“So you haven’t seen him, Jonathan?” Frederick Flood asked. They were standing in the Floods’ kitchen at eight o’clock in the morning on Friday. Frederick and his wife had just come in from Greenwich.
“Who has?” Fiona asked. She glanced around the kitchen, first at me, then at Flan, who was putting on her coat to go outside. Meanwhile the Floods’ driver was bringing in suitcases from their car.
The Flood parents were always packing and unpacking at odd times, going back and forth from Manhattan to Greenwich, and then just as often they were headed to Paris or Bermuda or Antigua, or to the horn of Africa for safari. Their lives were a perpetual vacation.
“But you’re staying here?” Frederick asked.
“Um, if it’s okay.” I said.
“Of course it is. It’d just be nice if we knew where our son was.”
“I think he said he’d meet us up in the country before Thanksgiving,” Flan said.
“That’s this coming Thursday.” Her mother sighed and tightened her cashmere scarf around her neck. “Perhaps he’ll check in with us before then?”
“I can call him.” I pulled out my phone, though I knew how completely doubtful it was that I’d reach Patch.
“No, I talked to him before,” Flan said. “He’s fine.”
“Jonathan, help me take this pot into the garden,” Frederick Flood said. I stared at him. He was in lemon-yellow corduroys, a cream-colored cashmere sweater, and Gucci loafers. He wasn’t smiling at me. At his feet was a small clay pot.
“Okay.” I just sort of stood there, since I couldn’t figure how I was going to help him carry the little pot.
“Pick it up and follow me.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Careful,” Flan whispered, as I headed toward the backyard with her father.
The pot was a lot heavier than I’d thought. The Floods’ garden had been planted with the kinds of plants that look good even when they’re dead for the winter. We stood there, Frederick Flood and I, puffing air at each other.
“Let me think about where it should go …” So while he thought, I wobbled and hugged the pot to my stomach.
“As you may know, I’m a subscriber to the philosophy put forth by our mutual friend, Sam Grobart.”
“Oh, God.”
“Total honesty, that’s my thing. Total honesty, even to a fault. For instance, the moment Alec Wildenburger said Ricardo Pardo’s work was over, I saw that he was right and put all my Pardo sculptures up for sale even though I’ve been friends with Ricardo for more than ten years.”
From inside the house we could hear Flan begin to bicker with her mother over whether she had to wear tights to school. Outside, it was alarmingly crisp and the sky was the same stunning blue that it had been all week. It was the warmest November anyone could remember.
“So Sam—my therapist, my counselor, my friend—has confirmed as truth something that I’d long suspected your father had done.”
“Um.” I looked around the garden, but the wooden fence was easily ten feet high and the stakes were pointed on top. He’d be able to yank me down before I got free. And then he’d probably empty my pockets to get whatever he could to pay himself back for my father’s crimes, and then he’d kill me. So even though I knew I couldn’t run, I began to back away.
“Can I put this down?”
He didn’t look at me.
I heard the front door slam, which probably meant that Flan had left for school.
Sure enough, Fiona Flood came out to the garden. So we were all standing outside in the bright morning sun, and finally I just gave up and set the pot at my feet.
“I want you to tell me the truth,” Frederick said.
“About what?”
“How much did he steal from us?”
“How should I know?” I asked. I took another step backward and knocked up against the fence.
“It’s not about the money,” Fiona said.
“Right. My dad said that, too …” But then I decided that probably wasn’t the right thing to say right then.
“Well, that’s an interesting opinion for him to hold. But yes, it’s the principle of the thing. We have tremendous sympathy for your mother. You should know that.”
Frederick glared at me. “Talk!” As I scrambled to come up with an answer, we heard the glass door swing open.
“Why, February,” Fiona said. “We’re busy just now, with Jonathan. Can you—”
“Leave him alone.” February Flood winked at me. She and I had been friendly since I’d gotten her into a bona fide private A.P.C. sale a month earlier. And since just a few weeks ago, when she said she appreciated how I handled everything that had been weird with Flan.
“Excuse me?” Frederick Flood turned to his daughter. No two people could have been more different. February looked like Chloë Sevigny after a bad night and Frederick looked like Prince Charles in the middle of a good morning.
“He’s a junior in high school and he’s going to be late for class and you two are old and mean. If you want what amounts to gossip, you’ll have to find it within your own clique.”
“Are you joking?” Frederick asked. “We’re just having a friendly conversation.”
I stared at February and her dad. They circled each other, like alley cats about to rumble. I wished I could climb a tree and scuttle out of there. Then, suddenly, Frederick Flood harumphed and followed his wife back into the house.
“Wow. Thanks February.” I smiled at her.
“Don’t thank me—I just get off on screwing up whatever my dad’s up to. There’s one thing I need from you, though.”
“What?”
“Guess.”
“Find your brother and make sure he’s okay?”
“Exactly. I’m not my brother’s keeper—you are. And if you don’t find him, I’ll unleash the wrath of my parents on you.”
“And I can’t afford that.”
“Right again.” February smiled at me, and it was impossible for me to tell if there was a gleam in her eye, or if she was still high from the night before, or brilliant, or what.
“And for what it’s worth,” she said, “I heard about your Caribbean sailing vacation and I think you should bring Patch. If you can find him, I mean.”
“It’d be hard to lose him on a yacht.”
Then I said, “With Patch, you never know.” And we both nodded at each other.