The Chain(34)

Rachel puts the now-riddled-with-irony champagne bottle on the countertop. The polite thing would be to offer them a drink, but that would eat up more precious minutes. Her mind is racing. How is she going to explain this? She can’t say Kylie is sick. Marty would insist on seeing her.

“So, um, Augusta?” Pete asks hesitantly, not wanting to initiate a conversation but trying to buy some thinking time.

“Why did you mention that?” Tammy says and mimes hanging herself.

“Oh, man, yeah, Augusta National is just beautiful and—” Marty begins.

“Where’s Kylie? Is she getting ready?” Tammy wonders. She takes Rachel’s hand, gives her a big smile, and checks a ping on her phone.

Really, these kids are too much, Rachel thinks, disengaging her hand. I mean, you can hide anything behind a smile.

Anything at—

Something occurs to her.

Something terrible.

Something diabolical.

“That’s a lovely necklace you’ve got there,” she says to Tammy. “I’ve been thinking of getting a chain. What do you think?”

Tammy looks up from her phone. “What?”

“I’ve been thinking of getting a chain. Like yours. It’s not about the money, is it? It’s about the chain.”

“You can have this if you want, sweetie. I got it at Filene’s. On sale.”

Not a flicker. The Chain has nothing whatsoever to do with her. It couldn’t. The selection process is almost entirely random. That’s the genius of it. Rachel turns to her ex-husband. “Marty, look, I’m really embarrassed about this. I screwed up. I should have called you. Kylie’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“It’s all my fault, you two driving up here. I completely forgot you were coming today. I’m so stressed about teaching after all these years and about the roof and I was trying to write my lectures, and I just forgot,” Rachel says.

“Where is Kylie?”

“She went to New York,” Rachel says.

“New York?” Marty asks, puzzled.

“Yes, she’s been working on this school project about King Tut and they have that mini-exhibition there at the Met and she did so well in school this term, I let her go see it.”

“In New York?”

“Yup, I saw her onto the bus and her grandma picked her up at Port Authority and took her to the apartment in Brooklyn. She’s staying there for a couple of days and getting all the Egypt she’ll ever want,” Rachel says.

Marty’s brow furrows. “It’s November. Isn’t your mother down in Florida?”

“No, not this year. She’s staying in New York a little longer because the weather’s been so warm.”

“When is Kylie coming back?”

“In a couple of days. They might take in a show. Um, Mom has a line on some Hamilton tickets.”

“Oh, I gotta ask Kylie about that. What night is she actually going? I’ll text her,” Tammy says.

“Do you have Kylie’s number?” Rachel asks, horrified.

“Of course. And we follow each other on Instagram. Don’t think she’s posted anything about New York, though.”

“No, um—”

“This is weird,” Tammy says, staring at her phone. “Kylie hasn’t posted anything on Instagram since yesterday morning. Normally she posts two or three times a day.”

“Are you sure she’s OK?” Marty asks with concern.

“Yes, she’s completely fine,” Rachel insists. “Her grandmother probably confiscated her iPhone. She’s always going on about looking at the real world instead of burying your head in a screen a few inches from your nose.”

Marty nods. “That sounds like Judith,” he says. “But I mean, hell, Rachel, why couldn’t you have just called us? A simple text, you know? Save us all a lot of hassle.”

Rachel’s hackles rise. How dare he? He’s the man who was golfing in Augusta while his daughter was kidnapped. He’s the man who left his wife, who was recovering from cancer, for a younger woman. He’s the man— No.

This is not the time for a war. She has to be super-contrite and end this. “I’m really sorry, Marty. I messed up. I’m a total schmuck. I’m under a lot of pressure, you know? New job. Teaching. The roof. I’m sorry.”

Marty is taken aback by Rachel’s self-reproach. “Oh, right, yeah. Look, that’s OK, sweetie, these things happen.”

Get them out now! a voice is bellowing in Rachel’s head.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asks, taking a gamble. “It seems a shame for you to come all the way up here and have to go straight back. I could make”—she tries to think of Marty’s least-favorite food. Mussels? Yeah. He’s always hated mussels in garlic—“a big salad and they’ve got some amazing mussels in at the fish market.”

Marty shakes his head. “No, no, we’d better go if we’re going to beat the traffic back.”

“Traffic?” Tammy says, puzzled. “The traffic will be going the other way.”

“There will be traffic,” Marty insists.

“I’m so sorry I screwed up,” Rachel says.

Marty gives her a sympathetic nod. “It’s OK. Shall we say next weekend?”