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“I have a trust fund. I could get by very nicely on the income from that.”
“You couldn’t take money out of your trust without the permission of your trustee, right?”
“Right.”
“Who is the trustee, your father?”
“No, it’s a bank. They would let me take money out of the trust for living expenses and my education.”
“I can help, too.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“You have to let me decide what I want to do,” Peter said. “I have a bank account in Virginia that receives automatic deposits for my prep school fees, but I left prep school early, so there’s something like fifty or sixty thousand dollars in that account. I can write checks on it.”
“I wouldn’t want to touch that money.”
“It’s my money now; my mother is dead. Just think of it as a safety net.”
“All right, I’ll think of it that way.” She smiled. “I feel better now.”
Peter took her in his arms and held her for a moment. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he said. “We’ll make this work.”
56
T he group met at Elaine’s, and Stone’s first thought after they sat down was that both Peter and Hattie were unusually subdued. Normally, they would be talking a mile a minute, and instead, they were staring at their food or just into the middle distance. But, in the circumstances, what did he expect? He was pretty subdued himself.
“Have you kids thought about where you’re going to live at Yale?” he asked, just to get a conversation going.
Peter spoke up. “I thought we might look for a three-bedroom apartment,” he said.
“Hattie,” Stone said, “you’re going to have to speak to your parents about that.”
“I already have,” Hattie replied. “They’re good with it, as long as I have my own room. After all, lots of college dorms are co-ed, so it’s not very different from that.”
“I’ll want to hear that from them,” Stone said.
“Of course,” she replied, then went back to staring at her food.
“I think you should look sooner, rather than later,” Stone said. “I’ve looked at the Yale website, and starting in May, housing begins to disappear fast.”
“We could take the train up there one day and have a look around,” Peter said.
“You forget,” Ben interjected, “I have a driver’s license.”
“All right,” Dino said, “you can take my car. If you were seen on campus in that tank of Stone’s, you’d ruin your reputations. I think you should stay overnight in a hotel, too. Hattie can have her own room and you and Peter can bunk together.”
“Sounds good,” Peter said.
“Yes, fine,” Hattie echoed. Everybody stopped talking again.
“When do you want to go up there?” Stone asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, “maybe in two or three weeks?”
More silence. Stone gave up.
Peter took Hattie home in a cab. “Tomorrow, after school,” he said.
