Alongside the article was a photo of Curtis in his apartment, sitting in a wooden chair looking seriously at the camera, the dimple in his chin just visible.
“Uggggh.” Georgiana made a strangled noise.
“What? I thought he came off well. You should reach out to him. You would probably have a lot to talk about,” her mother said.
“Not happening,” Georgiana croaked, and picked up her phone to text the article to Lena and Kristin before angrily shoving fourteen dollars’ worth of lox in her mouth. Her father came and joined them at the table, carrying with him a pink copy of Saturday’s Financial Times. He poured himself a tomato juice and poked at Georgiana’s newspaper.
“Real men read pink papers,” he joked.
“Georgiana’s school friend is on the front page of the Style section,” her mother chimed in.
“He’s not my friend,” Georgiana said grumpily.
“What’s the story?”
“His family owns Taconic and now that he has access to his inheritance, he’s giving it away to amend for all the people his family’s company has killed.”
“That’s probably a pretty substantial fortune.” Her dad wrinkled his brow.
“He doesn’t have access to all of it.”
“I wouldn’t imagine so. It’s typically parceled out over time. Nobody would give a kid in his twenties hundreds of millions all at once.”
“Is my account parceled or could I take it all out?”
“Well, you’d never want to take it all out.” Her father looked at her, alarmed.
“But can I legally get access to it?”
“Sure, but it’s nothing like the Taconic kid’s.”
“How much is in my account?” Georgiana pressed.
“Don’t you open your statements? You get statements like all investment clients.”
“I haven’t looked lately,” Georgiana admitted. The truth was, ever since the firm went paperless, she hadn’t checked the balance of her trust. That had been about five years ago.
“And you have two trust accounts. One from Geegee and Deedee and one from Pip and Pop.”
Georgiana knew this. The trust from her mother’s parents, set up at her birth, was the more substantial of the two. The mortgage payments for her apartment were drawn from the interest income earned in that trust account. While she could have purchased her one-bedroom outright, the mortgage rates were so low that her father’s assistant explained that it was cheaper to get a mortgage and pay it off, leaving the principal of her trust in the stock market to grow. The trust from Pip and Pop was also set up when she was born and then multiplied exponentially when they died, but since they were a real estate family most of their fortune was tied up in property that her father now controlled, so that trust was only in the seven figures. The trust from Geegee and Deedee was comfortably eight.
It was embarrassing to admit, but Georgiana never paid any attention to money. Her job paid her about forty-five thousand dollars, then her mortgage payment was made automatically from her trust account, and then her father’s assistant transferred another chunk into her checking each quarter to cover things like trips and clothes. She hadn’t ever thought about seeking access to the trust to pay for college or graduate school—it was more efficient in terms of taxes for her grandparents to cover that separately.
“How much could I take out today, though, if I wanted to, Dad?” she pressed.
“Today is Sunday, so probably about two thousand bucks or whatever the ATM at Chase Bank will give you,” he laughed.
“Dad,” she whined.
“It would be problematic for them to suddenly make any significant cash distributions to you. The way they have your trusts invested in so many small companies, it would move the market on those guys to suddenly cash out. It would cause pretty big problems for the other accounts the team manages. But what would you even want to do that for? Are you thinking about a bigger apartment? I expect you’ll want to upgrade once you get married and start a family, but until then . . .”
“No, I love my apartment. I’m not moving.” Georgiana did love her apartment. It was plenty big for one person, it was sunny and new, and more than that, Brady had slept there. “Are Cord and Darley invested in the same small companies I am? Do our accounts look the same?”
“Well, Cord’s trust investments are almost identical to yours, but Darley doesn’t have any trust investments since she got married.”
“She doesn’t?” Georgiana asked, surprised.
“No, she chose not to ask Malcolm to sign a prenuptial agreement, so she forfeited her benefit from her trusts.”
“So she doesn’t have any money?” Georgiana had known this on some level, but it still felt shocking to hear the details.
“She has plenty of money. Malcolm does very well for himself.”
“But what happened to her money?”
“It’s held for her kids. When a beneficiary marries without a prenup it is treated as though they are deceased. Things will just go to the next generation.”
“Huh. Were you mad she didn’t have Malcolm sign the prenup?”
“Darley is a romantic,” her father sighed. “She kept talking about how signing a prenup was ‘arranging for certain divorce.’？”
“But Sasha didn’t sign the prenup, did she?”
“Of course she did. That’s why Cord still benefits from his trusts.”
Georgiana paused, surprised. Why did Cord say Sasha hadn’t? Or maybe he never actually said that. All she knew is that he had been upset and that Sasha had briefly moved out. “Did Cord take a big chunk of his trust to buy the limestone?”
“No, he doesn’t own the limestone. He and Sasha are living there, but your mother and I still own it.”
“So Sasha won’t get half our house if they divorce?”
“Georgiana!” her mother interrupted. “That is a horrible thing to say about your brother and his wife. Nobody is getting a divorce. And, frankly, none of this is your business. I don’t know why we are talking about money. This is certainly not lunchtime conversation. My goodness. Now, pass me the real estate section. I heard Fannie Keaton is selling her apartment for ten million and put it in the paper today.”
Georgiana pulled out the section and handed it to her mother, and they spent the rest of the meal in relative silence, pausing only to peer at Fannie’s colossal brownstone and lament the horrible layout. （“You’d think for ten million you’d get a proper laundry room,” her mother said, and shook her head sadly.）
* * *
As soon as Cord sent the email inviting the family to dinner Georgiana knew: Sasha was pregnant. “Please join us for a celebratory dinner.” What else could they be celebrating?
“I’m not going,” Georgiana emailed Darley.
“You have to! I think they have baby news!” Darley replied.
“Do you think she’s going to do a gender reveal with blue and pink smoke bombs and set the limestone aflame?”
“Don’t be a brat,” Darley fired back.
* * *
—
When Georgiana got to Pineapple Street, her family was already assembled and drinking champagne. “What are we celebrating?” Georgiana asked, ready to act surprised.