Silver Girl (28 page)

But then Freddy couldn’t go. Work needed him. He was low man on the totem pole at Prudential; he had no choice.

And so, Meredith faced Toby alone. Toby was tan from having sailed somewhere impossibly glamorous—Ibiza or Monaco—and he’d brought, as a date, a girl from his crew. The girl’s name was Pamela; she was taller than Meredith, and beefier, and she had red, calloused hands. Meredith found her pushy; she offered to help Connie with her train and her bouquet when they had just met the day before.

Connie had said,
Oh, don’t you worry about it. I have Meredith here to help me.

Meredith had thought, All right, Pamela was cute enough, friendly enough, but not the person she’d expected Toby to choose. Toby was effusive with his attention toward his sister and his mother and Pamela; for the ceremony and the first part of the reception, he ignored Meredith completely. She, meanwhile, couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He exuded his usual healthy, outdoorsy energy; the tuxedo seemed to be reining him in. The green satin bow tie he’d chosen made his eyes seem greener. Inwardly, Meredith cursed him. Goddamn him for being so luminous all the time. He spun Pamela around the dance floor. He gave a very sweet and funny toast to Wolf and Connie, and Meredith had to admit that freedom did suit him.

The band played “The Best of Times” by Styx, which was Meredith and Toby’s number one song as a couple, and Meredith realized she had a choice: she could go to the bar for another fuzzy navel, or she could hide in the ladies’ room and cry.

Toby intercepted her on the way to the ladies’ room.

“Dance with me,” he said.

“You haven’t talked to me once all night,” Meredith said.

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Dance with me.”

Meredith thought back to the night of their breakup. She nearly said,
I thought you didn’t like to dance.
But instead she let Toby lead her to the dance floor. She fit right into his arms in a way that felt unholy.
Freddy,
she thought.
I am engaged to Freddy.

Toby hummed in her ear. They used to listen to this song in Toby’s Nova when they made love. A long time ago. But not so long: five years. Meredith said, “It’s weird that they’re playing this song.”

Toby said, “I made a request.”

Meredith pulled away. Toby had requested their song to the band?

“What about Pamela?” she said.

“She’s just a friend. And she doesn’t seem to mind.”

Meredith craned her neck. Pamela was at the bar, draped all over Wolf’s brother.

“I don’t get it,” Meredith said. “You know I’m engaged? You know I’m getting married in June?”

“I know. I heard,” Toby said. “But I just thought…”

“Thought what?” Meredith said.

“I needed a way to break the ice,” he said.

“Break the
ice?
” Meredith said. “When I hear this song, Toby, I
hurt.
”

“I know,” Toby said. “I hurt, too.”

“Why would
you
hurt?” she asked. “
You
broke up with
me.
”

“Meet me later,” Toby said. “Please, Meredith? Meet me at the Wayne Hotel.”

She glared at him. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”

“At the bar,” he said. “So we can talk?”

“About what?” she said. But he didn’t respond. He tightened his grip on her. He was humming again.
The best of times are when I’m alone with you.

Meredith had half a mind to storm off the dance floor, but she couldn’t make a scene at Connie’s wedding; Connie’s wedding was shrouded in enough scandal as it was. So she finished out the dance with Toby. The horrible truth was, she still had feelings for him; the horrible truth was, he did have the first and best piece of her heart; the horrible truth was, it felt electrifying to be in his arms. But would Meredith meet him at the Wayne Hotel? She hesitated. One second, two seconds, ten seconds. Then she thought,
No way.
I won’t do it.
The next song, she returned to her seat, and Wolf’s brother, Jake, asked her to dance. Meredith watched Toby and Pamela throw back shots of tequila at the bar.

Meredith thought,
I have to get back to New York. I have to get back to Freddy.

Freddy and Meredith got married the following June at Saint Thomas of Villanova, the same church where Chick Martin’s funeral Mass had been held. There were a hundred and fifty people in attendance, and if Meredith had one complaint, it was that the church looked empty compared to the crowd that had packed in to pay their respects to her father.

Connie served as Meredith’s matron of honor, even though Ashlyn had been born in April and Connie was still nursing her. Richard Cassel had served as Freddy’s best man. Bill and Veronica O’Brien were there, though Toby had declined. It had taken courage for Meredith to invite him, but after what had happened at Connie’s wedding, she decided it would be a good idea for Toby to watch her getting married to somebody else. Surely, she wasn’t the only bride to feel this way? Toby sent a note that said, “Sailing in the Lesser Antilles! Wishing you the very best!” Meredith was disappointed, but she realized he probably wouldn’t have come if he’d been down the street.

Annabeth Martin came in a wheelchair and was tended to most of the night by Meredith’s mother, both of them glowing with happiness. This was as it should be; Meredith married right out of college—just as they both had—to a man who was going places.

Freddy’s mother came to the ceremony but didn’t stay for the reception. She claimed she had to get back to Utica that night so she could get to work in the morning.

“Work?” Meredith said. “On Sunday?”

“At the store,” Freddy said. He meant Kmart.

Meredith had only met Mrs. Delinn for the first time earlier that day. She was soft bodied, and her skin was the blue-white of an undercooked egg. Her hair was thinning and had been badly dyed the color of Bing cherries. She had watery blue eyes—lacking the intense cobalt pigment of Freddy’s eyes. Generally Meredith thought Mrs. Delinn seemed worn out and run down, as though the effort of making it to this moment in her life had nearly killed her. She was oddly deferential to Meredith and kept saying how much she appreciated being invited.

“Of course,” Meredith said. “You’re Freddy’s mother.”

“You’ll take care of him,” Mrs. Delinn said. It was a statement, not a question. “You’ll love him. He’ll pretend like he can get along without it, but he can’t. Freddy needs his love.”

Meredith walked down the aisle by herself. She felt the absence of her father; her whole left side was numb. Everyone in the church was beaming at her. She was glad they were there, but the only person who mattered was the man at the altar, his eyes flashing, his face radiating promise. When she was ten steps or so from the altar, he came for her; he took her by the arm and walked her the rest of the way. The crowd in the church gasped at first, and then ahhhed.

Freddy leaned in and whispered, “You looked lonely.”

She said, “Yes, but not anymore.”

He said, “Never again.”

Meredith set down her dessert plate. The ache in her heart could not be described.

She was tired, and in many ways, she was defeated, but she was still herself, Meredith Martin, so she slid out of bed and went into the bathroom to brush her teeth a second time.

She fell asleep remembering the dancing at her wedding. She and Freddy had taken lessons in the city, and they had been synchronized in the way they moved together. It had been a great party—at one point, every single guest had been out on the dance floor. Even Annabeth Martin in her wheelchair; even Wolf holding tiny baby Ashlyn. At one point, Meredith had been in a circle of Freddy’s friends—the old guys from Dial, the new guys from Prudential—and now, as Meredith pictured it in her mind, there was someone she didn’t recognize in the circle, a tall, lean man with the white-blond hair of a Scandinavian. Meredith turned to Gwen Marbury, while at the same time thinking,
Gwen Marbury wasn’t at my wedding,
and asked, “Who is that guy?”

“That guy?” Gwen said. “That’s Thad Orlo.”

Meredith startled awake. Her eyes snapped open.
Thad Orlo!

Meredith woke up at daybreak and wondered what time she could reasonably expect Dev to answer his cell phone. Eight o’clock? Seven o’clock? She didn’t want to be the lunatic client who called him at dawn. But she wanted to tell him about Thad Orlo. It was something real; it was the name of a Swiss banker. She took a measured breath. She couldn’t tell if she was anxious because she was sure this information would help, or if she was worried it wouldn’t help. She had to find the answer.
The other investors are clamoring for your head. Your family is going to be flushed away.
She needed to find the key that would set her and Leo free.

She turned on her cell phone and waited with the predictable anxiety to see if anyone had called overnight. Amy Rivers had her number. It was conceivable that she had left an abusive voice mail, elaborating on the hateful things she’d said the day before. But the phone booted up silently, giving Meredith nothing but the time. It was 6:09. Unable to wait another minute, she dialed Dev, and he picked up on the first ring.

“Allo?” he said. He sounded funny, but of course he sounded funny, it was still basically the middle of the night.

“Dev, it’s Meredith.”

“Hello, Meredith.” He sounded out of breath.

“Did I wake you?” Meredith asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m running. Riverside Park.”

Riverside Park was in the same city where Meredith had spent most of her adult life, but she hadn’t been there in twenty years or more, since one of the boys had a little friend from school who lived on the Upper West Side, and the other mother (whose name was lost to Meredith) and Meredith would take the boys to the playground there. Meredith liked thinking of Dev running on those paths by the Hudson. She liked thinking of him unchained from his desk.

“I’m sorry to bug you,” Meredith said.

“Is everything okay?” Dev asked.

“I’m calling because I thought of something that might help,” Meredith said.

“Oh, yeah?” Dev said.

“A million years ago,” she said, “and I’m talking nineteen eighty-two, nineteen eighty-three…”

Dev laughed. Meredith counted back to make sure that Dev would have been
alive
in those years.

“It was my senior year at Princeton, and Freddy was living in New York City working for Prudential Securities.”

“Which division?” Dev asked.

“Oh, God, I have no idea,” Meredith said. Even as much as she had loved Freddy back then, she hadn’t bothered to find out exactly what he did for work. She didn’t care; she had never cared, just as Freddy had never cared about the distaff family lines in Faulkner. “Trading? Derivatives? Don’t you guys have that kind of information at your fingertips?”

“I don’t,” Dev said. “The
SEC
might, though.”

“We lived in a sublet of a man named Thad Orlo.” She paused. She could hear the thwack of Dev’s sneakers on the pavement, a siren, taxi horns, a barking dog. “Has that name come up in the investigation?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” Dev said. “But no, I don’t think so.”

“Thad Orlo was working for Prudential, but he was spending a year in Switzerland, at some Swiss bank, perhaps a bank affiliated with Prudential? Anyway, I never actually
met
him because while we were in New York, he was in Switzerland—that was the whole idea—but I asked Freddy about him from time to time in subsequent years. Freddy told me that Thad Orlo had stayed on with the bank in Switzerland, but when I asked which bank it was, Freddy said he couldn’t remember. Now, what this really meant was that he didn’t
want
to tell me because if there was one thing about Freddy, he remembered
everything.
And then there was another time—” this, Meredith remembered just as she was saying the words—“when I asked Freddy what had ever happened to Thad Orlo. I was asking because we had, you know,
lived
in his apartment with all of his furniture and all of his stuff—every time I saw a certain kind of Danish design, I thought of him—and at first Freddy pretended not to know who he was at all, which was absurd, and then once he copped to the fact that he did remember him, he started asking
me
in this paranoid way about why I wanted to know about Thad Orlo. And I can remember saying, ‘Freddy, I’m sorry. I was just wondering!’ ”

Dev was breathing hard. Maybe he was crushed at how underwhelming this tip was. Maybe he was wondering why she hadn’t just waited until he was in the office. But the more Meredith thought about it, the more convinced she became.

“Yes,” she said. “He was defensive and angry when I asked him about Thad Orlo. You should check it out. You should find Thad Orlo.”

“But you don’t know which bank?”

“I don’t. Freddy most certainly does, even though he lied and told me he didn’t.”

“But Freddy’s not speaking. At all.”

“Still?” Meredith said. She didn’t want any news about Freddy. But she did.

“Still.”

“Well, can’t you find him anyway?” Meredith said. She had figured the
SEC
had huge databases crammed with names, and connections between those names. It was impossible, in this day and age, to stay anonymous, right? “Can’t you google him?”

“I’ll do that first thing on Monday,” Dev said. “Do you know anything else about this guy?”

“His mother was Danish,” Meredith said, but then she wondered if she knew this for sure, or if she had just assumed it, because of the furniture. “I think.”

“Where was the apartment?” Dev asked.

“Seventy-first Street,” Meredith said. But she couldn’t remember if the building had been between Lexington and Third, or Third and Second, and she certainly didn’t remember the number of the building. She had lived there for nearly two years, but the address eluded her. She was old enough now that this sometimes happened. The salient details of her past evaporated.

“Okay,” Dev said. “I’ll check out everything you just told me.”

“And you’ll tell the Feds?”

“I’ll tell the Feds.”