Page 139 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“Mom, what are you doing here so early?” Dalton asked, turning and giving her a kiss on the cheek as she embraced him.
“They won’t let me check into the hotel in Falls Church until three,” Margot said. “So I thought I’d surprise you and take you out for brunch.”
“Oh,” Dalton said. “Well, I kind of promised Leo I’d help set up the silent auction. Maybe I could meet you somewhere in like an hour?”
Margot frowned and tilted her wrist to check the time. The white pearl watch face with small, circle-cut yellow diamonds around the bezel caught my eye. It was the same watch I’d admired the first time I’d met Margot, in the city. I’d always liked yellow diamonds, partly because you didn’t come across them very often. My mother had had a canary diamond engagement ring. She’d take it off when she was gardening or washing the dishes and string it on a thin gold chain she wore around her neck, so that it hung over her heart. Sometimes when I’d sit on her lap as a little girl, she’d wiggle the ring off her finger and let me hold it, and I’d try threading it on my too-slender fingers. I used to marvel at the large emerald-cut diamond, which was such an unusual color. The color of daffodils and summer squash. The diamonds on Margot’s watch were exactly the same shade.
But the unusual color of the diamonds on Margot’s watch was not the only thing that caught my eye. This close, I could see Margot’s watch was a ladies’ Oyster Perpetual Caliber 2235 model. I knew because I’d considered that same model when shopping for my own wristwatch last year for my sixteenth birthday. I’d eventually decided against it and chosen a vintage Rolex Bubbleback from circa 1933. The Oyster Perpetual model that Margot wore on her wrist was new. Rolex didn’t start manufacturing it until the late 1990s. And yet, in the city, when I’d asked Margot where she’d gotten it, she’d claimed it was an heirloom.
“That’ll be too late,” Margot said. “Most places stop serving brunch at two. And I’m craving a mimosa.”
“It’s fine,” I told Dalton, trying to keep my voice level. “Go have brunch with your mom. I can handle setting up.”
“Are you sure?” Dalton asked. “I feel kinda bad.”
“It’s a one-person job anyway and Leo roped me into it a while ago,” I said. “There’s no reason we should both have to suffer through it.”
“Okay, if you’re sure?” Dalton asked.
“I’m sure,” I said.
He leaned in and gave me a peck on the forehead and I tried not to flinch at his touch. “You’re the best,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight?”
“I’ll be here,” I said, and I gave him a weak smile.
When they were both gone, I glanced around the room to make sure that no one was looking in my general direction and then sank behind the table.
What. The. Hell?
The suitcases in the basement were one thing. But the watch with the same unusual-color diamonds as my mother’s engagement ring? And Margot’s watch was not an heirloom, it was maybe a decade old at most. My mother’s ring, on the other hand, was an heirloom. It had belonged to my great-grandmother.
I could feel my heart hammering in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
I remembered the engagement notice Greyson had found in an old issue of the Times. Had my mother’s engagement ring once belonged to Margot? My stomach twisted. I felt like I was going to be sick.
Keep it together, Calloway, I told myself. You have to keep your shit together.
Now, more than ever, I couldn’t fall apart.
I stood up straight and took a deep breath. I shook my head to clear it. I could do this. I could do this. But I couldn’t do it alone.
I took out my phone and scrolled through my contacts. When I found the one I was looking for, I pressed the little phone icon next to the name. I put the phone to my ear and listened to the ringing on the other end, and then that familiar voice answered.
“Hey,” I said. “I need your help.”
My father picked me up at my dorm room at seven o’clock and we walked together, arm in arm, across campus. He wore a crisp black suit and silk tie under his winter coat, and I wore a midnight-blue A-line evening gown with a beaded bodice that my father had brought with him from the city. His assistant Rosie had picked it out for me. I also wore my mother’s old necklace, the one with the cheap crab pendant. Jake had given it to her, I was sure. According to the “In Memoriam” page in my dad’s old yearbook, Jake had been born in early July. He was a Cancer; the crab was his zodiac sign. My mother had held on to that necklace all of those years; Jake must have meant a great deal to her. I wore the necklace now as a kind of amulet. I wondered if my father recognized the necklace, but if he did, he said nothing.
The lights from the banquet hall spilled onto the front lawn, and as we made our way up the stone steps, we stopped here and there to greet my father’s friends. It was the one event at Knollwood where the parents and alumni outnumbered the students.
“Alistair, old man,” Matthew York said, grabbing my father’s arm. He was with his daughter Meryl. I didn’t really talk to Meryl, even though she was an A initiate, like me. She was quiet and kept to herself. She had a long, stern-looking face, and so I’d always assumed she was a little bit mean.
“Haven’t seen you at the club lately,” Matthew York said to my father. “What’ve you been doing with yourself?”
My father stopped to answer him and I gave his hand a little squeeze and mouthed that I would meet him inside. He nodded at me.
“Teddy around?” I heard Matthew York ask my father.
“Yes, Grier’s here, too,” my father answered. “My niece just applied for next year.”
