Page 56 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“I can get you the PI case folder,” he said. “It’ll be our little secret.”

“Thank you, Uncle Teddy,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Of course,” Uncle Teddy said, and he put his arm around my shoulder as we headed back to our booth. “What’s a little secret between blood?”

Fourteen

Alistair Calloway

1996

In late December, my family gathered at my parents’ house in Greenwich for the holidays. As usual, Eugenia outdid herself. The whole house smelled of evergreens. A twenty-foot Christmas tree stood in the entrance hall near the grand staircase; the banisters were wrapped with holly and ribbon. Festive garlands dripped from every mantel, and paintings of snow-covered landscapes hung proudly on the walls while white lights twinkled from every bough of the trees on the front lawn.

We all brought someone home with us for the holidays because we Calloways would go crazy if we stayed cooped up with just ourselves. I brought Margot, as I had the Christmas before last. Olivia invited her friend Porter from Vassar, who wore argyle sweaters and horn-rimmed glasses and liked to talk in long run-on sentences about art and Sartre. I figured Teddy would show up half-drunk the day after Christmas with one of his eating club cronies in tow; instead, he showed up three days before Christmas with Grace.

Margot and I had been out at Bergdorf’s all afternoon making our wedding registry and so I didn’t see my brother and Grace until that evening when we all sat down together in the parlor.

There was a fire lit in the hearth; Teddy and Grace were sitting next to Margot and me on the large sofa, and Eugenia was getting us drinks from the wet bar.

“When was the last time you had your hair cut?” Eugenia asked, fussing over Teddy as usual as she handed him his scotch.

Teddy ran a hand subconsciously through his hair, patting at his unruly cowlick. “I’ve been busy,” he said.

“I’ll give Robert a call,” Eugenia said. “He can come by and give you a proper cut and a shave.”

I leaned forward and ran the sharp wire of the cheese cutter through the pale rind of the Parmigiano-Reggiano that Eugenia had laid out on the coffee table. I imagined the block of cheese was Grace’s pale slender neck as I sliced it.

I was irritated that Grace was there. In our last conversation, it was like she had picked at a scab that had long ago healed over, and now I had to deal with it all over again. I was having this recurring dream now where I was standing atop a tall ledge in the dark. It was so dark I couldn’t really see anything around me—I just instinctively knew where I was, and what lay below me. Every time, I tried to navigate away from the ledge. I’d be sure it was in front of me, so I’d take a step back. Or I’d be sure it was behind me, and I’d move forward. And every time, I was wrong. I fell—down and down and down until I hit the water. It engulfed me, cold and dark, and I’d try to swim out of it, but I could never reach the surface in time. No matter how hard I tried, how fast I swam, I could never find my way out of it. I’d wake up gasping for breath, drenched in a cold sweat.

Twice, Margot had been sleeping next to me when it happened. She was alarmed enough that she urged me to see a doctor. I scheduled an emergency appointment with my physician, Dr. Carmichael, and he ran a full physical, countless blood tests. Everything came back normal.

“You have a perfect bill of health,” Dr. Carmichael had told me at our last appointment.

“Then why do I wake up at night drenched in sweat?” I asked.

“Anxiety,” Dr. Carmichael said. “Has any stressful event occurred in your life lately? Anything out of the usual?”

I thought of Grace. We were dating when it happened, she had said.

“I’m getting married,” I said instead. “In September. At the Vineyard.”

“That would do it,” Dr. Carmichael said with a chuckle. “Classic case of prewedding jitters.”

He prescribed me Xanax; I popped that shit like candy, just so I could get some fucking sleep.

And now there Grace was again—sitting in my family’s parlor like she was a member of the goddamn club. It was annoying, to say the least. What was she even doing there? Was Teddy still playing that stupid game of his?

“It’s called Two Truths and a Lie,” Eugenia was saying to the group. “It’s a little game we like to play.”

“I want to go first,” Olivia said, perching on a chair near the fireplace.

“We need to explain the rules of the game first,” Eugenia said, settling into her armchair with her glass of red wine. “And Grace should get to go first, since she’s our guest.”

Olivia leaned back in her chair and sighed. “That’s hardly fair. Since we know practically nothing about her, she has a huge advantage.”

“Do we have to play this?” Teddy whined. “Can’t we be normal and play charades or something?”

“You’re just saying that because you always lose,” Olivia said. “He’s not very good,” Olivia said to Grace.