Suspicion (3 page)

D
anny felt his mouth go dry. “She wants to cancel because I’m a few months late?”

“First, kiddo, it’s not ‘a few’ months, it’s
fifteen
months—”

“Okay, but—”

“You know how bad things are in the industry. Publishers are all freaking out about e-books. They’re looking for any excuse to cancel contracts these days.”

“Was there ever a time when things
weren’t
bad in publishing?”

Mindy gave a quick, rueful laugh, more a bark. “Louisa Penniman doesn’t screw around.”

“This isn’t just a threat? I mean, you think—she’s actually serious?”

“As cancer,” Mandy said. Then, quickly, she added: “Sorry. Bad choice of words.”

 • • • 

Mindy Levitan had gotten him a bigger advance for his biography of Jay Gould than he’d ever expected. It helped that his first book,
The Kennedys of Boston
, had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, even though it didn’t sell particularly well. Or actually win the Pulitzer, for that matter.

Also, he had to admit that his proposal had been damned good. Even better was Mindy’s pitch to publishers:
No one knows who Jay Gould is anymore
, she’d written in her cover e-mail.
Yet no one had heard of some Olympic track star shot down in World War II, but
Unbroken
was a massive bestseller. Nor had anyone heard of a serial killer who menaced Chicago during the World’s Fair, which didn’t stop readers from buying
The Devil in the White City
: It’s all in how the story is told.

And Danny knew how to tell the story. Jay Gould was a railroad speculator and a strikebreaker and one of the richest men in America, an inside trader and a virtuoso at bribery, a scammer and a liar who actually bragged about being “the most hated man in America.”

Random House, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster had all bid, but Louisa at Triangle had topped them all. The money sounded good at first—until you subtracted Mindy’s fifteen percent and spread the payments out over the three years, at least, it would take him to write the book. Plus, a big chunk of the money wouldn’t come in until the trade paperback was published, at least a year after the hardcover. Not that he was complaining: He got to do what he loved, and if he lived frugally and didn’t go on any trips to the Caribbean, he could have made it.

But then came the call from Sarah.

His ex-wife had just gotten the results of a biopsy. There’d been no lump, nothing on a mammogram. Just a little warmth and redness in one breast she noticed one day. The skin felt different, hard and taut like an orange. Her lymph nodes were enlarged. Her doctor had told her it was probably an insect bite, and he’d prescribed antibiotics.

Her doctor was wrong.

The survival rates for inflammatory breast cancer weren’t great. She was a single mom, and she was frightened.

One minute Danny was researching the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, and the next he was Googling estrogen receptors. Sarah’s second husband had taken a job at a firm in Manhattan, and their eventual breakup had been acrimonious. And the guy was a jerk, as Sarah had finally come to realize. She needed Danny’s help.

He began eating a lot of cafeteria meals at the Dana-Farber cancer center.

For the first time in years, his daughter actually seemed to need him around, too. She needed a steadying presence. She also needed someone to drive her to dance practice and play rehearsals and sleepovers. While he waited in the cramped back room of the dance studio, he researched chemotherapy and radiation and hyperthermia and raw apricot seeds and vitamin B17.

And Jay Gould moved to the back burner.

Because Mr. Gould, as fascinating as he was, wasn’t as important as Danny’s daughter, or his ex-wife, whom he’d never stopped loving even when she stopped loving him.

“Danny?”

“What?”

“I said, we need to figure out what’s next. How soon can you get me a hundred, hundred fifty pages? To see if we can keep them on the reservation. Keep her from canceling.”

“You think that’ll do it?”

“Might. Who knows? It’s the only card I have to play. So you’ll do it?”

Danny wasn’t even close to having a decent hundred-plus pages, and he wouldn’t be for at least a month. But if the book was canceled, there went his entire income stream.

Danny swallowed hard. “No problem,” he said.

L
ucy looked at him, arched her brows, and smiled sadly. “How bad?”

“Very.”

He told her what Mindy had to say. And about his meeting with the head of school.

And then about the surprise loan from Thomas Galvin.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s generous.” She didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“Lucy.”

She avoided his eyes.

“Let’s hear it,” he said.

“Well, are you sure that’s really a good idea?”

“Why not?”

“I just think it’s weird for this guy who doesn’t even know you to pay for your daughter to go on a trip.”

“It’s unusual, I’ll give you that. Though he invited us over for dinner tomorrow night.”

“I work tomorrow night. I mean, if I was even invited. Does Abby know about this?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Never underestimate teenage girls. They notice everything. And they can be manipulative. Believe me, I used to be one.”

“Maybe.”

“I just think it’s not a good idea to borrow money from this guy you barely know. It just—well, it sends up a red flag.”

“You know what’s not a good idea? Charging five thousand bucks for a friggin’ school trip to Italy. The way this school just takes for granted that parents can shell out that kind of money.”

“You’re just figuring this out?”

“No, but it still annoys me. What it’s doing to Abby.”

“So we’re really talking about Abby’s new friend.”

“Abby gets driven home from the Galvins by a Hispanic servant wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, okay? There’s something wrong with that.”

“I wouldn’t mind it.”

“She’s a kid. And it’s not her life. It’s someone else’s.”

“Exactly. That’s not her life, and she knows it. That kind of thing isn’t going to turn her head.”

“How could it not? It’s like when someone says to you, ‘Doesn’t that tag inside the neck of your T-shirt bother you? Doesn’t it itch?’ And all of a sudden, what do you know?—it
does
itch. That tag starts driving you crazy.”

“The itch being—what? Living with a father who adores her but doesn’t happen to be a zillionaire?”

They heard the squeak of the front-door hinges, the thud of Abby putting down her backpack, the
thump-thump-thump
of Rex’s tail against the floor. Abby was talking to the dog as if he were either a young child or a moron. “How was your
day
, Rex? Have you been a
good
boy? Oh, why is your collar still on?” The dog’s prong collar jingled. “Let’s ask Daddy if he remembered to take you out for a walk.”

When she walked to the kitchen, she looked more like a woman, less like a girl. In the couple of months since she’d become best friends with Jenna, she’d started dressing differently. Instead of her everyday uniform of light blue Juicy sweatpants and a plaid fleece-lined flannel shirt, untucked, she’d wear preppy-looking twin sets and leggings. She’d started using makeup. He wanted to tell her to stop, slow down. You have your whole life to be a grown-up. You only get to be a girl for a few years.

“For you.” She pulled an envelope from the pile and dropped it on the table. He recognized the cream-colored paper stock of a Lyman Academy envelope. “Looks like another bill,” she said. “Are we behind on the tuition again?”

“We’re fine,” he said. “Nothing to worry about. You have dinner yet? I’ve got some shrimp and linguine left, if you want it. Or I could make, I don’t know, macaroni and cheese?”

“No, thanks,” she said, her tone softening a bit. “I ate at the Galvins’.”

“Great,” he said, trying to sound upbeat. Lately she’d been having dinner most nights with Jenna and her family. Who could blame her? Dinner with just the two of them was often strained, punctuated by long silences. But still . . .

“I guess I get to meet them tomorrow night.”

She nodded. “I know. You’ll like them a lot.”

“Hey, Abby,” said Lucy, coming up from behind and giving Abby a quick peck on the cheek. “I love those flats. Tory Burch?”

Abby looked uncomfortable but, at the same time, pleased. “I guess.”

Danny used to worry about how his daughter would get along with his girlfriend. But she and Lucy seemed to be friends. Maybe it was because Lucy never tried to take Sarah’s place. Maybe it was because Abby wanted another mother figure in her life. Maybe it was because Sarah had married a man Abby didn’t like.

“They’re so cute,” Lucy said.

“Are they new?” Danny asked.

Abby’s face reddened. She looked around theatrically and said, “What is this, like, the Style Network? Um, can I go do my homework now, please?”

“In a moment,” Danny said. “We’re talking.”

Abby folded her arms and compressed her lips, making it clear how much talking she planned to do.

“I asked, are those shoes new?”

Abby looked at him steadily for a long moment, as if deciding how to reply. Finally, she said, “They’re a gift from the Galvins, okay?”

“That’s so nice,” Lucy said, trying to calm the waters. She busied herself at the dining table, which was piled with books and papers and junk mail. She was smart enough not to get involved any further.

“A gift? For what occasion?”

“Occasion?” Abby’s eyes widened. “I mean, for standing there like a dork, watching Jenna buy stuff when we were at the Natick Mall this afternoon, because I don’t have a credit card and I don’t have any money, and she probably just felt sorry for me.”

“She felt
sorry
for you?”

“She has her own Platinum American Express card and I don’t even have, like, a debit card.”

“That’s terrible. How can a girl show her face if she doesn’t have a Platinum AmEx card?”

Abby smoldered silently.

“If you wanted to buy something, you could have called me. You know that.”

“And you would have said no.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. But at least you should have asked.”

“Oh yeah, sure, I could see that. Like, ‘Hi, Dad, I just saw the cutest pair of Tory Burch flats and Jenna just bought a pair and can I have two hundred dollars to buy them, too?’ Like you would have said yes? At least why don’t you be honest with
yourself
?”

“Two hundred dollars?” Danny said. “You’re damned right I would have said no.”

“See?”

Obviously, his daughter didn’t mind receiving charity from the Galvins. “You girls spent the afternoon at a shopping mall? What about your homework?”

“I didn’t have my laptop with me.”

“Why not?”

“You’re talking about that MacBook that weighs, like, a thousand pounds? I don’t think so.”

“You carried it around all last year and didn’t mind.”

“And the year before and the year before and the year before. It’s a dinosaur. It should, like, be on
Antiques Roadshow
or whatever.”

He tried not to laugh. “If you need a new laptop, we can talk about it,” he said. “Until then, why don’t you invite Jenna over here sometime? Maybe you two can actually get some homework done.”

Abby stared with incredulity. “Are you serious?”

“If you’re concerned about privacy, I can go out and work somewhere while you girls are here. Find a Starbucks, whatever.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“What am I not getting?”

“You think I want her to see this . . . this
veal cage
we live in?”

Danny couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

“It’s not funny!” she protested.

“Of course it’s not, sweetie,” Danny said. When her mother was well, before her second marriage broke up, Abby had lived in a rambling old six-bedroom Victorian in Chestnut Hill that belonged to her stepfather, a partner in a big Boston law firm. Now she had no stepfather—not that she minded that—and no rambling house, and no mother.

He came closer, tried to put his arms around her, but she bucked away. “I just want to make sure you give yourself enough time to do your homework. This is a really important year. You know that. This fall, you’ll be applying to colleges, and—”

“Seriously?” she said, stiffening. “Seriously?” Then, yelling: “I don’t
believe
this!”

She spun around and ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.

Lucy glanced up from the dining table, gave a sad smile. She didn’t need to say anything. She felt bad for both father and daughter; she understood the complexity. Her marriage, to an architect, had broken up, though amicably; her son, Kyle, was a sophomore at Bowdoin. She’d been through all this.

She ran her fingers through Danny’s hair. “No one ever said teenagers were easy,” she murmured.

L
ucy woke early and made coffee for the two of them before leaving for work. Danny managed to get in a solid hour of writing before he heard the music coming from Abby’s room.

Thumping, floor-vibrating bass, some kind of hip-hop. It wasn’t so long ago that Abby awoke to some sweet twangy ballad by Taylor Swift or one of her many clones. Now everything she listened to sounded the same: Auto-Tuned vocal tricks and rants about being “on the floor” in “the club.”

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting at the dining table reading
The Boston Globe
and sipping coffee from an oversize white mug that said
I
My Daddy
in the spindly printing of a five-year-old. The
Y
looked like Poseidon’s trident. Abby had made it at a friend’s birthday party at a clay workshop in Brookline where kids decorated ready-made pieces of ceramic pottery. More than a decade ago, and he remembered it as if it were a few months.

Abby emerged from the bathroom in a steam cloud, wearing a bathrobe, hair wet from the shower. She came over to the small kitchen without acknowledging his presence and poured herself a bowl of Cinnamon Roll Frosted Mini-Wheats, doused it with Lactaid milk, and brought it over to the dining table.

“Any left for me?” she asked as she sat down.

“Any what?”

“That.” She pointed at his coffee mug.

He grinned. “You’re too young to get hooked on caffeine.”

She slid the pile of mail in front of her and began flipping idly through the envelopes. “I mean, it’s so not a big deal when I sleep over at the Galvins’. Celina always makes
café con leche
for Jenna and me.”

“Celina is their housekeeper? Or their cook?”

“Keep up, Dad. She’s Jenna’s mom.” She picked up the cream-stock envelope from Lyman and slid a finger under the flap. He didn’t want her looking at the reminder note—no need for her to worry—but he also didn’t want to make too big a deal of it, so he said nothing.

“Well, you’re not at the Galvins’, are you?” he said, and he couldn’t hide his smile.

He’d solemnly sworn, when Sarah and he first saw that whooshing heartbeat on the fetal monitor, never to say all those trite, predictable things that all parents seem to say. Like:
As long as you live under my roof, you’ll live by my rules
and
Because I said so
and
I don’t care what the other kids do
and
Don’t make me stop this car
.

He put the milk away in the refrigerator, and then he heard a high-pitched sound, a stifled cry, and he whirled around.

Abby was holding the Lyman letter in a trembling hand. The paper rattled. Her face had gone pale.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said. “The check’s a little late. I have to move some money around.”

She was crying with an abandon that Danny had seen her do only once before, in the hospital room right after Sarah had died. There was barely any sound. Like she was gasping for breath. Or hiccupping. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and downturned. She looked almost in shock. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

Danny felt his insides clutch. She was overreacting, but he couldn’t stand seeing her in pain. “Boogie,” he said softly, coming over to her and circling his arms around her shoulders from behind. “Abby. Baby, what’s wrong?” He glanced at the letter and felt his stomach drop. Even though he glimpsed only fragments of sentences, it was enough to understand:

. . .
regret to inform . . . leave us no choice . . . immediate payment is received. . . . Abigail’s school records . . . assist in the transfer to another school . . .

Unless Lyman Academy received sixteen thousand dollars by five
P.M.
on Friday—three days from then—Abby would have to leave the school.

He squeezed her tight, her tears scalding his forearm, her chest heaving.

“Listen,” he said, softly yet firmly, “that’s not going to happen, okay?”

Then came a rush of words in one terrible anguished sob, most of which he couldn’t make out. Just the words
all my friends
and
Daddy.

The shape of her mouth when she’d let out a cry was precisely the same as it had been seconds after she’d been born, when the nurse had taken her, all of six pounds, from the obstetrician’s gloved hands, swaddling her expertly in a blanket, and put her down on the warming table. Then this tiny infant had curled her tiny hands into fists and let out a great big gusty cry, the first of her life, announcing,
Hey,
I’m here!

And he knew he’d always do everything in his power to protect this little creature.

“Sweetie,” he said. “Listen to me. Don’t even think about it. That is
not
going to happen. You have my word.”

But he knew his assurances were hollow, his promises empty, and he wondered whether she knew it, too.