The Winters(30)

“She treats Gus like her personal chauffeur. I don’t like it,” Max mumbled. He turned to face me. “I’m sorry. I’m sure there is a lot of stuff I’ve failed to mention.”

He came over to where I was sitting and placed his hands on either arm of the chair. “What other questions do you have? I’d be happy to answer them.”

“Max, if I offended you, I didn’t mean to,” I said, shrinking into the seat.

He launched himself off the chair and stood upright, shoving his hands in his pockets. “You want to know why we adopted, I suppose.” He didn’t wait for me to reply. “We couldn’t get pregnant. We tried for years. Went through all the tests you go through, Rebekah more devastated than I when the answer remained elusive. A definitive it’s your fault, no, it’s her fault would have been better than the awful mystery of it all. Then, around the time the doctors threw up their hands, a baby became available through a private service. I needed some convincing, but once we held her, we never looked back.”

Emboldened by his honesty I asked him what he knew about her birth parents, or at least her birth mother.

“Enough to know that she was far better off with us,” he said.

I realized my legs were shaking. I touched my face. It was clammy and hot.

“Are you okay? What is it?”

“I just feel terrible about all this,” I said, waving my hand vaguely.

“About being here?”

“No! No, I feel like I just smacked into a hornet’s nest. Max, are we having a fight?”

He laughed loudly. “Believe me, you’ll know when we’re fighting. This is just us still getting to know each other. And in that vein I suppose we should talk about the conversation you and Louisa walked in on.”

He told me he’d been ambivalent about reelection but now was leaning towards another run. He quite liked the work, more than he thought he would. It gave him purpose. Dani, too. She liked to be involved.

“But it’s a big disruption, a campaign,” he said.

“Do you want to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “I guess I should say it’s because I’ve been blessed with so much, I feel the need to serve. That’s not untrue. But it’s got more to do with self-interest, I’m afraid. Asherley, the land around it, makes me a major stakeholder in Suffolk County. I want to do what I can to protect it.”

“Is Asherley under threat?”

He smiled. “Depends on your definition of threat. For instance, that causeway? It means we might technically no longer live on an island, which might affect how we’re taxed. To me, that’s a threat. And I’m in a position to do something about it.”

A small knock on the door interrupted us. It was Katya.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Winter. Who’s staying for lunch?”

“It’s just going to be us, Katya. And I think we’ll take it upstairs, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll take it up now, then,” she said, and ducked out.

“After a big fight like that, I like to make up,” he said.

My eyes lingered on the door. It felt strange for things to be reversed so suddenly, for me to live someplace where others worked for me, came and went in hushed rooms, brought me food, washed my delicates, changed my sheets. I didn’t want to become imperious, accustomed to a widening gap between me and the people who worked here. I might be marrying a wealthy man, insulated from the messier bits of life, but that’s not who I was raised to be. I needed to participate in my own care, our care. I would talk to Katya later, find a way to help that wouldn’t impinge on her duties and income. That’s how I would grow more comfortable here, earning a little of what was being given to me so freely.



* * *



? ? ?

We ate our lunch on the four-poster bed—whole garlicky leaves of romaine lettuce, fried sardines, chunks of buttered sourdough—until I was full, and then napped again at dusk. When I woke, Max was gone from the room, though he’d left a fire going. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand to check the time, embarrassed by my indolence. Soon it would be supper and what had I accomplished that day? Walk, eat, make love, and nap. Off to a purposeful start. No wonder Dani wanted nothing to do with me. I could imagine what she was telling her friend Claire. She’s lazy, plain, such a mouse. I have no idea what my father sees in her. She just follows him around hiding behind him like an idiot. When she’s not eating, she’s sleeping, when she’s not sleeping, she’s running around after him. God, it’s so embarrassing.

I had resisted checking Dani’s Instagram account since we’d arrived at Asherley. But lying there, I was overcome with the impulse, if only to confirm my paranoia that she’d made some mention of me.

I was not wrong. There were three new posts. One was from yesterday, a looped slice of video, presumably taken in the back of the cab from the airport. It was a grainy close-up of her face quickly morphing from serene beauty to cross-eyed goof, over and over, the caption reading, “On my way to meet my future stepmonster.” The comments were mostly chiding: “Man, she’s gonna love you! Hahahaha,” and several cartoon faces exhibiting mania and disgust and some thumbs-down signs as well. Her last two posts, both from a few hours ago, featured her and a much prettier dark-haired girl, presumably Claire. The picture was treated with filters that removed imperfections, brightened eyes, and gave their already smooth skin a doll-like sheen. In both shots they were squeezed into the frame, their breasts pressed together. In one, they had cartoon dog ears and noses. In the second, both wore tight tank tops, while Dani, side-eyeing the camera provocatively, licked the side of her friend’s face. The caption read, “Yum. Missed my Claire Bear.”