Thirty-Eight
I could be, should be, burying myself in grief. I am a woman with no job, no father, no boyfriend, no idea what the future holds or where I
am going to land. Instead, I am burying myself in facts and figures about child labor.
Preeti has refused to fly back to Mumbai. She has insisted on staying here to help me, and is currently ensconced at the Rosewood
in Menlo Park. I tried to entice her to stay with Lucy and me, but after one evening at our apartment, she wasn’t having any
of it.
“Listen, ladies. I love you both, but why would I sleep on your sofa when I could stay in the lap of luxury in a giant hotel
suite with room service and a mini bar?” Preeti gestured to the sofa in horror as Lucy burst out laughing.
“We need to make sure there’s nothing we’re missing,” Preeti says, on the second day of our research. “I keep thinking about
that Journal piece. I know this might sound crazy, but that feels like a total setup to me. Is there any way Clara would have known that
journalist?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think she knew the journalist. I would have known.”
“I just wonder if it’s coincidence that the terrible Journal piece just happened.”
I stare at Preeti as the cogs in my brain finally click into place. Could she be that duplicitous? Is that possible?
“Eleanor Perkins,” I say the name of the journalist. Which will remain etched upon my memory forever, before I whip out my
phone and start tapping.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking Clara’s Facebook profile.”
Within minutes, we are both hunched over my laptop, scrolling through Clara’s Facebook friends. No Eleanor Perkins. Preeti’s
shoulders slump in defeat.
“Hang on,” I say. “There’s a Laura Perkins who went to Stanford with Clara.” She clicks on Laura Perkins’s profile, but her
friends are private.
“Laura Perkins. Palo Alto.” I type at the speed of light, changing the search terms, narrowing the circle until we find the
Laura Perkins who went to Stanford, the Laura Perkins whose face matches the thumbnail on Facebook. Within minutes we have
found her family. Parents Richard and Elisa, brother Joseph, and sister Eleanor.
I am so stunned I can hardly breathe.
“This was a setup.” I slowly shake my head in shock. “It had to be.” I think about the old Clara, the Clara I looked up to as a mentor
and friend, the Clara I wanted to be. She would never do this to me, surely? Would never have arranged what she knew to be
a journalistic hit job unless . . .
“Are you okay?” Preeti is concerned.
“I’m stunned. You know she was my role model? I don’t know what to think. The thing I loved most about her was her ambition.
She was so strong, and so sure of what she deserved. I loved that about her. It’s how I wanted to be.”
“Ambition is a wonderful thing, as long as you raise other people up alongside you. Ambition when you are truly secure means you want everyone to be successful because you know that generosity, and success will only beget more. Ambition at the expense of others, ambition that involves others losing in order for you to rise, comes from a place of scarcity and fear, and scarcity and fear will always beget more. She was never who you thought she was,” says Preeti. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.”
“But you know it now. And better than that—” she rubs her hands together gleefully “—we’re going to bring that bitch down.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Mess with my friends and I will make you suffer. I swear, in another life I must have been Sicilian.”
I laugh out loud. “Thank God I found you in this life.”
“Thank God you did.” She lets out an evil chuckle. “Poor, poor Clara. The one thing she hasn’t realized is that you always
reap what you sow.”
By the end of the day the two of us have gathered substantial information about child labor, and made some headway in gathering
photographs from my trip to India, putting them together with facts and figures for a slideshow.
“Do you think Jerome would help with this?” Preeti asks.
“I don’t know. We have just broken up . . .”
“But you’re on good terms and he did say he wanted to help. We could do with his help. Will you at least ask?”
I nod. “That’s a great idea. I don’t trust any of the documents Clara gave me. How did a projected profit of eight hundred
and six million dollars suddenly become one point two billion? I thought this before, but didn’t pursue it. God, I was so
stupid to trust her. All those times she made me look like an idiot, sending me incorrect information or holding meetings
without me. She was deliberately undermining me. I still can’t quite believe it.”
“Believe it. Sadly, women do this to each other all the time. Jealousy is a pernicious and dangerous thing. Hey, is there any way we can get to ipryy, maybe at night, and get into your dad’s computer?”
I think of the night security guards and shiver as I remember Curt turning me away.
“No,” I say slowly. “But he always had everything backed up on his computer at home. I bet you anything Scarlett hasn’t been
anywhere near his home office since he died. Too busy buying Birkin bags.” I roll my eyes.
“Ooh! I could do with a new Birkin bag,” says Preeti as I shake my head in disbelief.
“How is it that we’re friends?”
“Because underneath this superficial Indian Diva beats a heart of gold, just like yours.” She puts her arm around me and lays
her head on my shoulder, and I think how lucky I am to be surrounded by such good people at such a difficult time in my life.
“And now this superficial Indian Diva wants to know if we can go to your father’s house. Like, today. Maybe even now.”
Usually, I wouldn’t think twice about going to my father’s house. Except it is no longer my father’s house, it is Scarlett’s,
and it doesn’t feel right to walk in unannounced. I text Scarlett to ask if it’s okay to come over, that there are some papers
in my father’s office I need, and she writes back that she’s on a private art tour at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco,
and to help myself to whatever I need.
I was right. My father’s office hasn’t been touched.
The housekeepers have been in, have dusted around the piles of papers, the open notebooks filled with his familiar scrawl (however much of a technological whizz he was, he always made notes in the same notebooks, with the same black pens).
It looks the same, like a mini version of his ipryy office, the black suede sofas, the giant TV screen, the polished wood cabinets, but it smells different.
It smells of a room that is not lived in, a room that is no longer loved.
I lower myself into my father’s vintage ’70s Knoll office chair, the black leather slightly worn and cracked at the edges.
Preeti drags over a gray wool Saarinen chair and sits next to me as I take a deep breath and turn his computer on.
“Fuck.” We both say it at the same time, as the password box comes up.
“It’s usually something really obvious,” says Preeti. “Maybe Scarlett and a number?”
“He’d never be that obvious,” I say, although I type in Scarlett, and add 33, because that was my father’s favorite number. Nothing.
“The kids?”
We try all the variations I can think of. Nico, Paloma, Missy, with and without 33, with and without other numbers I think of. We try birthdays, and anniversaries. We try license plates, and the date ipryy
was created. Nothing.
“Would Scarlett know?”
I burst out laughing. There is no way Scarlett would know. But you know who might? I slide my phone over and call my mother.
“Mom, do you by any chance know if my dad had passwords when I was younger? I know this is a crazy question, but do you have
any idea what they might be?”
“Are you breaking into his computer?” she asks, loving a bit of subterfuge.
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s my girl. He did have a password. It was the same for everything.” She tells me the password, and my heart sinks.
There’s no way it’s going to be the same given the changes in his life, his new family, his new kids. I say goodbye to my
mother and type it in anyway.
Peanutlov3*
The computer opens as Preeti and I shriek, high-fiving each other before standing up and each doing a small victory dance.
My heart threatens to burst with disbelief and something that feels much like joy. Peanutlov3*. He loved me all the time.
And then we get to work.