Chapter 18
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
Ezra Kittredge
Lily asks about Summer three days before the gala.
We're at the kitchen table in the co-parenting apartment. The one Allison and I settled on after the divorce, neutral ground that belongs to neither of us fully and therefore belongs to Lily completely.
She's working through a math worksheet with the focused intensity she applies to everything.
I'm answering emails. We've been doing this for an hour.
The comfortable parallel quiet of a Saturday morning I've been protecting since she was three and I understood that some things are worth protecting by simply showing up for them.
"Is Summer your girlfriend?"
I set down my phone. "Where did you hear that name?"
"Grandma Victoria mentioned her." Lily erases something with the focused precision she brings to corrections, blows away the debris, keeps her eyes on her worksheet.
"She said you were spending time with a journalist and that it was inappropriate.
I looked up inappropriate." A pause. "I don't think Grandma was using it correctly. "
"What did you find when you looked it up?"
"Not suitable for a situation." She frowns at a long-division problem, writes something in the margin, reconsiders it. "But liking someone isn't unsuitable. That's just liking someone." She looks up at me briefly. Her mother's fine features, her own sharp attention. "So is she?"
"She's someone I care about."
Lily nods. Looks back at her worksheet. Writes something in the long-division column.
Then, without looking up: "Rosa says I make a face when I'm thinking about something important.
Like when I'm trying to remember whether a butterfly is a monarch or a viceroy.
They look almost the same." A pause. "You make a face like that when you say her name. "
I look at my daughter. She has moved on.
She's writing numbers in the margin of her worksheet with the focused unconcern of someone who has said what she came to say and considers the matter settled.
I think about the deck at the Hamptons house. The ocean doing its patient, relentless work. Summer's shoulder warm against mine in the dark, both of us looking at the water and not saying the thing we weren't saying.
I think about the elevator, the conference room, the kitchen island, the list, the voided NDA, and the specific weight of okay when she means it.
I think about the fourteen times I checked my phone without calling. The coffee with no note. The lobby and Diana and the cold October night.
"She'll be at the gala Thursday," I say.
Lily looks up. "The boring charity one?"
"They're all boring charity ones."
"Can I come to the part before it gets boring?"
I look at my daughter. Her dark hair, her mother's fine features, her eyes that are sharper than either of ours, her absolute unconcern with performing anything for anyone.
I think about all the things I've built and all the things I've protected, and how none of them has ever been as important as this particular Saturday morning.
"Yes," I say. "You can come to the part before it gets boring."
She nods, satisfied, and returns to her long division.
The Metropolitan Club gala is, in Lily's assessment delivered from the back of Joel's car, "very shiny and also kind of too much."
She is not wrong.
Diana has arranged for Lily and her nanny Rosa to attend the pre-event reception. Approximately forty minutes of legitimate gala experience before Lily's bedtime logistics require departure.
Lily has dressed for this with complete seriousness. A navy dress, her best shoes, her hair done with Rosa's help in a style she describes to me as "professionally formal but with some personality."
"Can I use your recorder?" she asks, in the elevator up.
"You may not."
"I thought journalists used recorders."
"You're not a journalist tonight. You're a guest."
She considers this. "What's the difference?"
"Guests enjoy events. Journalists document them."
"Can't I do both?"
I look at her. She looks back at me with the expression of someone who has identified a logical gap and is waiting patiently for it to be acknowledged.
"Summer does both," I say.
"I know." Lily straightens her dress as the elevator doors open. "That's why I asked."
I spot Summer the moment she arrives.
This is not unusual. I spot Summer in every room she enters. But tonight is different.
She's wearing the emerald Halston again. Watching it through Lily's eyes before I've consciously processed the shift produces something I don't have a clean word for. The dress catches the candlelight the way it caught it at the Metropolitan Club.
She moves through the room with the quality I've been cataloguing since the Plaza. Not belonging, not pretending to belong, just being exactly who she is and finding that sufficient.
Lily sees her three seconds after I do.
"Is that her?" she asks.
"Yes."
"She looks like she's thinking about something important."
"She usually is."
"I like her already."
I steer us toward Summer through the crowd, and I watch the exact moment she registers Lily beside me. The slight double-take. The recalibration.
The way her expression opens into something warmer and less guarded than her usual public face. Not performed warmth. The actual version, which is rarer and more specific.
"Summer." I stop. "I'd like you to meet my daughter. Lily, this is Summer Knoll."
Lily extends her hand with the formal gravity of someone who has been told handshakes matter and has decided to take this seriously.
"Hello. I asked my dad if you were his girlfriend, and he said you're someone he cares about.
" She shakes Summer's hand once, brisk and businesslike.
"I think that means yes, but he's being careful about it. "
Summer's mouth curves. Not the controlled professional smile I've watched her deploy in a hundred rooms. The surprised, real one. She shakes Lily's hand with matching seriousness.
"That's a very accurate assessment," Summer says.
"My grandmother said you were inappropriate, but I looked it up and I don't agree with her application of the word.
" Lily is already turning toward the far end of the room.
"Do you want to see the face painting? I want a butterfly, but I need to check if they can do a viceroy, because everyone always does monarchs and they're not even the most interesting species when you actually look at the taxonomy—" She stops.
Pivots back with the decisive energy of someone who has just thought of the relevant qualifying question.
"Can you tell the difference? Between a monarch and a viceroy? "
Summer looks at her for exactly one second. "The black line on the hindwing," she says.
Lily stares at her. The stare of a child who has just encountered evidence that another human being is more interesting than anticipated.
Then she grabs Summer's hand and pulls her toward the face-painting station with the decisive energy of someone who has found an ally and is not wasting time.
I watch them go. I stay where I am for a moment longer than necessary.
Something is happening in my chest that I've been aware of since the Hamptons deck and have been allowing to surface in increments since. It has a name.
I know its name. I've known it since the alley behind the tech summit, when I watched Summer take a folder from a frightened man and say it's journalism with the calm certainty of someone who knows exactly who she is.
I know its name, and I'm not going to say it in the middle of the Metropolitan Club gala while Diana is flagging three conversations I need to have before nine.
But I know it.
The evening moves through its expected rhythms.
I attend to the Hendersons. To the auction. To the flagged conversations. I do it thoroughly, efficiently, with the full attention each interaction requires.
But I'm aware of Summer and Lily in the room the way I'm aware of everything I've decided matters.
They're at the face-painting station for twenty minutes. Lily emerges with an extremely detailed viceroy butterfly across her left cheekbone. Not a monarch, she informs me immediately on approach, pointing out the hindwing line with proprietary satisfaction.
Rosa hovers at a professional distance with the expression of a woman who was not expecting this evening to involve lepidoptery.
"Summer knew," Lily announces. "Without being told. She said the black line immediately."
"I heard."
"That's not common knowledge, Dad. I've asked fourteen people this year and only two got it right."
"Who was the other one?"
"My biology teacher." She considers. "But she gets paid to know. Summer just knew." She looks at me with the expression she reserves for conclusions she finds significant. "That means she actually pays attention to things. Not just the things she's supposed to pay attention to."
I look at Summer, who is talking to one of the investors' wives with the focused warmth she brings to people she's decided are worth the full version of her attention.
"Yes," I say. "That's exactly right."
Lily nods, satisfied, and updates whatever internal record she's been keeping.
Twenty minutes later Allison arrives.
She moves through the crowd with the practiced ease of someone who has attended a thousand events like this.
Her expression when she finds mine carries the comfortable neutrality of our post-divorce equilibrium.
Two people who decided, eventually, that what they are to each other is worth more than what they couldn't be.
Then she sees Summer and Lily at the small bench near the conservatory windows, heads bent together over something I can't see from here.
"Ezra." She reaches me. "I didn't realize you'd be bringing company."
"Summer is here for the foundation piece."
"Mmm." Her gaze stays on the bench for a moment. Something moving in her expression. Not jealousy, not exactly, but the careful assessment of a woman who knows me well enough to read what I'm not saying. "Lily seems taken with her."
"Lily is perceptive."