Augie creased a fold with her thumb, sliding it back and forth until the friction hurt.
“They’ve been playing together nonstop. It seems kind of weird to bring your nanny as a guest, but whatever. As always, the royals do as they shall.”
Augie grabbed another napkin, silent.
“Not that I’m being sexist,” TC continued. “I love the idea of a male nanny. Kid is nice, too. Polite. Maybe I should have been a manny. You’ve met him, right?”
Augie set her finished swan in the plastic bin, squishing it against the others. “Yeah, here and there with the boys. The swim meet.”
“He plays hockey, too, you know. Athletic little asshole,” TC joked. Augie knew TC was a big hockey fan, that he even taught skating lessons in the winter.
“We were shooting the shit the other day at that kids’ golf night, too. I got caught with him and Danika at the bar while Bill was out there on the Putt-Putt greens, trying and failing to get Cooper to practice. Hate to tell the guy, but I don’t think they’re gonna be future partners. Maybe that’s why he likes playing with the manny.”
Augie kept her face down but cleared her throat. “You talked to him and Mrs. Crawley?”
“Yeah, it was so funny, the three of us were all talking hockey. Mrs. Crawley was getting kind of drunk, she kept ordering mojitos, but she was so into it. She knew all about it. All the positions, the different leagues. Even the European rankings. Wouldn’t have guessed it.”
“European rankings?” Augie looked up.
“Yeah, we were talking about how Chat—that’s his name, right? Weird name. Anyways, we were talking about how he’d hoped to go pro, play for France Two or Belgium, but he got hurt or whatever. That’s a bummer. That would have been so cool. I wish I had been even close to good enough to play in Europe.”
“What did Mrs. Crawley say?”
“She was so into it. She was slurring, sure, but all the same. She was telling me all about the import rules, the Optibet Baltic league, how she’d gone to games in Sweden and Estonia and Norway. I was surprised. Impressed.”
Augie stopped folding. Mrs. Crawley had gone to hockey games in Europe? Wasn’t that where Chat had been trying to play? Maybe this was why they were so close—was it as simple as bonding over a sport?
“Did she say anything else?”
“Not really. She was pretty out of it by the end. Ah, alas, we’re out.” He crumpled the plastic wrap that had held the clean napkins into a ball. “We need sixty total, right? Did Aida say there were more in her office?”
“Oh, yeah. I think so. I can go check,” Augie said, suddenly eager to be alone.
As Augie walked down the hall, she imagined Mrs. Crawley and Chat talking about hockey, traveling. She wondered how Mrs. Crawley had gone from design school in California to gallivanting across Europe. But with money, Augie supposed anything was possible. Maybe it was a long vacation. Maybe she’d grown up with some hockey-obsessed dad. Augie felt another swirl of jealousy. She’d never been to Europe. She didn’t know the first thing about hockey. She didn’t know which sports her dad liked.
The office was always a mess, and Augie shoved the door open, fighting a pile of boxes. It wasn’t Aida’s fault. It was the only place they had within a stone’s throw of the ballroom to store extra place settings and uniforms and votives and the like. Luckily, Augie spotted the napkins right away. She stepped over a bushel of fake flowers tograb another plastic-wrapped stack before noticing that Aida’s computer was logged on.
Aida had always told them if they ever noticed she forgot to log off, to please do so immediately. Mr. Dryer was a stickler about privacy; he’d scolded her for breaching protocol before.
Augie adjusted the napkins under her arm and stepped to the computer, moving the mouse to the bottom left to exit. She paused before she clicked. Discovering the open computer at this exact moment felt too destined to ignore. And while she looked over her shoulder, hesitating just so, she sat down.
Augie opened the master file and scrolled to the singular number blaring in her mind: 9119. The Crawleys’ member number.
At first, the spreadsheet of contact information and invoices looked standard, and Augie felt a little regretful as she studied the columns of numbers, but a second later, she saw something strange—in the notes column were the red capitalized words: “PAST DUE.” And as she scrolled all the way to the current billing cycle, she saw it was in the negative.
$59,989.43 in the negative.
Augie sat back, blinking, when she heard someone at the door. She rushed to close the page and log off.
As Aida pushed into the office, cursing the mess at her feet, Augie stood up, raised the napkins, and yelled, “Found them!”
It was difficult for Augie to focus after that. She knew she shouldn’t be this obsessed with the Crawleys, but she couldn’t help it. On top of everything, they were in debt to the Club? More and more, Augie sensed something was awry. More and more, she wondered how much Chat really knew about them.
Augie wished she could text Leah about what she’d seen, but it felt tone deaf after their previous conversation. Augie needed to apologize first, needed to call her. So, for now, she told herself not to overthink—just lie low and get through the day.
Yet as she and TC finished the swans and returned to the kitchen, Aida raised a set of golf cart keys from her pocket and instantly, Augie cringed.
“It’s your lucky day. The golf staff is falling way behind.” Aida handed Augie the keys. Usually, everyone coveted the chance to help drive the snack carts and escape into fresh air, but today, Augie dreaded the thought of running into Chat and Bill out on the course. As much as she wanted to see Chat, she didn’t want to be cornered with him and his foursome. How awkward.
