Page 34 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“You don’t need to lie to me,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I just need to know.”
“The last time I saw your mother was a few days before,” Claire said. “I never came to the house that night.”
“Just tell me the truth,” I said. “Please. Tell me what you were doing there. Tell me what the pictures meant.”
“What pictures?” Claire asked.
“You know,” I said. “I know you know.”
“Charlotte,” Claire said, “I don’t know what you saw that night—or who you saw—but whoever it was, it wasn’t me.”
She reached out as if to comfort me, and I took a step back. My hand knocked against a glass on the counter and it fell to the floor and shattered.
“Charlotte,” Claire said.
“I have to go,” I said.
I blindly grabbed my purse from the table and stumbled toward the front door. I was in my car and backing down the driveway before I really registered what was happening.
Claire was lying; she had to be lying.
Only, the thing was, I wasn’t so sure she was lying.
Part Two
Ten
Alistair Calloway
Fall 1996
Every November, between Halloween and Thanksgiving, my family hosted a charity ball at the Carlyle Hotel. All proceeds went to whatever obscure and ridiculous cause my sister Olivia picked out. One year we raised money for the United States Flora Ethics Committee, which was fighting for a Bill of Rights for plants. Olivia believed that broccoli should have rights, too. The food that year was awful—seven courses of wild-caught herbs and vegetables and chicken, and wine made of grapes that had been “humanely” fermented. Another year, we raised money for prosthetics for three-legged dogs. But the cause du jour was just a front, because there was only one cause the great Calloways had ever really believed in, the only thing that we took great pains to raise awareness of: ourselves.
As usual, I arrived promptly at eight o’clock, clean-shaven, dressed sharply in a suit, my fiancée Margot Whittaker on my arm. I looked around for my younger brother, Teddy, who wasn’t there. Teddy was, as usual, not prompt, and would probably arrive after the main course had been served, with a thick stubble on his chin, and dressed in some sort of calculatedly inappropriate attire like a Tommy Bahama shirt and flip-flops, despite the weather. Teddy’s eternal quest in life was to push the limits of my father’s patience and my mother’s blind adoration. My father had very little patience to begin with and would have disinherited Teddy years ago if it were not for my mother, but Teddy had yet to bottom out on the depths of her love for him.
As usual, Eugenia had spared no expense (Eugenia was my mother, and I had always called her Eugenia, even as a child, because she felt the term “mother” prematurely aged her). The pale violet orchids in the centerpieces had been flown in from Bogotá; the wines were from a cellar in Tuscany; the steaks that would be served during the main course had been dry-aged in the finest butcher’s cellar in the city for the past three weeks. And no detail was overlooked. The tablecloths were starched and pressed, the water glasses were set exactly one inch from the tip of the dinner knives; Eugenia had gotten out a ruler to check the measurements herself.
“Alistair, you look dashing,” Eugenia said, greeting me with a kiss on both cheeks.
Eugenia had always been coolly indifferent toward me. I think she found it boring that I was always where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to do. She didn’t have to scold me, or worry about me, or coddle me like Olivia and Teddy. But I was my father’s favorite. He found Olivia foolish and frivolous and Teddy unruly and rebellious. I was always there, a quick study and duty-bound to prove myself, and so my father put me through the fire again and again and again, molding me into a man whom he’d find worthy of being handed the Calloway legacy one day.
“Margot, dear,” Eugenia said, “you’re here.”
Eugenia was severely disappointed that I had chosen to marry a girl who was not pretty, flighty, or rich. In short, that I had not chosen someone more like her. And she was annoyed that I had given Margot the family ring: an eighteen-carat flawless emerald-cut canary diamond, flanked by two half-moon-cut diamonds on a platinum band. The ring had belonged to my grandmother. My mother had her eye on it for Teddy, but my grandmother had bequeathed it to me in her will, and I had given it to Margot. Ever since, my mother had been a complete bitch to Margot, hoping to scare her off, and Margot always responded with a smile, not retreating an inch.
“Eugenia, it’s lovely to see you,” Margot said without a hint of sarcasm. “You must tell me who you’re wearing. That dress is stunning.”
“Oh, I would, dear,” Eugenia responded to Margot, and I knew then that the reply would not be nice, because “dear” was not a term of endearment with Eugenia. Whenever I heard my mother say this I heard “pond scum” or “white trash” in its place, because that’s what she really meant, but those weren’t terms one could use in polite company. “But you probably wouldn’t be familiar, since you’re not knowledgeable about fashion. Your dress is tolerable. Did Alistair pick that out for you?”
“Yes, it was a gift,” Margot said.
“It’s Versace,” I said. “From their fall line. I thought you would approve.”
“Maybe on a different frame,” Eugenia said, eyeing Margot up and down while she took a sip from her wineglass. “Yes, a different frame would elevate it.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Margot put her hand on my arm.
“I’m parched,” Margot said. “Let’s get a drink, shall we? It was a pleasure talking to you, Eugenia. We’ll catch up more later.”
