The Futures(57)

“Michael reiterated that today. No bonuses. But, he said, he wanted me to have this. As a token of his appreciation. He said he was proud of the work that I’d done on this WestCorp deal.”

He handed me the envelope, nodding at me to open it. Inside were several stacks of crisp new hundred-dollar bills wrapped in paper bands.

“How much is this?”

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“Jesus. But Evan, what are you—you can’t keep this, can you?”

“I don’t know.”

He stood up, taking the envelope back. On his way to the bedroom, he dropped it on top of the bookshelf, like he was tossing aside a pile of junk mail. A gesture of indifference that both frightened and disgusted me. Evan couldn’t feign innocence any longer, not like before Las Vegas. He knew exactly what Michael had done—what he himself had done. They were breaking the law. And this time, he hadn’t asked my advice. He was acting like this was the most normal thing in the world. The Evan I knew was never coming back. So then what was his deal? It was so obvious he didn’t care about me anymore. Why was he still here?

Later, in bed, wide awake. “When are you leaving for Boston?” he asked.

“Oh. Uh, Wednesday afternoon.”

He was silent. I wanted to sit up, turn on the light, ask him what the hell he was thinking. But we were past that point. Whatever words we might once have said had nowhere left to land.

“Are you…” I started to say. “For Thanksgiving, are you—”

“I’m staying here. Work.”

“Right. That makes sense.”

He rolled over, away from me. Our cheap mattress bounced and sagged from the shift in weight. “Goodnight,” he said. A few minutes later, he was asleep.

*

Elizabeth was waiting for me at the train station. It was colder in Boston than in New York, and she wore a huge parka with a fur-lined hood. She was the small one in our family—a delicate build, a foxy face—and the parka made her look even tinier.

“This is weird,” I said, climbing into the front seat of her old silver Saab. Hot air blasted from the vents. I kicked aside the empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups rolling around in the footwell.

“What?”

“I should be the one driving. I’m your big sister.”

She laughed. “You’re a bad driver. I wouldn’t let you.”

“You got home today?”

“Yeah. The roads were terrible. It snowed last night. Can you believe that? In November.”

Elizabeth went to a small college in Maine. She had been at the top of her class in high school and would have had her pick, but she decided to forgo the most competitive schools—no Ivy League for her. She was majoring in studio art. She wrote poetry on the side, and she developed her own photographs. My parents had expressed concern about the path she seemed to be headed down, but Elizabeth kept telling them this was what she wanted to do. Eventually it sank in, and for the most part, they left her alone.

“Plus I barely slept,” she said. “I was in the studio until four in the morning. So how’s New York? No Evan this year?”

I grimaced inwardly at his name. “He couldn’t take the time.”

“Are things any better between you guys?”

“Actually, there’s this guy I sort of reconnected with. From college.”

“What?” She whipped around to look at me. “A guy? Like, romantically?”

I saw the disapproval written across Elizabeth’s face, and I changed tack. The urge to confess came so strongly, but the lie came easily, too. “Oh…um, no. Not like that. We’ve just been spending time together. Friends. I don’t know what it is.”

Elizabeth nodded, turning back to the road. She had always liked Evan, and I felt bad dumping this on her. But she was also my sister, and she knew me better than anyone did. She may not have liked what I was saying, what I was implying, but I think she understood what lay behind it.

After a long silence, she piped up again. “Hey, can you let Pepper out? Mom asked me to walk him.”

“So why don’t you walk him?”

“I’m just dropping you off. This girl from school is having a thing. Mom and Dad are at that party at the Fletchers’. I didn’t know I was going to have to pick you up.”

“Well, thanks for squeezing me in.”

“I’m just saying. I have other plans.”

“Yeah, well, so do I.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Well, I had the option to have plans. One of my boarding-school friends had started an e-mail chain suggesting that anyone in Boston for the holidays meet up at a local bar on Wednesday night. It seemed better than sitting alone in our empty house, waiting for everyone else to return. I’d been doing that too much this past summer in New York. “I’m meeting up with some Andover people at Finnegan’s.”

“Finnegan’s! Yikes. Have fun with that.”

Elizabeth dropped me off, and I found the spare key under the planter. Pepper, our black Lab, was in his crate in the mudroom off the kitchen. His tail thumped as I fiddled with the latch, then he burst out and collided with me. He nuzzled his wet snout into my palms.

“I love you, too, Pepper,” I said. “Let’s go outside, okay?”