“Lillian?” Madison asked.
“It’s me,” I replied.
“Okay,” she said. “Thank goodness. Just tell me straight up, have you done anything stupid?”
“No,” I said, a little aggrieved. “Well, I mean, I went back home to my mom’s.”
“Well, yes, that is stupid, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You haven’t talked to any reporters? You haven’t drawn attention to the kids?”
“No,” I said. “We drove to my mom’s. We ate mac and cheese. We slept on the most uncomfortable mattress in the world. It’s fine.”
“Well . . . good,” she said.
“How much did you pay my mom to tell you where I was?” I asked.
“A thousand dollars,” she told me. I didn’t say anything. “Why?” she asked. “Is that more or less than what you had hoped?”
“I honestly have no idea,” I said. I didn’t really know how money worked anymore.
“We never really got a chance to talk, Lil. It’s been so crazy. It’s been insane. I mean, yes, the confirmation, all that. But, you know, Timothy . . . catching on fire . . . being a fire child. All that.”
“You protected him,” I told her.
“Well, I fucking dropped him,” she said. “Oh my god, he burned the hell out of me.”
“But you protected him when it mattered,” I said.
“When Jasper threatened to send him to some weird test site? Yeah, that was never going to happen. I would have destroyed him. It was such a sign of his own weakness that he was even going to consider it.”
“But you were going to send the kids to that ranch, that whatever-the-fuck,” I told her.
“It was up for discussion, Lil. That’s all. I know you don’t believe it, but I have a conscience. I feel bad about stuff. It may take longer than it does a normal person, but I do feel bad.”
“But now that you have your own fire child,” I said.
“Exactly,” she replied. “Exactly. It happened, and it was terrifying, but then Timothy was still Timothy afterward. He was sweet. He was mine. And I felt like, okay, I can do that. However many times it happens, I can do it.”
“That was pretty impressive how you covered it up,” I said.
“It honestly wasn’t even that hard,” she said. “I had it all worked out before we even jumped into the car. There are a lot of nice things about being rich, but one of the best is that you can say almost anything, and if you do it with confidence, without blinking, people put a lot of effort into believing you.”
“So Timothy is staying with you?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I made Jasper understand that, and he’s accepted it. We had a long talk last night—we had to stay in the guesthouse, by the way, which was pretty great, even though Jasper couldn’t stop crying about his family home—and I had to make him understand a lot of things. I had to make him understand how much I could ruin him. How much all of us could ruin him. So he can be the secretary of state. Let him have it. It’s as close as he’ll get to the presidency.”
“So you’re gonna stay with him?” I asked, kind of already knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s fine. I’m going to get what I want. At this point, Jasper gives me access to the things that matter to me, and I don’t just mean money. I mean the freedom to have my own ideas and my own life. Plus, honestly, I still kind of like him. He’s stupid, but I like him well enough. And, hey, guess what? Somebody talked to me about running for Jasper’s seat in the Senate. I mean, wouldn’t that be wild?”
“And if Timothy catches on fire again?” I asked.
“I don’t know that it matters, honestly,” she said. “I’ll come up with something. Maybe I’ll even tell the truth. Timothy is going to be fine. I’ll make sure that he’s fine. I mean, you did it with two kids; I can handle one.”
“Maybe he’ll be president,” I offered.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Timothy is going to be a Tommy Hilfiger model. He’s going to marry royalty. He’s going to have it easy.”
It was so nice to hear her voice, to hear her voice and listen to her talk about what she wanted. I never quite knew what I wanted, the letters I sent her so wishy-washy and pained. Madison, she fucking wanted stuff. And when she talked or wrote about it, with that intensity, you wanted to give it to her. You wanted her to have it. And it was so easy, I was in love with her again, the routine of our relationship, that she would hurt me, but I would allow it. I would live with it.
“What about the kids?” I asked, finally, waiting for bad news. “What about Bessie and Roland?”
“They are not going to that, whatever, that insane boot camp. It’s fine. Plus, honestly? It was going to cost like five hundred grand a year for both of them. That’s bullshit. No way.”
“But is Jasper going to take care of them?” I asked. “What will happen to them?”
Madison was quiet, and I could hear her breathing. I wondered where she was right now, if she was on the porch, a pitcher of sweet tea beside her. I wondered if she was on a private jet back to D.C. to go apartment hunting. I wanted to picture her clearly in my mind.
“Well, it’s complicated,” she replied. “Jasper wants to do the right thing, Lil, and he really, truly means it. He fucked up. He fucked up so bad that I don’t think Roland and Bessie ever really need to forgive him. They’d be well within their rights. But they’ll be taken care of.”
“How?” I said. “Madison . . .” I was almost crying. “How?”
“Do you want them, Lillian?” she asked.
“What?” There was this little ray of light. I could almost touch it. It was so faint, but I could reach up and it would be right on my fingertips. And I could barely breathe. And I could barely move.
“You heard me. I know that you heard me,” she said.
“Me?” I asked.
“Would you take care of them? Would you keep taking care of them?”
“For how long?” I asked.
“As long as they want you to. As long as you want to. For good. Permanently.”
“How?” I asked. “Why?”
“It’s not that complicated. Well, it is, but Carl walked me through everything. He’s so smart. He’s the best. I had the idea, but he worked it out. So, you wouldn’t adopt them, okay? Because that would, like, make you responsible for them. And Jasper, he’s a good man, but it’s nice if he has to legally be a good man. It’s legal guardianship. You’ve heard of that, right? You’d be their legal guardian. But Jasper would make sure they were cared for. He’d provide for their upbringing. He’d pay their expenses. If you wanted Bessie to go to Iron Mountain—”
“Fuck no,” I said, but I was kind of laughing. I was kind of crying, and I was kind of laughing. I must have sounded insane.
“Well, whatever, not Iron Mountain, but a good school. A good but normal school for both of them.”
“They’d be mine?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Madison said. “Would that make you happy?”