Hudson smiled, and it looked so bleak that Ellory almost begged him to stop. It made her feel sorry for him, that he was capable of smiling like that. And yet it made a perverse kind of sense. He made her so miserable sometimes that he had to be well acquainted with the feeling.
“Dinner will be better,” he promised. “Not by much, mind you, but there’s wine.”
The untouched hors d’oeuvres would haunt her all night, but all Ellory said was “Okay.”
7
Dinner was served in the dining room, a separate space from the kitchen, with a long wooden table decorated by exactly ten chairs, ten place settings, ten wineglasses, and an intimidating number of utensils. The dishes spread out in the center had little cards before their silver trays, helping Ellory to identify them: TRUFFLE CHICKEN AND POTATO GRATIN, ROASTED PHEASANT WITH PEARL BARLEY, SMOKED SALMON AND LEMON RISOTTO, DUCK BREASTS WITH A MAPLE SYRUP VINAIGRETTE, PEAR AND SHALLOT TARTE TATIN WITH WHIPPED GOAT’S CHEESE. It was like the food was speaking its own opulent language, one that Ellory wanted to learn. No wonder the wealthy looked so full of themselves all the time, if they got to eat like this.
She and Hudson ended up in the two seats to the right of Colt. Her desire to fill her plate like it was Thanksgiving was checked solely by her desire not to make a fool of herself in front of the professor. She kept one eye on him and Hudson, reaching for everything they reached for, using the same forks they used, pouring asmuch wine as they poured. She seemed to be the only one who expected to eat dinner at this dinner party. For everyone else, the food was a decoration for their plates, to be ignored as they talked and went through the decanter.
“My mother is thinking of investing in some California vineyards,” said Quentin Yardley, one of the few names Ellory had retained because she couldn’t believe someone had named their child that. “Napa Valley has a billion-dollar economy that only increases with every passing year.”
“Their business is also enduring and practically self-sustaining,” said a woman whom Ellory was pretty sure was Kendall Rhodes. “Between the vineyards and their annual tourism, wouldn’t it be near impossible to make any sort of mark, let alone a profit?”
“Overseas investments are definitely more lucrative right now,” Greer added. “The American economy is a joke.”
After every statement, the speaker would glance over at Colt as though expecting a pat on the head. The professor was smiling politely, indulgently, the kind of smile that offered nothing and took everything. He looked like a Roman noble watching a gladiator fight, picking through a plate of grapes and assorted cheeses while people died for his entertainment.
Ellory almost flinched when he turned his attention to her.
“Miss Morgan,” he began, “tell us a bit about yourself. It’s not often we have guests, even though they’ve always been welcome.”
Ellory imagined telling a table full of people who had overseas investments that she lived in a two-bedroom in Astoria and kept cash in a cookie tin. She said, “I was born in Jamaica. Mandeville, to be specific.”
“Oh, really? You barely have an accent!”
“I mean, I’ve lived here since I was four, so…”
“We went on a cruise to Montego Bay once,” said Duncan Something-or-Other, a man with bronze hair and a beauty mark by his straight nose. “Have you ever been to the Tryall?”
“Um, no.” The Tryall was a private-members club, and Ellory was fairly certain he knew that. “Anyway, I live with my aunt in Astoria, so I don’t really—”
“Are your parents dead?” Greer gasped, a hand coming up to cover her mouth. “Was it gun violence?”
“Hey,” Hudson snapped. “Can you let her speak before you hurt yourself jumping to conclusions?”
The edge to his voice felt personal. Ellory wondered if this was how his first dinner had gone, the color of his skin painting such a violent image for these sheltered people that he had to learn to aggressively assimilate. Still, she was grateful enough to shoot him a smile. If Hudson Graves hated these people more than he hated her, that made them a united front. For now.
“My parents are in Mandeville.” She considered telling them that it was common, in Jamaica, to consider schools in North America to be somehow better, to believe that the opportunities in the United States and Canada were more plentiful than the ones the island had to offer. The American dream’s hold on some Jamaicans had never faded, even afterThe Great Gatsby,Death of a Salesman, andBetween the World and Me. In the United States, they flocked to Florida, New York, and California. In Canada, they gathered in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. For many of her countrymen, the devil they didn’t know was better than the devil they did. “They sent me up alone so I could go to school.”
“Sorry,” Greer murmured, as if Ellory hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t mean to be rude or anything. I’m not racist.”
“No one who isn’t racist has ever needed to say they aren’tracist,” said Sofia Aston, the only other woman of color in the room. Ellory had learned, earlier, that she was Filipina, and that her parents worked in tourism. (And that’s all you need to know about that, she’d said in a clipped tone.) But even though she was beautiful, round-cheeked and dewy-skinned and wavy-haired, she had been so standoffish that Ellory hadn’t pushed for more conversation. “Especially when no one called them that in the first place.”
Greer’s pale cheeks went red. “That’s not what I—why are you—it’s that—Professor.”
“Miss Aston, leave Miss Hammond alone,” Colt said, though his crow’s feet had deepened and his eyes glittered as if at some private joke. “We gather together to have productive discussions, not to accuse one another of groundless isms.”
It wasn’t groundless, Ellory almost said but didn’t.
“Miss Morgan, would you like to continue? I’m especially interested in this aunt of yours. Does she have any children of her own?”
“No, she’s never been married.” Aunt Carol considered marriage and children something for other people, people who didn’t know how to enjoy their lives and needed a distraction. Ellory assumed she was aromantic and asexual, because she’d never even seen her go on a date, but Carol had very strong opinions about the expectation of women to bematernaland to be only half formed without romance to make them whole. “She used to be a teacher until—um, now she kind of does freelance tutoring.”
Colt tilted his head like he wanted to ask her about everything she wasn’t saying. Thankfully, he just nodded. “A woman after my own heart. There’s nothing more important than education and the bright future it creates for the minds of tomorrow.”
“I agree. That’s why she wanted me to go here. Aunt Carol is all about bright futures.”
