“I don’t know what to do. If I were him, I’d probably block my number. I’ve been so hot and cold,” Georgiana admitted, pulling Lena’s dog onto her lap for support.
“How did you last leave it?” asked Lena.
“I told him I was too busy to hang out.”
“So, could you just tell him you got less busy?”
“No, I think that would be fake. I lied to him about Brady, and if I want to move forward with him, I should probably try to be honest from now on.”
“Ugh, honesty is the worst,” Kristin groaned.
“The worst,” Georgiana agreed and got up to meet their onion rings at the door.
* * *
—
A few days later, Georgiana stayed late after work, watching her colleagues shut down their computers in their various bedrooms and parlors and butler pantries. She took a deep breath and opened up the Scribus layout designer she used to make the company newsletter, changed the font to Times New Roman, and crafted her version of a mea culpa, her attempt at a boom box held aloft outside a suburban window, a dispatch that would lay her heart bare in a way Curtis might understand.
It is November and much of Georgiana Stockton’s cohort has absconded to the far reaches of Brooklyn where her clan dresses in sequined gowns to dance to nineties pop music while chugging vodka and eating pickles. Georgiana has, for more than two and a half decades, blithely joined in these costumed celebrations, her greatest concerns chiefly centered upon finding good outfits for theme parties and maintaining a 5.5 tennis ranking. But now, at the age of twenty-six, Georgiana Stockton is ready to grow up.
Georgiana is part of a growing movement of millennials who have been raised as one-percenters but are now realizing they are assholes. “People like me shouldn’t exist,” Stockton says from her Brooklyn apartment. “I’m twenty-six years old. There is no logical reason for me to have Chanel sunglasses.” Further to that, Stockton has been untruthful with someone she would like to get to know better. When he attended a presentation on her company’s work in Pakistan, she led him to believe that only her friend Meg had perished in the plane crash. The truth is that she had also been sleeping with a married man who died that day. Her grief and guilt were real, but she deeply regrets having obfuscated the truth from someone who had shown her great kindness. Stockton knows that it will be hard for people to believe she has turned over a new leaf, but she hopes that by finally acknowledging her mistakes in this article, Curtis McCoy, local heartthrob and excellent kisser, might give her a second chance.
Georgiana dragged in a photo of herself smoldering at the camera and saved the article as a PDF. She composed an email to Curtis, attaching the file and simply writing, “In case you missed this week’s Style section.” She pressed Send and listened to the whoosh as her missive made its way across the air, chopped into little data packets, hopped between hubs, carried by the airlines of cyberspace to reassemble before Curtis’s eyes.
She hoped he would read it. She hoped he might understand how a good person would have done something so stupid. She hoped he might help her be better.
Georgiana wanted so badly to be better, but she still had so much work to do. Bill Wallis had come up with a plan for her to set up a foundation and fund the first million from her own account. He had consented to sit on her board, and so had Tilda. Together the three of them would agree on grants to nonprofits, and Georgiana hoped that over time they would move more and more money from her account to the foundation until her trust was gone.
She still thought about Brady, still thought about Amina. Sometimes she sort of wondered if she would always regard Brady in the same way. Or if over time she might consider the fact that he was older than her, more powerful than her, as evidence that he might not have treated her fairly. She wasn’t sure. For now, she just hoped that Amina was okay, she hoped that she had found peace. Georgiana knew that their paths might cross again someday, working side by side toward the same common good, and she liked to think that would make Brady happy. That his legacy on this earth, however complicated, had doubled in his absence, the two halves of his heart joined in the same pursuit, that all the love he had shown Georgiana might radiate out into something truly good.
TWENTY-ONE
Darley
As Darley and Malcolm got ready to meet Cy Habib for drinks, she dabbed perfume on her wrist, she swept mascara through her eyelashes, she brushed her hair until it shined, and she slipped her Saint Christopher necklace over her head.
Malcolm’s mother had worn a gold Saint Christopher necklace for as long as Darley had known her. Etched in the center of the medallion was a man holding a staff and carrying a child on his shoulder. The story of Saint Christopher, Soon-ja had told her, was that of a giant man who ferried passengers across the river to safety. He was the patron saint of travelers.
When Malcolm was twelve years old, he had a soccer tournament three hours away, so Soon-ja and Young-ho had packed up the car, a forest-green Ford Explorer, and driven him. An hour into the trip, flying along at sixty miles an hour on the New Jersey Turnpike, a tractor trailer lost control of the breaks and slammed into the side of their car. The Ford Explorer flipped, tumbled, landed upright again, and skidded to a terrible screeching stop against the guardrail. The way Soon-ja told the story, she opened her eyes and it was as though she had imagined the entire thing. She turned to look at Malcolm, who was sitting in the back seat, still buckled in, still holding his Game Boy in two hands. Young-ho was in the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel, completely unharmed. The three of them opened their doors, shaking, and huddled and clutched one another on the side of the highway. None of them had a single injury, not a bruise or a scratch or a sprain. The paramedics came to examine them, the police came to file a report, a fire truck arrived as a precaution. As an EMT checked the vehicle he found one thing: Soon-ja’s Saint Christopher medal, the one she had been wearing around her neck, hanging from the rearview mirror.
On the day of Darley’s wedding Soon-ja presented her with the necklace, and Darley wore it whenever she flew, whenever she took a long drive, whenever she needed that extra bit of luck. As she and Malcolm walked along the leafy sidewalks of Willow Street to meet Cy, the necklace warming against her chest, she felt good. Her breath made little white puffs in the cool air, her long coat swirled prettily as she moved, and the neighborhood smelled lightly of woodsmoke. Darley felt lucky. She reached down and took Malcolm’s hand.
* * *
—
Darley and Malcolm had spent the week cramming as though for an exam, learning everything they could about Cy Habib. Cy was a divisional senior vice president of Aeropolitical and Industry Affairs for Emirates Airline. He had started out in the graduate training program of British Airways before he was recruited by Cathay Pacific. He was so talented and his reputation was so good that Emirates had brought him over and created a position for him. Cy was the perfect example of why the aviation industry was so appealing—his success wasn’t based on pedigree, it wasn’t predicated on the banking hierarchy, it was a meritocracy that rewarded sheer intelligence and passion.
When they arrived at Colonie on Atlantic Avenue, Cy was already seated at a small table in the front. Darley made the introductions, Cy ordered a bottle of wine, and the three of them talked flying: they compared adventures they had taken by Cessna and Cirrus, swapping stories of their favorite spots to land. Malcolm’s was the runway at Ingalls Field Airport in Hot Springs, Virginia, one of the highest airports east of the Mississippi, with a runway cut into the top of a mountain. Cy was sentimental and he liked the First Flight Airport in North Carolina, where the Wright Brothers practiced gliding. They liked Block Island despite the short runway, they were both desperate to make a Grand Canyon trip, and Cy showed them a video on his phone of landing on Dauphin Island, Alabama, where the runway started an inch off the water.