Page 96 of All These Beautiful Strangers
But, in the end, I had agreed to the dinner and invited my father. If I was ever going to get to the bottom of what had happened to my mother, I needed to start asking my father some questions. And I had decided that the best place to start was with Jake Griffin. After seeing those photos in my mother’s case file, it seemed obvious that my mother’s disappearance was linked in some way with Jake. I just needed to find out how, and if my father was somehow caught up in it, too.
My father’s office was on the top floor of a glassy skyscraper downtown. We had called ahead and so there were passes waiting for us at security on the ground floor. Rosalind, who had been my father’s secretary for as long as I could remember, greeted us at the elevator. She was a stout woman in her fifties; she was the type of person who was all sunshine and rainbows when she liked you, but all snark and bite when she didn’t. When I was a child, I’d seen her make grown Wall Street men cry. Or, at least, tear up.
“Rosie,” I said, giving her a hug.
She laughed and hugged me back. “Don’t say that too loudly,” she said. “You’re the only one who can get away with calling me that, and I don’t want anyone getting it into their head that that nickname will fly around here.”
Like they would dare cross her.
“And who’s your tall and handsome friend?” Rosie asked.
“Royce Dalton,” Dalton said, extending his hand and smiling. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Charlie speaks very highly of you.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Rosie said, shaking his hand. She looked at me and winked. “He’s a keeper,” she whispered.
Rosie let us into my father’s office and went to get us waters. Apparently, my father was finishing up in a meeting across town and was running a little behind.
My father’s office was large and sparsely decorated. Something about the sparseness was supposed to make it edgy and modern, but to me it just felt cold and unapproachable, which maybe was part of the point. He had a corner office, so two sides were windows that looked out over the city below. In the middle of his office was a steel-framed desk and his computer. On the other side of the room were a black leather love seat, two armchairs, and a liquor cabinet.
Dalton sank into the couch and I stood at the window, looking out over the city. From this high up, all of the buildings looked almost small.
“Your father has good taste,” Dalton said.
“Yeah,” I said. I turned back to his desk and the bookshelf that sat along one wall. There were lots of pictures of my father. Pictures with clients and important people. Pictures with some of his old friends from school—there he was sailing with Freddy Heinz, there he was golfing with Matthew York. But there was only one picture of my father with me and Seraphina. We were at the beach by our house on Martha’s Vineyard. Seraphina must have been about seven. She was perched on my father’s shoulders. I was standing next to my father, leaning into him; he had his arm around me. I was wearing one of my father’s old Columbia sweatshirts, which was way too big for me. I had worn holes into the sleeves that I hooked my thumbs through.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” I heard a familiar voice say behind me, and I turned to see my father in the doorway, dressed in a suit and overcoat.
He came in and set his briefcase on his desk.
“Charlotte, so good to see you,” he said, and he wrapped an arm around me and planted a kiss in my hair. He smelled faintly of tuberose blossoms, the scent of his favorite cologne from Barneys.
“You too,” I said, a little stilted and breathless.
“And you must be Charlotte’s friend,” my father said, taking several long strides across the room to shake Dalton’s hand.
Dalton rose from the couch, his hand outstretched.
“Royce, sir,” Dalton said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I hope you don’t mind, my mother is running a bit late, I’m afraid, and she likes to make an entrance.”
“Well that’s certainly a fine introduction to give your own mother.”
We all three turned toward the door and saw a woman standing there, finely dressed in dark linen trousers and a delicate cashmere sweater and a thick wool coat. On her arm she toted a boxy Birkin bag. There was something impressive, awe-worthy, about the way she carried herself, though she was of average stature. It was strange, but as attractive as Dalton was, I had always expected his mother to be a great beauty. Instead, I could pick out some of the features that, so attractive on Dalton’s face, made his mother plain—the strong, square jaw; the wide nose; the tall forehead. There was something else that was vaguely familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“I meant it as a compliment, I promise,” Dalton said with a smile. “Charlie, Mr. Calloway, may I introduce my dear mother—”
“Margot,” my father said hoarsely.
“Oh,” Dalton said, his forehead wrinkling in confusion. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were acquainted.”
Mrs. Dalton strode forward—there was something masculine, commanding, in her gait—and kissed my father on the cheek.
“Alistair, dear, it’s been too long,” she said. “And this must be your daughter Charlie,” she said, turning her attention to me. Her eyes were appraising, looking me up and down. “My stars, if she isn’t the spitting image of her mother. Please, dear, call me Margot.”
She held out her hand and I took it, even though my heart was stuttering in my chest at the mention of my mother. No one ever brought her up in front of me. “You knew my mother?” I asked.
“Yes, I knew Grace,” Mrs. Dalton said. “Your father and I went to school together—at Knollwood, and then Columbia.”
And it clicked then, why she seemed familiar. I hadn’t met her before, but I had seen her. Margot was the girl in the photograph—the girl stripped naked, her body marked up in red. But she had that same steady, unabashed gaze as the girl in the photograph, as if you, and not she, were the one who had been stripped bare.
