How to Start a Fire (20 page)

“Should I ever need the services of a graphology expert, I now know where to go,” Malcolm said.

“J. L. was also on the field hockey team,” Anna said.

“You’re currently on the field hockey team.”

“Because I couldn’t make the basketball team. What if the love of my mother’s life was a woman? Sad, isn’t it? She’s married to a man,” Anna said.

What Anna thought was different than what she’d said. It wasn’t the sadness of the idea that stoked her interest. If these letters narrated the story she’d let run wild in her mind, it changed how she saw her mother, made her more complete. She’d always seen Lena as strangely two-dimensional, like a photograph of a stern relative who had long since passed.

“Your mother has a right to privacy,” Malcolm said, startled that he was defending Lena.

Malcolm also had an oddly incomplete and two-dimensional perception of Anna and Colin’s mother. A stately villainess. Her chilly severity always smacked of performance. He was wildly disappointed in Anna for bleeding her mother’s secrets, but mostly he didn’t want Lena humanized. He realized he enjoyed the luxury of disliking the woman and not having the remotest desire to please her, since he had that need with virtually everyone else he met.

“She has no idea they’re missing, if that makes you feel better.”

“It doesn’t. Get rid of them,” Malcolm said.

“No. I need them.”

“What do you need them for?”

“Leverage,” Anna said flatly. “As long as I have these letters, my mother doesn’t have the power she thinks she has.”

Malcolm bowed his head and rubbed his eyes. It was only a year since he’d saved Anna from the lake, when he’d pulled her up and felt the violent gasp for breath in her lungs and her thrumming heartbeat. What Anna was, who she became, mattered to Malcolm, and he saw with stunning clarity that the little girl he’d saved might be turning into something ugly.

“Put the letters back. If I hear you’ve done anything with them, I’ll tell your mother every secret I know about you and then I’ll make up a few.”

“You wouldn’t take her side,” she said, calling his bluff.

“There’s some part of you, Anna, that isn’t good. It worries me and it should worry you too.”

Not a scratch of emotion surfaced on Anna’s face, but Malcolm’s disapproval struck her hard. She busied herself by unpacking her provisions. She avoided his gaze until her glassy eyes dimmed.

“Did you hear me?” Malcolm asked.

“Yes. Do you have anything to add?”

“No.”

“Can I get you anything else?” she asked. “Homemade peanut brittle or liver pâté?”

“Good night, Anna.”

Richmond, Virginia

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” the father of the bride asked Anna.

“I don’t have a bedtime anymore,” Anna said.

It was late. Anna hadn’t bothered changing out of her bridesmaid’s dress. But it was a “normal” dress, as George had promised—navy blue, bateau neckline, no bow or taffeta in sight. The bar at the Jefferson Hotel was finally emptying out after spillage from the wedding had taken over. Now it was just Anna and Bruno Leoni and a very cozy private couple at a back table. Anna had watched them for a while. Adulterers, she’d decided.

Bruno ordered himself a Scotch and another of whatever Anna was having.

“Unless you were leaving?” he said.

“No,” Anna said. “I don’t like to leave until I’m asked.”

When the drinks were served, Bruno and Anna clinked glasses.

“Congratulations,” she said.

Bruno formed a smile, but it took effort. He cast his eyes about the room, as if he were looking for something to distract him. “Thank you. I couldn’t be happier.”

“Lovely wedding,” Anna said. “It was very . . . white, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Bruno said.

“And those pillars in the ballroom were enormous.”

“Indeed.”

“And that was some chandelier,” Anna said.

A real conversation masquerading as small talk. Anna was commenting on how utterly un-George-like the wedding was, down to the white-tiered vanilla cake. George liked chocolate cake. She always said vanilla was so vanilla.

“Why are we here?” Bruno asked.

“To drown our sorrows,” Anna said, taking a sip of her drink.

“No. Why are we in Richmond, Virginia? The bride’s family lives in the Midwest and the bride currently lives in New York.”

“The groom and his family are from Richmond.”

“I thought weddings were all about the bride,” Bruno said.

“Not this one.”

“My daughter once told me that when she got married, she wanted to wear a sundress and waders in the muddy yard of my lakefront cottage. Who got married today? It wasn’t George.”

“People change,” Anna said.

“Not that much,” said Bruno.

“You okay?”

“I feel old,” Bruno said. “Time is slipping by so much faster than it used to.”

“Is that all?” Anna said, trying to lighten things up.

“I have a slightly indelicate question I must pose. My daughter’s looking a little different lately. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Anna had clocked so many differences. The even tan, the plucked eyebrows, the unnecessary weight loss. But Bruno was thinking of something more indelicate.

“You mean her boobs? Yeah. They’re fake. There’s no push-up bra in the world that can do that.”

Bruno drained his drink and ordered another.

“I never thought she was the type to do something like that.”

“She wasn’t,” said Anna.

For months after meeting Mitch, Anna and Kate had believed that George would come to her senses. Then they learned of the boob job and realized that sense had flown the coop. Kate started talking plots and kidnapping and grand interventions. Anna tried to subtly slip in hints during phone calls, planting seeds of doubt in infertile soil. At the bachelorette party, Kate was relentless.

Anna knew they weren’t. You could get that teardrop shape only with silicone.

Anna yanked Kate off the barstool before she could repeat her statistics on the first-generation silicone implants. Or discuss the environmental ramifications of the disposal of implants, which rarely lasted more than ten years. When Kate began her research, she’d imagined a giant landfill of discarded breast implants swollen with saline or silicone. Her research informed her that they would be treated like medical waste. So, the plastic boobs would be incinerated and the remains would rest in peace with other medical trash. Kate had planned to mention the environmental impact of burning plastic, but Anna interrupted the lecture, having heard the details over breakfast months earlier when Kate was fully ensconced in her research.

Four cocktails after the implant argument, Kate cornered George and said, “Don’t marry him. You will regret it.”

“You’re drunk,” George said and told Anna to put Kate to bed.

“Can he make my daughter happy?” Bruno asked.

“Yes,” Anna said. She always felt better about single-word lies. After the fact, you could plausibly claim that you hadn’t understood the question.

“If you say so,” Bruno said. No part of him believed her.

“Trust me. I’m almost a doctor.”

“So, Almost Dr. Fury, tell me a secret,” Bruno said.

“You don’t want to know my secrets.”

“Of course I do,” Bruno said.

“Okay, but don’t tell anyone. I secretly dream of being a country music star. I’ve even written a few songs. Want to hear one?”

“Why do you always play games, Anna?”

“Is that a no?”

Bruno put his hand on top of Anna’s and said, “Does anyone say no to you?”

It was easy to explain what happened next. The bar closed and Anna and Bruno wanted another drink. They retired to his hotel room, since it was a suite with a sitting room and a minibar. Like a living room in a hotel. They had never been alone in an enclosed space before.

George’s mother and Charles, her second husband, still seemed wildly in love. Almost four years after the wedding, Vivien’s hands never seemed to leave Charles’s skin. Anna found it extreme, as if Vivien were trying to keep Charles from floating away. Or maybe it was a performance for her ex-husband. Anna clung to the scientific explanations for love—pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin—because it made falling out of love seem so much simpler. At least when it happened to her.

“Couldn’t you find a date for the wedding?” Anna asked.

“You invite a woman to a wedding, she might get some ideas.”

“Do you have a woman in your life who is inclined to get ideas?”

“I know your games, Anna. It’s just to keep the other person talking, to stay in control.”

“No, it’s not about that. I really want to know what happens with other people, inside their heads. It seems wrong or unfair or something that I only get to be in my own head.”

“That’s life, Anna.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“You have lovely feet,” Bruno said.

“That was an abrupt transition.”

“I just noticed them. Only my noticing was abrupt.”

“Huh.”

“Say thank you when someone gives you a compliment.”

Bruno reached for Anna’s left foot and began gently rubbing his fingers along the high arch.

“Thank you,” Anna said.

She relaxed with her foot in his hands. It seemed so natural, so easy. And certainly some chemicals were involved.

She wasn’t thinking when she straddled him on the couch and kissed him. She wasn’t thinking,
I’m kissing my best friend’s father.
She still wasn’t thinking when he got to his feet, turned her around, and unzipped her dress. It fell to the floor so quickly, you’d think it was weighted. Anna figured that was where it was meant to be all along. The only coherent thought that passed through her head as she unbuttoned Bruno’s shirt was that she needed to move fast so that he wouldn’t change his mind.

Bruno called room service early in the morning, anticipating the condition in which Anna might find herself. Every palliative measure was delivered: water, coffee, eggs, toast, bacon, bloody mary, Alka-Seltzer, aspirin, saltines, ginger ale, and Coke. An hour later, the nausea and pain had dimmed to the annoying flicker of a dying neon light. She would live with it for the rest of the day, but she could still function and smile and attend the brunch scheduled for out-of-town guests, which was just about all of them.

Anna slipped on her dress. Bruno zipped up the back and turned her around. He kissed her on the lips and said, “Forgive me.”

Anna returned to her hotel room to shower. Kate was dressed and had even made the bed.

“The whole point of staying in a hotel is that you don’t have to make your own bed.”

“I’m sure there are other reasons,” Kate said, in a tone that Anna couldn’t peg.

Anna reached for her dress’s zipper and realized she needed assistance yet again.

“Can you help me?”

Kate unzipped her dress. Once again, it dropped to the floor like it was weighted.

“I’ll be quick,” Anna said as she got in the shower.

She scorched her skin with hot water and then switched to cold for as long as she could tolerate it. Back to hot, then cold. After the shower, she pulled her hair into a tight bun. There was no time to blow it dry. She dressed quickly, packing at the same time.

Kate’s tiny suitcase rested by the door. Kate sat on the edge of her bed, studying Anna’s unfocused efforts. The bridesmaid’s dress was disrespectfully balled up and stuffed in a crevice of Anna’s suitcase, as it deserved to be. Anna zipped up her bag, thinking it signaled the perfect compartmentalization of events. As if none of it had happened. Anna was starting to feel human again. Then Kate spoke.

“I went looking for you last night when you didn’t come back. The bartender told me you had left with a man. He described him,” Kate said. “A good police description.”

Anna remained expressionless.

“One day,” Kate said, “you might have the urge to come clean, to tell George what you did. When the urge comes, fight it. It won’t clear your conscience and it won’t do anything for her.”

“It’s not what you think,” Anna said. The words sounded so foolish, it was as if someone else had spoken them.

“Just promise me,” said Kate. “And then we’ll never talk about it again.”

Anna slumped against the door, leaning her head against the evacuation instructions.

“I promise.”