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When we pulled up in front of the house there were no cars parked out front, but the house has a six-car garage, so that didn’t tell me much of anything. Andy hung back a little as we approached the door. I rang the doorbell. We heard footsteps coming from inside and saw a shadow approaching on the other side of the glass. Jamie opened the door. She was barefoot, dressed in blue jeans and a pink blouse, open at the throat to display a light tan and a gold necklace with a round medallion. She looked, as she always did, very pretty. Jamie had the kind of body that no woman over forty has without obsessive focus and absolute discipline. Very thin, and toned to perfection. Her toenails were painted neon yellow, and her hair and makeup were perfect. She looked like she’d just walked off the set of Selling Sunset. She looked at me like she’d never seen me before. Suddenly I felt like we’d overreacted.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Jamie. I hope we haven’t interrupted your dinner?”
She raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow, folded her arms, and said nothing. Even by Jamie’s standards, this was rude.
“I’m looking for Nina,” I said, a little more abruptly. “Is she here?”
“Why would Nina be here?”
“She told me that she and Simon would be home on Saturday. Yesterday. And I haven’t heard from her. I’ve been calling, but...” I let my voice trail off. “Look, Patrick at the gas station said that Simon came home from Stowe already. Is that right? Is he home?”
Jamie let out an impatient sigh. “Simon and Nina broke up. She’s not here.”
My mouth fell open. I searched for words.
“If she’s not with Simon, where is she?” said Andy.
“I don’t know. Probably with her other boyfriend. Now, if you don’t mind, we’re eating dinner. I’m going to have to say good night.”
Before either of us could react, Jamie Jordan closed the door in our faces.
I looked at Andy. I could feel my cheeks flushing with anger. “Other boyfriend?”
Andy shook his head. I stepped forward and rang the doorbell again. I leaned on it hard and long. A minute passed, and the door opened again. This time it was Rory Jordan. Six foot three. Handsome despite his broken nose. He didn’t look angry. He looked sympathetic.
“Folks,” he said. He held his hand out to Andy. It sat there for a second, until Andy took it and shook. “Jamie tells me you’re worried about your girl?”
“She was due home yesterday,” I said. “We’ve been calling, but—”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rory cut across me, shaking his head. “Sorry we can’t be more help. But like Jamie told you, the kids broke up. Bound to happen, they’re so young. Simon’s all cut up about it, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure it was his idea, you understand? But he hasn’t spoken to Nina since Friday. They broke up, so he came home. Wish I could be more help, but that’s all we know.”
I felt so stupid in the face of his confidence. I was a terrible mother. Nina and Simon had broken up and I hadn’t even known about it. She hadn’t called me. She’d broken up with him? But she loved him. Talked about him all the time. Structured her whole life around him. This didn’t make sense.
“It’s not like Nina not to call her mother,” Andy said. “You sure Simon don’t know where she is?”
“I’m sorry,” Rory said, firmly. Then he waited for us to leave.
“Thank you,” I said, mechanically. “We’ll call her again.”
“Tell her we wish her all the best,” Rory said. And he closed the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Jamie
I didn’t see Simon on Saturday, because I was in Boston. I drove down on Friday night and I stayed over. Every three months I go to see Dr. Jason Marque, who is a genius with a needle. Botox and fillers are an absolute gift, but only in the hands of a true artist, so I’m very careful about who I let touch my face. My husband is fifty-seven years old. He doesn’t want a wife with frozen, puffy-lipped Instagram face. He wants natural beauty, and natural beauty takes tiny, careful, regular tweaks by exactly the right person. I had a little Botox and the teeniest bit of lip filler on Saturday morning, did some clothes shopping, and drove home. I got in late.
On Sunday morning, I was up before Simon and Rory. I did my yoga practice, had breakfast, and then went to my walk-in closet. I had to plan my outfit for a gala dinner we were attending in Washington. The dinner was a fundraiser for David Garvey, a Vermonter who was running for Senate, and our table had cost Rory twenty thousand dollars. He was happy to pay the money. Rory could be generous with political and charitable donations, as long as they delivered a return that he thought was worthwhile. Political fundraisers qualified because they offered access. Charitable causes qualified if they delivered column inches in the right newspaper. Rory’s philosophy was that the best way to succeed in business was to produce something of real value, something that couldn’t be easily copied or replicated. He said that to survive in business you needed to be smart and capable and willing to work hard. But to thrive, you also needed status, reputation, and connections. Events like the dinner mattered to my husband, so I would choose my clothes with extra care. He would expect me to get it exactly right. I couldn’t be too sexy, or I’d look like a twenty-something on the hunt for a man, but if I turned up looking like Claire Underwood from House of Cards, that wouldn’t cut it either. Robin Wright is a beautiful woman, but in that show she was all about power, and that is not Rory’s thing. He likes a woman to be feminine.
Getting clothes right is harder than it seems. I have to look pretty, but not girly. Sexy, but not obvious. Sophisticated, but not boring. And I can’t wear anything twice, because the pictures will be on social media at least, and possibly in some online publication. Rory’s not tight with money, but he is careful, and I used to worry about the cost of my clothes, until I realized that clothing and grooming was the one area of my spending that Rory didn’t monitor at all. He wanted me to look good. He liked it if we were at a party or a weekend away and the other women made a fuss about my Valentino minidress or my Tom Ford bomber jacket. So I stopped worrying and started spending more. A lot more.
What Rory doesn’t know is that I sell my clothes after I’ve worn them. He also doesn’t know that I replace my most expensive handbags with very good knockoffs, made to order by a guy I know in New York, and that I sell the originals. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, actually. I use two different apps, and I take beautiful photographs, and I’ve built up quite a following online. Most of my stuff is snapped up in days. Obviously, I make sure to stay anonymous. Just that morning I’d accepted an offer on my Celine glitter jacket for twelve thousand dollars, and an offer of five for my Prada leather lace-ups. I set myself a target of thirty thousand dollars a month, but most months I do better.
I don’t sell my clothes out of any sense of frugality, by the way. I do it to save my own ass. I started my little project just over five years ago, when Rory’s friend Tony Webster exchanged his second wife, Sally, for a newer model. Literally, a newer model. Before she’d married Tony, Sally had been on the cover of Vogue, and post-babies she was still willowy and gorgeous, but willowy and gorgeous can’t compete with young. Not if your husband is Tony Webster, an insecure little toothpick of a man who has to surround himself with trophies to make up for his lack of personality. Sally was very sweet and completely clueless and never saw it coming. They had a prenup, of course, and their kids were grown, and she got nothing from the divorce. Last I heard she was back living with her parents in Wyoming.
Sally’s wasn’t the first divorce in our set, but she started the warning bells off in my head. Six months after the Webster divorce, Marco Perez got engaged to a twenty-six-year-old catwalk model with hair down to her ass, a girl who hung on his every word and anticipated his every need (I heard she did a six-month massage course just so she could properly massage his shoulders after tennis); and I felt a shift in my relationship with Rory. For the first time, I felt that he was comparing me with the other wives and girlfriends, and that he wasn’t sure he had the best deal.
I was twenty-two when we got married, so not exactly a baby, but I was very out of my depth. Rory was thirty-five, and he’d never been married. He’d never had a relationship that lasted more than a few months, I think because women didn’t really interest him. He gets more worked up about machines and technology and ideas and business wins. The night I met him, I was working behind the bar and he was out celebrating the closing of some big deal, and I guess he’d had a few drinks, because his eyes lit up when he saw me, and he asked me out. He told me afterward that he could see that every guy in the bar wanted me, which was clearly the beer talking because that wasn’t what it was like at all. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t know I look good. I’ve worked too hard at it not to know exactly where I stand in the prettiness rankings, which is pretty damn high. But at twenty-two, I was bleaching my own hair and wearing thrift-store jeans. I wasn’t some beauty that every guy wanted. I had no money. I was sleeping on a friend’s couch because I’d just split up with my boyfriend, a musician who never got gigs anywhere more than once. My ex had been arrested for weed possession, mostly because he pissed off a cop. I’d bailed him out with tip money I’d been saving for six months, and the next day he got drunk and slept with my best friend. So the night I met Rory I was basically homeless, broke, and not exactly full of confidence.
