“How many people are members of this?”
“Fifty-seven,” Mimi said. “Everyone signs a non-disclosure agreement. It’s legally binding.”
Anna had to stop herself from laughing.Not the place,she told herself. The absurdity, though, of forcing people to sign an NDA for a crazy scheme that was completely illegal. Were they all idiots? Who would even enforce it? Still, they had all fallen in line, Anna supposed, fifty-seven women, which, quick math told her, came to over five million dollars. You could control a lot of officials with that kind of money, year after year.
“To be honest, this is a lot more complicated than the secret society version I was running with in my mind,” Anna said.
“We prefer to be called the Generals,” Mimi snapped back.
“The Generals. Whatever.”
“You knew all the important parts,” Di said. “And every time we tried to convince you to let it go, you just kept pursuing it.”
“But you helped me!” Anna said. “You told me to run for president! You helped me plan parties!” Di, in particular, Anna thought, had been at the root of this betrayal. Di and Mary had sat beside her, supporting her, knowing that it was all a sham. Why had they done it?
“You’re rigid, Anna. You’ve always been rigid. I knew you weren’t going to give up on an idea. I told you at the very beginning that it was stupid, but you didn’t want my advice,” Di said. “So I figured I might as well control the narrative, if you weren’t going to give it up.”
That, Anna felt, was the ultimate sucker punch, the faux friendship. It was her own Chi Omega. Her sorority of sisters. All of it had been a lie.
“You suggested I go to the police! You came with me to file the report,” Anna said. She wanted to hear Di say it. She wanted a full recitation of the truth.
“I thought if you felt like there was more danger, maybe you’d back off. And I knew the police wouldn’t do anything,” Di said.
“The police,” Anna said.
Di nodded. The police, Anna now realized, were never going to take a report seriously. Not if they were on the Generals’ payroll.
Anna looked over at Mary, who had until now refused to make eye contact. She realized that she had misjudged her friend. Hadn’t Anna misjudged everyone, though? Friendship with Mary had been rooted in sympathy. Girl from South Hamilton, sodeservingof Anna, but all along, it was Mary who had been sending out warning flares, telling her to get out, and Anna who had been too stubborn to listen. The silence was thick, but Anna could almost feel those words floating above, the words of admonition.I told you to stop. I told you this was dangerous. I told you there were things you didn’t want to hear. Yeah, well, the things she didn’t want to hear, to be fair, didn’t seem like Skull and Bones crazy. And this shit was definitely Skull and Bones crazy.
Mary had said nothing to Anna since they arrived at the carriage house. She looked at Mary, and Mary looked back.
“I really did think we were friends,” she said.
“Actually, I think you pitied me,” Mary said. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Anna had believed that something wasdifficultin Mary’s life, that there weremoney troublesorgambling troublesoraddiction troubles,the kind of troubles you just don’t talk about when you’re from New England. But the things that Mary had been keeping to herself had nothing to do with shame. Her buriedsecrets had been for want of a better future, of buying into a dream. She was socking it away, all right.
“In the end, I guess I didn’t really know you,” Anna said.
“I guess you didn’t,” Mary said. “Small house, big bank account. My husband works for the Baupost Group. You always seemed to forget that about me. You saw what you wanted to see. And I let you.”
That was true, and there wasn’t any point in denying it.
All of this, though: It was . . . ridiculous? That was the only word Anna could come up with. She would have been less surprised if Ashton Kutcher had shown up, announced thatPunk’dwas being revived, and told her it had all been a big joke. Anna wondered if this coven of women knew how insidious, weird, and, yes, crazy this all looked from the outside, or if they had operated within its limits for so long that they had just started to accept a lack of boundaries as normative.
“Does this seem normal to any of you?” she asked.
“Who has the time or patience for normal?” Mimi asked.
Maybe, Anna thought, they were all just delusional. Maybe power had made them drunk. Or maybe they just didn’t care.
Anna shivered at the thought. “Just explain this to me, because I genuinely don’t understand. Why would a secret society likethe Generals,with half of Massachusetts on board, be so threatened by one person?” Anna said.
Mimi and Karen exchanged glances. “You’re not theonlyirritant to us,” Mimi said. “Why don’t we talk about those emails. I’m sure you were wondering who sent them.” She paused and walked around Anna in a circle, momentarily contemplative, maybe waiting for Anna to say something in recognition. The emails. Of course Mimi had known all along.
“That was Sarah Saunders,” Mimi continued. “Our former treasurer. At some point, Sarah grew a conscience. She and her husbandand daughter moved to Winchester and started getting the state police involved. Sarah thought that since she had the entire roster of contacts saved, she could go around the order of operations.”
“I can’t imagine that sat well with you, Mimi,” Anna said, acting as if the revelation did not bother her. Her own response was bait. But Mimi didn’t go for it.
“We’ve worked hard,” Mimi said. “This is our masterpiece.” The Generals, Mimi seemed to believe, deserved to be protected—and Anna believed that she believed this. A delusion, maybe, but her delusion.Theirdelusion. Anna could empathize with the desire to create something. She had been a stalled artist herself; what would it feel like to have put something in motion in the world, something larger than herself? Probably magnetic. Probably powerful. Probably important. A feeling like that—to know that you were responsible for lifelines and futures, to know that you could make things happen—could have become addictive, and fast.
