When Georgiana found out Brady was going on the Pakistan trip, she was irritated. “Weren’t you just gone?” she asked with a vague whine in her voice.
“I haven’t been on a project in months. It’s the best part of the job—getting out in the field.”
“How long do you think you’ll be there?”
“Probably a month?”
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” Georgiana pouted.
“Then count yourself lucky.” Brady kissed her on the nose. “Put WhatsApp on your phone and we can talk all the time.”
The weekend before Brady left, they barely got out of bed. They laughed and joked that they were sex camels, storing up all the sex they could in their humps before Brady went off to the desert. On Sunday when Georgiana came out of the shower, Brady guiltily hid something behind his back.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m writing you notes,” he admitted. “I’m going to hide them all around your apartment so that you find them while I’m away. Now either close your eyes or go back into the bathroom.”
Georgiana grinned and retreated to the bathroom to comb her hair in front of the mirror, listening to Brady move around her living room, lifting pillows and opening and closing drawers. That night after he left, she found one in the pantry, taped to the bread, that said, “You have nice buns.”
* * *
—
Four days after Georgiana kissed Brady goodbye, the company founder called an all hands meeting in the second-floor dining room. When Georgiana walked in, she could immediately tell something terrible had happened. People looked stricken, confused. Sharon, the receptionist, was clutching a tissue and wiping her nose as tears leaked down from behind her glasses. Somehow, Georgiana knew. It was about Brady. She could feel it whoosh through her, a cold pain that shot down her arms, shot through her stomach. The founder’s voice cracked as he spoke, a sob caught in his throat. He told them that Meg from grant writing, a project manager named Divya, and Brady had boarded a flight from Lahore in the east of Pakistan, bound for Karachi. The pilot reported technical difficulties, and the plane turned to go back to Lahore. Thirty-five miles outside the city the plane crashed. There were no survivors.
When Georgiana heard the words “no survivors,” she had to put her hand against the wall to steady herself. Her vision narrowed to a tiny pin of light, and the floor seemed to go sideways under her feet. She felt the old wallpaper against her palm and stood in the dark, unsure if she was standing or falling. When the pinprick opened back up and she could see again, all around her people held hands to their mouths in horror. Georgiana couldn’t look at anyone. She couldn’t go back to her desk. She quietly walked down the stairs and through the foyer and out onto the street. She didn’t know where she was going.
Brady had died. His body, his freckled back, the toes he slept with latched to his ankle were all burned to ash somewhere Georgiana had never seen, would likely never go. She would never hold him again; she would never be able to see his face or kiss his mouth or even mourn over the body she had worshipped with such fervor. She stumbled up the stone steps of her childhood home and used her keys to get in. She was crying too hard to breathe or see, and she dropped her bag in the hall outside her room and crawled into her closet. She pulled her clothing from the hangers and buried her face in the musty fabric until she couldn’t breathe. She kicked at the wooden beaver she had hidden. She had been a child, a stupid child, but Brady had seen her. Her love for him had filled her with shame, but also with a power that burned hot and bright. And now he was gone, and she would never feel that power again.
Georgiana cried until her stomach ached, until she could no longer see, until her face was swollen and her skin was mottled. She didn’t know how many hours had passed when she heard a thump on the stairs and slowly the closet door opened. It was Sasha.
“Georgiana, what happened? Are you all right?”
“I did something terrible,” said Georgiana. And she told her.
TWELVE
Darley
Before I was born I had a tail,” Poppy said seriously, looking into Darley’s eyes. They were eating dinner at the little restaurant called Tutt’s on Hicks Street and Poppy had a large dollop of tomato sauce on her chin.
“You had a tail?” Darley asked, unsure if they were operating in the realm of fantasy or reality.
“I had a tail just like a tadpole.”
“We both had tails like tadpoles,” Hatcher agreed, carefully picking every olive and pepper out of his salad and placing them on the table.
“I could swim fast fast fast, and then I was an egg,” Poppy said.
Darley looked quizzically at Malcolm.
“You know you didn’t really have a tail, right? Humans don’t have tails,” Malcolm explained.
“I did! I had a tail like a tadpole and then I was an egg and then I grew in Mommy’s belly!” Poppy replied indignantly.
Darley started laughing. “Malcolm,” she whispered, “she means when she was a sperm.”
The school had sent home a note saying that they would begin talking about health and human sexuality in science class. The section must have started. Darley didn’t want to be an old lady about it, but back when she was a kid, they didn’t take sex ed until the fifth grade. Kindergarten seemed so young. But she supposed it was better they learn it at school than on the internet. She just hoped Poppy wouldn’t start talking about sperm at the racket club.
* * *
Ever since Darley was a student thirty years ago, the Henry Street School had hosted an annual auction in the fall to raise money for their scholarship fund. The parents dressed in their finest and crowded into the school gym to bid tens of thousands of dollars on meals prepared by celebrity chefs, courtside seats to the Knicks, boxes at concerts, weeks on yachts, and even once the chance to have a child taught to swim by an Olympic medalist who’d appeared on boxes of Wheaties. In years past, the Stocktons had won a ski trip, a hot-air balloon ride, a family photo session with a National Geographic photographer, and a frankly hideous painting made by Cord’s fifth-grade class that cost them four thousand dollars.
Families were encouraged to donate generously and bid competitively, and it was a chance to truly show off your best connections. If your son-in-law was in MLB management, you secured a meet-and-greet with the Yankees. If you were on the board of the Mark Morris Dance Group, you arranged a living-room performance with the premier dancers. Since most everyone had a second home either on Long Island or in Litchfield County, it wasn’t special enough to offer that up as a trip, but if you had a third home in Aspen, Nantucket, or St. John, then you best make that your annual gift. Even better if you lent out your plane to get there.
The Stocktons had figured out their go-to gift when Darley was in middle school and the family had bought more property along the waterfront. They would offer up a themed party in one of the unoccupied buildings—an Oscars party in the vacant Brooklyn Heights movie theater, a masquerade ball in the former home of Jane’s Carousel, a murder mystery evening in what was once part of the Navy Yard.
This year Tilda had outdone herself and arranged an Old Hollywood night at the former Hotel Bossert on Montague Street. The hotel had been one of the properties sold when the Jehovah’s Witnesses began to divest themselves of Brooklyn Heights real estate in 2008, and the Stockton family had participated in the five-year bidding war to secure the property. （Rumor had it that the total cost of the place was barely shy of a hundred million.） It was a stunning building, with a marble lobby, massive chandeliers, and a two-level restaurant on the roof where players for the Dodgers had famously celebrated a World Series win in the 1950s. The hotel hadn’t been open to the public in thirty years, and the neighborhood was quivering with curiosity about the place. It was clearly grand and smack in the middle of everything, and honestly Tilda probably could have donated an evening of eating peanut butter sandwiches on the floor of the lobby and people would have bid like crazy just to get in the door.