Even chaos bowed to math.
Was it a coincidence that Gertie had mentioned Xavier Lindqvist so soon after my mother had expressed her fears? I downloaded some actuarial tables and tried to calculate just how unlucky the Belmonts had been. Even when I pushed it, their misfortune was less than two standard deviations from the norm.
Xavier wasn’t my ancient enemy. He was just a fellow legacy, someone I’d hooked up with, then beaten at archery.
“Jessica! Here you are!”
Faraday was at the glass doors, clutching a bottle of champagne. She wore an antique raccoon coat like one of Grandpa Dwight’s, and darker lipstick than usual.
She bustled into the Sun Parlor, dislodging the chairs in her path, leaving a corner of the rug upturned. The freshmen who’d been sketching each other by the fireplace looked up.
“Quiet hours are over,” I told them, and they started gathering their things.
Faraday sat beside me, filling the air with her mother’s perfume, and pulled two glasses—miraculously unbroken—from a coat pocket. She placed them on my Econ textbook.
“Can you pop the cork?” she asked. “I’m hopeless.”
I took the bottle, stripped the foil. “Krug? Fancy.”
“Guess why.”
“A return to financial security?”
Faraday let out a shriek, and one of the freshmen gave us a last glance—scandalized, envious.
“They dropped the case today! Or agreed to our terms, however you say it. Marlow’s terrible contract is null and void.”
I punctuated her news with apop. The cork pinged off the tin ceiling, smacked a window, and wobbled across the floor to hide beneath an old claw-footed table.
The bottle frothed in my hand, the particular Krug scent of lemons and rot spilling out.
“That’s splendid.” I poured two glasses, slowly, to keep the fizz from lathering over. “But this champagne is traumatized. Did yourunhere?”
“All the way from the store. You like it cold!”
“I like it at fifty Fahrenheit, dear. Exactly what it is outside.”
“Oh, right.” Faraday sloughed off her coat onto a chair, sat down on it. “But we won!”
I handed her a glass, raising my own. “To winning.”
We drank—all bubbles at first, but they resolved into liquid against my tongue, oily and bright.
“To the Mortons,” she added.
“That goes without saying.” I gave her a serious look. “So don’t say it.”
“Right, of course. None of them knows why it happened—not even Marlow, which is annoying. He’s taking credit, when it wasmefixing his fuckup.”
“He’s irrelevant. He didn’t sign.”
“He should still praise me.” Faraday sat back, smiling. “Oscar Junior just got into Harvard. Imagine if we couldn’t afford it. How embarrassing!”
“I’m so pleased, dear.”
“The Victorian house is back on for next year. I can still kick Salinger out. We should live together, Jessica—as allies.”
I smiled back at her, pretending to sip.
