“What about you?” I ask. “What if it were just up to you?”
“I think having a practice in a small town would be nice. Relaxing. Maybe I could even keep regular hours.”
"What's that like?" I ask.
She laughs along with me.
"You know, growing up, I thought all of those people who have their friends and their work and everything within a twenty-minute drive and I thought how boring? That would be awful. But now having this baby, that's all I can think about. I just want Lincoln to be with me. I guess the pregnancy I can handle on my own, but I'm a little scared about having the baby. And then after we come home ..."
I'm about to bring up hiring help again, but she beats me to it.
"Help would be useful, but it's not the same thing as raising a child with your husband, with the father. And I don't even mean forever, you know? Just a couple of years. We can connect, bond, leave the rat race."
"I couldn't agree more," I say. "That's why you should do it."
"Do what?"
"You should seriously think about taking the trust to court."
"What about your mother? She'll never speak to us again."
"You'd be surprised."
"What are you talking about?" Marguerite furrows her brows and crosses her arms across her chest again.
"I'm not saying that Mom wouldn't be mad. She would, of course. All I'm saying is that she may even admire you after that."
"What? That doesn't make any sense.”
"I don't know. I can't make any guarantees. All I know is that the money should be yours. That is an unfair trust, and if you can convince Lincoln to go along with it, I'll testify on your behalf at any time. You deserve that money, Marguerite. You love each other. You care about one another. That's what that's about."
She reaches out, grabs my hand, and pulls me into a tight hug.
I wonder why I have been thinking a lot about that trust now. It has been weighing heavily on my mind for a while, partly because of how unfair it is and how much the two of them deserve that money to be theirs, and partly because that same trust applies to me.
I also have to marry someone from a comparably wealthy family, whatever the hell that means. So far, Mom hasn't been putting any pressure on me about that.
She probably thinks I'm sowing my wild oats or whatever patriarchal, antiquarian ideas she still considers to be dogma. But I think about it, that money, those options.
It's not me that I'm thinking about, not exactly.
It's all the debts that I owe and all the money that they're going to collect unless I pay them.
I stay with Marguerite late into the evening. We watch Netflix, I order a pizza, and she continues to eat her crackers and fruit.
After that initial conversation, we talk about anything and everything except for Jacqueline and Lincoln.
We laugh, we watch some stupid fail videos on YouTube, and we pretend that we're both much happier than we actually are.
Initially, I was going to stay until Lincoln showed up, but when it's almost eleven and he's still not back, I tell her that I have an early flight in the morning and I have to go.
She gives me a warm hug and I tell her not to bother getting out of bed. She's too nauseous and too tired.
Giving her a kiss on her forehead, I tell her to lock the door behind me with her app.
12
Dante
The following weekend, after I come back from monitoring Vasko, and overseeing his investments with my investors' money, I head to the Hamptons.
The family owns a large beach house that we refer to as, "The Cottage," but it's hardly that at all. It's five bedrooms with two wraparound porches, a large pool, and it borders onto the water, onto the sand, and the swaying green grasses for which the Hamptons are famous for.
My family owned this house a while ago and it has recently come back to us after Mom agreed to help Lincoln and Marguerite with the financing.
There has been a lot of land consolidation, and taking down of old cottages, and buildup of new giant homes all around us. This house remains somewhat of a relic. It was particularly large back in the day when it was first built, but Mom still complains about it because she prefers Cape Cod.
The property now belongs officially to Lincoln and Marguerite, and they are paying Mom the mortgage and the fees while she holds the title. Still, it remains more of a family place.
I drive down the narrow streets, two lanes with beautiful landscaping around each home. The summers are what everyone here lives for.
This is when all the out-of-towners swarm in, the wives and the children typically staying all summer and the husbands coming just for weekends.
I have more work to get to on Monday, but I'm looking forward to dipping my feet in the ocean, having a barbecue, and catching up with Lincoln.
When Mom calls, I reluctantly answer. I had mentioned to her that we're going to be meeting up here this weekend, and she's still bitter about it.
"Why can't you come to Cape Cod?" she asks.
"Because I have to fly out of LaGuardia early Monday morning."
"Well, you can fly it out of Logan Airport or Cape Cod. It has a bunch of flights."
This is probably the third time we have had this conversation.
"When was the last time you were here?” I ask.
We're video chatting, and she's in the kitchen chopping vegetables feverishly. She turns away from me for a moment to tend to the stove. I just sit here holding my phone in front of my face, waiting for her to return. "Where are you?" Mom asks, turning back.
"I just pulled up to the house,” I say and point the phone at the big white traditional home with siding and two columns in front of the curved driveway.
"I guess they're taking good care of it," she says, "from what I can see."
"Yeah, it's perfect. They had it repainted. The housekeeper is doing a good job."
"I still don't know why you all can't come up here—” Mom starts to say again, but I cut her off, and tell her that I have to go.
Getting out of my rented car, I park right by the front door and knock.
No one is inside.
I use the code that Marguerite had texted me, and then walk into the newly painted interior. The living room is grand, with a big piano in the corner.
No one in our family plays, but it was bought by my grandfather many years ago as a statement piece. Now we have to hang on to it for probably in perpetuity.
The walls have been painted a combination of slate gray and white, giving it a very modern look. There's a waterfall style kitchen island made out of marble, and a sink right in the middle.
I head to the sub-zero refrigerator, open it up and see that it has been freshly stocked with fruits, vegetables, and some pre-made meals in the freezer.
I grab a vegetarian lasagna, nuke it in the microwave, and eat it straight out of the container.
That’s another thing that Mom wouldn’t approve of. For her it's all about presentation. You have to eat from the right plates using the right utensils, no matter what.
The food is fresh and delicious, and I scarf it down, and then make myself another. Grabbing a beer out of the fridge, I walk out onto the porch and inhale the scent of salt water coming off the ocean.