TURNING OFF HIGHWAY 75, YOU WOULD ASSUME THEBES was beautiful. The route bypasses the decidedly unlovely downtown in a semicircle, meandering instead along Middle River. So many Dakota skipper butterflies dot the purple coneflowers on the banks that you can practically see them fighting each other for the best pollen. North of the river, you wind through bluestem prairie grass fields and tiny streams galore. If you didn’t know that almost all the old-growth forest had been decimated by my uncle’s company after he bought thousands of acres of land for cheap during the Great Recession of 2008, the baby fir trees lining the roadside for miles and miles would appear charming and make you think of Christmas Future. It all looks Dickensian to me for other reasons. Orphan reasons.
Thebes is not only the place where my uncle reigns supreme; it’s the place where I cringe to think I might run into James Hollings. Whenever I made an obligatory visit back to the King abode for Christmas during college, Harrison and Izzy couldn’t understand why I refused to go into town with them to our old haunts. Too risky. He could be anywhere. According to my occasional indulgence in late-night drunken internet searches for ex-boyfriend activities, I know that James and his wife have two kids, and he still works for Roberts and Associates Law Offices in Thebes. I also learned that he ran for, and won, a seat in the state assembly—a part-time government role that only fueled my competitive juices about heading to Washington.
I drive up Tributary Access Road—a shortcut through the North Bank fields. Pink lady’s slippers, the Minnesota state flower, are just beginning to show their blush-colored petals on the edge of the prairie grasses. We spent a great deal of our elementary school years memorizing critically important information that all future global citizens must know, such as the state flower, the state tree, even the state drink. Which is milk.
Here’s what I remember about the history of our flower: Back in the early 1900s, it was such a popular adornment for church altars that the enthusiasm of the good Christian ladies for surrounding sermonizing ministers with the bobble-headed orchids created a statewide crisis. In 1925 the state legislature decreed it illegal to pick, remove, or transport the native-blooming lady’s slipper across state lines. Is this the kind of earth-shattering controversy that James debates in his role as an assembly member?
I’m close now. Oppressively close. I pass formerly working farms, one after the other, now cordoned off by barbed wire fences littered with rusty but threatening signs warning not to trespass on the private property of King Family Construction. Who are they trying to keep out? The occasional CAUTION, BEAR CROSSING notices seem far more practical.
As I drive around the horseshoe bend past the turnoff for Old Quarry Road, the rows of rotted, twisting wire abruptly give way to ornate wrought-iron curlicues and spear-tipped fencing. It starts about four feet high, and grows as I drive, both in height and in drama. Finally, the enormous gates of the King family compound loom before me, complete with the coat of arms my uncle established all the way back in the ancient days of the twentieth century. The crisscross backhoe-meets-lion emblem soars into the sky as if reaching for the gods themselves.
I’m back.
New since my last time confronting these gates of Hades—I mean home—just months ago: electronic security everywhere. Three video cameras point their all-knowing eyes from the tops of the various entries to the property. A large keypad box with a speakerphone has been installed at the end of the driveway several feet back from the gates. As I pull up to the box, I glimpse a glass-encased guard booth just inside, with a uniformed guard visible from between the iron pillars.
Either Christopher is becoming seriously paranoid about the outside world or there have been incidents I haven’t heard about. Or, quite possibly, given this is my uncle, the show needed to get bigger and badder and more dramatic. At any rate, nobody bothered to tell me the gate code, or send me a key card, or whatever.
I stare at the box, expecting it to somehow welcome me. To acknowledge I belong. I guess my refusal to return to the fold as the company lawyer has resulted in the reality that I’m not expected to return, ever. Even though I chose it, I still feel a pang. I’m truly an outsider now.
I could back up my car right now and floor it back to the Cities. I have a killer job; all I need to do is turn around and take it, take what I’ve worked my ass off for the past seven years. Paul will undoubtedly survive without my help—he’s always made that clear.
But I can’t. I need to know the truth. And I need to face the fact that I did let my uncle think for far too long that he might persuade me to return. I resisted, I questioned, but I didn’t say no outright. I’m not blameless where Uncle Christopher is concerned.
Was taking the Grogan job a choice? Or was it an instinctive leap in any direction but here? Now, looking up at the tons of twisting metal between outside and in, between who belongs and who simply never will, I know it in my gut: I can’t live this life. Not anymore. Coming back to work for Christopher with his rules, his gates: it would end me. I’m not a child dependent on him for life or death anymore. I’m stronger now. I have a job, a purpose. Goals. I live in a world bigger than all of this, where I’m my own person.
The rearview mirror says otherwise. I look like I’ve been through a hurricane. I try to smooth my hair, but to no avail. I yank it back into a ponytail, then grab a baseball cap out of my gym bag. My clothes might literally have HARVARD written all over them, but my general comportment does not. I take a deep breath, hold it for three seconds like the yoga instructors on the videos that Izzy sends regularly tell me to do, then exhale.
Nope.
Yoga might work for Izzy-size anxieties, but not for mine.
The mini bottle of Dewar’s I stashed in the outside compartment of my gym bag for emergency situations is more like it. Top o’ the morning to everyone. The shot burns my throat and travels immediately throughout my chest and limbs.
That’s better. I press the electronic call button.
“Can I help you?” a male voice crackles. I can see the guard on the other side of the gate holding the phone to his ear.
“It’s Toni. I’m here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a Toni on the list.”
“Antonia. Antonia King. It’s me.”
Rustling of paper.
“I don’t see any authorization for someone named Antonia King . . .”
“I’m your boss’s niece. Look on the family list or something.”
“Ma’am, there is no niece on the list. Please provide proper authorization for entry and an ID that matches.”
I punch in Christopher on my cell.
“You want me here so badly you call before dawn,” I say. “So at least tell your henchman to let me in.”
“My error. What was I thinking?” I can picture him holding his cell phone up to the intercom to ensure I’m hearing him call down to the guard booth. Reminding me again that he calls the shots here. “Larry, let our guest through and instruct her to park her vehicle in the back lot.”
Guest. Got it.
A buzzing noise emanates from the speaker, and slowly and with regal fanfare—fit for a King, of course—the gates begin to swing outward. The backhoe and the lion part ways and each takes guardianship over a different vista: backhoe, with its jaws of steel, ready to gobble up the land to the south; lion surveying the north on its hind legs, baring its feline incisors.
When Harrison and I were little, one of our favorite games was playing superheroes. I was Batman, Avenger of All Wrongdoing, because I got to wear the best mask. Harry was Aquaman, Prince of the Ocean, because he loved how the cartoon character’s blond hair curled perfectly over his forehead, even underwater. Izzy, three years younger than Harry, was always in peril. We pretended that the lion and the backhoe were evil bad guys holding her hostage in a dank, dark cave and it was our job to resurrect her to her rightful place as a princess in a castle on the hill. The castle that my cousins live in to this day.
Sunglasses and baseball cap in place, I floor the gas pedal and gun it past glass-encased Larry and up the hill to the circular drive at the front of the house, screeching to a full stop at a forty-five-degree angle that blocks any other car from passing me on either side. I press on my horn long enough to rouse a family of Canadian geese out of the fountain that graces the entry. The birds flap around the marble statues of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo that spout rivulets of water out of upturned sculpted hands into the fountain’s base.
It wasn’t until I saw the elegant row houses lining Commonwealth Avenue in Boston that I understood the difference between their understated grandeur and the House That Christopher Built. My childhood home boasts endless rows of Ionic columns, a massive stone stairway leading up to the oversized wooden door, fussy and architecturally dubious sconces, window frames dotted with carved cherubs.
I quaff the rest of the Dewar’s, toss the tiny bottle in the back seat, and swing out of my car to face the King Family McMansion and everyone who awaits inside. Before I lose my whiskey-fueled nerve, I march up the steps and ring the doorbell. Nothing. I ring again. All of this—ignoring my ring, pretending I’m not welcome, using his guard as a go-between—is Christopher punishing me for signing with Grogan. I can be just as stubborn as him, though, so I ring the bell over and over until the door finally opens.
Izzy falls into me with a gigantic hug that practically knocks me backward.
“Toni! You’re here!”
I smell the familiar lavender scent of my now-taller-than-me cousin’s arms against my face and for a brief second, I’m back in our childhood days, sitting on the marble bathroom floor while Aunt Evelyn soaps Izzy’s back from beside the tub. Little Izzy thought I was the most fascinating toy in her house full of toys, special-ordered from the other side of the world and delivered to Thebes just for her amusement.
Izzy was, and still is, too oblivious to notice any cues from me. She hugs me like I’ve come back for fun, just to hang out with her, and of my own accord. The happy sleepwalk of the cherished.
I pull out of her arms.
“So, your dad finally allowed you to let me in,” I say, to remind her that everything isn’t flowers and hearts between me and Christopher right now. She puts her hands on her hips and eyes me up and down.
“You look like shit. I’m totally giving you a makeover,” she says.
“And you look amazing!” She does. At twenty-one, she’s a natural Minnesota beauty. If the Miss America contest was still a thing that mattered, she would win. Big blue eyes, shining wavy blond hair. The perfect pink lip at eight in the morning in her own house. She’s wearing a crisp tank top and bedazzled skinny jeans. I’m aware again of my disheveled appearance.
“You should have seen me last night,” I say. “Cocktail party. I was killing it.”
She looks at me skeptically. I can’t say I blame her.
“If it’s not on social, it didn’t happen!” she says. “And I know you’re not on Insta. We’re fixing that. It’s, like, a brilliant lifetime record of your best moments ever; you just have to use it right.”
Along with loving only Motown, I defy my millennial label by having no social media presence. Paul and I both. Him because it’s a tool of materialist oppression that’s been co-opted by the corporate elite for nefarious purposes. Me because everyone else does it.
“There she is.” Harrison sticks his head into the main entryway and waves. He’s dressed for business.
“Harrison, doesn’t Toni look like absolute shit?” Izzy asks her brother.
“Worse than absolute shit,” he answers. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
Izzy squeezes my arm again to show that she is also.
“Fuck you both very much,” I say. I really do love these two.
If it wasn’t for Harrison, I would have never survived Mt. O High School without serious emotional damage. His effortless popularity ensured that the whispers of “How did that family end up with someone like her?” from clusters of Minnesota farm girls were kept to a minimum, or at least relegated to the girls’ bathrooms out of Harrison’s earshot. He kept me off the hit list of Mt. O’s bullies for four years, and I kept the secret that his biggest crush was on Tank Mitchell, the hunky linebacker, not Barbie Johnson, the bouncy cheerleader Harrison dated all through high school to have an excuse to be at all the football practices. I also kept the secret that one night after a drunken party celebrating Mt. O’s victory over archrival Athens High School, Harrison and Tank had an epic make-out session down by the riverbank.
My sophomore year at college, Harrison emailed a photo of Barbie’s engagement announcement to Tank Mitchell. I FaceTimed him immediately, and we laughed until we couldn’t sit up.
“Come in, he’s waiting for you.” Harrison gestures me toward the great room, his eyes filled with urgency. Izzy skips ahead of me and I walk slowly, slinging my gym bag over one shoulder, past a six-foot-tall arrangement of birds-of-paradise and ferns splayed open on the marble table in the middle of the room. I pinch a fern frond as I pass: plastic. But almost undetectably so.
Izzy spins back toward me and pulls off my sunglasses. She reaches for my baseball cap, but I place my free hand quickly on my head to stop her.
“Believe me,” I say. “It’s not any better under there.”
She believes me.
And here they are, arranged in the great room like plastic birds in their own paradise. Aunt Evelyn in a pale pink dress, hair dyed the exact same shade as Izzy’s and coiffed to the skies, sits with her legs demurely crossed at the ankle in a high-backed upholstered chair, holding a coffee cup with both hands. Uncle Christopher looms behind her, wired for action. His physicality makes him omnipresent, as if the room were a hall of mirrors, each of which reflects him in motion, a thousand Christophers following me with every step I take. I feel diminished—like a woodland creature that somehow mistakenly got inside the house.
“Antonia, we have to move quickly,” my uncle says, shifting from behind Evelyn’s chair to beside it. “Your brother’s actions have brought serious trouble to our family.”
“Nice to see you too, Uncle Christopher.”
Aunt Evelyn’s eyes dart back and forth between us. Her mental checklist, silent to others but transparent to me: Is Antonia okay? Is there a storm brewing? Since my childhood, this has been her back-channel parenting style. Avoid setting fires by keeping her mouth shut but track the glowing embers to ensure they don’t burst into flame.
Once Izzy hit her teenaged years and lost patience with hours of sitting at her mother’s feet having her hair brushed and braided and curled and beribboned, Aunt Evelyn’s sense of purpose seemed to fade. By the time we were home from school she had a wineglass in her hand, replaced by a martini glass at five and an after-dinner liquor by eight. Not to mention the vodka supply we all pinched from on the second floor.
When we were little, she was always managing our activities, organizing our lives. But when things shifted, this glazed-over Evelyn was left behind. Was having four teenagers at once just too much? Plus, the strangeness of me and Paul, the ghosts we dragged in behind us.
My impulse is completely out of character: I bend down and kiss her on the cheek. Her foundation makeup leaves a slight powdery residue on my lips.
She stirs. Is there something she wants to say?
Then Christopher’s hand comes down on her shoulder, gripping tightly.
“Sit down, Antonia,” he says. “Over here.”
My aunt turns back to stone. Stares down at her white porcelain coffee cup once again.
I fold into the matching chair to her left, tucking my knees into my chest so the heels of my sneakers are digging into the upholstery in the most retro adolescent pointless kind of way. Watching Christopher shut her down makes me angry at them both. It’s as if the dark and lonely teenager I was when I left for college wanders this room, waiting for me to return so she can hurl herself back into my body. If Melanie Dwyer saw me now, she wouldn’t recognize me as the sparkling woman in the red dress from last night’s event.
My phone vibrates. I slip a quick peek in my bag: Ah. It’s Paul at last. I relax just seeing his name light up on the screen. He doesn’t hate me. He was sleeping, he must have been. But I won’t answer, not yet. Keeping the news from Christopher that Paul reached out is the best form of control I have at the moment. I shove my bag behind me on the chair.
“Okay, I’m here,” I say. “What’s going on that you couldn’t tell me about over the phone?”
Christopher clears his throat, nods to acknowledge that as resistant as I was initially, he sees that I’ve done as he asked. There’s an invitation in his eyes, in the lines that have deepened around his mouth in just the few months since I’ve seen him last—he wants me to bend in and be part of the family and the business that he holds so dear.
All I need to do is follow the lead of my cousins and his acrimony will fizzle away. Harrison’s patient navigation, Izzy’s shrugging compliance—Christopher understands this as family love. Soften my edges, speak their language, and his approval will be mine.
It would be so easy. And yet, for me: impossible.
Christopher clears his throat. “The Big Dig is slated to start tomorrow. We rolled our machinery on-site to prepare on Friday. Then, last night, a group of renters decided to make trouble. Against their own best interests, a few of them made the misguided choice to chain themselves to the lead tractors. Including your brother, Antonia.”
Harrison mouths don’t say anything to me behind his father’s shoulder while Christopher continues.
“This obviously would never have happened if you joined the business. Paul would have instinctively wanted to protect you, and he would have stayed out of the entire disaster. Now I’m asking you to make it up to me.”
“Make what up to you?”
“Your brother’s betrayal.”
Betrayal. I’ve heard this word from Christopher as long as I can remember. The world is measured in droplets of loyalty and oceans of betrayal. As in: loyalty requires unwavering adherence to the principles and practices that he lays out before you, whether you are family, friend, business associate, or employee. But loyalty is fragile. One step in the wrong direction, one failure to comply, and you have betrayed him. And that’s forever. You’re considered loyal only until the first time you have an opinion of your own. From then on, you can try all you might to crawl back into his good graces, but it’s going to be either a lifetime of trying or a lifetime of banishment.
He did rescue us more than twenty years ago. He and Eddie found us, orphaned and utterly alone, under that cot in Sarajevo. And Christopher brought us into a clean, well-fed, safe home when his brother’s overdose left us alone again. I know this. I’m grateful. But how do I show it when his definition of loyalty scrapes up against my own?
I remain still in the face of Christopher’s accusation—not because Harrison is imploring me to do so, but because I need to think. What’s at stake right now? How can I get the information I need from Christopher before I talk to Paul and find out his side of the story?
“Silence can be a good lawyer’s greatest weapon,” Melanie told me on my first day at the firm. “When you’re silent, your allies think you agree with them and your adversaries think you’ve got something on them.”
And when you don’t know if your own relatives are your allies or your adversaries, silence is nonnegotiable.
“Here’s what we need to do,” my uncle continues. His voice is calm, rational. He has a plan. “Because the rioters committed illegal action by chaining themselves to private property, the police had no choice but to get involved. Because the police were involved, it became a matter of record beyond a small local interest story about a few holdouts. Because a policeman was injured, it became news. And because your brother”—he glances at me, then shifts his gaze back to the room at large—“placed himself publicly at the center of this affair, it threatens to become a sensationalistic story about this family that could completely undermine the Dig. I moved mountains to get support at the highest levels of state government, and I won’t have those contracts placed at risk because of Paul’s naïveté.”
I’m pretending with all my might to be Melanie Dwyer, but Christopher’s grandstanding is just too much. Teenaged me has been waiting in silence long enough. It’s her voice that flies out of my mouth.
“Seriously? Paul has as much right as anyone else in this family to have opinions and express them however he wants! How long are you going to punish us for just being ourselves?”
Harrison now has his head in his hands. Even Izzy looks up from her Instagram feed.
“Us?” asks Christopher. “Does that mean you’ve known all along what he was planning? Tell me, where is he?”
“I have no idea.” I can say this with utter clarity and truth that I know he sees in my eyes because I haven’t yet responded to the call from Paul. At least I’m still in control of that information. It anchors me. “But no matter. He deserves to be treated like a human being.”
“You need to understand the gravity of the situation. There’s a warrant out for Paul’s arrest. I don’t have to tell you that he’ll be treated far more like a ‘human being,’ as you say, if he turns himself in peacefully.”
A low moan from Aunt Evelyn surprises us all.
“Mommy?” Izzy seems confused, as if she forgot her mother could speak or move.
Christopher turns her way. “Evelyn. Is there something you wish to add?” Is there a hint of a warning in his voice? Or even fear?
My aunt and uncle look at each other—a gaze loaded with something potent. Marital. Inscrutable. Then Evelyn brings her pale hands to her chest.
“I guess I’m not feeling well,” she says, eyes downcast. “I think I’ll just go back to bed for a spot.” Whatever silent battle waged between them is over. She lost.
“Isobel, take your mother over to the sofa so she can lie down.” Christopher is done with this distraction. “Evelyn, you can’t go upstairs yet. We need to sign the papers.”
“Papers?” I rise to my feet.
Izzy slides past me to help her mother cross the room. Christopher is ignoring her and watching me. He’s not sure what to do with me yet, or whose side I’m on.
“At the advice of my lawyer—a form of authority I doubt you’d disagree with—we’re issuing a statement from the King family disavowing Paul’s actions.”
“Hold on: you want me to denounce my brother?”
“Not him. His activities. An officer has been injured. Our reputation in this town is at stake—and on the brink of starting the biggest project we’ve ever undertaken. Despite your recent career choices, we are a family, and we must stand together.”
So this is why he’s brought me here. He wants me to help him throw my brother to the wolves. It’s my loyalty, not Paul’s, that we’re debating now.
I look past my uncle to Harrison.
“What do you think?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It’s just about staying out of the media. Why would any of us have anything to say to them anyhow? We might as well agree to it.”
“Is anyone other than me wondering where Paul is, and whether he’s safe? Or are you just hoping he won’t give you any more trouble?”
“We need you to find him, and convince him to turn himself in,” says Christopher. “He’s putting himself at risk until he does. Even you can’t dispute that.”
He’s right, I know. But because I have a message from Paul waiting on my phone, I push. “What if he’s hurt, or lying in a ditch somewhere? Don’t you care?”
“You know I always put my family and their safety first. Including you and Paul. Don’t you remember the gossip when I brought you both home from the Balkans? ‘Those kids sent poor Eddie over the edge. Johanna broke their engagement because of them. They’ve cursed the King family forever.’ It was my protection and my standing in this community that ensured we all survived Eddie’s tragedy, and that you and your brother thrived.”
My Eddie guilt. Christopher always knows how to get to me.
“Toni, let’s focus on what we need to do. This is a way you can help Paul.” Harrison, still trying. “Don’t you think it’s better for him if we make sure we aren’t dragged into a media frenzy? Everyone is looking for controversy out there; why should we feed the fire?”
Harrison is a natural conciliator. More than once he stopped me from starting fistfights in the halls of Mt. O High School. He risked his own popularity to defend me against anyone who called me a loser or a stuck-up snob, who made fun of me for everything from my 4.0 GPA to my jet-black hair to my dropout older brother.
Uncle Christopher senses my hesitation. “If you can’t hear my concern for you and your brother in this moment, surely you can hear your cousin’s.”
Izzy, from the sofa where she strokes her prone mother’s forehead with one hand, holds her phone aloft with the other. “Nobody on my social feed is talking about any of it yet, so we still have time.”
Oh, Izzy. As if the fashion bloggers are going to pick up a local story about protestors chained to machinery. What were they wearing? Everyone wants to know.
I check the time on my phone: 8:45 a.m. Per’s files will be on Grogan’s server in fifteen minutes. And all this drama is not helping dissipate the last vestiges of my hangover.
Christopher leans forward. His intense blue gaze finds me, holds me like it did when I was a child. Forward, forward; everything about my uncle is kinetic drive to get to the yes he needs. Now, though, behind the urgency is an emotion I can feel but can’t quite name. A struggle. A darkness.
Despite myself, something inside me softens.
I sigh. “Show me the statement.”
Christopher claps his hands together. “Excellent. Everything’s waiting in the office. My lawyer is there to answer any questions.” He gestures me to go ahead of him and flashes an approving little nod in Harrison’s direction.
Fine. Whatever. I’ll assess the language that Christopher’s new lawyer who isn’t me has prepared. Then I’ll get on my laptop and access Per’s files. Then I’ll talk to Paul before I sign anything and see how I can help get him out of this mess. That way I’ll have all the cards for both work and family, and I can decide which ones to play, and when.
Christopher’s home office is on the westernmost side of the house. His own West Wing, he bragged when he had it added on after a windfall back in the early 2000s. A separate entrance with a separate driveway from the residence allows for business to be conducted in tandem with his family time, while ensuring that whoever comes to the house for work could be kept private from us. Christopher made certain we understood that what happened in the office was important and sacred, and he crafted the physical separation between work and leisure to maximize the point: His crew took down the biggest, highest, oldest tamarack tree on the property to craft the floor-to-ceiling double sliding doors that dominate the end of the great room. A craftsman from Duluth planed the wood and hand-carved the King family coat of arms that Christopher designed into the doors. The backhoe on one side and the lion on the other are joined by a wrought-iron door latch forged from the hinges on the barn doors of Christopher’s old family farm.
“Go ahead, open the door. He’s expecting you,” says my uncle from behind me.
To this day I hesitate to touch the latch to the office. When I was little, I would sit on the floor by the edge of the door, running my fingers over the carved toenails of the lion, thinking it was a real lion that came to life at night when we were all asleep. I used to imagine this was my birth father, the man I don’t remember, silently padding through the darkened rooms, maybe even nudging his way into Paul’s bedroom where I slept every night, curled tight against my brother because it was the only way I could beat back the nightmares.
I force myself to grab the iron hinges. Do this fast, I remind myself. Do this and get on with your life. I push the double doors aside.
Nothing could have prepared me for the man I see sitting at the conference table.
His dark hair is shorter now. His cheekbones are more chiseled, and there’s a deeper furrow to his brow. It’s him, though, holding an expensive fountain pen in his left hand and twirling it between his fingers as was always his habit when he was impatient. He looks at me and I feel him taking me in—the oversized T-shirt, the baseball cap, the bare legs under my shorts. Can he see me flush, or can he merely intuit it from the other side of that table?
“Hello, Toni,” he says.
Uncle Christopher’s lawyer is James Hollings.
He flashes a little half smile, a sign to me that he remembers everything from that summer. Absolutely everything.