Chapter 28
DI CALLED TO see if she wanted to come over for a bit in the afternoon before heading out for dinner, and she was relieved; she wanted to talk about the emails, and she wanted to talk about them with Di.
Besides the conversation with Mary, Anna had kept the information to herself, except for scribbling down a few notes in a moleskin.
The women of Hamilton, she now believed, had something precious to protect, and it was the well-guarded futures of their progeny.
By getting in the middle of the natural order of wealth and privilege, Anna Plummer had gummed up the machine.
Ben and Louisa were playing a game where neither one of them could talk until one of the adults said some kind of magic word.
Blackout or Fake Out or Black Magic—Anna couldn’t remember what it was, but both kids had surrounded her in the kitchen, pulling at her as she tried to scramble upstairs to get ready, their lips pulled taut.
“What? What is it?” she said to them, but they refused to speak, waving hands in front of their lips.
“Mmmmm,” Louisa mumbled.
“Mmmmm,” Ben said, by way of response.
Whatever that was—that game—it was Denny’s problem now, Anna thought.
Upstairs, she pulled out a pair of black jeans that she almost never wore and a black short-sleeve cashmere sweater.
She had bought it a few years ago, one of those sweaters that had no true season.
The night was cold, but why not, she figured, fingering the gold buttons that ran all the way up to the neckline.
It was pretty and she felt bad about having spent so much money on it.
She switched out her diamond studs for chandelier-style earrings—a little old-school, but she was into it—and pulled on black boots with a heel and an ermine-colored sweater for over the whole outfit, a sort of slouchy thing that she could at least use to keep her warm until she got where she was going.
Hair back in a quick ponytail, she looked at herself in the mirror (acceptable, yes) and bid adieu to her own reflection.
Denny had fallen prey to the kids’ game. How they had persuaded him to say the secret word, she would never know, but they were dancing around him in the kitchen now.
“I won, I won,” Ben was squealing in delight, meaning that Louisa was appropriately miserable. His gain was always her loss, as was the way with siblings of a certain age.
“He cheated,” she said, stomping a foot. “He drew a picture for dad! Do-over! I want a do-over!”
“You didn’t say I couldn’t,” Ben said, sensing the injustice of a long-awaited win against his big sister being stripped away from him.
“Dad? No one said! It’s not fair!” He erupted into a pool of tears.
For a second, Anna had the sensation that she was outside her own body, watching the three of them from beyond the kitchen, her tiny and perfect son, her precocious daughter, her temporarily hapless husband who couldn’t figure out how to soothe them both.
But she was just as quickly snapped back into the reality of herself.
“It’s okay,” she said from the hall, and they all turned to look at her.
“Louisa, your brother won, fair and square, okay?” Anna’s word was gospel, and they all knew it.
Louisa would sulk, but she would accept her mother’s decree.
Ben shook off the bout of emotion. Denny rose to face the kitchen island.
“Where are you headed and what time will you be back?” Denny asked.
There were two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese on the counter, Wednesday-night dinner for three.
“Out with friends. I’ll be back late. Don’t wait up,” Anna said. She walked over and kissed each of her children on the head. Louisa smelled like the watermelon shampoo, Ben slightly of sweat. When she leaned into Denny, she smelled sawdust, cold air from the shed.
“Have a great time at Bradford,” she said. “See you tomorrow.” Then she walked down to the garage, where the recently repaired Volkswagen was waiting.
Di’s normally well-lit driveway—she kept lights on even in late afternoon—was dark.
This struck Anna as strange. Also, there was a car that she didn’t recognize parked in front of the carriage house, a black Mercedes GLS 450, with tinted windows.
Only one light was on in the entire house, and it looked like it was in the back, although the porch light had been left on.
This was also strange. Still, Anna didn’t think too much of it as she parked the car in the pea gravel driveway, which Di had just had redone last summer.
Walking to the granite steps, Anna stopped twice to unearth the small stones from the heels of her boots, and in so doing noticed a sound coming from somewhere.
Was it the woods behind Di’s house? It sounded like a rustling or even a dragging sound.
Anna could not quite tell. For a minute, she held her breath, not even in a conscious way, until, suddenly aware of the bruising cold, she moved forward to the steps.
The front of Di’s house was hulking, slabs of granite that had failed to impress Anna, three pieces so large it had taken a crane to deliver them.
They were graduated in size, organic and beautiful, shaped by a mason but not absurdly so; they were meant, Di always said, to look like they had been plucked from the ground and placed there by accident.
The mahogany door had two gaslit sconces on either side and a brass lobster claw knocker on the front, but no one ever used it, preferring the bell instead.
Tonight, though, Anna held the cold, unforgiving metal in her hand and allowed it to thunder in a satisfying boom.
She could see no light coming from the front entrance, but Di, also dressed smartly in black—turtleneck sweater, black jeans, similar black heeled boots—appeared breathless, as if from nowhere.
“Come in! So sorry, I was in the back,” she said, ushering Anna through the door.
Anna stood in the large vestibule, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dim light. “Di, can you turn on the light?” she said.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” her friend said. Her voice was different.
Then, Anna felt the way she imagined a sailboat felt when the sails were being drawn down.
No more wind. She was being brought to her knees by some external force, and it took her a minute, in the dim and hazy light, to understand that she had been grabbed from behind, that someone had put pressure on her in a place where she was being drawn into unconsciousness, that the things that were familiar were at once not familiar at all.
The ground was where her face was, the ceiling was at a funny angle, and then her eyes closed, only to abruptly open a few minutes later, when she found herself sitting upright in a chair, a belt cinched around her waist, her head aching something awful.
“Where am I?” she asked. At first she thought she was alone.
The room was very bright and unfamiliar, but then, no, she realized she knew it.
It was the room above Di’s garage, the so-called carriage house, which Di had started renovating during the pandemic but had never finished.
They had envisioned it together: a plush room for visitors with oak floors and custom built-ins, but the momentum had waned, like so many other pandemic projects.
Now the room was just a space where spare items collected.
Empty boxes. Rugs that Di didn’t want any longer but that she didn’t know what to do with.
Things that had no use in the main house but that she wasn’t quite ready to part with.
Because the carriage house was not yet finished, it had no real decor yet.
The light was harsh, just a wired construction bulb that hung from the ceiling.
Anna looked around and saw that she was sitting on an old Windsor chair—probably just another thing that Di had decided she no longer had any use for—in the room’s center.
Her arms were taped loosely behind her back, and as she tried to swing them to get herself free, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Soon she was joined by a suite of people.
Di walked in first, her dear old friend.
The betrayal ran deep. Anna wanted to say something, but she realized her mouth had gone dry.
Behind Di came more people. Karen Pistoulia, also dressed in black, was next.
Karen wore leggings and a tight-fitting sweater, along with a skullcap; she had tucked her hair up into it, like a common criminal.
Behind Karen, Anna watched Ellen Wilson emerge from the shadows.
She looked sullen and gray, like the idea of this had made her sick.
Had she missed the memo about the attire?
Her green oversize sweatshirt didn’t comport with her fellow kidnappers’ outfits. She wore her hair back in a taut braid.
When Mimi Mar walked up next, clad in Lululemon leggings, a zip-up hoodie, and a black Gucci fanny pack, Anna was not surprised.
But she was surprised to see the final woman ascending the stairs.
Mary Langley, in boots that came up nearly to the thigh.
Mary, who had tried to warn her about Di.
Here she was, part of whatever this was. In on it, too.
Mimi cleared her throat. She wasn’t about to cede leadership to anyone else, Anna figured, or not now. “Maybe you’re wondering why you’re here?” Mimi asked.
Anna said nothing, just looked straight ahead, at the space where she and Di had planned for the built-ins. Not Hague Blue like her own office, but a mint green that they had selected from the same Farrow & Ball catalogue. It was called Middle Ground.
Mimi walked over to Anna and turned her hand into a small fist. She tucked the fist under Anna’s chin. “We did warn you, didn’t we? Gave you plenty of chances to back off of this little . . . experiment? Didn’t we, Di?”