The Necklace Read online

  “She was pretty loony tunes at the end,” Baldwin says to Nell, and then turns to his children and says, more loudly, “She was hoarding scrap silver.”

  “We did manage to clean out the basement. We had a team that was very sensitive,” Louis says directly to Nell, as if she is already in charge.

  “Found a whole room filled with nothing but quart mason jars filled with rancid water, like a typhoid version of an air-raid shelter,” Baldwin is saying. “And then the scrap silver, of course.” He nods his head at Louis. “Bins and bins of it. There was a shoebox with some gold Krugerrands, too. Couple of cases of Chartreuse as well.”

  Nell’s picturing Ali Baba’s cave in that dirt-floor basement, but filled with gold formerly under international sanction, tarnished flatware, and liquor that tastes like a Swiss cough drop.

  “The gold has been valued and included in the statements,” Louis says, trying to sound thorough. “The silver is going to be dicey.”

  “She was concerned with the collapse of Western civilization, like, legitimately concerned with a coming Armageddon,” Pansy says, and Nell can’t tell if Pansy shares this belief or is just protective of her grandmother.

  “Like the zombie apocalypse?” Emerson says, eyes still on his phone. “You guys couldn’t have had her in some blue chips or something?” he says to Louis, who holds up both hands in defense. Lawyers don’t handle investments, and it was Loulou’s money to do with as she liked, however ill-advised. They all know this.

  “So who knows if that necklace is real,” Baldwin continues, turning to Nell. “I never saw Mother wear it. Not once.” He stops stitching when he looks up and says, “I think she said it was cursed, but that could just be more bats-in-the-belfry stuff. Seems like you got the delusional gift.”

  His quick dismissal of her single legacy makes her feel like this should be expected. She didn’t really think she was here to receive anything legitimate, did she? Nothing besides some leftovers or a mix-up should be expected, even if she is executor.

  She can feel Louis watching them all.

  Baldwin, of course, gets the house. As the last surviving member of his generation, and Loulou’s sole heir, this is expected. Nell’s mother, who has been dead a decade now, is not mentioned. Nor is her father, which is understood. Loulou claimed he was never a true Quincy, and, as an in-law, he wasn’t. Nell had called him in Italy, and he had refused to come. “Come see me afterward,” he’d said. “You’ll need it.”

  “ ‘And the residue of my estate,’ ” Pansy reads out loud. “ ‘Keeping in mind the provisions I have made for my son, Baldwin, and his children in subsequent bequests and gifts, both in this instrument and throughout their lifetimes, blah-blah-blah to be divided and blah-blah by my grandchildren and my grandniece Cornelia Quincy Merrihew.’ Translation?” she says, looking at Louis.

  “You split the contents of the house in thirds, notwithstanding the enumerated gifts, of course. The structure itself goes to Baldwin.”

  Louis passes around another stack of papers without meeting Baldwin’s eye. “The trusts, and the money therein, remain much as they were when they were established during her lifetime. You’ll see little change there.”

  Louis turns to Baldwin. “And you remain executor of those.”

  Emerson is scanning his copy, mumbling to himself.

  “There’s a bit of money left,” Louis says, nodding toward a stack of paper in Emerson’s hands. “That’s the most recent trust statement from the financial advisors that you asked for.”

  “It was intended for her to live on,” Baldwin says, a touch defensively, as Emerson flips to the last pages containing the totals.

  “She went through it like spaghetti,” Emerson says under his breath.

  “Son,” Baldwin says with a shake of his head.

  Pansy turns to her father. “Did you know about this, too?” She rises, unfolding herself in the lanky, double-jointed way of an athlete. “About the contents?”

  Baldwin only shrugs at Pansy and then turns to address Nell, though she’s not asked any of the millions of questions whirring through her mind. “If you must know, she asked me if I wanted it all. And I couldn’t lie to her. I don’t. I have everything I need, and I don’t need a bunch of Mother’s old things.” At Pansy’s look, he says, “What? I thought she should do what she wanted with it. I have to say, I never thought she’d gift it to all of you equally.” He turns to Louis and says, “But that was silly of me—”

  “As it stands, I know she took a long time considering her options,” Louis interrupts, ready to move this along.

  “She always did feel guilty about your mother,” Baldwin continues to Nell in the magnanimous tone of someone secure that he’s gotten everything he wanted.

  Nell’s neck feels hot, and she decides to opt for the nicotine gum, even though she’d really like a cigarette, an old habit she’s been able to fend off in times of stress with the gum. What she’d really like is a few moments to step outside and breathe. Even breathing in noxious poison would be better than sitting in this atmosphere.

  “She had one of the nurses call very late on a Saturday night,” Louis is saying to Emerson in response to some question about the date of the will. “If you look you’ll see we had the nurse on staff as a witness. I couldn’t come until Monday morning, so she’d even had a few days to think about it, and she was quite clear.” Here he looks Pansy in the eye. “And she was quite lucid when she requested the changes. For good measure, because I knew—” Here he clears his throat. “Because I knew she’d want it done properly, you’ll see the affidavit at the end, signed by two doctors, stating that she was in sufficient health, not in pain, and not suffering under any mental deficiency when she requested these changes.”

  “One of them’s Dr. Kelly, her old bridge partner,” Emerson says, looking up from the page. “He’s almost as old as she is.”

  “I think you’ll find Dr. Kelly is still a practicing member of the AMA. And the other affidavit is from his younger partner in the practice, Dr. Chin.”

  Louis is then met with a barrage of questions; no one waits for him to answer before firing another. What does this mean for taxes? Who’s to take care of the day-to-day? How does this affect the generation-skipping trusts? What do we do next?

  All the questions secretly ask the same thing: do you know what you’re doing?

  Nell watches as the chummy rapport with Louis fades away, suspicion falling into place quickly. She reaches into her bag for another piece of gum and adds it to the wad in her cheek, feeling the nicotine hit her bloodstream.

  “Can I have one of those?” Pansy asks.

  “It’s nicotine gum.” Nell mumbles her confession.

  “Okay,” Pansy says. “I’d like one.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m open to all experiences.”

  At that, Nell hands it over. She never has been able to say no to Pansy. No one has.

  Pansy raises it in toast before popping it in. “Sorry to hear about you and Paul breaking up,” she says as she chews. Meanwhile, Baldwin and Emerson drill Louis on provisions she doesn’t care about.

  Nell has to think for a minute about how to respond to a kindness from Pansy. Things have been over with Paul for months, but Nell recognizes the gesture. And there are other factors to consider. There’s Pansy’s smugness, backed by her seemingly successful marriage to Brian, a management consultant who travels constantly. There are their two boys, who are enmeshed in soccer and lacrosse. And then there is her job as a holistic life coach and intuitive guide, which seems to be doing well given the elite pricing Nell had seen when she’d stalked the website yesterday.

  This is all in contrast to what Nell suspects is the Quincy view of her life, as ingrained as it is retro: a spinster with no kids, a sucking black hole of a career, and a wastrel father in Italy.

  “But I never liked him. No one did.” And this is classic Pansy, thinks Nell, nodding her head at the predictability, but l
ooking like she agrees. Pansy’s digs are not traditionally the type of thing you can call her out on without looking crazy or defending an untenable position. Paranoia hits Nell in the chest at the thought of a Quincy cabal discussing the wretchedness of Paul, of her life, only now letting their opinions be known. It’s one thing to suspect, quite another to confirm.

  The shimmering glamour-spell of the Quincys is fading, as it does when she’s around them long enough, reminding her that her mother did know best and a wide berth is required. She cracks her gum in response to Pansy.

  “I’ve got a new chanting group for healing you might like,” Pansy continues. “You should try it while you’re here.”

  Louis is packing up his much slimmer document case. Paper is strewn around the room as if he’s detonated a bomb. Nell tries to catch his eye as he moves toward the door, but he won’t look at her. She has questions, and she wants to ask them away from Pansy. She gives up any pretense of disinterest and follows him to the front hall, ditching her gum in the wrapper and stashing it in her empty glass.

  “You don’t know where this thing is?” she asks his retreating back.

  He turns and holds up his hands, as if to say “Search me.”

  Nell doesn’t want an enemy, so she won’t challenge his handling of the inventory. “Did she have any other messages for me? As executor, maybe?”

  His forehead furrows and lines crease the corners of his intelligent eyes, drawing them down and giving him a competent look, as if he can handle anything thrown his way. She suddenly wonders what he thinks of this whole business, if he finds them all ridiculous. “She was sure of what she was doing, if that’s what you’re asking.” He places both of his bags at his feet and widens his stance, bracing for an inquisition.

  “I’m glad she knew what she was doing. I have no clue.”

  “She didn’t really confide in me,” he says. “I mean, beyond the professional.” Nell doesn’t doubt that. Loulou confided in few people. “But you being a lawyer certainly had something to do with her choice of executor. She did mention that a few times.”

  “Loulou was a Libra,” Pansy says, coming up behind them, and not even pretending she didn’t overhear. “The scales, you know.” She holds her hands up with an imaginary set of weights. “They have an acute sense of fairness.” She addresses Louis as if Nell isn’t there. “As they define it, of course.” With that, she walks out to retrieve something from her car.

  “She was kind of an outcast, my mom.” Nell tries to feel normal as the intricate gears of her family are revealed to him. But she shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. In his role as estate attorney, Louis’s already had an eyeful.

  “From what I can tell, your mother was very much on Loulou’s mind,” he says generously.

  “Are you staying?” Pansy asks, coming back from the car with a saddle leather tote. When Nell doesn’t answer, she says, “Brian’s out of town and I’ve scheduled sleepovers for the boys. You really should, you know.” She breezes past as if she is Lady Bountiful distributing largesse.

  After Pansy passes them, Louis trains his blue eyes on Nell, so light they’re almost gray. “Yeah,” he says, not unkindly. “Shouldn’t say it. But even the little exposure I’ve had to your family, I’ve gotta say—I’m glad I’m not you right now.” And with that, he hefts his bags and leaves.

  1925

  THE BOOTLEG CHAMPAGNE

  May insisted on throwing Ambrose a party at the farm, as if she were auditioning for the role of wife, showcasing her skill as a hostess, trying to change his mind about leaving on his trip. He wanted to tell her that her strategy was obvious, and that no one doubted her abilities, least of all him. But he wouldn’t say that to her now; tomorrow he’d be gone.

  She’d arranged it all perfectly, yes. The food was supposedly Chinese. The guests were avoiding it. She’d even found some recipe for milky Indian tea with spices, which everyone ignored in favor of illegal champagne. Little maps hung off the portico and fluttered in the hot breeze—Japan, Korea, all of Africa. A large poster shaped like a postage stamp, with “Bon Voyage, Ambrose!!!” written on it in May’s girlish looping script, was propped against the bandstand—the three exclamation points at the end like jabs.

  Given that she wanted a real party, and that meant cocktails, she’d convinced his brother, Ethan, to throw the shindig at his newly built country place instead of her parents’ house in town.

  Ambrose settled an arm across Ethan’s heavy shoulder as they watched the guests on the lawn. Ambrose felt a sudden wave of anticipatory nostalgia. He’d invited his brother on the trip only once, and Ethan had declined with certainty. But two brothers off to see the world, really that made such an engaging picture, didn’t it? Standing there now, Ambrose felt he should have pressed. His brother should be coming with him. He’d have taken their sister, Loulou, with him if she’d been older. Poor thing was dying for adventure and had been a willing audience as he planned his trip, living vicariously through his many choices as if they were her own.

  “Wonder what Father would think of this.” Ambrose joggled his glass. The smell of the sharp pine water Ethan used for shaving mixed with the astringent bubbles from their champagne in the heat.

  Their father, Israel Quincy, would not be pleased to see them drinking. He was a well-known teetotaler, a throwback to his Puritan ancestors, and a man who publicly supported Prohibition despite his two sons sitting at the hub of the young social whirl, which included illegal liquor.

  “Sober mirth and controlled rapture,” Ethan said.

  “More like ecstatic piousness and wanton boredom.” Ambrose enjoyed needling his older brother, something he’d been doing since they were boys. Teasing Ethan made him feel closer to his brother, as if they were on the same team. And today Ambrose wanted to confirm that they were still on the same team. He’d never outright thank Ethan for the party; that would only make them both uncomfortable.

  “He disapproves of excess of any kind,” Ethan said, reflexive in defense of his father, in defense of anyone, really.

  Yes, the teetotaling made Israel seem fussy and, Ambrose hated to admit it, a bit feminine. Temperance was a women’s issue.

  “Except excess money in his bank account,” Ambrose said, and nodded deeply in mock solemnity.

  “And your bank account,” Ethan said, clipped. “Your travel accounts.”

  The brothers sipped their drinks in silent acknowledgment of their father’s munificence.

  “It looks good,” Ambrose finally said, gesturing toward the house. “All it needs is a moat.”

  Ethan kept his eyes on the house across the lawn, but Ambrose knew his brother recognized the olive branch in the backhanded compliment. It was the only type of compliment tolerated between the brothers.

  It was then a third joined their group, shouldering into Ambrose, and sloshing a good amount of his drink on the lawn.

  “Looking forward to those pearls of the Orient?” Richard Cavanaugh, or Dicky, as he was known, was dressed as an Indian dancing girl—complete with kohl-rimmed eyes and swathed in pink silk shot through with gold thread.

  “Get ready now,” he said, swiveling his hips in a faux seductive dance. “They’re supposedly ruinous.” Dicky’s exuberance was his calling card and his fondness for costume the stuff of legend. Months ago, he’d come to the Union Club’s formal New Year’s Eve party clad only in an enormous costume diaper, though it was snowing, wearing an immense frilly bonnet and holding a gallon-sized baby bottle full of rye in his hand—a horrendous Baby New Year. He’d attended that debutante ball in Baltimore in a tuxedo with a Pied Piper hat on his head and set loose one hundred white mice on the dance floor, smuggled in a writhing tennis valise. The club had sent him the extermination bill.

  “I prefer Ohio girls,” Ambrose said. “Buckeyed beauties.”

  “Bucktoothed is more like it.” Dicky was frequently embarrassed by Ambrose’s penchant for the flowery. “I’ll pass.”

  “Best to pass on the b
uckeye, they have poisonous nuts.” Ethan smiled.

  “Nuts are not fearsome,” Ambrose replied.

  “You’re a nut.” Dicky did the hip swivel again, and Ethan backed away in exaggerated defeat, hands up as if at gunpoint.

  Ambrose knew this was when his brother felt best, welcoming people like a paterfamilias in training, though he was still a bachelor. Ethan preferred the beginnings of any party, those he attended or his own—before someone spilled a drink on his shirt, before the flowers wilted, before the champagne ran out—and why not? Ethan had built his house for parties.

  Finished only last month, the faux Cotswolds mansion was meant to impress with its scale, its grit stucco and stonework, its leaded glass windows. Country, yes, but large enough for house parties with a half-dozen couples in the guest rooms and a small herd of bachelors sleeping on camp cots in the open third-floor dormitory. Ethan imported the coffered ceilings in the front hall from some monastery in Italy, and the library was paneled in black walnut milled on-site from trees felled on his land. The architect ordered all the furniture in one day from a Grand Rapids cabinet-maker—a different color and theme for each bedroom. The green bedroom furniture was painted with flowers and vines, the blue bedroom suite with a geometric Moorish pattern, the white bedroom with gilt and French curves. The rest of the house was styled in popular reproduction Tudor and fake Jacobean befitting a magnate in training.

  “Come on now, you two.” Dicky rounded on them, linking one arm with Ethan, the other with Ambrose, and marching them out on the lawn, mindless of their drinks. “Form a brother team. Can’t have a race without the host and guest of honor.”