He asked me about the notes I’d gone through today and I answered him. I’d taken a stack and brought them to his desk, not wanting to spend another day on the floor. So I sat in his chair, going through his stuff and inputting it into some of the different spreadsheets and Word docs I’d already begun, while he spoke on the phone to me.
It was definitely surreal.
I was listening to him, but my eyes wandered to the framed photos on his desk. One of him and his parents taken at his graduation from Brown.
He looked like his mother—very Upper East Side, very Old Money. She was in a smart, cream linen suit. My guess was Chanel, but I’m not well versed on WASP-wear. Montrose had his arm around her, a near-identical smile on both their faces.
His father was on his other side and also wore what looked like a cream linen suit, though definitely not Chanel. Brooks Brothers maybe? His arm was not slung around his son or his wife’s shoulder, but there was a nice smile on his face and he seemed happy to be in the photo.
The other photo was of Montrose and a beautiful young woman, their arms entwined, both looking at the camera. They wore ski gear and I could see a ski resort, and mountain, behind them.
“Uh-huh,” I said to Montrose, not catching everything he said, but most of it. I slid my laptop over and Googled “Billy Montrose girlfriend” and waited. Several times the name Diandra Scott came up, but upon further investigation, it looked like they’d ended things a while ago. And on Google images Diandra Scott was not the woman skiing with him. A new girlfriend? He looked about his current age in the photo, like maybe it had been taken last winter.
“Um,” I said, when he paused, “I’m working at your desk today, and I was just noticing the photos on your desk.”
“I have photos on my desk? I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I’m looking right at them.”
“Seriously? Like, framed photos of people?”
Man, absent-minded professor or what? “Yes. Two of them. And you’re in both photos.”
“I don’t think—Oh. Oh, right. My mom sent those to me when I first started at Bribury. She sent them right to the office. Probably figured—rightfully so—that I wouldn’t take the time to put up anything personal. I just sat them on the desk and didn’t think of them again.”
“But you must see them every day.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I was desperate to ask about his ski bunny when he said, “One with them at Brown, right? And one of me and my sister skiing?”
An easing in my heart at hearing the word “sister,” and then self-chastisement. Like it should even matter to me if he had a girlfriend or not.
But it did. It desperately did.
“Right, those are the two,” I said.
“Yeah, of course I remember. Like you said, I see them every day.”
I laughed as I ran my finger along the heavy, expensive silver frame. “Oh yeah? What is your mother wearing in this photo?”
“A Chanel suit.”
“Huh. I guess you do notice them.”
He didn’t say anything for too long. “Wait,” I said. “She always wears Chanel suits, doesn’t she?”
“Busted.”
We laughed together, and it felt so good, so right, to share something with him.
After talking about Esme/Rachel for another hour we said our goodbyes and hung up. I wanted to dive back into his notes, but the Google page with results on Montrose taunted me until I finally mentally packed my bags and spent the next two hours cyber stalking him.
There wasn’t much I didn’t already know, although I hadn’t been aware of his relationship with Diandra Scott—a woman he apparently met at Brown and dated quite seriously for several years. If I did my math correctly, I estimated they’d broken up right about the time he felt he was heading for self-entitled prick. So, he’d been a prick for about two years of their relationship. Maybe Diandra dumping him is what made him take a hard look at his life?
Or maybe he’d dumped her because of said prick-ness?
At one time, I’d known everything there was to know about Billy Montrose. In fact, I probably should have guessed that the woman in the second photo was his twin sister. They had a very similar look, though the sister was blond to Montrose’s dark brown hair. But the same eyes, the same perfect smile with blindingly-white teeth.
