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“Who was the queen?”
“Not me,” says Ivy.
She leads Jane down the stairs to the receiving hall, then into the single most enormous room Jane has ever seen inside a private house. “What is this?” Jane asks, trying not to squeak. “The throne room?”
Ivy makes a little heh sound and says, “The ballroom. But now you’ve got me trying to decide which room Octavian would choose as his throne room. Probably the library.”
Jane is barely listening. Deep and high-ceilinged, the ballroom shines with burnished dark mahogany wood. “The Thrashes have balls?”
“The galas are basically balls,” Ivy says. “People dressing up and dancing waltzes in fancy rooms, et cetera.” Then she leads Jane through a doorway into another long room, bright with chandeliers and containing a table that could seat thirty. Four people, two men and two women, are assembled at the far end, their voices sharp, cutting across one another. Kiran isn’t there.
As Ivy leads Jane toward them, Jane asks, “Will you eat with us?”
“No,” says Ivy. “I eat in the kitchen.” But she seems to interpret something in Jane’s expression, something Jane herself probably couldn’t articulate, for she takes Jane’s arm above the elbow and squeezes it, then touches one of the empty chairs so Jane will know the right place to sit. Then, flashing her another small, wicked grin, she pushes through a swinging door beyond the table.
Jane sits down. No one seems to notice her. She tries to blend in and absorb the rapid-fire conversation, which appears to be an argument about a family they all know personally.
“You don’t seriously think they did something bad to their own kids?” says an English-sounding black woman who has a heart-shaped face and short, curly dark hair. A shimmering star sits in each of her earlobes, maybe made of tiny, sparkling diamonds? She’s next to Philip Okada, the germophobe from the attic. She’s wearing a lot of foundation and eye shadow.
“No, I’m only saying they’ve clearly flipped out,” says the other woman, white, rosy-cheeked, with honey-brown hair and two rows of pearls at her throat. She’s got an American accent and a deep voice. “People do unpredictable, bad things when they flip out, so how can we know what they’ve done, really?”
“Is that a medical term?” Philip Okada asks her, teasing. “To ‘flip out’?”
“Philip,” says the pearl-necklace lady forcefully. “The Panzavecchias are our friends. They left their lab one day and held up a bank. Why would they choose to do that?”
“Well,” says the star-earring lady beside Philip, “you’ve heard the rumors about Giuseppe’s gambling problem and the Mafia.”
“Okay, but have any of you ever known Giuseppe Panzavecchia to so much as bet on a dog race?” says pearl necklace.
“But people hide habits when they become problems,” says star earrings. “We might not know what Giuseppe’s really like.”
“But we do know what he’s like,” says pearl necklace. “Don’t we? All Giuseppe ever does is brag about his kids. I mean, have you heard him talk about Grace and her amazing mnemonic memory devices? Grace is a little eight-year-old computer. Giuseppe could just die of pride. Maybe I’ll believe he’s got a touch of a gambling problem somewhere that he’s hiding from everyone. But to choose to get mixed up with the Sicilian Mafia when his life revolves around those three little kids? Why should we believe that? Just because he has an Italian name? It’s offensive.”
“Do you have another theory, then?” asks star earrings.
“No,” says pearl necklace. “I only reject that the Panzavecchias chose an affiliation with organized crime. Either something else we haven’t thought of is going on, or they both inhaled some toxic gas in that lab of theirs and flipped out.”
Mrs. Vanders pushes through the swinging door, making Jane jump. Laden with serving plates and bowls and followed by Ivy, she glares at Jane in a way that makes Jane feel guilty, instantly, before she’s even had time to consider what she might be guilty of. As she delivers to the table what looks like a giant pot roast, roasted vegetables, and an enormous pear salad, then exits abruptly through the swinging door, Jane struggles to assimilate all that’s happening—for she knows the name Panzavecchia. Not personally, like these people, but from the news.
It’s been headline news for a few days, in fact, maybe a week. Victoria and Giuseppe Panzavecchia, married microbiologists from two wealthy New York families, left their university lab in Manhattan at lunch one day; made a bank robbery attempt that failed when a particularly courageous bank teller challenged them to produce weapons they didn’t have; ran from the bank; rounded the corner; and promptly vanished into the ether. At practically the same moment, their daughter, Grace, went missing from her private school, and their sons, little Christopher and Baby Leo, were snatched from the arms of their nanny in Central Park. Baby Leo was ill. The nanny had only just noticed spots forming on his skin when he’d been taken.
The news has also reported that Giuseppe had been warned by the Mafia that if he didn’t pay his gambling debts, his family would be made to disappear. And now they have.
All these people at this table know the Panzavecchias? Do all rich New Yorkers know one another? The whole story seems suddenly absurd, in the very moment it becomes real. It sounds like some silly mobster movie. But if these people know the Panzavecchias, then Grace and little Christopher are real. Baby Leo is a real baby. Their lives changed suddenly, crazily, in one day. Just like Jane’s did the day her parents died in a plane crash when she was a baby. And the day she got the call about Aunt Magnolia.
Jane realizes now that Kiran and Mrs. Vanders’s comment about bank robbers, in the car on the way up to the house, had been a Panzavecchia joke.
“You all know the Panzavecchias?” she says aloud, then immediately regrets it, because now everyone is looking at her and she can hear the naïve wonder in her own voice.
“We do,” says the pearl-necklace lady crisply. “I’m Lucy,” she says, holding out a hand. “Lucy St. George. Ravi’s girlfriend, so to speak.”
“I’m Janie,” she says, shaking Lucy’s hand awkwardly, and adding, unsure that it’s even true, “Kiran’s friend.”
“I met Janie earlier,” Philip Okada announces to the table. “Upstairs. Janie, this is my wife, Phoebe.”
Star-earring lady holds out a perfectly manicured hand, nails turquoise. “Nice to meet you,” she says.
“And I’m Colin,” says the fourth person, reaching a long arm toward Jane. Kiran’s boyfriend. Jane supposes she was expecting someone boring, or bland, or generically rich-looking. But he’s a skinny, pale guy with sandy hair, gentle eyes, and a soft scattering of freckles that make him look young, sweet.
Heels strike on the wooden floor and Kiran strides into the room. At the sight of her familiar, irritable face, something in Jane’s chest loosens.
She slumps into the chair between Jane and Lucy. “Sorry,” she says shortly. “Phone call with bad reception. It’s raining frogs. What are we talking about? Janie, did you meet everyone?”
“We were very polite and introduced ourselves, sweetheart,” says Colin.
Kiran doesn’t look at Colin or indicate that she’s heard. “Do you have everything you need?” she asks Jane. “Is everyone being nice to you?”
“I’m fine,” says Jane.
“And how are you, Kiran?” asks Phoebe Okada. “What are you doing these days?”
“Is that code for ‘Do you have a job yet?’” asks Kiran.
Phoebe raises one perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Why? Do you have a job?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Don’t you speak a lot of languages, Kiran?” says Philip Okada. “You could help Colin when his work takes him abroad. Don’t you sell to a lot of foreigners, Colin?”
Kiran speaks distinctly to the salt shaker she holds in her hand. “You
want me to join my boyfriend on his work trips. So I can make it my life’s purpose to help him with his work.”
“He didn’t mean it that way, Kiran,” says Phoebe. “It would just be nice for you to have something to do.”
“Everyone wants to tell me what to do,” says Kiran.
Philip’s wife smoothes her expression, looking carefully neutral. Her makeup seems hard, masklike; Jane gets the feeling that tapping on her face would sound like hail hitting a window. Beside her, Philip seems limited to a small range of friendly expressions. The more belligerent Kiran becomes, the more unoffended he looks. They’re false, Jane realizes. They’re pretending at something.
“Kiran will be ready for the right work, when it presents itself,” Colin says firmly. “And she’ll be brilliant at it.”
Kiran doesn’t look at Colin. Her shoulders remain hard and straight. “Does anyone know when Ravi’s coming?” she asks.
“Tonight, late,” says Lucy St. George. “He texted me this afternoon. He had an auction in Providence, then headed to the Hamptons on his bike. He said someone was picking him up there.”
“Someone? Patrick?” says Kiran.
“I think so.”
