The Queen of Hearts(28)



“Hey!” said Eli. “I liked that song.”

“Hey, Lainie!” said Finn, patting her benevolently as he climbed in. Although the boys considered their older sister, Rowan, to be a mortal enemy, they were fond of Delaney and frequently allowed her to tag after them. As a result, she had acquired some less-than-desirable characteristics, including a disturbing preoccupation with the NFL and an extensive bathroom vocabulary. She greeted her brothers by making some arm-fart noises. This was received with enthusiasm. The other two boys, Will Grainger and Will Packard, appeared impressed. Who knew that very small girls could be so cool?

Trying not to think about the fact that Nick had apparently named his dog after me—his dog!—I turned into the Eastover section of the city. If anything, it was even posher than Myers Park, with enormous green lawns rolling uphill toward the stately homes. Charlotte was somewhat unusual in that some of its nicest neighborhoods bordered downtown, which was handy for the hordes of converging bankers every morning, but it also meant that these enclaves were in close proximity to some of the city’s less affluent areas.

As if to reinforce this line of thought, a pimped-out Honda turned onto the street ahead of us. Someone had gone to the expense of modifying its tailpipe, which was now enormous and bright silver and quite noisy; it made a tremendously loud rern-rern sound every time the driver hit the gas pedal. As if this weren’t classy enough, there was also a bumper sticker reading GAS, ASS, OR GRASS: NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE. Well, those were some poor options, really, if you were in desperate need of a lift. Suppose you didn’t have any money or weed on you?

I wrenched my mind back to more pertinent issues. I tended to miss the driveway to Will Packard’s house and then would have to pull into the wrong mansion’s driveway to turn around. Ah, there it was. Will’s father or grandfather or someone had done something financially important, like founding a bank or a major hedge fund. This meant that Will’s family was one of the wealthiest in Charlotte. Wealthy, as in private planes, vacation houses in Sea Island and Vail, and their own charitable foundation. Will himself gave absolutely no clue to his family’s prominence. He was a shaggy-haired, freckled kid, wearing the same currently fashionable getup as all the other little boys, namely, a hoodie emblazoned with the name of a sports manufacturer and tall, garish neon socks. There was some discernible irony in all these private-school kids desperately trying to look like sports figures, but I couldn’t quite articulate it. Maybe I could flag down GAS, ASS OR GRASS and ask him what the fascination was with those stupid hoodies.

The Packards’ driveway wound between an iron-and-brick gate mighty enough to front a castle and then meandered up a hill in large, graceful arcs. I eased the car to a stop at the bottom of the driveway, narrowly avoiding a child’s bicycle lying half on the pavement and half on the grass. I stopped the car. The back wheel was bent nearly in two, doubling back on itself like a folded tortilla, a training wheel dangling by a thread. Apparently being rich did not insulate you from the maddening inability of children to put away their expensive possessions.

Finn, in a rare moment of lucid observation, was more charitable than me. “Gosh, I hope nobody was riding that bike when the dad ran over it,” he said. Finn had lost plenty of his own toys by leaving them inexplicably positioned underneath the back wheels of Drew’s car, so he spoke from experience.

My phone buzzed as I tried to navigate around the abandoned bicycle. Text! I stopped again and peered down. It was from Will P’s mom, Betsy: Can you drop Will off at Ryder’s house?

Blast. I was short on time, because I still had to drop the other Will off (he lived in a normal rich-person house down the street from us), get the kids to tennis lessons at Emma’s club, get Rowan from Nina, get home, unload grocery bags, supervise homework, make dinner, clean up, get everyone bathed, brushed, and pajamaed, read to Delaney and the boys, and get everyone into bed. Driving an extra fifteen minutes to Ryder’s house threw a wrench into the entire system. Still, I could not bring myself to attempt to explain all this to Betsy Packard via text.

Sure, I typed. Before I could hit send, she called me.

“Zadie,” she said, “is Will in the car?”

“I got him!” I said brightly. There had been an embarrassing flail last year when I’d left him behind at the Oak Academy, but I thought we’d moved past that.

Betsy made a rusty, half-sobbing noise. “Is your phone on speaker?”

I blinked and switched off the Bluetooth. “Not anymore,” I said. “Are you okay?”

I had to strain to hear her. “No,” she said. “No, no. No— I.” She stopped and tried again. “Eleanor,” she said.

“Betsy,” I said, staring at the small shredded bicycle on the grass beside the monstrous bulk of my SUV. “What happened to Eleanor?”





Chapter Twelve


    WHAMMIFIED


   Zadie, Present Day


“I ran into her,” said Betsy. Her voice was alien, awful: a corroded gate croaking out human language.

“Oh, Betsy,” I said, a hot flood of tears immediately escaping my eyes and nose in an undignified gush. I put my head on the steering wheel to hide my face from the children. Eleanor was three, and a bubbly, pink-cheeked sprite who’d been at our house just last week. She and Delaney had commandeered the space under the dining room table, industriously filling it with rocks, dirt, and the uprooted remains of all my basil plants. “Please tell me she’s going to be okay.”

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