Confessions: The Paris Mysteries (9 page)

The American Hospital was to hospitals
what the Plaza is to hotels. It was an awesome place with famous doctors and the best medical services on the Continent. And then there were the bonus amenities like Wi-Fi; gourmet meals; and hairdressers, pedicurists, and masseuses by appointment.

It was almost like a resort where you could have brain surgery and get a high-fashion haircut at the same time.

Hugo kept Harry company while Harry’s doctor met with Jacob and me outside the closed door. Since Dr. West is a highly regarded cardiac surgeon and I’m a sixteen-year-old girl, needless to say, he spoke over my head.

He said to my uncle, “Harrison’s symptoms: breathlessness, dizziness, and the syncope—that’s fainting—the fluttering in the chest and sudden weakness—these all are indications of tachycardia. It’s generally not very serious, and I’ve seen a lot of this in teenage boys.

“But you should know that tachycardia can be brought on by using energy drinks—either alone or as a mixer. Stimulant drugs like cocaine can also bring on tachycardia. Given that Harrison had been at a party, followed by the stress of the police interrogation, it all makes sense. I’m not concerned with the tachycardia—”

I interrupted. “So is he going to be all right?”

The doctor ignored me. “As for the arrhythmia, this is an irregular heartbeat that
can
be life threatening…”

Dr. West went on, saying that arrhythmia, or fibrillation, was potentially more serious, and that pretty much infuriated me.

Because I wasn’t convinced that any of my brother’s heart issues were caused by congenital defects or energy drinks mixed with booze or recreational drugs.

A different idea had occurred to me. A bad one.

I pushed open the door to Harry’s hospital room. It was a big, bright corner room, furnished with a supercomfy sit-up bed and a reclining chair currently occupied
by Hugo, who was enthusiastically thumbing his Nintendo 3DS.

I saw a couple of huge, ostentatious flower arrangements and a garish bouquet of metallic balloons tied to the footrail. Who had sent them? Harry had arrived just hours ago.

Behind the balloons, Harry was sitting up in bed, talking on his phone. He had good color in his face, an open laptop on his knees, and papers littering his blanket. The papers looked legal. Like contracts. In fact, my brother looked less like a heart patient and more like a whiz-kid businessman.

He held up a finger to me, the universal gesture for “just a minute,” and said into the phone, “Yes, I can make it to the audition tomorrow at three. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

He clicked off his phone and grinned.

“Who was that?” I asked. “What kind of audition?”

“Haven’t you heard, Tandy? I’m a musical genius. I’m about to take Paris by storm.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. It felt like I was in a convenience store and a live deer had wandered inside. And when that happens, you want to approach it very carefully so that it doesn’t go nuts and break up the place before leaping through the plate glass window.

“Dr. West said you have heart problems, Harry. You know that?”

“I heard him. I guess maybe I did party a little too hard. But it was no big deal, Tandy. I don’t know what Lulu ‘ingested’ because I lost sight of her the second we walked through the door. All I had was a couple of beers—”

I cut him off because he was seriously scaring me. I said, “Do not lie to me. I have to know. Are you taking the
pills
again? Are you having a reaction to our illegal, non-FDA-approved pills with whatever you ‘ingested’ at that party?”

“I’m not taking the pills,” he said. “I stopped taking them when you did. When our supply was cut off.”

“Harry, if you’re lying, if you’re mixing pills and other things, you could
die
.”

He shook his head. Like he couldn’t accept that I didn’t believe him. Well, there were boxes of pills in our father’s office when he died. Harry had had plenty of opportunity to stash some away for the future.

I had done it. Maybe all my brothers had, too.

Our drugs had their advantages.

Hugo looked up from his 3DS. He said to me, “He keeps them in a vitamin C bottle inside his suitcase. A big bottle.”

Harry glared at Hugo, then turned an even angrier
glare on me. “I said, I’m not taking any pills, Tandy. Don’t worry. The Harry you’re seeing is all me. Something huge is about to happen, and I can’t afford not to be one hundred percent.

“Finally, it’ll be my time to shine.”

When I peeked in on Harry that night,
he was cross-legged on his bed, scrawling on music sheets, humming to himself and counting off beats on his fingers. He looked good. He didn’t see me open and close his door.

Across the hall in his own room, Hugo was surrounded by pillows on the floor, intensely involved in a football game on the giant TV, shouting out to Matty, who was on Skype watching the game with him from thousands of miles away.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the dining room, Jacob was having coffee and cake with Monsieur Delavergne. After my sunburst of love for Gram Hilda’s lawyer, I now had to see things as they actually were. And reality sucked.

Harry had left home without permission.

He’d gone to a wild party, where his “date” had died of an ecstasy overdose. And probably even more disgraceful—the press had videotaped Harry Angel’s arrest, his release, and his fall in front of the police station. Now everything that had ever been said, filmed, or written about our family was being regurgitated for a whole new audience.

Most of our recorded history was pretty disgraceful, to say the least.

I went to the kitchen and washed the dinner dishes, soaking them in hot water and scrubbing vigorously while the meeting that might turn Harry’s inheritance to crap rumbled along out of earshot. I was totally terrified for Harry.

On the other hand—and wasn’t there always another hand?—I understood why Harry was rebelling.

Harry’s paintings, in my humble estimation, were brilliant. He also composed music and could really,
really
play the piano.

Our parents hadn’t appreciated these talents; they thought his brand of creativity was weak. Or they didn’t see a financial advantage to painting and music. Or they really didn’t like Harry, which was
his
opinion. He was the unloved child.

Whatever, because of Harry’s epic press coverage,
reporters had learned of his debut at Carnegie Hall and that he’d written music for other musicians.

They’d figured out their angle, which was also the truth: Harry was an oppressed musical
giant
. Now there was interest in Harry, all right. Big-money interest.

I took a few swigs of cooking sherry, nearly dropping the bottle when my phone suddenly rang.

Could it be James?

I leapt for my phone, which was on the kitchen table a mile away. I grabbed it and eyeballed the caller ID.

It wasn’t James.

But a thrill shot through me anyway.

I was almost as excited as if James was actually calling me. I clicked the phone, put my mouth to the speaker, and
screamed
.

She screamed, too.

She
was Claudia Portman, aka C.P., my best friend from school—really my
only
friend from school. C.P. is a bold dresser, a loud talker, and like me, she tends to color outside the lines. I’m
her
“only,” too.

When I last saw C.P. a week ago, my family was fleeing New York, probably for good. We were about to cab it down to the docks and within hours board the
Queen Mary 2
and sail to France, our future unknown. I also hadn’t known until C.P. told me on the street that day that she had spent the night in Harry’s room.

Why did this feel bad? I don’t know, but I’d made her promise to never, under any circumstance, even if we
hated each other, even if I pointed a gun at her head, tell me about having sex with my brother.
Vom.

So I don’t know anything about
that
, and I buried this tidbit under a wrinkle in my cerebral cortex and moved on.

Now—C.P. was screaming into my ear, and then she said, “Tandy! Why didn’t you call me back?”

“You called?” I said. “When?”

“Yesterday. And—two
days
ago. And the day after you left me in New York—all by myself!”

I laughed loud and hard. God, it felt good to laugh from my belly, especially great because she was laughing now, too.

I gasped for air. And then I said, “Sorry, C.P. I didn’t have the satellite hookup when we were on the ship, and then I was at school—no phone, and then Jacob took all our phones away, and then Harry was in the hospital—”

“Hospital? What’s wrong with Harry?”

I skipped the part about his date with Lulu Ferrara—Harry could tell C.P. about
that
if he wanted to—but I did say he’d had some heart palpitations and that he was okay.

But I wasn’t done. I had to backtrack to tell C.P. about Gram Hilda’s “gifts and challenges.”

“It’s like, ‘Don’t disgrace the family, or bread crusts for you.’ And you know, C.P., my brothers and I do tend to ruffle feathers.”

C.P. laughed again and said, “I think it’s still hashtag lucky bitch.”

“Maybe, but I’m talking too much. What’s up with you? Any new guys to fill me in on?”

“Nooooooooo, don’t stop now. What happened with James? Did you ever hear from him?”

Whomp.
C.P.’s question was a huge gut punch, one that just about laid me out. I swallowed a few times, took in a lot of air and let it out, and then said, “Better than hearing from James, C.P. I
saw
him.”

There was more shrieking in my right ear, and this time, I held the phone away. Truth is, I didn’t want to have to talk about James, and that was why I hadn’t called her right away.

“You really saw him?” C.P. asked. “Oh my God. Tell me everything.”

I was evasive at first, edging around the corners of the thing. Then I started talking for real, telling her almost everything—and couldn’t stop until the end of the entire sick story when I found James’s note on the floor of his room.

“Tell me word for word what he wrote,” C.P. said, “and don’t tell me you don’t remember. You have a photographic memory. We both know that.”

So I swallowed and then quoted the letter, including the last line James had written:

“Don’t ever doubt that I love you. And always will.”

Those last words were like shards of glass in my throat. I started crying, and C.P. was snuffling, too, and I’d like to say that by the time I hung up the phone, I felt better.

I could
say
that.

But it would be a damned lie.