Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(86)

“Of course that’s what I mean. A school is a school.”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I fidgeted with my necklace.

“You seem less pleased than I’d hoped.”

“But Win, I didn’t ask you to stay here. I just don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. These past two years have taught me that it’s best not to make too many plans beyond the present moment.”

“That’s crap, Anya. You don’t think that. You’re always thinking about your next move. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

Of course he was right. The real reason I didn’t want him to stay was too hard to say aloud. Win was a decent guy—maybe the most decent one I’d ever known—and I didn’t want him to stay in New York because he felt sorry for me or out of some misplaced sense of obligation. If he did that, he’d only end up regretting it later.

Since I’d learned about Simon Green, I’d done a bit of reflecting over my parents’ marriage. My mother and father had fought constantly the year before she died. One of the major points of contention between them was that she resented leaving her job at the NYPD and had wanted to go back to work—which obviously was impossible, considering what Daddy did for a living. My point was, I didn’t want Win to end up resenting me that way.

“Win,” I said, “it’s been a good couple of months for us, but I can’t know what’s going to happen to me next week let alone a year from now. And neither can you.”

“Guess I’ll have to take my chances.” Win studied my face. “You’re a funny sort of girl,” he said, and then he laughed. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Anya. I’m just trying to put myself in your neighborhood.”

At the mention of marriage, I winced.

“And I’d done so well distracting you from the news of Scarlet’s nuptials.”

I rolled my eyes. “What is wrong with her?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. Except that life is hard. And complex.”

I asked him if he was taking her side, and he said there were no sides. “The one thing I do know about Scarlet Barber is that she is your friend.”

Scarlet Barber may have been my friend but soon she would be Scarlet Arsley.

Win’s mother dragged him away to talk to some of the other guests at the brunch. He made me promise to stay a little longer. Natty seemed to be enjoying herself—she was talking to a cute cousin of Win’s—so I wandered up to the garden. The day was unseasonably hot so no one was out there. The last time I’d been in that garden was that long-ago spring day when I had ended things with Win.

I sat down on the bench. Mrs. Delacroix was using a trellis to grow peas, and the plants made little white flowers, which reminded me of the blooms on the cacao plants in Mexico. I was glad to be in New York—not to be in hiding—but I also missed Mexico. Maybe not the place itself, but my friends there and the feeling that I was part of something worthwhile. Theo and I had both been raised in chocolate yet his life had been totally different from mine. Because chocolate wasn’t illegal in Mexico, he had lived his whole life in the open whereas I had always been hiding and ashamed. I suppose that was why I had been so drawn to the idea of medicinal cacao.

I was about to leave when Charles Delacroix came out to the garden.

“How do you stand the heat?” he asked me.

“I like it,” I said.

“I would have guessed that about you,” he replied. Mr. Delacroix sat next to me on the bench. “How goes the medicinal-cacao business?”

I told him I’d run the idea by the powers that be at Balanchine Chocolate and that it had been roundly and unceremoniously rejected.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Charles Delacroix said. “I thought it was a good concept.”

I looked at him. “You did?”

“I did.”

“I would have thought you’d think it was a cheat.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand much about lawyers. We live for the gray areas.” He nodded and stroked his beard. “We live in them actually.”

“You ever gonna shave that thing off? It makes you look like one of those park people.”

Charles Delacroix ignored me. “I imagine the idea was threatening to your cousin Sergei, or ‘Fats’—word on the street is that he’s the one running the semya now? I’m horribly out of touch, but I do try to keep up. And he probably said that the Balanchine business model was based on the idea of illegal supply which, of course, is true.”

“Something like that.” I paused. “You always think you know everything, don’t you?”

“I don’t, Anya. If I did, I’d be giving speeches downtown instead of at a graduation party. As for your cousin? I can predict his response because it’s thoroughly predictable. He’s a guy who was promoted through the ranks, a guy with his own speakeasy. Yes, I know about that. Of course I do. What you said would terrify a guy like that.”

None of it mattered much now.

“Do it anyway,” Charles Delacroix said.

“What?” I stood up from the bench.

“It’s a big idea, maybe even visionary, and those don’t come along every day. It’s a chance to really change things, and I believe it could make money, too. You’re young, which is a good thing. And thanks to me, you know a thing or two about chocolate. You’ll have to tell me all about that trip to Mexico someday.”