Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

“Attention, attention!” Everyone quieted down to listen.

“It’s Meredith’s birthday,” Freddy said. He mugged, the room chuckled. Meredith thought about the things she really wanted. She wanted her children to be happy and successful. She wanted more time with Freddy. She remembered looking up at his salt and pepper curls, his piercing blue eyes, his fine-cut suit, and thinking, I never see this man. I never spend time alone with him. She remembered hoping that her present was everyone else in the room going home.

But no. There was some elaborate presentation of an envelope on a silver tray by one of the waiters, which Freddy opened with the nervous suspense of an Oscar presenter, and he announced that he had bought his wife, Meredith Martin Delinn, a star in Bode’s Galaxy. He had named the star “Silver Girl,” after a song Meredith’s father had sung to her as a child.

Teenager, Meredith thought.

A star? she thought.

Where is Bode’s Galaxy? she wondered.

“So when you look up in the sky,” Freddy said, “you’ll know that one of those stars out there belongs to Meredith.”

He kissed Meredith and presented her with a certificate from NASA, and everyone in the room applauded, and the waiters moved around the room with star-shaped chocolate truffles and bottles of port from the year of Meredith’s birth.

Meredith kissed Freddy and thanked him.

He said, “What do you think? I promise you are the only woman on the Upper East Side with her own star.”

Meredith had kept the NASA certificate, although in truth, she had barely glanced at it. She was ambivalent about the name of the star, and she felt abashed at the grandiosity of the gesture, and in front of all those people, some of them perfect strangers. How much money had Freddy spent on this star? She wondered. A hundred thousand dollars? More? Wasn’t it the equivalent of throwing money away, since the star wasn’t something Meredith would ever see in this lifetime? Wasn’t Freddy basically announcing that since they could afford anything on God’s green earth, he had to move into the heavens to find a surprise for Meredith?

These things had all bothered Meredith, but what had bothered her the most was the way he’d acted. His posturing, his showmanship. There were times-and this was one of them-when Freddy came across as a charlatan, rolling into town with his cart of magic potions meant to cure this or that, tricking the innocent townspeople, disappearing with their money, leaving them with a handful of placebos and a vial of sugar water.

Meredith studied the certificate. There was no seal on it, nothing engraved or embossed. Meredith hadn’t wondered about this at the time Freddy gave it to her, although now it seemed clear that this wasn’t a NASA document at all-but, rather, something that Freddy had printed up himself on his computer. She shook the paper in fury. How had she not seen this? She hadn’t studied the document closely at all. As with everything else Freddy told her, she’d accepted it on blind faith.

And now it was painfully clear that it was a fake. If she had only looked at it, if she had only opened her eyes, she would have seen that. This was something Freddy did himself on the computer. She wanted to rip up the certificate-Goddamn you, Freddy! She thought (zillionth and sixth). But it might be evidence. Meredith pulled out her cell phone and called Dev.

“I think I have it this time,” she said. “Check for the name ‘Silver Girl.’ ” Then she caught herself. “Or, that may be the name of a star registered with NASA.”

“Huh?” Dev said.

“Freddy said he bought me a star,” Meredith said. “But now I think he was lying about it.” Of course, he was lying about it: the certificate had been printed on ivory cotton bond paper, the same paper Freddy kept in his office.

“When was this?” Dev asked.

“Two thousand and six,” she said. “Did you find Thad Orlo?”

“I’m not allowed to say,” Dev said.

“Not allowed to say? I gave you the information.”

“We’re getting closer, we think,” Dev said.

Meredith noted how he now included himself as a “we” with the Feds. “Well, use the name ‘Silver Girl,’ and cross-reference it with what you’ve already got. Or what the Feds have got.”

“Does the certificate say anything else?” Dev said. “Does it have a number on it? The Feds are looking for account numbers. Preferably nine digits.”

“Yes, it has a number,” Meredith said. In the upper-right corner, in Freddy’s own handwriting, was a number-ten figures, not nine, and three of the figures were letters. In Freddy’s own handwriting, in Flair pen. This was it, this was a real clue, this stupid star, her supposed birthday present! Freddy had hidden information here. He had given the information to her, but had he ever expected her to figure it out? God, Meredith was a dismal failure at seeing what was right there in front of her face. Meredith read the number off to Dev. “Zero, zero, zero, four, H, N, P, six, nine, nine.”

He said, “Do those numbers mean anything to you?”

“Nope,” Meredith said.

“It’s probably just an account number from the bank. Maybe one of the zeros is extraneous; maybe one of the numbers is a dummy number. Thank you for this, Meredith. This is good stuff.”

“But you don’t know for sure if it’s good stuff,” Meredith said. “The Feds have to check it out, right? But can you please tell them I’m trying?”

“Oh, Meredith,” he said. “We all know you’re trying.”

Meredith and Toby had been under Connie’s roof for nearly twenty-four hours-and was it awkward?

Yes.

There had been a strained exchange at lunch. Meredith had lasted ten or twelve minutes before she went to hide out upstairs.

Toby had said, “Should I just leave? I have an open-ended ticket back to BWI. I can go anytime.”

Connie said, “You just got here. I haven’t seen you in aeons. I want you to stay.”

“Okay,” Toby said uncertainly.

“She’ll get over it,” Connie said.

“You think?” Toby said.

When Meredith descended at five o’clock, she looked even more unglued than she had at noon.

Connie said, “Everything okay?”

Meredith turned on her. “Okay?” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Connie said. “I didn’t mean to spring it on you. I honestly didn’t think he’d show. You know how unreliable he is.”

“That I do.”

At that moment, Toby materialized out of nowhere. “Who’s unreliable?” he said.

They had to do something about dinner. Connie didn’t feel like cooking, Meredith didn’t want to go out, Dan called to say he was spending the night at home with his boys but that he’d come by in the morning to take the three of them to Great Point. Connie told Meredith this. Meredith had been talking about going to Great Point for weeks, but Meredith just frowned and said, “Fine.”

They decided to order pizza with sausage and onion, which was the kind of pizza they’d eaten all through high school. If Connie closed her eyes, she could see their booth at Padrino’s, herself and Matt Klein on one side, Meredith and Toby on the other, the pitcher of birch beer and four brown pebbled plastic glasses between them, Orleans on the jukebox singing “You’re Still the One.”

Connie whipped up a salad, and when the pizza came, they sat down to eat. But the conversation was stilted; Meredith was off in her own thoughts someplace. It was as different from Connie’s memories of Padrino’s as a dinner could be.

Not to be defeated, Connie suggested that they go into the sitting room to watch a movie. Was this too obvious? How many hundreds of movies had the three of them watched together in the O’Brien basement? Toby was game, and Meredith agreed reluctantly. Connie took the easy chair and Toby sat on the sofa, and Meredith glanced at the spot on the sofa next to Toby. Toby patted the cushion. “Come sit here.”

But Meredith said, “I’ll be fine on the floor.” She sat cross-legged on the Claire Murray rug, her back straight, her chin high. Annabeth Martin’s influence, or all that diving.

Connie said, “Meredith, you can’t be comfortable.”

Meredith said, “I’m fine.”

They deliberated over which film to watch, which was to say that Connie and Toby deliberated with the understanding that whatever they picked, Meredith would deem it “fine.” They had agreed on The Shawshank Redemption, but then at the last minute, Toby cried out, “Oh, no, let’s watch Animal House.”

Very slowly, Meredith turned to him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Come on,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

“Yes,” Meredith said. “I do remember.” And then, slowly as smoke, she rose and drifted out of the room. “Good night,” she said, once she was on the stairs. “I’m going to bed.”

Connie waited until she heard the door of Meredith’s bedroom click. “Do I even ask?”

“First date,” he said.

“Why are you torturing her?” Connie said.

“I’m not torturing her,” he said. “I thought she’d find it funny.”

“Yeah, she was just cracking up.”

Toby said, “So what happened between the two of you?”

“What happened between the two of you?” Connie said.

“Work in progress,” Toby said.

Connie shook her head.

Toby said, “I know the two of you had a big fight. I noticed she didn’t show up at Wolf’s funeral, but you never told me what happened. And I was too much of a drunk to ask.”

“It’s water under the bridge,” Connie said.

“Tell me,” Toby said.

“Oh…” Connie said. She hadn’t talked to anyone about her fight with Meredith except for Wolf. Ashlyn and Iris and her friend Lizbet knew there had been a rift, but Connie hadn’t wanted to share the details. It was nobody’s business, and the break from Meredith had been exquisitely painful. But Connie was sick to death of taboo subjects. If she had told Dan what happened with Ashlyn at the funeral, then she could tell Toby about her phone call with Meredith.