“Oh, wow, I guess I didn’t realize that.”
“And, honestly, it’s huge for me. It’s the kind of visibility that means I can start to advocate for things I want to do. The party is already talking about how to utilize me moving forward.”
“Well, cool,” I said, and I felt like the biggest nerd in the world, pretending I knew what kissing felt like, what boys wanted.
“We’ll have to move to D.C., of course,” Madison continued.
“Really?” I asked.
“For sure. There’s already people who are looking at real estate for us.”
“What about the kids?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll be okay with that?”
“Timothy can handle anything,” she said, not even really looking at me, her mind racing, like, four or eight years into the future. “The schools in D.C. are a hundred times better than the ones here anyway.”
“What about Roland and Bessie?” I asked.
“Well—” she said. “I don’t know about them. I just don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?” I asked.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to handle the city. It’s much more public, a lot more stressful.”
“They’re never going to see Jasper, are they?” I said, like, of course they wouldn’t, and, like, how did I not already know this?
“Not much,” she admitted. “Who knows? Maybe that’s for the best. Jasper is a better parent in theory, like if you look at his actions and his values from a distance. They’ll still have access to what he can provide for them, Lillian. That’s what really matters.”
“So you’ll be taking care of them?” I asked.
“I won’t even really be able to take care of Timothy,” she said. “This is a huge responsibility.”
“So do you want me to stay with them?” I asked, my heart beating because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted the answer to be.
“No,” she said, so chipper, so happy, “you’ve done so much for them. You’ve done so much for us. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Oh, okay,” I replied. “So then, what? You get them, like, a real governess?”
“Well, I haven’t had much time to think about this, you understand? Like, there are huge things going on. But I think maybe boarding school would be good for them.”
“They’re ten years old,” I said.
“In Europe,” Madison said, “kids go to boarding school when they’re eight. That might be really good for them, to go abroad, to experience the world after being cooped up in that house with Jane all this time.”
“I think that’s a terrible idea,” I countered. “I mean, what happens if they catch on fire, right? Don’t you think sending them away is going to make that worse?”
“Honestly, it’s better if they catch on fire in Europe than in D.C.,” she replied. “It’s less visible, less verifiable.”
“They’ve just been through a lot,” I said.
“We went to Iron Mountain,” she replied, “and that wasn’t so bad, was it?” And before I could even reply, her face fell, and she stuttered, “Well, I mean, it was a good school, right?”
“You’re going to ship them off somewhere?” I said. “That fucking sucks, Madison.”
“What else can we do?” Madison replied.
“You can take care of them!” I said.
“Okay, Lillian,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I appreciate the fact that you helped me when I needed it. But, truthfully, you have been watching them for, like, hardly any time at all. You think it’s just so easy. But you don’t have the kind of pressures that Jasper and I have. You can focus entirely on these kids because that’s all you have to do. We have to plan for our long-term future.”
“This isn’t right,” I said.
“This is the thing about you sometimes, Lillian,” Madison said, and I knew that this was going to be soul-crushing. I knew it was going to hurt. “You act like you’re above it all, and you act like the whole world owes you something because you had it rough. And you judge people like crazy. Like, I know you hate Jasper. I know you think he’s not nice. But you haven’t given him a chance. You just saw that he was rich, and that makes you feel weird, and so you think he’s a bad guy. You never really tried at anything. You had this bad thing happen, you got kicked out of school, and you let that sit there forever like it was the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone in the world.”