Around ten, Wogs and I got permission from Aunt Livy to retire to our rooms. We were grateful to be able to change out of our gut-squishing girdles and pinchy heels. Wogs whispered that Judy was already upstairs, with a bottle of champagne she’d scored from the kitchen.
I would have preferred some time with Alistair, but he was still pouring booze for a few straggling VIPs. I hadn’t had a moment to speak to him since I’d kissed Jack—and seen or not seen what had gone on with Aunt Livy. Now, after Grayson Bell’s pronouncement, my head was a battleground of conflicting emotions. At the moment denial was winning. I couldn’t accept that Alistair was not a student at Princeton. I’d been in his dorm room, right there on campus. And he was so…Princetonian. Besides, I’d met him at the Princeton mixer, for goodness sake.
And Grayson Bell was weird. Wogs and Judy said so. I laughed happily as they made cruel fun of him. After a couple of glasses of champagne, I was able to push his awful accusation to the back of my mind. I decided not to rock the boat by asking Judy what she and Alistair had been fighting about. I was sure that tomorrow I’d finally get Alistair alone and we would talk, clarify, and all would be well.
But the next morning Alistair did not appear at the breakfast table, which Aunt Livy explained—with uncharacteristic leniency—by citing the lateness of last night’s VIP partying. Wogs and Judy and I were assigned to help Marie and her people with kitchen clean-up, and Alistair still didn’t appear—maybe because it was women’s work—but I was annoyed when he didn’t join us at lunch, either. Aunt Livy informed me that he and Uncle Con had gone off to do some last-minute shopping.
“Con always puts off shopping until Christmas Eve,” she said. “He goes to the local jewelry store and buys outrageous things, has them lavishly gift wrapped, bestows them on us on Christmas Day—then we take them back and get what we want.”
Gifts. I had no gifts for anybody. I hadn’t even thought about it. I did have the book I’d bought for my dad—an ancient volume of the nonsense poems of Edward Lear I’d picked up at a library sale. Maybe I’d give it to Alistair. Everybody else would have to understand.
I supposed it made sense that Uncle Con would want to take Alistair—and his car—on his Christmas shopping trip, but it was weird that Alistair was spending all his time with my Aunt and Uncle and not with me.
I was beginning to feel the Alistair I knew was evaporating, and a strange, distant cousin-y person had taken his place.
I let Wogs and Judy talk me into going sledding on the front hillside after lunch. I figured it would take my mind off Alistair. But once we got out there with an ancient Flexible Flyer and a couple of aluminum saucers, I wished I hadn’t. The hill was steep and ended abruptly in a stand of birches by the road, and the snow was heavily packed, with a layer of crunchy ice under the dusting of snow from last night. But Wogs declared the conditions “perfect,” and she and Judy jumped on the Flexible Flyer and zoomed down the hill, laughing all the way in a state of Jingle Bellsy merriment.
“Come on!” Wogs called when they got to the bottom. “Saucer on down!”
Judy chimed in. “What a high! It’s better than drugs!”
I hadn’t done anything like this since I was twelve, but I lowered myself gingerly onto the saucer, pushed off, and catapulted down the hill screaming with the scary fun of it all. Wogs yelled something, but I closed my eyes, trying not to let the scary win over the fun.
Wogs yelled again. Judy screamed. So did another voice. A man’s.
I opened my eyes and saw a tree. A big tree. Coming at me at terrifying speed. I managed to swerve to miss it, but that sent me spinning into another tree. And another. Followed by pain. And blackness. And then, hovering above me, the handsome, smiling face of Jack Poirier, telling me everything would be all right.
I woke in a white room. My head was fuzzy and my left leg hurt a lot. I heard people outside. Nobody I recognized. I called out for help.
“The Conway girl,” somebody said. “She’s awake.”
I faded back into fuzziness and when I opened my eyes again, I saw Aunt Livy—and Alistair, right behind her.
“Nicky!” Alistair said, reaching for my hand. “Thank god you’re awake. You’ve given us an awful scare.”
“You have a concussion,” Aunt Livy said. “And a broken leg. I don’t know what possessed the three of you to go sliding down the hill like four-year-olds. Thank goodness Jack Poirier was taking a break from his work in the ballroom. He got you to the hospital faster than if we’d called an ambulance.”
I didn’t much like hearing that Jack Poirier had witnessed my humiliating wipe-out, but with Alistair here, looking at me again with concern and affection, I didn’t dwell on it. I smiled up at Alistair and squeezed his hand. He squeezed mine back. Everything else faded to insignificance. I might be a bit battered, but all was well in my world.
The next morning, Christmas Day, Alistair appeared in my hospital room again—by himself this time. He gave me a yummy kiss—our first in days—and presented me with a little gift-wrapped box. Inside was an exquisite pair of pearl earrings. My eyes teared as I hugged him in gratitude. I was embarrassed at what a small gift I had for him.
“In my suitcase,” I said, fighting to speak coherently though the pain-killer haze. “Back in my room at Goose Hill—there’s a package wrapped in red tissue paper…”
“Your suitcase is right here,” he said—pointing to where a familiar plaid case stood in the corner. “I brought it over yesterday.”
He seemed amazingly pleased with little book of verses. If he sensed it was originally intended for my father, he didn’t say. He read me a couple of silly limericks, and then quoted a poem by F. Scott Fitzgerald that he liked to recite—something about a surviving a storm that I suppose was appropriate to my situation. It had a line about crying trees that made me giggle. At first I thought he was going to be angry I’d interrupted his performance, but he gave me a hug and laughed. Finally I felt the warmth we used to share in the little apartment in West Conshohocken. I didn’t need to talk about Jack Poirier or the stupid kiss. The Alistair I knew was back.
“Isn’t this a crazy Christmas?” I said. “I hope you’re having an OK time. Did Uncle Con work you to death at the Open House? I should have warned you we’d have to work for our bed and board.”
“The engineers got a little tedious,” he said. “But the evening was fine. Except that I hardly got to see you.” He put his arms around me and gave me another kiss. “And I don’t much care for your cousin’s friend Judy. I have no idea why a Conway would consort with a vulgar person like that. But as for your family—they’re wonderful. If it weren’t for you, I’d have spent Christmas alone with my unfinished play manuscript. The Gorgon hasn’t even phoned. It’s happened so often…thank you, darling.” There was a catch in his voice, and for a moment, instead of the suave jet-setter, I saw Alistair as he must have been as a little boy—abandoned by his mother in one boarding school after another, alone and unloved.
I hugged him tightly, regretting all my suspicions. “They all like you too,” I said, lying only a little. “Do you believe some Conway Industries guy was actually jealous that you got to be bartender and not him? He was so bent out of shape, he tried to tell me you’re not a Princeton student.”
Alistair stood, his face contorted in fury.
“What? Who said that…?”
I told him about Grayson, wishing will all my heart that I hadn’t brought up the subject. I’d shattered the lovely mood.
When I finished my story, Alistair—still looking miffed—gave me a quick squeeze and said he had to get back to Goose Hill because Aunt Livy was expecting him at lunch. I knew about Aunt Livy’s meal time demands, so I urged him on his way.
I was surprised when, only a few minutes later, Jack Poirier came in, carrying a box of chocolate Santas and a large plush red-nosed reindeer wearing a tiny cowboy hat. “I couldn’t resist the cowboy Rudolph,” he said. “Remember the song you used to sing about Rudolph the two-gun cowboy?”
I had no recollection of cowboys named Rudolph or of singing for anybody. My voice had a range of three notes, all of which sounded like duck farts. It creeped me out that this man had more memories of my childhood than I did.
The rest of the family didn’t visit until the next day, when they announced they had arrived to take me back to Goose Hill, since the doctors no longer had to monitor my head injury. Of course I was disappointed Alistair wasn’t with them. When I asked about him, Aunt Livy looked pained and handed me a note.
On elegant stationery—obviously Aunt Livy’s, since it smelled of her perfume—Alistair had written—
“The Gorgon wants to see her little boy after all. Flying out of Philadelphia tonight. Sorry I don’t have time for good-byes.”
My heart felt a pang. But I knew it was a selfish pang. His mother was as difficult as my father. It was an unspoken bond between us.
Aunt Livy sniffed. “When Alistair told us he hadn’t heard from his mother in weeks, I insisted he phone her,” she said. “And it turned out she was worried sick and there’s a ticket to London waiting in his mailbox at home.”
I made myself fake a smile. Everything was perfectly reasonable.
Only Judy suggested Alistair could have tried harder.
“He couldn’t have taken fifteen minutes to stop and say goodbye to his girlfriend in the hospital?”
Aunt Livy sniffed again. It was obvious she shared Alistair’s opinion of Judy.
When we got back to Goose Hill, I was moved into a room on the first floor so I could roll around in the wheelchair they’d rented for me. I could have climbed the stairs with my crutches, which would probably have been better, fitness-wise, but Aunt Livy kept making noises about my head injury.
As the hospital-strength pain medication wore off, I was just as happy not to be jostling myself around. My head felt as if it had been on a three-week bender, and my leg throbbed with low, dull pain that aspirin couldn’t touch.
Aunt Livy had Marie pack up the rest of my things and bring them down to my new, sunny room where I could sit looking out at the snow-covered pines and the ocean beyond. Aunt Livy said she’d sent the rose formal out to be dry cleaned. I was embarrassed to have left it in a heap on the floor.
“But your great-grandmother’s jewelry,” Aunt Livy said, interrupting my inept apology. “I can’t find it anywhere. Where did you put it?”
I didn’t. Trying to think made my head hurt under its bandages. I half-remembered taking the necklace and earrings off. I would most likely have put them in the case, but I wasn’t sure. What I remembered was a lot of champagne and quite a bit of punch before that. I told her I probably left it on top of the dresser with my make-up, which had arrived with my things at the hospital.
“Who packed my suitcase?” I asked. “She might know.”
“Alistair did that,” Aunt Livy said. “He said he’d know best what things you’d need. We had no idea how long the doctors would keep you at that point.”
Alistair had packed my suitcase. The thought came to me he would have known about the gift he pretended to find such a surprise. I didn’t know if that was sweet or not.
Marie was told to turn the room inside out, but there was no sign of the garnets.
By the next morning, Aunt Livy was in a fury.
“I want this house searched top to bottom,” she announced at breakfast. “Nobody leaves until we find those jewels. If we can’t find them, it means one of the help we hired for the Open House has burgled us and we’ll have to call the police. It couldn’t have been the waiters, because they were gone by nine, so it had to be one of the clean-up girls. Who knows what else she took?”
I felt terrible. Not only was this my fault for not looking after the jewels, but in my crippled state, I couldn’t even help. My head had stopped hurting, but I could not get the hang of the crutches. I especially felt bad because I knew Wogs and Judy had planned to go into town.
“Maybe I didn’t take them off in my room. Maybe I waited until I got to Wogs’ room. We drank some champagne…”
“You took the Mumm’s from the kitchen?” Aunt Livy gave Wogs a dark look.
Wogs nodded, taking the rap for Judy.
“Good. Champagne is better for your figure. Punch is full of sugar. Now go find that jewelry. I don’t want to have to deal with the police. They’re so exhausting.”
Judy looked uncomfortable as she and Wogs exchanged looks.
“Would you mind if I went into town first?” Judy said. “I have to pick up my, um, antihistamines. I have allergies.”
Wogs tossed Judy the keys to the Renault. “Go. I’ll search for both of us. I’ll bet I’ll find them by the time you get back.”
Wogs wheeled me into the conservatory and handed me a copy of Town and Country.
“Judy doesn’t need pills,” she whispered. “I’ve sent her to buy me cigs. I’m sick of her Larks. I’m a menthol smoker. You don’t have any do you?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t developed a smoking habit in spite of the Brontës’ urging.
I hadn’t got more than a few pages into the magazine when I heard Wogs stomping down the stairs. She threw open the door to the conservatory, her lower lip trembling. “Look,” she said, holding out the familiar velvet box. “I found them. You know where? In Judy’s room. In her suitcase. I wasn’t even looking for them. I just wanted a cig. Nicky, what am I going to do?” She collapsed on the wicker love seat. “The person I love is a thief. And a liar. And she had the nerve to talk about Alistair.”
I felt an awful chill. Not because of what she’d discovered about Judy, although that was awful. But my thoughts were of Grayson Bell and his stupid accusations.
“Judy talked…about Alistair? What, exactly, did she say?”