all things Hampton since toddlerhood. “And we’re so very pleased to accept your kind invitation.”
“You do have a car somewhere?”
“In Locust Valley.”
“How the mighty are fallen.”
“Ah,” I said, “but how the tiny are risen.”
“Camilla says kiss-kiss.”
“Goody gumdrops. Tell her I want my fucking nose back.”
“You’ll have the whole weekend to tell her yourself, Madeline. We’re driving out together right now.”
O joy. O rapture.
“Please God,” I said, “let me have some Percodan left.”
“What?”
“I merely said, ‘ Poor Antonini, all by himself in Rome.’”
“Mad.Uh. Line.”
“Sweetie, please,” I said. “You know my lips are sealed.”
Astrid didn’t seem to find comfort in this assertion.
“Some things are sacred,” I continued. “I mean, good God, woman, we prepped together.”
This time she hung up on me.
Southampton. Fuck.
Cate had copied out Mrs. Underhill’s home number for me. I pulled the slip of paper from my pocket and started dialing.
21
Two hours later, I was on a sidewalk outside Jamaica Station scrutinizing the passing traffic for Cate’s car, still thinking about the coming weekend with Astrid.
I had been so not kidding about the Percodan.
Here’s how much I hate all things Hampton: if someone told me “You’re getting five root canals, followed by lunch at the Maidstone Club,” I’d hoard the anesthesia so I could shoot it up all at once in the ladies’ room, hoping to black out face-first into my lobster salad.
And Southampton specifically? The place was downright feral, an overpriced Trump-skanky trailer park peopled exclusively by Dobermans with the Hapsburg lip.
The prospect of girding my social loins for two full days of The Astrid and Cammy Show would’ve been excruciating in the happiest of times: forty-eight hours of gossip about people I didn’t know and places I couldn’t afford, larded with inside-joke punchlines in all the latest slang of languages I didn’t happen to speak.
Coming right on top of the one-two-punch revelations about Teddy and Pierce, it might just kill me. And I’d have to gut my way through it with a smile on my face because Dean needed the job, and we both needed his fucking paycheck.
I stepped back from the edge of the curb when a car that wasn’t Cate’s pulled up right in front of me.
The passenger window slid down and I heard a woman call out, “Yo, Madeline.”
My ride was Skwarecki.
“Is Cate okay?” I asked, worried.
“She’s fine, I just thought she looked a little busy so I offered to come instead.”
Skwarecki’s radio kept bleeping and squawking as we drove toward Prospect, interspersed with rough voices speaking in snatches of numerical code.
“How’s tricks?” I asked.
“Mrs. Underhill identified Teddy’s sneaker this morning.”
“I know,” I said. “She invited me over for tea, later.”
“That poor woman,” said Skwarecki.
“It’s hard to tell whether finally knowing a child is dead would be even sadder, or come as a relief, you know?”
Skwarecki slowed for a red light. “From what I’ve seen it’s both. A lot of both.”
“Does she know about Teddy’s life, what happened before he died?” I asked.
“We haven’t discussed it with her yet. It’s hard to predict what will happen once she knows—if she doesn’t already.”
“She had to know.”
Skwarecki shrugged. “Even if she did, the question is what she’s willing to do about it. Sometimes a death like this fractures a family’s loyalties; sometimes it makes them pull closer together.”
“And sometimes it makes everyone go la-la-la-la-la with their fingers stuck in their ears.”
Skwarecki looked over at me and raised an eyebrow, not saying a thing.
Smart woman.
Had Mom really not suspected anything about Pierce back when Pagan and I were kids?
I crossed my arms. “But so far do you think she had any idea?”
“Doesn’t sound like it. But Teddy’s mother came to live with her when she was nine years old. Mrs. Underhill raised her after that.”
“What’s his mother’s name?”
“Angela,” said Skwarecki.
“And what happened to Angela’s mother?”
“Shot to death,” said Skwarecki. “By a boyfriend.”
“Jesus.”
“Bad shit. Angela’d seen her mother get the crap beat out of her for years by a string of different guys, then had to watch her die.”
“Were most child abusers abused themselves?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I mean, you guys see a lot of this, right?”
“But you know what? Not everyone who was hurt as a kid grows up to hurt other children. Most people don’t—even the ones who suffered the most appalling, scariest kinds of physical damage imaginable.”
Skwarecki hit the turn signal and checked her mirrors, then pushed the wheel left to cut across traffic. “I’m not saying personal history won’t fuck with your head, but you raise your hand to a child? That’s on you. It’s