Elin Hilderbrand - Silver Girl

Meredith reminded herself to breathe. She saw Connie coming up the stairs from the beach rubbing her wet hair with a towel, and she prayed that Connie wouldn’t come inside and ask if Meredith wanted a turkey sandwich for lunch. Meredith needed to process what she’d just heard; she felt like she was torn between two worlds. There was this world, Nantucket, with the ocean and the outdoor shower and lunch on the deck, and then there was the world of international banking and double identities and lies. Kirby Delarest was Thad Orlo. Kirby had been tall and blond and lean, and he’d had that accent, which he’d claimed he’d acquired growing up in Wisconsin. Meredith knew something was wrong with that answer, but she hadn’t questioned him. What had Freddy always said? Midwesterners were the most honest people on earth. Ha! Kirby Delarest had been in cahoots with Freddy. His daughters always wore those beautiful matching Bonpoint dresses. Meredith thought of the afternoon when she had discovered Freddy and Kirby Delarest by the pool, the bottle of Petrus consumed by two men on a Wednesday afternoon to celebrate the fact that they were robbing the whole world blind. Kirby Delarest had shot himself in the head rather than face Freddy’s fate.

Meredith’s eyes burned like she was in the desert. The account numbers had all been variations on the phony NASA star. These were Silver Girl accounts. Did that implicate her further? Please, she prayed, no.

“So you found the money, then?” she said. “Four billion? That’s a lot of money.”

“No, no,” Dev said. “The money was withdrawn last October. All of it-gone, vanished. Moved, most likely in cash, to another location.”

“When in October?” Meredith asked, dreading the answer.

“October seventeenth.”

Meredith shut her eyes. Connie tapped on the glass door. Meredith opened her eyes. Connie mouthed, Are you okay?

“That’s…” Meredith said.

“What?” Dev said.

“You’re sure it was the seventeenth?” Meredith said. “The seventeenth of October?”

“What is it?” Dev said. “What is the seventeenth of October?”

“Samantha Deuce’s birthday,” Meredith said.

“Okay,” Dev said. “Okay, okay, okay. Could be a coincidence. But probably not. Let me call you back.”

“Wait!” Meredith said. “I have to know… Have you heard from the warden? At Butner? Can I speak to Fred?”

“Fred?” Dev said, as though he wasn’t sure who Meredith meant. Then he said, “Oh. No, I haven’t heard back.”

“I really need to…”

“I’ll let you know if I do,” Dev said. “When I do.” And he hung up.

Meredith lowered herself onto a chair. She thought about Kirby Delarest, his wife Janine, those little blond girls, as perfect and precious as the von Trapps. She thought of Kirby Delarest’s brains splattered all over his garage. Meredith remembered Otto, the folk sculpture in Thad Orlo’s Manhattan apartment with his gray cottony hair and the piece of wire twisted to make spectacles. She remembered how carefully she had watered the Norfolk pine, terrified it would turn brown and lose its branches in their custody. She had never met Thad Orlo, though she had lived among his things. Those fancy knives, the blond wood rocking chair. She had felt she’d known him.

The phone rang at ten minutes past six.

The evening news, Meredith thought. America was now watching the evening news.

Connie was there to check the caller ID. “Number unavailable,” she said. “Should I answer?”

“I’ll answer,” Toby said. He had just come downstairs in fresh clothes. Meredith had been unable to tell him or Connie about the Thad Orlo/Kirby Delarest story, partly because it was so bizarre that Meredith couldn’t believe it was true, though of course it was true. Freddy hadn’t acted alone; he’d had helpers, henchmen, Dev had called them, people helping him to dig a mass financial grave-and it made sense that Meredith would know some of these people. Kirby Delarest was Thad Orlo. All of the things that hadn’t made sense about Kirby Delarest were now explained. Meredith had been right about Thad Orlo, and she had been right about the phony NASA star, and yet she worried about just how right she had been. The $4 billion in those accounts were, however tangentially, connected to her. Had Freddy hidden the money there for her? He’d moved it on October seventeenth-Samantha’s birthday-but what did that mean? Was it a coincidence, or was the money for Samantha?

Meredith was afraid to think any further.

She also didn’t tell Connie or Toby because she wanted to keep the noxious fumes of the story out of this house. This house was Meredith’s only safe place. But she couldn’t keep the phone from ringing.

“I’ll get it,” Connie said, and she picked up. “Hello?”

Meredith watched Connie’s face, trying to gauge friend or foe, but she couldn’t tell. Connie looked surprised; her mouth formed a small, tight “o.” Her eyes popped, then mysteriously, filled with tears. Were these sad tears, happy tears, angry tears, a little of each? Meredith couldn’t tell.

Connie held out the phone. “It’s for you,” she whispered. She blinked. Tears spilled down her pretty, tanned face. Meredith took the phone, and Connie moved away with purpose.

“Hello?” Meredith said, thinking, What has Connie just handed me?

“Mom?”

Oh, my God. She nearly dropped the phone. It was Carver.

What did he say? What did she say? She could only remember the conversation in snippets afterwards.

“I saw the news,” he said.

“Did you?” she said.

“Jesus, Mom. I can’t believe it.”

She didn’t want to talk about this. She had her son on the phone. Her baby, her beloved child.

“How are you? What are you doing? How is your brother? Are you making it? Are you okay?” She would have said there was nothing bigger inside her than her hurt, but yes, this was bigger. Her love for her sons was bigger.

But Carver was stuck back on this other thing. “He cheated on you, Mom. Now do you see? Please tell me you see him for what he really is… a shallow, empty person who fills himself up with lies and things that he can take from other people. You get it now, right?”

“I get it,” she said, though she was lying. She didn’t get it. “I need to talk to him.”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

“No!” Carver shouted. “Forget him, leave him, divorce him, get him out of your life. This is your chance.”

“Okay,” Meredith said. “Yes, you’re right. You’re right. How are you? How are you?”

Carver’s voice softened. “But he did love you, Mom. That’s what blows me away about all of this. He really did love you. He revered you, like a queen or a goddess. Leo agrees with me. He knows it, too.”

Leo! Meredith thought. She wanted to talk to Leo. He was such a straight arrow, such a good kid, on his hands and knees scraping wax off the hard wood floor of the church, refusing Meredith’s help. There had been one time when Meredith had shot up to Choate in the middle of the week to see Leo’s lacrosse game. Meredith broke the speed limit in the Jaguar, but she had made it there in time to surprise Leo, and he had scored the goal that won the game. Meredith had been there to cheer, and then afterward, she took Leo and Carver and two teammates to Carini’s for pizza. She had made it back to the city before Freddy got home from work, but when he walked in, she told him what she’d done; she told him about the goal and how surprised Leo had been to see her, and how he’d kissed her through the car window before she pulled out of the gates, even though his buddies were watching.

Freddy had smiled wearily. “You’re a wonderful mother, Meredith,” he’d said. But his mind had been elsewhere.

“Are you okay?” Meredith asked. “Is Leo okay?”

Carver sighed. “We’re doing okay, Mom.”

But what did this mean? Was he really okay? Meredith had been picturing the two of them in a big, dusty Victorian house. She wanted to hear about the house, how they were refinishing the floors or painting the baseboards.

“We love you,” Carver said. “But I’m calling to make sure you do the right thing. File for divorce. Please. Promise me.”

She wanted to promise. But she couldn’t promise. No one understood. She was absolutely alone. She panicked because she heard the end of the conversation encroaching in Carver’s voice, and there was still so much to say. So much she wanted to know. He was going to hang up, and she didn’t have a number for him. He would be lost to her again, as lost to her as Freddy was, as her father was.

“Wait!” she said. “Your number! Can I call you?”

Again, the sigh. Carver had become a sigher, like a disappointed parent.

“Julie Schwarz wants Leo to wait,” he said. “Until the smoke clears a little more. Until a little more time has passed. And that goes for me, too. I shouldn’t have called you now, but I had to. I had to talk to you.”

“I know,” Meredith said. “Thank you.”

“You heard me, Mom, right?” Carver said.

“Right,” Meredith whispered.

“I love you, Mom. Leo loves you, too,” Carver said. And then he hung up.

Meredith said, “I love you, too. I love you, too!” She became aware that she was speaking to a dead phone, and she became aware that there were other people in the room: Toby, who was watching her, and Connie, who was watching Toby watch her.

She should have gone over to Dan’s house for dinner. When she called him to say she was staying home, he told her he might just go out by himself. Connie pictured him eating at the bar at A.K. Diamond’s, where he knew everyone and everyone knew him, where his old flames would find him, or the cute receptionist from the salon would be sitting on a neighboring bar stool. Connie desperately wanted to go with him, but she couldn’t go out; her face was all over the news. Sure enough, when Connie checked her cell phone, she had missed calls from Iris and Lizbet; they had seen her on CNN. She couldn’t go anywhere.