

The boys scampered up the stairs. Before they reached the second floor landing, she thought she heard Chris say, “Joe's an asshole.” His stutter caused him to stop a half step on the
a
, like a record skipping. Chris never cursed.

Yvonne stopped midchop, her knife poised just above the cutting board. “Joe Dunn?” She called after them, but they were gone; the muffled thumps of their sneakered feet against the carpet had fallen silent behind their bedroom's door. Above her head, she heard the rush of water fill the pipes as one of the boys turned on the sink.

Yvonne turned slowly back to the onion, piercing its flesh with the tip of the knife. “Language,” she said, shaking her head, though there was no one there to hear her.

Pat Jr. was right: Toby did seem to have it in for Chris. Yvonne had seen it herself. Toby could sense Chris's fear. He barked mercilessly at him whenever he passed by.

Kids were the same. Chris had always been picked on because of his size, because of his stutter. It had been worse this year, worse than ever. Yvonne couldn't figure out why. Chris had always been a little different, but what had been a gap between him and the other kids had widened to a chasm. His grades had dropped to C's and D's, though his test scores still showed above average capabilities across the board. He had no friends, except for his brother. In the past, Chris had carried on in his own quiet way, almost as if he was unaware of just how different he was. Then he turned twelve, and everything seemed to change. Yvonne kept trying to track it (had it been a year since things had gotten really bad? Maybe since the summer?), but it had been a gradual deterioration, a slow burn.

At first, she had thought it was the girls in his class. They had come back to school after the summer tall as beanstalks, and keenly aware of the boys. They wore their hair flipped over to one side now, with deliberate cool. Little stud earrings—hearts and peace signs and stars—peppered their earlobes.
Alli Shapiro
, Chris reported, awestruck,
had gotten a nose ring
. Yvonne saw them clustered on the sidewalks and in front of the school, giggles and whispers passing through them like wind in the reeds. The girls all dressed the same, which was the part that concerned her most. You could tell where each of them fell in the pecking order by how closely they adhered to whatever style dictum was setting the curve that semester. Twelve: the age of conformity. Anyone who was different didn't stand a chance. The girls' lack of interest in Chris caused him to drift farther and farther toward the margins, in a little life raft that Yvonne feared wouldn't hold up against the open waters of high school.

When he was seven, Yvonne found Pat Jr. on the curb outside the house, his hands cupped in front of him like a nest. In them was a baby sparrow. Pat Jr. had found it in the gutter; a car had almost parked on top of it. It had a broken wing and was so covered in dirt that it hardly looked like anything at all. He kept it in a cage that he found in the basement and fed it mashed bananas three times a day until it had grown to full size. He would take it out to the backyard in the afternoons until one day it flew away. Pat Jr. was a protector; he had to be, with a younger brother like Chris. She thought of this more often, especially now that he was getting into these fights.

The first time the school called about Pat Jr.'s fighting, his father had said, “This had better not have anything to do with your brother. You can't always fight the kid's fights.”

The second time, Pat Jr. came home with a black eye and a day of suspension. Yvonne was called in to see Pat Jr.'s guidance counselor. Teresa Frankel was a middle-aged woman who looked as though she resided permanently at the intersection of boredom and disinterest. She didn't let Yvonne say much of anything, but told her that if it happened again, there would be “serious ramifications.”

That was three weeks ago, and Pat Jr. had been sullen ever since. Yvonne had a bad feeling that whatever was going on with him wasn't over and, in fact, had probably just begun.

Her stomach had been tied in knots all week, and not just over the boys. She thought maybe it was the vacation: She hadn't taken one in four and half years. Sol kept referring to it as her “two weeks off” even though, with the holiday, she was only taking six actual vacation days. Still, Sol wasn't used to fending for himself, and the idea of it made them both nervous.

He had been driving her crazy all week with little tasks that “had to get done before she left” and questions that he already knew the answer to:
How do I print documents on the color printer?
And:
What is my voicemail password?
Part of her suspected he was doing it on purpose; overloading her so that it was almost not worth taking the vacation at all. Fortunately, he was out in Westchester with a client today and wouldn't be back in until Monday.

The office administrative staff had been told they could leave at noon, though most of the lawyers were still around. The lawyers were always around, so it was as quiet a day as Yvonne was going to get.

Sol had forwarded his work number to his cell phone, so the desk had been eerily calm all morning. When the phone rang, she practically jumped. She had her own line, but almost no one used it.

“Mrs. Reilly,” Teresa Frankel's voice came in nasal and weary, “It's about your son Patrick.” The bottom fell out of Yvonne's stomach, as though she were in a plane that had suddenly dropped in turbulence.

“But it's a half day,” Yvonne started. She was holding her sandwich with one hand, the meat and bread pulled back like a bandage. “Is he even still at school?”

“He was just outside the school, still on the property. He got in a fight with Joseph Dunn. We're going to need someone to come down here to pick him up right away.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Patrick's fine. Just a few scrapes on his knee but the nurse put some antiseptic on it. Joseph has a black eye.”

“Isn't Joe in high school?” Yvonne said suspiciously. She put down the sandwich and buried her forehead in the palm of her hand.

Though no one was within earshot, she spoke at a near whisper. Yvonne's desk was open on three sides so anyone rounding the corner could hear what she was saying before she saw them. The hallways of Penzell & Rubicam were typically quiet. The lawyers kept mostly to themselves behind the doors of their private offices. Secretaries were trained to keep their voices low and their conversations short. For confidentiality reasons, there were no outside visitors on the floors where the lawyers had their offices. Penzell & Rubicam hired its own cleaning, security, and mailroom staff, which was more tightly vetted than those provided by the building. Clients went directly from the lobby to a conference room on one of the five “hospitality floors.” Attorneys reached the hospitality floors via keycard-protected internal stairwells, but the clients had to use a separate bank of elevators, a different one for each floor. So discreet was the firm that the elevators' schedules were tightly controlled, so as to prevent even passing intraclient interaction.

“Joe Dunn is still in eighth grade,” Teresa Frankel snapped. “The point is, your son hit him on school property. Frankly, Mrs. Reilly, from the sound of things, it wasn't provoked. So you or your husband better get down here as soon as possible. I can't release him without a parent present.”

“Where's Chris?” Yvonne said. “My other son,” she added testily.

“Christopher is waiting here in my office. He's very upset. He keeps saying something about a dog.”

“Toby.”

“What?”

“Nothing. The dog's name is Toby. That's the Dunns' dog—Joe Dunn's dog. They're our neighbors. Never mind. I'm leaving work now.”

“The school closed twenty minutes ago, Mrs. Reilly,” Teresa said, crisp as paper off the printer. “If I were you, I'd get down here as soon as I could.”

Yvonne was slipping on her jacket when the phone rang again. She froze, one sleeve hanging from her shoulder.
What now
, she thought, when she saw the number.

“Hi,” she said, as neutrally as possible.

“I need you to get a pen immediately and write this down. Got a pen?”

“I was on my way out. How important is this?”

Sol paused, stunned into silence. Yvonne's eyes instinctively blinked shut. She had rarely pushed back on him, never in an emergency, and so neither of them quite knew what to do now that she had.

“What?” he said, stupidly.

Yvonne weighed her options.
Better to stand her ground than back down and apologize
, she thought.
If I apologize, he'll feel justified in being pissed off, and then he'll be even more difficult than usual
.

“You said I could leave at noon,” she said. Her voice came out loud, a little too aggressive. “Everyone else left. I have some business at my kids' school. So unless it's really important, I can't get to it right now.” She winced, immediately regretting the last sentence.

“It
is
really important,” Sol said, sounding vaguely triumphant. “It's an emergency. Get a pen.”

Damn it,
she thought.
Never argue with a lawyer.

In the background, Yvonne could hear the distant ding of elevators opening and closing, and the murmur of voices around him, as though he was in a tank filled with water.

He's in a lobby somewhere.
He must be desperate
.

Sol never called from unsecured spaces, unless it was about daily logistics, confirming a dental appointment, or having her reserve a conference room, that sort of thing. He was paranoid—no, obsessed—with the fear that an outsider (a taxi driver, a teenage hacker, Yvonne's cousin visiting from Boston) would happen upon some shred of confidential information. He talked about these possibilities all the time.