That night, blanketed in children, I heard Madison whispering above me. “Lil,” she said, and I thought it was a dream because, honestly, I dreamed about Madison a lot.
“Yeah?” I said.
“I’m back,” she said, still whispering. “Timothy and I just flew home. Come with me. Let’s hang out. Let’s talk.”
I realized that she was real, and I felt myself waking up. I looked at her. I couldn’t make out her features, only her form, in the dim light from the bathroom in the hallway.
“The kids will wake up,” I said.
“No, they won’t,” she said. “Just come on.” She sounded like maybe she was drunk, her voice kind of husky.
“Bessie?” I whispered, and the girl shrugged away from me before turning back over and opening her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“Madison is here,” I said, gesturing to Madison, who waved.
“What do you want?” Bessie asked.
“Lillian,” Madison replied. “Just for a little while.”
“I’ll be back soon,” I told her. “Just keep sleeping.”
“Okay,” Bessie said. “I guess so.”
I slipped out of the bed, Roland snoring hard, and followed Madison as she tiptoed from the room. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants on the way out, some sneakers.
“Come outside,” she told me. “I made margaritas. To celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” I asked, being petty, being dumb, because we were in very different circles of the blast radius of this good news.
“Jasper!” she said. “You know it’s Jasper, silly.” We sat on the steps that led to the house and there was that fucking pitcher again, that tray. There was something Stepfordish about everything being served in a pitcher, instead of, I don’t know, putting your face in a giant punch bowl and just vacuuming it up. I don’t know what I wanted. I guess I wanted Madison to be a little more like me and a little less like the kind of person you had to be to live with this sort of wealth. And yet here I was, living on their estate, my bank account filled with so much money, not having to spend a dime while I strolled the grounds. This was my life, a good part of it, hating other people and then hating myself for not being better than them.
She poured the drinks, and it was so good, cold and strong.
“It worked,” she said. “I kind of can’t fucking believe that it worked.”
“All the vetting?” I asked. “I thought, I don’t know, they’d come talk to me.”
“No,” she said, “I kept them away from everyone. I shamed them. The thing we thought would be so bad, Jane killing herself, the kids abandoned, actually gave us the chance to keep them at a distance, or else they’d look like ghouls, you know?”
“I guess so,” I said. I just kept drinking.
“I mean, they definitely wanted to make sure that Jasper hadn’t killed Jane or anything like that. And they have some secondhand reports about the kids, about the fire, but it’s so unbelievable that they can’t really do much with it.”
“Oh, good,” I said. Being rich, of course, meant it was easier to just keep getting what you wanted. It took less and less effort to keep it.
“And they really just wanted to make sure that Jasper wasn’t crooked, that he didn’t have financial ties to anything that would look bad. That he hadn’t pissed off the wrong people. It was all a lot easier than we thought.”
“It happened so quickly,” I said.
“Because the guy died!” she said, fucking giddy. “How could we have known? We thought this was going to be drawn out, and, you know, the longer it went on, the more other people would want to butt in. But Jasper’s steady. He’s really good.”
“So what’ll happen now?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a confirmation hearing. It’s mostly a formality. I’ve coached Jasper anyway. He just has to be so noncommittal that it actually seems like he doesn’t know anything. He’ll keep saying how much he looks forward to exploring these issues and finding the best way to proceed. It’s pretty much a done deal.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “So then what?”
“Then he’s the secretary of state,” she replied.
“I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted.
“Foreign affairs. Big-time stuff. He’s, like, right next to the president, advising him. Fourth in line to the presidency, actually.”
“Oh, wow, I guess I didn’t realize that.”
“And, honestly, it’s huge for me. It’s the kind of visibility that means I can start to advocate for things I want to do. The party is already talking about how to utilize me moving forward.”
“Well, cool,” I said, and I felt like the biggest nerd in the world, pretending I knew what kissing felt like, what boys wanted.
“We’ll have to move to D.C., of course,” Madison continued.
“Really?” I asked.
“For sure. There’s already people who are looking at real estate for us.”
“What about the kids?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll be okay with that?”
“Timothy can handle anything,” she said, not even really looking at me, her mind racing, like, four or eight years into the future. “The schools in D.C. are a hundred times better than the ones here anyway.”
“What about Roland and Bessie?” I asked.
“Well—” she said. “I don’t know about them. I just don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?” I asked.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to handle the city. It’s much more public, a lot more stressful.”
“They’re never going to see Jasper, are they?” I said, like, of course they wouldn’t, and, like, how did I not already know this?
“Not much,” she admitted. “Who knows? Maybe that’s for the best. Jasper is a better parent in theory, like if you look at his actions and his values from a distance. They’ll still have access to what he can provide for them, Lillian. That’s what really matters.”
“So you’ll be taking care of them?” I asked.
“I won’t even really be able to take care of Timothy,” she said. “This is a huge responsibility.”
“So do you want me to stay with them?” I asked, my heart beating because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted the answer to be.
“No,” she said, so chipper, so happy, “you’ve done so much for them. You’ve done so much for us. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Oh, okay,” I replied. “So then, what? You get them, like, a real governess?”
“Well, I haven’t had much time to think about this, you understand? Like, there are huge things going on. But I think maybe boarding school would be good for them.”
“They’re ten years old,” I said.
“In Europe,” Madison said, “kids go to boarding school when they’re eight. That might be really good for them, to go abroad, to experience the world after being cooped up in that house with Jane all this time.”