Juliana
gets a text from an unknown number at eleven-thirty on the third Monday in August. The text says: PLEASE MEET ME AT THE BOTTOM OF MOHEGAN STEPS. 4 P.M.
Who is the text from? Someone who wants to murder her for all of the money she doesn’t yet have? (But the text says “please”—would
a murderer be so polite?)
She puts Allison to work tracing the number. Allison has all sorts of powers that border on the magical—she can get a caterer
who claimed to be committed elsewhere to make seventy-five mini lobster rolls; she can procure tickets to sold-out Broadway
musicals. Seven minutes after receiving the assignment Allison taps on ’s office door and says, “That number belongs
to Taylor Buchanan.”
Taylor Buchanan.
Taylor Buchanan wants to meet .
Deep breath.
(Why wouldn’t Taylor identify herself outright? What kind of game is she playing?)
At the bottom of Mohegan Steps.
Better than the top, if is looking for a silver lining.
is restless for the next three and a half hours. She makes a couple of phone calls and answers some emails. She drinks a coffee, then wishes she hadn’t; the coffee makes her jumpy. She works on the board deck for the next meeting. She can’t concentrate. She sits out on the dock for a little while. She tries to rest in one of the chaise lounges, but she can’t stay still. It starts to rain; she goes back inside; it stops raining.
The weather forecast is all over the place: rain, sun, chance of a thunderstorm later. After the rain, the sun comes out,
and with it the humidity. Finally, finally, it’s almost time to drive to Mohegan Steps. She leaves earlier than she needs
to. She takes the long way around, to chew up some extra time, but also to avoid the crowds in town.
Out by the airport, Center Road to Lakeside, past the Painted Rock, down Mohegan Trail. She arrives at 3:50. There are no
other cars in the parking lot, so she takes a deep breath and tries to relax. She’s there before Taylor. And there’s that;
at least she has first arrival advantage.
Three fifty-five. She starts to play psych-up music, then stops. She isn’t sure what she’s psyching herself up for.
Three fifty-six.
She gets out of the car.
She takes the steps down as quickly as she can, wondering if the exercise might help her shake her nerves. But with the rapid
pace and the late afternoon August humidity she’s breathing too hard when she gets to the bottom. She doesn’t like that; it
makes her look weak. She tries to slow her breathing the way a meditation instructor once taught her. She thinks more about
that meditation teacher, puts two fingers of her right hand on her forehead, and tries to open her third eye chakra. She can’t
tell if it’s open or not. (How do people tell? Are third eyes for real?)
Just. Keep. Moving.
She opens her actual two eyes.
She takes in the scene: the enormous, looming clay cliffs, the water crashing against the rocks, the wind turbines in the distance, gamely turning, turning. Okay, she can take a moment now, gather her thoughts, calm her heartbeat and maybe even pre—
“Hello, .”
“Jesus Christ. ” Talk about jumping out of your skin. Taylor has appeared literally out of nowhere. had taken her eyes off the steps for only a minute; there wouldn’t have been enough time for Taylor to descend. She
must have been there already. “Holy shit, you scared me.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Taylor smiles thinly at . “I try to be six minutes early to every meeting.” Her eyes are inscrutable.
No sunglasses, which is surprising, and somehow badass. “I find it puts the other person on their back foot.”
I’ll say, thinks . “Not me,” she says untruthfully. “I just didn’t see any other cars—”
“I didn’t drive,” says Taylor, offering no further explanation. Had she gotten dropped off? Had she cycled? No, she’s wearing
a pretty sundress, not cycling clothes. can’t imagine Taylor cycling anyway. She supposes Taylor could have dropped
from a hovering helicopter, rappelled down the clay cliffs like a superhero. “Now let’s get to business. Shall we?” Taylor
gestures to one of the wide flat rocks along the beach, against which, now sees, a straw bag is reclining. What’s
in the bag? (A weapon?)
“Business?”
“So to speak,” says Taylor. “We’re certainly not getting down to pleasure.”
kicks off her shoes, holds them in one hand, and follows Taylor to the rock. Taylor takes a minute to remove a blanket
from the straw bag and toss it over the rock. Then she takes another minute smoothing out the blanket.
Taylor sits first, and chooses a spot on the rock as far away as she can get. In the light of the late afternoon sun, Taylor’s hair, loose around her face, seems to be shimmering. She really does have beautiful hair. Taylor reaches for the straw bag and startles.
“Relax,” says Taylor. “I’m not going to kill you.” Mind reader, thinks . Almost as an afterthought Taylor adds, “Yet.”
laughs uncertainly. She forces herself to maintain her composure; she doesn’t let the laugh become maniacal. She’s
been in high-pressure situations how many times over the past decade? Too many to count. She can get through this one. Just
keep moving.
“Kidding!” says Taylor. “I’m definitely mostly kidding. The only kind of bullet I have is right here.” From the bag she draws
out a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon and two rocks glasses. “I figure if we’re going to handle this like a couple of men then we
should really handle it like a couple of men. I figured I’d go all Yellowstone on you.” doesn’t know what it means to “go all Yellowstone on you” (this is a TV reference, but who has time for shows?), and as she’s wondering, Taylor pours a healthy amount into
each glass—more hand than finger—and passes one to . Taylor’s grip is steady: no wobbles, no spills. “Drink,” she says.
“Oh, I don’t really want—”
“Drink,” says Taylor again. drinks, and as the bourbon goes down, smooth, warm, she thinks, What is happening now? What is
going to happen? “It’s good, right?”
nods; Yes, it’s good .
“I know what you did,” says Taylor. No more preamble. She fixes with an unwavering gaze.
Like the businesswoman she is, counters. “I know what you did,” she says to Taylor. “I know what you’ve been doing.”
Taylor looks at her quizzically: “I’m sorry?”
“With that guy who works for your dad—”
“Ohhhh,” says Taylor. “Oh.” She tosses her head back and laughs so long and so hard that the laugh seems to travel along the beach, bouncing here and there atop the rocks before heading out to sea. “Oh, Henry . Okay, let’s get a couple of things straight. First of all, he works for me, not my dad. Second, I’m not talking about you
and David. We’ll get to that, of course, that’s part of this conversation, and it’s not like that’s some fucking secret anymore,
obviously, but that’s not what I’m leading with.”
“What are you leading with?” whispers .
“I know how you got the money to start your business.”
Oh, no. Not that. Notthatnotthatnotthat. Not Serena. Not Mrs. Sanchez. Not George.
drains her glass and holds it out to Taylor. “May I have another, please?”
“Of course,” says Taylor, nice as can be. has to fight the urge to rip the bottle out of her hands and dump as much
as she can directly down her throat. She satisfies herself with what Taylor pours her, and she listens as Taylor begins to
talk. Taylor tells about a party she and David threw not long ago. “You weren’t on the guest list. I wasn’t crazy
about your manners last time you were at our house. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“One person who was there,” says Taylor, “was Shelly Salazar.”
’s stomach drops, and her hands feel like they’re going to float away from her body. Shelly, who’s been calling her
Jade all summer. Shelly, who can’t hold her liquor.
“Up until this party we hadn’t talked socially that much. She’s a hoot!”
No, thinks . “She is,” she says.
“We got to talking about all sorts of things, like where we lived in our twenties, and who we might know in common. Shelly
knew someone from my class at Yale. Everyone knows someone who went to Yale, you know.”
“Sure,” says . On the outside, she’s tough as nails. Inside, she’s shriveling.
“So while we were talking about college it was an easy segue to get to you. Shelly had mentioned that she was friends with your freshman-year roommate? Someone named Ann Marie?”
squeezes her eyes shut, holds her breath. When she releases the breath she says, “Mary Ann.”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, Shelly said, ‘She wasn’t George then. She was...’” Taylor pauses. ’s eyes fly open
and she doesn’t meet Taylor’s gaze. Above them a lone gull squawks; the waves crash; far down the beach to the right, two
figures are walking. To the left, nobody. Take me away, thinks . Take me away from here. “.” Taylor’s voice
is sharp. “I feel like you’re not giving me your full attention.”
fixes her eyes back on Taylor. Taylor says, “Shelly said, ‘She wasn’t George then. She was Jade Gordon.’ I
remembered that she’d called you Jade at dinner, right? But then you made it into a joke... what was that joke, Jade? Something
about jewelry?”
“Stop,” says . She gets up from the rock and stands facing Taylor. “Just stop . Stop drawing it out. Just skip to the end.”
“I don’t want to skip to the end, though. It’s such a good story! These are the kinds of stories the press loves, right? I
read your Forbes 30 Under 30 profile. Forbes couldn’t get enough of your Cinderella story. A young woman pulling herself up by her bootstraps, from what was it, Lowell?”
Cinderella married a prince and lived happily ever after; Cinderella did not start a company. “Lawrence.”
“Lawrence! Yes. A young woman from Lawrence, pulling herself up by her bootstraps, using nothing but her smarts and her ingenuity...
the American Dream, alive and well, right here in front of me! Amazing, . Really impressive. From scholarship student
to business owner. But there was this question of the name change, you know? I got a little curious. I put some of my people
in the New York office on the research. People in New York are very good at research, you know.”
“I know,” says sharply. “I have people in New York too.”
Taylor nods. “I bet you do. Any who. Something else that’s interesting is how much information is out there that’s public record. Most people don’t know that,
you know. Most people don’t know that all you have to do is ask for public information. Ask and ye shall receive, am I right?”
says nothing. “? Am I right?”
“Yes.” She won’t bend; she won’t say more than she needs to. She’s made it through 100 percent of her bad days.
“So. The first thing I did was have my people in New York fact-check this name change thing.” She offers a conspiratorial
smile. “I mean, Shelly is good entertainment, I’m sure you know that, having gone to college with her. I can only imagine
what she was like back in those days. Part of me was wondering if she’d make something like that up, just for fun. She had
a lot of those blueberry cocktails at my house.” She looks expectantly at .
“I bet she did,” says .
“So off they skipped to the courthouse, my people, to confirm the date of the name change. December 2014. After a little more
digging, they learned that a person named Jade Gordon had been named in a will contestation case in October 2014, regarding
the will of a man named George Halsey. I can see by your face that you know what will I’m talking about.”
chokes out a single, gutting word: “Yes.”
“And, guess what? Once that will contestation was filed, all of that was a matter of public record too! The children, talking
about how you’d swindled their father out of five hundred thousand dollars. The concierge from the old man’s building answering
questions about when and how often you visited him. The affidavit from the housekeeper detailing her observation of your relationship
with an old man. Eighty, was it?”
“He was seventy-nine,” says .
Taylor hoots. “Ohhh! Okay, Anna Nicole Smith. That’s much better. And you were... twenty-one?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Ah. Much much better. So you were twenty-two, and you met an old, rich man, and you dated him, and conveniently he died and left you money, and now you’re about to become a multimillionaire. Oh, I know about the
IPO rumors too, by the way. I know a lot.”
“It wasn’t like that,” says . “It wasn’t like what you’re saying. He was an advisor. He was a sounding board. I talked
out my ideas with him. He gave me feedback.”
“I bet he gave you feedback,” says Taylor. She snorts. “If ‘feedback’”—she makes air quotes with two fingers on each hand—“is what
we’re calling it these days.”
“There was never sex involved!”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, . There’s always sex involved when there’s money like that involved. He didn’t leave you five hundred thousand for like bringing him vanilla
wafers and milk. It’s all over the court documents. His daughter walked in on you kissing him.”
“I wasn’t kissing him,” says . “Not like you think.”
“You were a swindler, .”
“I was a friend. ”
Taylor snorts. “Escort.”
“Companion.”
“So you never slept with him.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“That’s a yes.”
“That’s an It’s none of your business . That’s twice now. Do you want me to say it a third time?” ’s heart is beating rapidly but she ignores it and crosses
her arms and fixes Taylor with a death stare. The fact that anyone is talking this way about George, her George, with his dapper little hats and his habit of standing up from a table at a restaurant if she had to go to the bathroom—and
also the fact that he never called it the bathroom, he called it the powder room — makes her feel sick to her stomach. George, who had an elevator that opened right into his living room. George, whose children rarely called, never visited, until he died, and then they couldn’t stay away.
“It was five hundred thousand dollars. He left it to me, fair and square. I didn’t ask for it. It was a gift. He had millions.
It wasn’t so much to him. It was a drop in the bucket. It was an investment in me, in LookBook.”
“It was enough that his children contested the will.”
“Let me tell you something. His children are assholes.”
“Let me tell you something, . I’ve been around rich people my entire life. Rich people don’t get rich by thinking of five hundred thousand
dollars as a drop in the bucket, no matter how much they have. There’s a reason he left you that money, and it’s all in those
court papers.”
“He believed in me. It’s as simple as that. People are allowed to leave money to whomever they want. There’s nothing illegal
about that. The contestation of the will didn’t make it past pretrial.”
“All of that may be true,” says Taylor. “Or none of it may be true. But here’s the thing. Here’s the dirty little secret.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It only matters what it looks like . You’re—how many weeks from your IPO?”
“Nine.”
“Nine.” Taylor smiles. “So it’s a delicate time. The business press is all over you. The board is up your ass, am I right?”
winces at the crudeness of the description; a nicer way to put it would be that the board is watching things closely . But yes, it’s true.
“Especially that one guy, let me think, the lead director, right? Daniel Scott?”
“How do you know who’s on my board? The company isn’t public yet.”
“Crunchbase,” Taylor says. “You know Crunchbase, right?”
Of course knows Crunchbase.
“It’s amazing what you can find out there. Anyway. Scott especially. I did some reading on him. Politically conservative.
Socially conservative. A whiff of impropriety would really turn him off, wouldn’t it? Like, if it got out that the company’s
founder got her seed money by sleeping with some dying old man...”
“No,” says .
“Yes!” says Taylor. “This stuff happens all the time. I mean, maybe not this specific situation. But I can see it. I can practically write the press release from the board. We lost confidence in our founder. We’re canceling our IPO and we’re reevaluating our options . Something like that. Then, the next thing you know, you’re out. They bring in another CEO. You still own—what?”
“Thirty percent.”
“Thirty percent. Okay. Not bad. But that thirty percent is just paper. And what if they put off the IPO for a year? Now you’ve
got no job, so you’ve got no paycheck. I’m not sure what you put down on your house here, but it wouldn’t take me long to
find out. I’m guessing you’re mortgaged to the hilt. The decorating, all those parties... I’m speculating here, .
Or Jade. Or whoever you are. Maybe you stretched yourself a little thin this summer, knowing you had a big payday coming.
You wouldn’t be the first founder who spent money before they had it.”
This time keeps her face impassive, neither confirming nor denying. Taylor has hit the nail exactly, precisely, on
the head.
“And what do you do with the rest of your life? You can’t get another job at the CEO level. Who wants to hire a leader who
was removed from her own company? You can’t get a job at a lower level, because now you’re overqualified. After all, you’ve
been a CEO. You founded your own company!”
will give Taylor credit for being sharp.
Taylor the Mind Reader leaps on ’s next thought before she even has time to formulate it. “And what’s the name of your foundation? I’m sorry, I can’t remember. Keeping so many things in my head, you know.”
“Girl/Power.”
“Right. Girl/Power. Decent name. And it does what again?”
has said this so many times it comes out like memorized lines of poetry in a high school English class. “We empower
lower-income first-generation female college students to become business entrepreneurs.”
“I love that,” says Taylor. “I really do.”
“Thank you,” says , before she can catch herself. “We’ve done a lot of amaz—”
Taylor cuts her off. “But what happens to the foundation when it comes out that this particular lower-income female entrepreneur slept her way to the seed money?”
“I didn’t—”
“I mean, you did. But. Again, it doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. It matters what the perception of what you did
is. There goes the reputation of your foundation. There go the donations. There go the girls you want to help. I guess they’ll
have to figure things out on their own.”
That’s it. stands and walks away from Taylor, parallel to the water’s edge, picking out spots where her feet can find
smooth sand between the rocks. The waves come in choppily. Everything feels like it’s on fire: her heart, her brain, her hands
and feet. The sky over the wind turbines has grown dark, but above the beach it’s still clear. The air is heavy—portentous.
She hears Taylor calling her name and she turns. “No,” she says, as Taylor moves closer. “No. You can’t do this. You can’t
take everything away from me.”
“Well, you ,” says Taylor, “can’t take everything away from me.”
“You just work for your dad. I created something out of nothing. I’ve been fighting every day since I was seven years old. You don’t understand.”
“Oh, I understand,” says Taylor. “I understand perfectly. I understand that it’s hard to be a woman in a man’s world. Believe
me, I understand that. I can see where it might have been hard to get the funding you needed to start your business, a girl
like Jade Gordon, no connections, not the slightest idea about how to get the attention of the VCs. No income while you got
your business off the ground.”
“No rich daddy to lean on,” spits . “You might have done the same thing.”
“Ho, no. No. I wouldn’t have prostituted myself.”
“I didn’t prostitute myself .” But Taylor’s right: it’s the perception that matters as much as the reality. She wants to pick up one of the rocks by her
feet and hurl it at Taylor’s head. “You don’t know what you would have done if you had to.”
“I know where I would have drawn the line.”
The dark clouds are moving closer now, racing across the sky. “Maybe you wouldn’t have done what I did as you , Taylor. But you have no idea what you would done as me. You don’t know what you would do as someone who has to work for
everything.”
“Whoa, easy there, girlfriend,” says Taylor. wonders if Taylor would have the strength to push her into the water,
hold her head down until she couldn’t breathe. The water is cold on this side of the island, and Taylor is tough as nails.
There’s real vitriol in Taylor’s voice when she says, “You think I don’t work? You think my father just hands me everything
for free?” She leans in so close that can smell the bourbon on her breath.
tries to pull herself straighter but she’s no match for Taylor’s height. You can teach a lot of things, and if it can be taught has learned it, but you can’t teach tall. If anything happens to her, will anybody know? Allison would remember that had asked her to trace a number, and she would remember whose number it was. But hadn’t told Allison when she was leaving or where she was going. She could trace the location on her phone—but not if Taylor destroys her phone.
“I think he hands you a lot,” she says.
“I’ve got news for you. He doesn’t.”
, who can count on the fingers of one hand the times she’s cried in front of another person, can hold it in no longer.
She starts to cry. “I worked so hard for what I have.”
Taylor’s eyes blaze. “ I worked for my shit too! I work harder than most people you know. I work and I work and I work. People think I’m putting myself first, but you know
what? I was bred to put the business first, and that’s what I do. I was taught loyalty before I was taught math.” Now she
actually looks like she’s going to cry. Does Taylor cry? “And guess what, as a result my husband is the one my daughter calls for in the middle of
the night.” She is. She’s crying . watches, amazed, as Taylor swipes at the tears that have escaped. “And that fucking sucks , , but there’s nothing I can do about it, because that road got paved years and years ago. I was left without any
choices.”
stares at her.
“You think my dad’s money means freedom, but it doesn’t. It’s a trap,” Taylor goes on.
snorts. Does Taylor honestly believe this? “I’m sorry,” she says. “ Wealth is a trap? Try poverty. Poverty is a real trap.” Taylor has been born above the hot struggles of the poor. And above them,
she will remain, no matter what happens. No matter what happens. “And you got a head start.”
More tears have leaked out, and Taylor swipes at those too. “And that’s my fault, right? I guess I personally owe you something
because I grew up with money and you didn’t?”
“Well, no, but—” (But yes. Sort of.)
“I’m sorry. But that’s not how the world works.”
“It should,” spits .
“Unfortunately, changing the way the world works is above my pay grade.” Taylor stops crying— can almost see her will herself to do that, to tell the tears, That’s enough. Go back where you came from. She sets her lips together. The wind is lifting her hair but instead of doing anything rude with it, it settles it back down.
Taylor’s hair still looks perfect. Everything about Taylor looks perfect. “Skip right to the end, is that what you wanted
to do? Well, we’re here now. We’re at the end.”
“What happens at the end?”
“What happens is, you make a choice. Choice number one: You keep everything you worked for, your company, your reputation.
Your IPO goes forward. You get all that money you’ve been dreaming about. And I don’t say anything to anyone about what I
found out.”
“What’s choice number two?”
“Choice number two is I tell everyone, and you lose everything.”
“So, ah, why would I not choose number one?”
“Because number one has a condition.”
’s heartbeat picks up. The spot behind her right knee begins to pulse. “Which is what?”
“Which is, you leave Block Island. You don’t talk to David anymore. Like not at all. No Instagram DMs, no secret texts, no
carrier pigeons. Nothing. Ever. After we finish here, you contact a Realtor, and you put your house on the market, at a price
I will dictate. I have a feeling you’re going to find a buyer pretty quickly.”
nods slowly and says, “I think I know where I’m going to find that buyer.”
“Damn straight you know,” says Taylor. “Damn straight.”
“I love my house.”
“I love my husband.”
“No, you don’t ,” says . “No, you don’t.”
“Careful,” said Taylor. “Careful. You don’t know what you don’t know about someone else’s marriage. You don’t know what goes
on.”
“But you—”
Taylor speaks over her. “Trust me. You don’t know. Which do you love more, my husband or your business?”
blinks at Taylor—this must be a rhetorical question, right?
Right?
But, no... Taylor’s eyes are wide and expectant. She’s waiting. She folds her arms and doesn’t let her gaze leave ’s;
she looks like someone who could wait all day. thinks back to her younger self, to all the versions of her younger
self. The girl in that dirty apartment in Lawrence, always looking for a way out. The foster kid, shuttled from place to place.
The scholarship student at Boston College, often alone, but not really lonely, because she always had her ideas. She always
had her focus. The girl who thought of LookBook. It really was like a light bulb turning on in her brain, a single, beautiful
idea, pure and ready. The building of it, the working, always working, always striving and climbing. The grind, and the joy.
Just keep moving, the past so dark but the future so bright.
“Which one, ?” prompts Taylor. “I don’t have all day.”
Then she thinks about David, and what she’s yearned for since meeting him, and what it’s been like to be with him this summer.
She’ll never connect on that level with anyone in her life. She knows that. You don’t get that chance twice; a lot of people
would give up everything for it.
But a lot of people would give up everything for their brainchild too— already has. She’s given a whole decade of her
life, and her energy, and her heart. She has hundreds of people counting on her.
“My business,” says finally. “I’ve given all of me to my business. If I lose it, I’ll have nothing.”
“I thought so,” says Taylor. “So that’s settled, then.” She looks at her watch and says, “Well, that all went faster than I expected. I think I’m going to make it back to the building site after all.” She folds up the blanket and puts it into the straw bag, then picks up the rocks glasses and packs them into the bag. “I’d give you a card, but you don’t need to worry about getting in touch with me. I’ll have my office get in touch with you, once your house is listed.”
Without another word Taylor turns and picks her way easily back over the sand. The rocks between the beach and the sand are
treacherous, they look almost like an intentional barrier, but Taylor seems to take these with no problem too, and
remembers that she read somewhere that Taylor had been a track athlete—a hurdler—and she retains a hurdler’s grace and agility.
The figures on the beach are gone; it’s only , the waves, the rocks, and the vast clay cliffs rising above her. Long
ago, she learned earlier in the summer, the Niantic and the Mohegan battled over supremacy of the island, until the native
Niantic forced the invading Mohegan over the cliffs to their death. This was five centuries ago, and here humans still are,
battling, struggling, seeking.
Nothing, it seems, is going to change that. Alone on the beach turns toward the water and unleashes the most primal
of all screams. She screams and screams until she can feel her face turning red, her throat growing sore, the small vein in
her temple pulsing. She screams until she is all screamed out; until there’s nothing left inside.