Dear Daughter (10 page)

She pulled me inside. Rue flounced on ahead, and Cora chattered on about the renovations and period detail and various bits of decorative arcana, pointing out the design of the foyer, the vintage grate on the radiator, the wallpaper that had been salvaged from some nineteenth-century mansion. We came to a set of antique oak double doors, which Cora didn’t need to draw my attention to. They were lovely, inlaid with pink and green stained glass. A botanical design: tendrils of foliage and a five-petaled flower. I reached out to touch it—

“Everybody,” Cora said, “I’d like you to meet Rebecca Parker.”

I turned to find Cora presenting me like I was a girl she’d pulled out of a hat. And then my mouth went desert dry: In front of me I counted seven serving dishes, three kinds of forks, a ham the size of a first-grader, and four faces I didn’t know.

I lifted my hand. “Hi?”

•   •   •

One of my tutors back in Switzerland was this stickly ex-classics don who’d left his post at King’s College after being caught with two of his students in a position so compromising Catullus himself would have blushed. Nigel was cheerfully unrepentant about the whole thing, as evidenced by the fact that he was as comfortable telling me about it as he was elucidating the finer points of Homeric Greek. His second-favorite story, though, was about this poet—his name was Simonides—who was performing one night for a bunch of rich guys when,
boom
, the banquet hall collapsed and crushed everyone inside.

Everyone, that is, except for Simonides, who had, serendipitously, stepped outside just moments before the accident.

The bodies of the dinner guests were so fucked up that when it came time to arrange for the burials no one could figure out who was who. But Simonides was known for his great big brain, and so the families turned to him for assistance. “Help us,” they begged him. “Help us identify our loved ones so that we might put them to rest with their ancestors! Please, sir, tell us anything you can remember!” What happened next, as Nigel told me, was that Simonides closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then proceeded to recite the names of each and every guest in the exact order of their placement at the table.

Simonides: proof that poets can actually be good at parties.

Ever since, when confronted with a group of unknown people—and when I estimate the level of mortal peril to be reasonably high (which in Beverly Hills was always)—I try to channel my inner Simonides. Which is to say that I look each person in the eye, listen to their name, and then make up a really lame rhyme so I won’t forget it even if the roof caves in.

I took a deep breath and surveyed the Kantys’ dining room. Six people were staring at me: Rue, Cora, and the four others I was going to have to meet.

Two were women. Could one of them be Tessa? I didn’t think so—they were closer to my age than to my mother’s, and pretty. My mother, ever an expert in the sorcery of aesthetic relativity, preferred only to know people who were less attractive than her.

So, where to start?

No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question, it was a test. Because the answer is always this: You start with the most powerful person in the room. He or she is inevitably the one you’ll have to win over or throw over in order to get what you want.

In this case the man in question was easy enough to pick out—he was the handsome older one at the far end of the table. He had slate-gray hair and the sort of face that exudes intelligence, with sharp cheekbones and thoughtful blue eyes and a serious nose. He was sipping at a gold-rimmed teacup, his little finger curved gracefully. It was that finger as much as anything else that convinced me of his status. It was a
Yeah, so I’m a man in South Dakota who drinks tea like Lizzy Bennet, what of it?
sort of finger.

I stepped forward and held out my hand. “You must be Cora’s husband,” I said.

The crowd, as they say, went wild. To my dismay, my ears stung with a blush.

When the laughter had died down, Cora, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, said, “No, dear, this is Stanton Percy.”

I sighed. “As in Percy Avenue?”

Cora nodded and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze.

“I do hope you won’t hold that against me,” said Stanton smoothly. “I promise there’s no metaphorical significance to the potholes.” His voice was surprisingly rough and deep for such a neat, elegant man. It was the kind of voice you’d expect from a blacksmith, not from a man who starched his shirts. I tried to imagine it filtered through insulation and drywall.

You think you’re so much smarter than everyone else, don’t you?

I shook my head. I couldn’t tell if he was the man I’d heard that night.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Percy—”

“Stanton, please.”

“Stanton,” I repeated.

Stanton,
Stanton
,
a man of . . . high standin’
.

Cora put her hand on the shoulder of the man at the other end of the table. “And
this
is Eli—my husband.”

I smiled over at him. Eli had the ruthlessly disciplined build of a long-distance runner or a military man, someone who wasn’t just fit but who had been so fit for so long that his body didn’t even allow for the possibility of outward expansion. We were made of wet clay; he’d spent time in a kiln. And he knew it.

His expression was polite but unenthusiastic, clearly a husband who would exhibit the precise level of excitement his wife required of him and no more. Under the table, his foot tapped impatiently.

Eli, Eli, he . . . wants to make a . . . beeline?

“A pleasure,” he said, begrudgingly—a less than helpful vocal sample size.

Cora pointed at one of the two women on the far side of the table.

“Then this is Kelley,” she said.

The woman who waved in response was small and dark-haired, with heavy black glasses. Her skin might have naturally been a healthy golden brown were it not for a wan overlay that screamed too many hours spent indoors. Her fingernail polish was black and chipped, and she was smiling so broadly I could see the flash of a tongue stud.

“It’s so nice to meet you,” she said, and my god I think she meant it.

Kelley, Kelley, as sweet as . . . apple jelly.

“And this is Renee.” The second woman was farm-girl beautiful, a Teutonic blonde who looked like she knew her way around a compound thresher. Her hair was long and loose and the sort of natural gold that inspires agricultural simile—it looked like flax or corn or winter wheat. (At least I’m assuming it did. I don’t actually know what flax or corn or winter wheat look like.)

She was dressed in tight jeans and a flannel button-down that gaped slightly over her chest. I tried not to tug at my own pants, which were too big in the hip and too small in the thigh, so the ass was just sort of pooling around the tops of my legs like maybe I was wearing a diaper underneath.

Renee, Renee, she . . . something something something.

“Hey,” she said.

Ah:
Renee, Renee, whose hair’s like hay.

An expectant silence. Oh, shit, it was my turn to talk—“Thank you all so much for having me.” My voice broke on the last word. I put my hand to my throat. Being nice required a much higher register than I was used to.

Cora put her hands on me again, directing me to the one empty chair with a firm press on my shoulders. “Just make yourself at home,” she said. I promptly tried to calculate how much I needed to slump to appear at ease without appearing impolite. Across the table, the two women exchanged a look.

Cora poured me a glass of water before sitting down on the opposite side of the table between Eli and Renee. “You know,” Cora said, “Kelley and Renee are two of Ardelle’s most successful businesswomen.”

“High praise indeed,” Renee muttered.

“Kelley runs the bookstore down on Percy,” Cora continued, “and Renee owns the most gorgeous gallery just a few blocks down. You should see what she has on display—there’s sculpture, textiles, photos—”

“Cora, as always, is too generous,” Renee said. “The stuff I sell is more on the crafts side of the arts-crafts spectrum, if you know what I mean. But this is my home, so I’ve got to make do. We don’t exactly have a huge demand for postminimalist earth art, you know?”

“Not yet, anyway!” Cora nudged her with a friendly elbow. Renee seemed deeply uncomfortable—she kept fussing with the cuffs of her shirt—but whether this was due to Cora’s optimism or affection, I couldn’t tell.

I wished I had something to futz with too, but when I’d changed for dinner I’d picked a shirt with the least-flattering sleeves possible (i.e., three-quarter length). I tried to fold my hands in my lap but decided that was too formal, so I took my left hand and laid it on the edge of the table in what I hoped was a negligent manner. I adjusted my ring finger slightly until it looked right. There.

“Eli, no.”

I looked up. Eli was spooning potatoes onto his plate. Cora placed her hand on his.

“We’re not all here,” she said.

“Rue!” Eli called out. “Sit down! Now.”

His words were as precise as his bearing, with a bite that brooked no argument.

Should’ve slapped that mouth off years ago.

My eyes narrowed.

Eli waited until Rue was seated before he lifted his spoon toward Cora. “
Now
may I?”

“No, because we’re
still
not all here.” She looked at the table and frowned. “Oh, shoot, and now we’re short a place setting—Rue, honey, would you get another chair, please?” Cora bustled back to the kitchen and returned with an armload of china and silver.

“Cora,” Kelley said. “Who else is coming?”

Cora shooed me to the right and Rue to the left and began to lay the dishes and cutlery between us. “Well—” she said.

Renee groaned. “Oh, Cora, no.”

Cora straightened. “Look, he’s all alone in that ramshackle house of his. God only knows what he’s eating.”

“Some skank from Sturgis, probably.”

Kelley gagged.

Stanton snapped his fingers. “Children, please.” Everyone quieted. I moved my right heel to put my foot in parallel with the other.

Stanton watched me over his teacup. “You’d be here for the festival, I imagine.”

“I wouldn’t miss it!” I said. “I’m a historian, you see, and I specialize in the demographic and socioeconomic ramifications of nineteenth-century—”

“Cora,” he cut in swiftly, eyes already glazing over, “remind me what the first event is . . . ?”

“The Bean and Cornbread Breakfast.” Cora turned to me. “We use only authentic recipes from the 1880s.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Renee said.

“Authentic?” Cora said.

Renee eyed the ham suspiciously. “Recipes.”

Eli sat up in his chair, catching sight of something through the window. “There he is.”

Renee barely had time to fashion another scowl before the He in question walked in. When I saw him my stomach dropped so hard and so fast I’m pretty sure it landed somewhere in the Earth’s outer core.

“And this,” Cora said, unnecessarily, “is Leo La Plante—Kelley’s brother and Ardelle’s finest.”

I sank low in my seat.
Leo, Leo, the cop I totally met earlier today when I was acting nothing like a virginal historian and everything like a bitchy ex-con, oh man am I screwed.

What? They don’t all have to rhyme.

•   •   •

“You’re late,” Renee said to Leo by way of greeting.

“Fuck you too, Renee.” Leo dropped a kiss on Cora’s cheek before peeling a can off a six-pack and dropping the rest in front of Eli, who grunted in appreciation.

He very nearly succeeded in making me think he hadn’t seen me.

“You’re not even going to apologize for being late?” Renee said.

Cora found something of great interest at the bottom of her wineglass, and Kelley rubbed her eyes as if hoping she could make them see something else. Stanton yawned.

“What would you know about apologies?” Leo asked.

Cora shot Kelley a beseeching look, which Kelley didn’t see, because she was rubbing her eyes again.

“I know when they’re called for, for one thing—hey!” Renee whirled around: Kelley had pinched her upper arm. “That hurt!”

“Dude,” Kelley said. “Chill.”

Renee gave Leo the finger; he returned it before sitting down in the empty chair that was, of course, right next to me. He turned to me and smiled. I hated that I noticed he’d shaved.

“It’s so nice to see a new face here in town,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”

I weighed the importance of getting to know the prominent citizens of Ardelle against the importance of getting the fuck away from this guy.

No, he’s just a cop
, I told myself.
And
probably not even a very good one.

“I’m Rebecca,” I said.

He tilted his head. “Really. I wouldn’t have guessed it.”

Or maybe he
is
a good one.

“My mother named me after a character in her favorite book,” I said.

“
Vanity Fair
?”

I smiled at the table. “The Bible.”

Leo sat back in his chair and stretched out his legs. My knee skittered away from his like roaches from a light. He nodded, as if double-checking an answer and having it come up right.

He wasn’t trying to threaten me. He was trying to test me.

But why?

Well, I’d just have to test him right back.

“You know,” I said, “you seem really familiar. Is there any chance we’ve met before?”

His eyes narrowed. “Depends. Ever been in police custody?”

I relaxed. If he didn’t want the table to know that I’d seen him on the side of the road, then I must have seen something he didn’t want shared. I had some leverage, then.

“Cora,” Eli said, with a dark look at Leo, “please tell me we can eat already.”

Cora’s hands fluttered up in dismay. “Oh, of course—go ahead.”

We served ourselves and began to eat. While the meal was not precisely, as Cora had claimed at the inn, “nothing fancy,” it certainly was trying to be. I scooped up asparagus with a broken hollandaise and fingerling potatoes that were crisped nearly black. The ham I left alone. I kept a running count in my head—
one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Jesus-God-why-isn’t-there-a-state-name-longer-than-Mississippi
—to remind myself to take a bite every time I got to sixty.