3. “Forty-Eight Hours”
“FORTY-EIGHT HOURS”
Isat on the floor of my loft until the radiator clicked twice.
I had been on the floor for forty minutes.
I hadn’t moved since.
The black dress was crumpled around me. My phone was face-down on the rug. The wedding ring was off my finger and on the coffee table where I had set it after I’d come home, with the careful slowness of a person handling evidence at a crime scene.
I stared at the ring.
The ring stared back, the way three carats and emerald cuts and platinum settings stared at people who were no longer their owners.
I thought about my mother.
I thought about my mother more often than I admitted to anyone, including Sloane, including myself.
Eve Whitlock had died of pancreatic cancer in October of my freshman year. I had been eighteen for nine weeks. She had been forty-eight years old and she had read me the last chapter of Gilead on the morning she died.
She would have known what to do about Atlas Cain.
She would have looked at me sitting on the floor of her mother’s loft at eleven at night with a ring on my coffee table and an attorney’s mouth still on mine and she would have made me a cup of tea and asked me, very seriously, if I knew what I was choosing.
I did not know what I was choosing.
I knew I had chosen it anyway.
The radiator clicked again.
I stood up.
Walked to the bed.
Lay down with all my clothes on.
Slept three hours.
Wednesday morning I was at my desk by 8:40.
That was twenty minutes earlier than usual. I told myself it was to get a head start on the Hsu manuscript. I told myself a lot of things in those first twenty-four hours that were not true.
The truth was that I could not be in the loft.
The loft smelled like the perfume I had worn to Atlas’s office on Tuesday morning. The kitchen counter still had the half-eaten piece of toast I had abandoned at 7:30. The desk by the window had the Margaret Hsu manuscript and an empty coffee cup and the small knot of guilt I had not yet untangled.
The office didn’t have any of those things.
The office had Genevieve and her oat milk and three colleagues whose backs of heads I knew better than I knew most people’s faces.
I worked on the Hsu manuscript for an hour before I made any real progress.
Then I made some.
I emailed Margaret at 11:14 with the offer letter and the editor’s note.
She emailed back at 11:18 with a single line that said Yes. Thank you. I’ll call my agent.
I cried, very briefly, at my desk.
It was the first thing in three days that had made me cry that wasn’t about Atlas.
It made me feel, for one passing minute, like a person who still had a life.
That feeling lasted exactly until lunch, at which point I made the mistake of opening my phone.
There were two notifications from Tristan Beauchamp.
I had blocked Tristan Beauchamp’s number on my personal line four weeks ago.
He had figured out, apparently, that I had not blocked his number on my work line.
The first text said Eden, please. Let’s talk.
The second text said I deserve to hear it from you.
I deleted them both without reading them twice.
I opened my email. There was a message from his mother, Camille Beauchamp, of the Greenwich Beauchamps, who had sent her son to Choate and Yale and into my life on a tennis court in East Hampton when I was twenty-three and stupid.
The email was titled A Quiet Word.
It said: Eden. I am writing because I love my son and I love your family and I would like to find a way through this that does not become a story.
Tristan is willing to discuss reconciliation if you are.
I know there is a great deal of hurt. I know there are several versions of what happened.
I would like us to find a fourth way. With warm hopes, C.
I put the phone face-down on my desk.
I went to the kitchen.
Genevieve was at the coffee machine again.
“You’re doing that thing with your face again,” she said.
“What thing.”
“The you-just-got-an-email thing.”
“Camille Beauchamp.”
“Ah.”
“She wants me to find a fourth way.”
“What a luxury,” Genevieve said. “To live in a world with three other ways.”
I almost laughed.
She poured my tea with her free hand and then poured me a coffee on top of it and pushed the coffee over the counter.
“Drink the second one. The first one is a prop.”
I drank the coffee.
Thursday Atlas did not text me.
Wednesday night he had texted Sleep at 11:42 and I had stared at the word for an hour and a half before I had not slept.
Thursday morning I had checked my phone before I had checked the time.
Thursday afternoon I had checked it again.
Thursday at 3:30 I had stared at a paragraph for forty minutes and not been able to read it.
Thursday at 5:47 I had gone home.
The cab ride was longer than usual because of an accident on the West Side Highway. I sat in the back with the phone face-up in my lap and watched the screen the way you watched someone you were waiting for at an airport.
It did nothing.
I let myself into the loft, took off the dress I had not changed out of from work, got into the shower with the water hotter than I needed, and stood in there for twenty-five minutes thinking about all the variations of being twenty-six and stupid that I had ever been.
When I came out, the phone was buzzing on the bed.
I crossed to it.
It was Sloane.
I almost ignored it.
I picked up.
“What’s wrong with you,” she said.
This was Sloane’s standard opener. Sloane was twenty-eight and the youngest of us.
She had been the smartest of us since she was eight years old and the sharpest of us since she was thirteen and she was the only person in our family who had ever been allowed to talk to anyone that way and not be corrected.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I said.
“Aspen says you sound weird.”
“Aspen also says her contractor is rude. I don’t trust her judgment.”
“Aspen’s contractor IS rude. She’s right about that. Don’t deflect.”
“I’m not deflecting.”
“Eden.”
“What.”
“Are you in love with someone.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
The towel I was wearing was already starting to get cold.
“No,” I said.
“You’re so bad at lying that I almost feel bad for you.”
“I’m not lying. I’m just — “
“Tell me.”
“Sloane.”
“Tell me. I’m your sister. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t tell Daddy. I won’t tell Aspen. I won’t tell Hadley. I won’t even tell Mrs. Harris and you know how Mrs. Harris is.”
“Sloane — “
“Eden. I have been waiting since you were nineteen for you to be in love with someone the right amount.”
I closed my eyes.
I did not say his name.
I said: “It’s complicated.”
She was quiet for a long beat.
“Is he a good person.”
“Yes.”
“Is he going to hurt you.”
“He’s going to try not to.”
“Are you happy?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ve been happy for forty-eight hours and I don’t trust myself.”
“Are you safe.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to leave it alone for one week and then I am going to ask you again. Don’t lie to me when I ask.”
“I won’t.”
“Daddy is going to want you at the compound this weekend. He’s been pacing. He says it’s about your divorce filing. I think it’s because he hasn’t seen your face since you broke up with Tristan and he’s worried about you.”
“I’ll come.”
“Of course you will.”
“Sloane.”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever — when you were eighteen — did you ever know you loved someone you weren’t allowed to love.”
She didn’t answer for a long time.
When she did, she said only, “Yes, Eden.”
“Did it stay.”
“Yes, Eden. It stayed.”
“Is it still — “
“That conversation is for another week, El. Get on the train tomorrow. I’ll see you Friday.”
She hung up before I could answer.
Friday at noon Atlas finally texted.
The text said: Coming to the compound tonight. Can you not come up until tomorrow. I want to be the one who handles your father.
I read it three times.
I texted back: Sloane already told him I’d be there for dinner. I’m on the 5:14 out of Penn.
A long pause.
Then he texted: Don’t look at me different.
I texted back: I won’t.
Another pause.
Then: Eden.
I waited.
If your father reads my face we’re done. I will hold mine. Please hold yours.
I texted: I’ll hold mine.
And then I did the most foolish thing I had done in three days, which was add: I missed you.
There was no reply.
I put the phone on the kitchen counter, packed an overnight bag, locked the loft, and got in a cab to Penn Station.
I arrived at the compound at 7:09 in the evening.
The drive in from the New Canaan train station was cold and clear and smelled like the salt of the Sound. The gravel of the long driveway crunched the way it had crunched my entire childhood. The main house lit up against the early dusk like something out of a magazine and a movie at once.
Mrs. Harris met me at the door.
Mrs. Harris was sixty-two and had been the housekeeper at the compound for thirty years and had known me longer than my own teeth.
She looked at my face. Looked at my bag. Looked at my face again.
“Eden Whitlock,” she said.
“Mrs. Harris.”
“Whose flowers.”
“What.”
“Whose flowers are you wearing on your face right now. You came home from the city looking like you’ve been picking flowers.”
“I haven’t been picking flowers.”
“Mm.”
She took my coat.
She did not press.
She never did.
“Your father is in the library. The boys are with him. They started early.”
I nodded.
I crossed the foyer with my chin up and my shoulders back and my best impression of a woman who had not just spent the train ride re-reading a four-word text.
I pushed open the library door.
Five men were at the long card table.
The senator at the head, in his Friday cardigan. Hawk Mercer to his right. Sterling Wolfe to his left. Knox Aldrich at the far end, glass of something on the rocks. Cole Brennan beside Knox.
And Atlas Cain.
Across the table from my father.
Atlas was wearing the gray sweater he had worn on Christmas Eve when I was sixteen and he was thirty-six and I had handed him a glass of mulled wine in the kitchen and he had not been able to look at me for the rest of the night.
I had not known then.
I had known now for forty-eight hours and one minute.
He looked up.
The whole table looked up.
My father stood and put his arms out and walked around the table and pulled me into a hug.
“Eden,” he said, into my hair. “There you are.”
Over his shoulder, I met Atlas Cain’s eyes.
He was holding his bourbon glass too tight.
His hand was the only thing on his entire body that gave him away.
I held my face.
He held his.
My father held me at arm’s length, looked at me, said the same thing he had said every Friday of my life — you look like your mother — and then went back to his seat at the table with his arm still around my shoulders.
“Sit,” he said.
I sat in the chair beside Hawk.
Hawk Mercer had built the compound’s restoration in 1998 and had been part of the boys’ game ever since. He was forty-four and had a tool belt for a wardrobe and one of the gentlest faces I had ever known. He squeezed my hand under the table the way he always did when he saw me.
He looked across the table at Atlas.
He looked back at me.
His eyebrows did something subtle.
I pretended I hadn’t seen it.
I asked who was winning.
Knox Aldrich said me without looking up.
Sterling Wolfe said Knox is lying.
Cole Brennan said Knox always lies.
Atlas said nothing.
The senator dealt me into the next hand.
I picked up my cards with hands I had managed to make steady.
I did not look at Atlas.
He did not look at me.
We held our faces.
For the first hand, I won.
For the second, I lost.
For the third, the senator won, and clapped Atlas on the shoulder and said Atlas, you’re slipping, and Atlas, very calmly, said I am very tired tonight, Chip. Forgive me.
The senator laughed.
I drank my water.
Under the table, my left foot found the side of Atlas’s right shoe.
I did not press.
I just rested it there.
Across the table, Atlas’s bourbon glass tilted half an inch in his hand.
He set it down very carefully.
The rest of the table did not see.
I did.
He did.
We held our faces.
I had not known forty-eight hours ago that holding a face was a physical activity.
I knew now.
It was, I thought, going to be the most exhausting weekend of my life.
The senator dealt the next hand and said, conversationally, Eden. Atlas is going to walk you down to the boathouse after dinner. He has some things to go over with you about the filing. I told him to keep it short. You’ve had a hell of a week.
I picked up my cards.
I said, very evenly, Thanks, Daddy.
I did not look at Atlas.
I turned the foot under the table away.
I won the hand.
The senator’s phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at it. Looked at the screen. The screen lit up with the name SARA, which was Sara Lin, which was his chief of staff. He did not pick up.
The phone went silent.
Then it buzzed again immediately.
He picked up.
The whole table watched him.
He listened for thirty seconds. His face did not move. His face did not move the way men’s faces did not move when they had been senators for too long and had been husbands and fathers and had buried wives and had been told things over phones in front of audiences.
He hung up.
He set the phone face-down on the table.
He looked at me.
“Eden,” he said, very evenly. “Did you tell anyone other than Atlas about the divorce filing?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Did anyone else at this table know?”
I shook my head.
He looked around the table. Hawk shook his head. Sterling shook his head. Knox said no. Cole said no. Atlas said No, Chip.
The senator nodded. Slowly. Once.
Then he said, in the gentlest voice I had ever heard him use, “Then we have a problem.”
He turned the phone face-up.
He slid it across the table to me.
I read the headline twice before my brain agreed to process it.
Then I looked up at Atlas.
His face had gone the color of paper.
The senator said, very quietly: “It’s a quote, Eden. From inside the firm.”