Page 25

Elena picks up her phone. I watch her thumbs move – she’s running numbers, looking up Frederick’s net worth. After about fifteen seconds, she puts the phone down.

“That’s a ten-figure divorce,” Elena says. “From a twenty-six-day marriage. That’s roughly thirty-nine million dollars per day married. I’m an accountant – trust me, that math is beautiful.” A pause. “I think I want to be you when I grow up.” She says it flatly, without irony, as a statement of professional admiration.

My mother looks at her. Not the usual assessment look – something rarer, something I don’t think I’ve seen before.

“I was given sons,” my mother says. “Two of them. I have made my peace with it, in the way one makes peace with a chronic condition. But if I’d had a daughter, I’d have hoped she might be something like you.”

The room holds its breath. My mother does not give compliments. My mother issues evaluations. This is neither – it is something unarmoured and real, and it lasts exactly two seconds before she smooths her jacket and the General returns.

“So. You’re an accountant.”

“I’m an unemployed accountant. There’s a difference. The difference is that I have more free time and lower rates.” Elena sits forward. “You need a forensic accountant to handle the asset restructuring, and whoever Frederick’s team hires is going to try to claw back through the offshore holdings. You’ve got exposure in at least three jurisdictions. I could help with that.”

“I don’t hire unemployed people,” my mother says. “I poach employed ones. From the best firms. It demoralises the competition and the candidates arrive pre-vetted. It’s called standards, dear.”

“You also didn’t plan to get divorced twice in two years, and yet here we are. And with respect – your standards approved Frederick. Mine would have flagged the boats.”

The bathroom door opens. Luke walks out in a towel.

Just a towel. Low on the hips, still dripping, hair wet, because he was expecting the apartment to contain his husband, his sister, and nobody else – a context in which a towel is perfectly reasonable. He’s heading for the bedroom, one hand holding the towel, the other reaching for the doorframe, and he freezes when he sees Catherine sitting in his kitchen in a checkered power-suit with a Yorkshire Terrier tunnelling under his armchair cushion.

“Catherine,” he says.

My mother looks at him. Her gaze travels from his face to his chest to his abdomen and back to his face, unhurried, like she’s appraising a sculpture at auction.

“Lucas.” She uses his full name. She always uses his full name. “You look… exceptionally healthy. The jawline is holding up. And the – well.” She gestures vaguely at his torso. “Your mother’s genetics are doing remarkable work. One can see why Preston married you. Put on a shirt, dear. You’re distracting Duchess.”

Duchess, under the cushion, has not moved. Duchess cannot see Luke. But Catherine has made her point.

Luke looks at me. I give him the shorthand – eyebrows up, slight head tilt, mouth flat – which translates roughly to: she divorced Frederick, she made another fortune, Elena is doing math, and the dog is having a breakdown.

Luke nods. He retreats to the bedroom. He comes back in jeans and a T-shirt and goes straight to the kitchen. This is Luke’s crisis protocol: when in doubt, operate the Breville. The machine hums. The milk steams. Normality is restored, one shot at a time.

“Preston.” My mother sits in the one remaining chair – the wooden one, the one that wobbles, which she addresses by not acknowledging it. She sits with perfect posture on a wobbling chair and makes the chair look like it’s the one with the problem. “I did not come here only to discuss Frederick.”

“I assumed.”

“I want to talk about your future. Yours and Luke’s.”

“Our future is fine, Mother.”

“Your future is a fourth-floor walk-up with a broken elevator, a radiator that sounds like a dying animal, and a shower that I suspect violates the Geneva Conventions. Your future is not fine, Preston. Your future needs renovation. Quite possibly demolition.”

“We have a situation with our living arrangements that we’re–”

“You have a crisis with your living arrangements. I can see the closet from here. There is a garment rack, Preston. In the bedroom. Yorks do not use garment racks. Yorks have dressing rooms. Your grandfather had a dressing room with a chandelier. You have a metal pole with hangers screwed into two drywall anchors!”

“We’re saving up, Mother. Buying in this city costs money, and we want to purchase something with our own earnings. Not my trust fund.”

“Buying costs money,” she repeats, as though I’ve said something in a language she doesn’t speak. “Preston, what could a decent three-bedroom in Manhattan possibly cost? One hundred thousand?”

Elena chokes on a Froot Loop.

“Mother. A three-bedroom in Manhattan starts at about two and a half million, and that’s for a fixer-upper.”

“Two and a half million? For an apartment? That doesn’t even include a garden?”

“No. It does not include a garden.”