Edgewater (17 page)

“You don't have to explain,” Charlie said. “I like the confidence.”

At least there was one thing I was truly confident about.

“So, when will Orion be back?” he asked.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Hopefully.”

“Do you have plans for the rest of the day?”

“Just a few things to finish up here,” I said.

“Do you want to come over and have dinner with me when you're done?”

The night before, I'd stopped by the break room at the end of the day, pretending to be oh-so-casual as I picked at the leftover food on the long wooden table. I'd planned to do the same tonight, since there was nothing at home besides food frozen next to the dead birds. But now here I was, being asked to have dinner with one of the wealthiest and most eligible of teenage heartthrobs.

Did Charlie qualify as eligible if he was on a break from dating Shelby Rhodes? I didn't want to think too hard on that one. And Shelby aside, I was a little nervous at the prospect of being back at the Copeland house. What if someone recognized me as a Hollander? What if I had another weird meeting with the senator?

Still, I was pretty sure there was only one answer to the question Charlie had asked. “Yes,” I said.

14

OUT OF SIGHT

I SHOWERED IN THE BATHROOM BEHIND THE TACK
room and then opened the cabinet Naomi kept stocked with supplies and used the spray-on deodorant and some moisturizer. That was when I spotted the extra toilet paper. Rolls of it, there for the taking. Except not really. This would be a new low: toilet-paper thief.

I'll replace the rolls
, I promised Naomi silently.
The minute my bank account is replenished, I'll buy even better toilet paper—three-ply, if there is such a thing—and restock the cabinet.
That would make me a borrower, not a thief. Still not great, but definitely better.

I stuffed a few rolls into my oversize bag and walked out of the bathroom. “Hey, Lorrie,” Jeremy said.

“Oh, hey,” I said. I pulled my bag closer to me, as if Jeremy
were a security guard at the Copelands', about to insist on seeing what was inside it.

“Nice bag,” he said.

“Thanks.” It was a Goyard. The past fall, Lennox and I had purchased matching versions of the Parisian shoulder bags that were
the
thing to tote your books in from class to class at Hillyer. Hers was orange, and mine was green.

“It looks good on you,” he said. “Matches your eyes.”

Which was, in fact, why I'd picked that color.

“My mom used to have one like it,” he went on.

“Thanks,” I said again. In all honesty, I didn't particularly like the Goyard bags, but it would have made more of a statement
not
to get one when they lined the halls of Hillyer. Now I felt simultaneously angry at myself for charging a thousand dollars to be like everyone else, and nostalgic for the time when I could do so and not give it a second thought.

But really: What seventeen-year-old needs a Goyard book bag? What forty-year-old needs one, for that matter? At least it was deep enough to hold a few rolls of contraband toilet paper. I squeezed the bag closer still, feeling the puff of rolls inside it.

“Well, I guess I'll get going,” I told Jeremy.

“Wait,” he said. “What are you doing?”

It sounded like an accusation. “Nothing,” I said. He couldn't possibly know about the toilet paper, could he? “Why do you ask?”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “I just thought maybe, if you were free tonight, we could grab a bite.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, I can't.”

“Why not?” he asked, uncharacteristically persistent. “If you're not doing anything.”

“Who said I wasn't doing anything?”

“You did,” he said. He tugged at his goatee. “You just did.”

“Sorry, I meant . . .”

I'd meant it as, I was most certainly
not
stealing toilet paper from our boss.

“I'm actually on my way to a friend's house.”

“Oh. Don't worry about it,” Jeremy said quickly, as if he was the one who should be embarrassed. “Maybe another time, then.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That'd be great.”

THE IRON GATES WERE CLOSED WHEN I GOT TO THE
Compound, and I had to roll down my window and speak into a microphone to announce myself. “I'm Lorrie Hall,” I said. It sounded a little bit more natural every time I said it. I hoped I wouldn't have to provide my license or any other kind of verification.

“Your business here?” a woman's voice asked.

“I'm here to see Charlie.”

“One moment, please,” she replied. The seconds seemed to tick by in slow motion as I waited. What was happening on the other end? A background check? Much as I wanted to see Charlie, I couldn't help but think how much easier my life would be if I just stayed home, out of sight.

But then the gates swung back on their hinges. And despite my instincts telling me to do otherwise, I pressed the gas pedal and drove up the long, private road to the Copeland home.
At least a half dozen other cars were parked in the driveway. I pulled up next to a Toyota and grabbed my bag, tossing the rolls of toilet paper onto the floor before heading outside.

Charlie met me at the door, in well-worn jeans and an untucked button-down. “Hey,” he said. He hugged me hello, and I breathed in the smell of him—soap mixed with something warm and sweet. As I walked into the barn each day, the smell of it had always done something to me, relaxed me in the way that I guessed scented candles or chamomile tea did for other people. I'd feel my shoulders drop and my limbs loosen. The smell of Charlie had a physical effect on me, too: I felt my knees weaken.

“Thank God you're here,” he said as he pulled away. He whipped his head, and his bangs lifted up, then settled down again. “I was worried I'd have to eat on my own.”

“Your parents aren't here?”

“Mom's on a road trip of the district, shaking hands and holding babies.”

Oh, good. One Copeland parent down. “Sounds like fun,” I said.

“Oh, she'll douse herself in Purell when all is said and done,” Charlie said. “My dad always says the campaign trail is the best place to pick up a MRSA staph infection.”

“I guess you really have to want it badly.”

“She does,” Charlie said. “My dad always did, too.”

I noticed he used the past tense to talk about his dad, which seemed odd. I wondered if that meant something. Back when Nathan and Lennox were an item, he'd say something offhand, and she'd spend the next couple hours analyzing it for hidden
meanings. I always told her she gave more thought to his words than he ever did. Now there I was, doing the exact same thing. But mostly I was worried about whether it meant Franklin Copeland was home. “Did your dad go with your mom?” I asked.

Charlie shook his head. “He had a doctor's appointment in Manhattan.”

“Is everything okay?”

Charlie's face registered something—the slightest discomfort—for a split second. But he recovered quickly. “He's fine,” he said. “Just his annual physical.”

“Won't he be back in time for dinner?”

“You ask just as many questions about my parents as your friend Lennox does. Do you have a blog, too?”

I shook my head, and I could feel my cheeks reddening. “No,” I said. “I have about as much politics in my whole body as Lennox does in her pinky.”

“The irony is, I do, too,” Charlie said. “And to answer your question—no, my dad won't be back for dinner. He has a bunch of meetings lined up for the next few days, so he's staying at our apartment in the city. Which means tonight it's just us. That all right with you?”

“It's better,” I told him.

“Good. Now, come in already.”

INSIDE, THE MAIN WAS NO LESS GRAND JUST BECAUSE
I'd seen it before. In fact, without the crowd, it looked like an exhibit hall in a museum. Of course I'd been in nice homes before, even some magnificent homes. Lennox's house in
Dream Hollow was all white and immaculate. The moms collected architectural plans of famous buildings, and original blueprints flanked each side of the double staircase. In her room, Lennox had a blueprint for the White House and a painting that Andy Warhol had done of George Washington.

But the artwork the Sackler-Kandells owned was nothing like this. I recognized at least two pieces from my art history textbook, and we'd barely made it past the front hall. If your house told your story, then the story this one told was: We have more money than God.

Charlie led me down a corridor, vaguely pointing things out as we went. “That's the parlor, that's the music room.” The latter had not one but two grand pianos, along with a harp. I heard muffled voices in the background, which got louder as we walked deeper into the house, and when we reached the dining room, I could see why—ten people on ten different phones. The table was piled with papers, but not like the piles at my house. These were neat and purposeful. Thick, scalloped drapes in dark jewel tones hung by the windows, held back with gold tasseled ropes. An Oriental rug was spread across the floor, clean and vibrant, and there wasn't a single cat in sight. “Campaign headquarters is supposed to be in the West House, but it spilled over into the Main,” Charlie explained to me.

“Yo, Charlie,” a guy called. “Wait up.”

Charlie bent toward my ear. “They try to speak my language when they want something from me,” he said.

The guy jogged up to us. He was short—shorter than I was—with thick dark hair and horn-rimmed glasses, and he slapped Charlie on the back as if they were pals. “We think it
would be great if you could come to Riverhead next week for the town hall your mom is doing. You know, reach out to the eighteen to twenty-four vote.”

“I'm seventeen.”

“Brock,” someone else called out. “Did the Speaker get back to us on that appearance next week?”

“His office said no.”

“Get his office on the phone.”

“I'm on it.” He turned back to Charlie. “I can count on you for that town hall, then?”

“I'll let you know,” Charlie said. He took my hand. “Come on.”

We turned down another hall. “Luckily you have another dining room,” I said as we passed a second one with gilded walls—rococo style, like the one in Edgewater, except without the mold. A crystal chandelier, round and somewhat reminiscent of the ball that drops in the center of Times Square every New Year's, hung down over an enormous mahogany table.

“This is the formal dining room,” Charlie said. “My mother would never let a war room be set up in here.”

“I can see why. It's beautiful.”

“I thought we'd eat outside, but we can eat in here if you want.”

I may have cleaned up back at Oceanfront, but all I'd had to change into was a spare T-shirt and jodhpurs. “Outside is perfect,” I said. “It's a little too formal in here for me.”

“My kind of girl.” Charlie picked up a phone on the sideboard. “Annalise, we're headed to the portico.” When he hung up, he turned to me. “Right this way.”

I followed him through double doors and onto an expansive terrace, where oversize hunter-green wicker chairs were set up around a glass table. Charlie took the seat next to me, not across from me. The chairs had enormous beige pillows on them, but I wished they were a bit smaller, because it felt like we were each sitting on our own private island.

“So, I'm guessing you didn't cook dinner yourself,” I said.

“Did you honestly think that was a possibility?”

“I wasn't going to rule out cooking as a secret Charlie Copeland skill.”

“It's true, I have a lot of secret skills,” he said. “But Felipe cooked tonight.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The chef.”

“Yup,” Charlie said, “and it's your good fortune that he's on staff, because if I cooked for you, I'd likely kill you.”

Two women in uniform—I assumed one was Annalise, but I wasn't introduced to either—came out with food on big silver platters: an enormous quiche; a frisée salad with goat cheese, croutons, and pomegranate seeds on top; and a bottle of champagne, which was immediately poured into crystal glasses.

“You said you liked champagne,” Charlie explained.

“Lennox said I liked it,” I reminded him.

“Well, I took her at her word.”

“I do like it,” I said. “But I have to drive home.”

“What do you normally drink when you have to drive?”

“Anything,” I said. “A Coke.”

“Of course! Annalise?”

“Oh, no, it's not necessary,” I said. But Annalise was already scurrying back to the kitchen.

“I just want you to be comfortable,” Charlie told me.

I smiled. “I am.”