Dear Eliza

Chapter Six

When Monday morning rolled around, Eliza got out of bed and headed for the shower. She hadn’t really planned to go back to work yet, but what else was she going to do? Sit at home and scroll through Instagram? Start researching Ross Sawyer? Eat the rest of the sourdough bread Amber had brought her the day before? She wasn’t sure why Amber thought she needed three loaves, but it was a sweet thought. And apparently, they could be frozen!

She tried to slip into her office unnoticed but should have known that was impossible in an organization whose culture was all about being in everyone’s business, all the time. It was entirely possible they had all known Patrice was pregnant before her wife had.

As she sat at her desk powering up her computer, she could almost hear the whispers. Should we all go in? Maybe just one of us? Who should go?

Davin clearly pulled the short straw, appearing at her door in a checked blue shirt and red pants.

“So, how are you doing?” he asked, his sleek blond hair flopping in his face. “We didn’t think we’d see you today.”

She shrugged. “Better to be busy. Besides”?—she pointed at the big calendar on the wall, counting down days to the gala?—“time’s a-ticking.” Time’s a-ticking? Where did that expression come from?

Davin picked up a stack of folders from the extra chair and dumped them unceremoniously onto her desk before sitting down. “How are the numbers looking?”

“Okay. Not great. I’d like to finagle a few more sponsorships. Vanessa certainly expects me to, anyway.”

Since joining Nourish Our Youth (or NOY, as it was affectionately, or disparagingly, known, depending on who was speaking) as director, Vanessa had been scratching and clawing to expand the organization’s coffers. She refused to accept the conventional wisdom that they were never going to be a major player in foundation circles.

Founded by the daughter of a wealthy upstate New York family, NOY had long been content to bump along fairly steadily. The initial board of directors was composed of the founder’s friends from her prestigious northeastern women’s college, and they spent many hours disagreeing on what children so unlike themselves needed. Some wanted to focus on physical needs (food, clothing, and shelter) while others wanted to focus on education (schools, books, and scholarships). In the end, NOY sought to do it all, making it difficult to compete with more single-minded organizations for donors.

Vanessa was trying to correct this lack of direction by pushing them toward education while simultaneously raising NOY’s profile?—hence her decision to bring Davin in as communications director. One of his biggest brainchilds thus far had been the Empty Library. The prior summer, they’d set up a symbolic “library” in Washington Square Park. It consisted of two walls of bookshelves, enough to accommodate at least three hundred books. But only a dozen tomes were displayed underneath a banner that said Our Children Deserve More . The idea was to demonstrate the unmet educational needs of underprivileged students and to invite the community to contribute. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a debacle to keep the display in working order for the full week. Several pornographic magazines appeared on the shelves overnight, and some words parents wouldn’t want their children to learn were graffitied on the back of the shelves. (Cleverly, they were carefully printed as rhymes: LUCK , DUCK , SUCK , etc.) Nonetheless, Davin secured NOY’s first blurb in New York Magazine .

Now Amber appeared in the doorway of her office. “I brought you a cup of tea,” she announced, holding a mug emblazoned with the logo of a line of educational toys. Eliza recognized it as a leftover from the swag bags at last year’s gala.

She reached for the mug. “The bread was delicious, by the way.”

Amber smiled broadly, her dangly earrings jingling. “Isn’t it yummy?”

“Hey, why don’t you bring us all some bread?” Davin asked.

Patrice stepped in before Amber could reply. “Because she’s not a baker. She’s our admin. Eliza! Why are you even here?” Her face creased with worry.

“I need to keep busy. Besides, there’s lots to be done.” Eliza found herself pointing again at the calendar.

“You also need to give yourself space to grieve,” Patrice said gently.

“I’m sure Eliza knows what she needs,” Vanessa said briskly, squeezing into the office herself. Her entrance had the same effect as a light being flicked on in the kitchen in the middle of the night, sending the mice scurrying.

Moments later, Vanessa was seated in the chair Davin had vacated, one leg neatly crossed over the other, her high-heeled pump dangling off one toe. “You’re okay?” she asked in a tone that suggested there was only one correct answer to her question.

Eliza nodded.

“Good. And you’re absolutely right. It’s important to keep busy. Now. Where are we on our numbers?”

Eliza clicked through a few screens on her computer to scan the back end of the online invitation. There had been little movement since she’d been gazing at these figures when Scott called her with the news the prior week. As she tried to quickly analyze what she was seeing, the data began to swim in front of her. She blinked rapidly, realizing her eyes had inexplicably filled with tears.

She cleared her throat. “Slow but steady,” she offered.

“Steady is good. Slow not so much.” Vanessa uncrossed her leg and put both feet on the floor, leaning toward Eliza. “You know we’ve upped our marketing budget. I really need to see ticket sales and sponsorships go up commensurately. The board will be expecting that.”

Eliza knew how this worked. Vanessa made budget decisions that didn’t pan out, and then it was up to everyone else to repair the damage so the board didn’t string her up.

“Of course,” she replied, willing calm into her voice. “I have a few irons in the fire that I can try to nudge along this week.” Nothing like a well-placed cliché to fill the silence. Then she had a sudden thought. “And just the other day I was talking with the marketing team at Swishtech. We’re trying to figure out a way for us to partner.” No need to elaborate that this was a chat over tea with Mo.

“Excellent. I have every confidence you’ll bring this home. But I need you to think big.” Vanessa picked up the snow globe sitting on Eliza’s desk?—a gag gift from Mo, after they’d spent years marveling at how many souvenir shops flourished in Times Square. As Vanessa absentmindedly jiggled it in her hand, silver sparkles swirled around the Empire State Building. “Maybe we should have a team brainstorming session.”

Eliza nodded. “And I’ll follow up with the board. Make sure they’re nudging all their personal contacts.” A few weeks earlier, when the physical invitations went out?—cream card stock with the NOY logo embossed in rose gold?—board members had sat in the conference room, handwriting notes on the invitations and scrawling their own names on the envelopes above the NOY return address. That afternoon now felt like it had been a year ago. In another lifetime.

Vanessa stood, brushing a piece of nonexistent lint off her pencil skirt. “Sounds good. I’ll shoot around an email to set up the team brainstorm.” She sometimes seemed to forget that she no longer worked at an international conglomerate.

After work, Eliza found herself veering away from the subway station that would take her home, heading down Third Avenue instead. She consciously slowed her pace, feeling like a slug alongside everyone else moving at New York speed. She didn’t realize she had a destination until she found herself in Kips Bay, a few blocks from Scott and Maren’s. Maren had texted her over the weekend?—a check-in to make sure she hadn’t gone completely off the deep end, Eliza surmised. But she hadn’t heard from Scott. Sitting on the shelf next to that conversation she needed to have was the conversation she needed to have with Aunt Claude. Her aunt had texted her every day but was respecting her privacy by not asking about the letter. The truth sat like a stone in her stomach, filling her up so that she could barely swallow anything else. She knew she needed to share it?—as the keeper of the letter for so many years, Claude deserved to know. But when she thought about saying the words aloud again, her throat closed up.

As she turned the corner onto Scott and Maren’s street, the distinctive sweetness of roasted chestnuts wafted by. As New York smells went, it was one of the pleasant ones?—although Eliza had never met anyone who actually ate roasted chestnuts. On a whim, she stopped to buy a bag from the vendor, who wore a canvas apron over his clothes and a Sikh turban.

“Here, take two,” he said, raising his hands in protest when she tried to give the extra one back. “You’re my last sale for the day. I always give a bonus on my last sale.” He smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Especially when it’s to a pretty girl,” he added.

She felt her face flush and wished she had learned how to gracefully accept a compliment. “Have a good night,” she called to him over her shoulder.

A few moments later, she stood in front of Scott and Maren’s apartment door, clutching her bags of chestnuts, suddenly afraid to knock. They probably weren’t even home yet from work, she reasoned. She paused and heard a burst of male laughter from behind the door. Quickly pulling her phone out of her purse, she texted her brother. Hey. Can I come over? I’m in the neighborhood.

She waited, watching the three dots dance on the screen.

Finally four letters appeared: Sure. Impossible to tell from that single word what he was feeling. If he was still angry with her. She knocked.

When the door opened, Eliza was peering into one of the paper bags, moist with steam. “I brought chestnuts,” she said.

“I can’t say I’ve ever tried them.” Josh’s voice was amused, and Eliza stepped back, annoyed by the stutter his voice activated in her chest.

“Oh! Josh. I didn’t know you were here.”

He shrugged. “I stopped by to check on Scott. I guess you did, too.”

She cleared her throat. “Something like that.”

He moved aside to let her in. He wore a dark blue half-zip sweater that looked like it had at least some cashmere in the weave. She didn’t think she could reach out and touch his sleeve without it seeming really odd. Even if she said she just wanted to feel the fabric.

Scott stepped out of the kitchen in jeans and a plaid button-down over a T-shirt. “Eliza?—you weren’t kidding when you said you were in the neighborhood. You must have been in the elevator when you texted.”

“Well, I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.” She glanced at Josh, hating that she was doing this with an audience. “After the other night.”

Scott scrubbed his face with his hand and exhaled a deep sigh. “What the hell were you thinking, Eliza?”

A part of her rose up at his words?—true, she had behaved badly, but hadn’t her whole world been turned upside down? But she tamped her emotions down. “I wasn’t thinking. I hadn’t eaten. And it just came out.”

Scott raised his eyebrows. “And you were drunk.”

Would she ever reach an age at which her older brother wouldn’t scold her?

“And I was drunk,” she repeated heavily, digging the fingernails of her empty left hand into her palm, very conscious of Josh standing beside her. “I shouldn’t have told you about the letter until I was ready to talk about it. You pushed me?—and it just came out.”

Scott was quiet, his lips pressed together. “Well, I guess it made for a more exciting shiva than most.”

Something eased inside Eliza.

“I brought roasted chestnuts,” she said, extending the bag in her hand.

“Does anyone actually eat those things?” Scott’s eyebrows drew together.

“We could try them...?”

A few minutes later, they were sitting around the dining table, the roasted chestnuts dumped into a cereal bowl Scott had grabbed from the kitchen. They all studied the dark brown spheres, split open to reveal the almond-colored flesh inside. Odd to think of the insides as almond colored. Aren’t they?—by definition?—chestnut colored?

“Okay, well, one of us has to go first,” Josh announced, reaching for one and popping it into his mouth. Scott and Eliza both watched his face as he began to chew. And chew. And then swallow. He looked from one to the other before announcing, “Yeah, no, I won’t be having one of those again.”

Scott snorted, and Eliza was happy to hear him laugh. Without a word he went back to the kitchen and returned with a plate of cookies covered with cling wrap. “Shiva spoils,” he said, putting them on the table. “Maren and I were talking about ordering Chinese food. You guys should stay.”

Josh glanced at Eliza. “Well?—if E doesn’t mind. You guys might have family stuff to talk about.”

She had forgotten that Josh used to call her E. It had been a long time.

“It’s all good,” Scott replied before popping a shortbread cookie into his mouth.

Later that evening, the four of them sat around the dining table, the plates in front of them marked with streaks of soy sauce and grains of fried rice that had escaped their chopsticks. Eliza had served herself a small portion of moo shu and an even smaller one of rice.

“That’s all you’re eating?” Josh had asked.

“I filled up on cookies,” she replied, looking at her plate. When she glanced up at him, she could tell from his expression that he knew she’d eaten only one cookie, but he dropped the subject.

“Ugh. I ate too much,” Maren moaned, pressing a hand to her stomach. “But it was so good.”

“I told you not to have that third helping. You’re going to be up all night,” Scott said, but his smile belied the scolding in his words.

“Eh?—it’s worth it.” Maren moved her plate farther away from herself. Then she glanced at Scott briefly before turning to Eliza. “So?—can we talk about your mom’s letter?”

The little bit of food she’d managed to consume churned. “I guess. I don’t know what to say about it.”

Scott shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe Mom would...” His voice trailed off. “Jesus. I wonder if Dad knew.”

“I guess we’ll never know,” Eliza replied, the words getting a little stuck in her throat.

“Unless Carol knows.”

The thought of Jack confiding in Carol that Laura had cheated made Eliza’s scalp tingle. Could that be why Carol had been so cold when she spoke about her husband’s first wife? Had been so prickly with Eliza?

“Do you really think he would have told her?” she asked, in a small voice.

“She was his wife, Eliza.” Scott’s tone suggested that the honesty and openness between husband and wife were complete and total. But are they?

“But what are you going to do, Eliza? I mean, your biological dad is out there somewhere.” Maren leaned forward and looked at her intently.

Eliza couldn’t pretend that this question hadn’t been bobbing on the horizon of her mind ever since she’d read Laura’s letter. Sometimes the clouds scudded past, obscuring it, but it was always there, taunting her.

Before she could reply, Scott interrupted. “No matter what, Eliza, Dad was your dad. This other guy?—what do we know about him? That he slept with another man’s wife.”

It was all so black and white for Scott. But this “other guy” wasn’t his birth father. He was Eliza’s father. And in her mind, she kept coming back to Laura’s letter and her confession that she and Jack had “ups and downs” in their marriage. The more Eliza thought about it, the more she knew it was true. The times that her parents barely spoke. Or spoke through Scott. Tell your mother that I’m going out to take care of some things. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.

And this “other guy” had been Laura’s high school boyfriend. She’d loved him. At least once upon a time.

Eliza was very aware of Josh sitting opposite her at the table. “I know he’s basically a stranger. But the truth is?—he’s my father. And Mom wanted me to know. How do I ignore that?”

“I don’t know, Eliza. I have no idea what I’d do if I were in your shoes. But it’s not like you can just replace Dad. Ooh?—instant dad!”

“Scott?—come on.”

Eliza appreciated Maren’s interjection. And didn’t appreciate Scott’s tone.

“Look?—I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t even know how I’d find him. But there’s definitely a part of me that wants to.”

Scott abruptly pushed his chair back from the table, picked up his plate, and went into the kitchen.

Eliza shrugged. “I guess the conversation is over?”

The roasted-chestnut vendor was long gone when Eliza and Josh passed his corner on their way to the subway. When she’d announced she was heading home, Josh stood up, too.

“You don’t have to go?—I’m just tired,” she’d said immediately, not sure how she felt about the prospect of having to make polite conversation with him alone in the elevator.

“No, it’s getting late. I should go, too.”

So now they were walking side by side toward Park Avenue South. It was the first time they’d been alone together in a very long time. Since the afternoon Eliza tried not to think about.

“Sorry I ended up intruding on a family conversation,” Josh said, hitching his messenger bag higher on his shoulder.

“S’okay. I probably gave up my right to privacy when I announced the news to a roomful of people.”

“Still.” Josh stopped, and Eliza drew to a halt beside him. “I was worried about you the other night.”

She felt a flash of annoyance?—and something else she couldn’t name. What right did he have to worry about her? “I’m fine. I mean, not fine. But you don’t have to worry about me.”

Josh looked at the sky and sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just...” His voice trailed away.

“Yeah.” Eliza started walking again, and he followed a moment later, his long legs easily carrying him alongside her again.

“Look?—if you want to try to find your dad?—I mean, your biological dad?—I might be able to help. I have access to lots of databases and records at my firm.”

“Not sure Scott would want you helping me. Doesn’t seem like he wants me to look at all.”

“Scott doesn’t always know what’s best.” Josh’s tone was sharper than she would have expected, and this time she stopped walking.

She pushed the strands of hair that had come loose from her braid behind her ear. “So are you saying you think I should look for him?”

Josh shrugged. “Obviously, it’s your choice. But I can understand why you’d want to. I mean, you’ve got to have a lot of questions, and no one else can answer them.”

She swallowed hard and nodded, blinking rapidly. Somehow, Josh had struck right to the heart of what she was feeling. How is he still able to do that after all these years?

“Shit, E. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“No, no. It’s okay. I’m just a mess.”

“No, you’re not. You’re grieving. Your dad’s only been gone a week.”

She sniffled and flapped her hands in front of her face. She hated how she looked when she cried. And hated that she cared how she looked in front of Josh.

“Look. We don’t have to talk about this now. Or ever. But I just wanted you to know that whatever I can do to help, I’ll do.”

Is this his way of trying to make amends?

Before she could reply, her phone pinged in her pocket. “Sorry, just a sec.” She pulled it out and swiped, glancing down at the text. “My friend Mo with her nightly check-in,” she explained, smiling. “She worries if she doesn’t hear from me.” As she said it, she realized the irony of her words?—she so hated to be worried about, but guessed it was okay to have one “authorized worrier.”

Josh nodded. “That’s nice. What about this Carson guy?”

“Who?” Her eyebrows knitted together before she realized who he meant. “Carter,” she corrected.

He made a face like it really made no difference if his name was Carson, Carter, or Cowabunga.

“What about him?” she prompted.

“Just... I hope he’s looking out for you, too.”

She actually hadn’t heard from Carter since he’d left her place Saturday morning, but that was hardly something she wanted to share with Josh. Why was he asking all these questions anyway? It had been years since the two of them had really talked.

She sidestepped his question. “How’s what’s-her-name? The woman you were with at Scott’s wedding.” She resumed walking, and he fell into step beside her.

“Susannah? She’s okay as far as I know. We broke up nearly a year ago.”

“Oh?—sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine. It was mutual.”

They reached the subway station at Park Avenue South and Thirty-Third Street.

Josh pushed his hand through his unruly dark hair. “Let me give you my number. If you want to reach out about finding your dad... or anything... give me a call.”

“Sure, thanks.” She tapped his number into her contacts, even as she doubted she’d ever use it, then headed down the steps to the uptown train.