When Vivian returns from the hospital, she tears off her clothes so quickly that she rips a hole in her silk blouse. She wants it off, this stench of sickness. She wants itoff.She is angry at her mom for spending all the family money and for getting sick and for being someone who even in sickness is a bitch.
Mostly, though, Vivian is angry that her mother no longer knows who she is. But she doesn’t even know to whom she should direct this sense of injustice—her mom? Her mother’s bad genes? Life? Some higher being?
With a pang, Vivian remembers she still needs to take care of Lucy’s school tuition. Christ. It’s probably now overdue. For this financial pickle, Vivian has no one to blame but herself. After doing extensive research on Philadelphia schools, she’d urged Lucy’s dad to apply to Locust Prep. It’s expensive, and he never would have considered it without Vivian’s insistence on covering the costs.
She opens the school’s payment portal, typing in her credit card information with short, sharp jabs. She reluctantly clicks the box to accept the 3 percent transaction fee, and she’s so irritated by this that she sends an impromptu text to her accountant:I have some irons in the fire…I may not need to close the Chestnut Hill store after all. Let’s discuss.It’s bullshit, of course. She has no irons, no game. Just an idea with a loose thread she’s twirling around her finger.
She now opens a new tab and types in a search: “missingschedule of beneficiaries Massachusetts.” She’s done this search already in the past few days, several times over. She doesn’t know why she’s doing it again. The results are the same. The first article that pops up reads: “Beware the Missing Schedule of Beneficiaries for Your Massachusetts Nominee Realty Trust.” Seems like she’s not the only one who this has happened to. A schedule of beneficiaries, like her ancestor put in place in the 1800s for the trust that held the title to the Knox real estate, wasnotrecorded at the registry of deeds. Such documents, perhaps unsurprisingly, were easily misplaced or often went suspiciously missing.
Vivian snaps the laptop shut harder than she needs to. She knows what’s also bothering her. Today is the day that the real estate agency has scheduled a few private showings at her mother’s house. Michael L. Carucci of Gibson Sotheby’s is the best of the best, and this is part and parcel of listing one’s property. But even though the house no longer resembles the one she grew up in, Vivian still feels uncomfortable with the thought of complete strangers traipsing through it. It would be nice if she didn’thaveto sell.
Glancing at the ripped silk blouse in a puddle at her feet, she gives a short, sarcastic laugh. Yet another thing she’ll need to offload: her blouse, at the thrift store. The hole is simply too big for repair.
Vivian meets Rachel for an early dinner at Sorellina, the upscale Back Bay restaurant. It’s not the type of place where one brings a baby, which is why Vivian chose it. She really needs her friend to pull a rabbit out of her genealogical hat. That—and a drink, after the day she had.
“Michael sounds interesting,” Rachel says, taking a bite of her steak tartare.
“Michael? Don’t you mean Peter?” Vivian says. They are sitting at the owner’s table, the coveted seating area. There are some undeniable perks, she must occasionally admit, to being her mother’s daughter.
“No, I mean Michael.”
“Oh.”
“Is he single?”
“How would I know?”
“Does he wear a wedding band?”
“No.”
“So, you noticed.”
Vivian takes a sip of her chardonnay. Her mother never liked chardonnay, felt it was a bad wine. No—her mother hated chardonnay. She didn’t dislike things; she hated them. Vivian has found herself drinking more and more chardonnay, which she happens to like very much, since her mother got sick.
“You got me. I noticed,” she says dryly.
“Look, maybe Michael can be your ally.”
“Why would I need an ally?” But as she says this, she recalls the grandfather clock stuck on 3:03. The crowd. The drugs. The secret cigar room. The fight. The warning that Xavier gave her. The geomancy readings—which, as she looked up, are divination readings that traditionally use marks made on the earth. Thereisa lot of drama at the Knox—and a lot of mystique.
“You’ll never guess who I ran into there,” Vivian adds.
“Who?”
“Xavier.”
“Xavier! Really? What was he doing there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was with someone? I didn’t notice a new boyfriend, but then again, there were a lot of people…and a lot of people in costume. Funny enough, Xavier recognized me because of my pendant.” She gestures toward it.
“What did Xavier have to say for himself?”
“We didn’t really talk,” Vivian admits. She doesn’t know why, but she’s reluctant to tell Rachel about his warning. The strange way he’d acted. The fact that at first, she thought he might’ve been drinking. Maybe she doesn’t want Rachel to think the Knox is unsafe. And why raise a red flag about the alcohol when Vivian doesn’t know what was in his glass?
“That’s too bad,” Rachel says. “I wonder how he’s doing.”
“Do we know whom Xavier might be dating at the moment?”
