So I guess I’m speaking to Marion Connolly. Aiden’s mother. The cause of all the bullshit in his life. I finally get to confront her. Under the worst possible circumstances.
I’m sorry, Connolly. In advance, I am sorry for anything that is about to happen, anything that is going to fly from my lips, however hard I try to hold my tongue.
I need to keep it together. Focus on the painting. Don’t tell this woman what I think of her and her husband and their marriage contract and the hell they’ve inflicted on their own sons.
For Connolly’s sake, I must keep that to myself and let him handle his family situation.
I only hope I can do that.
* * *
I have no more idea where Connolly’s parents live than I knew where he lived. I vaguely recall him saying once he had to pop over to his parents’ place while we were in Boston, and I figured he meant their house. He didn’t, as I realize when the car leaves the city. They must have a place in Boston, a condo or something, but their house is outside, and when the car finally arrives at its destination, I truly understand just how rich the Connollys are.
When we first met, Connolly’s surname—combined with the eau d’ old money he wears like cologne—had pinged some sense of familiarity. Old Boston family. Old Boston money. It’s certainly a common enough Irish name in a town rooted in Irish immigration. Yet I recognized it. When others did, too, I realized he came from more than just a well-off local family. Still, while I can joke about that moneyed cologne and his fashion sense and his luxury cars and his country club life, it still only said “one-percenter” to me. Even finding out he had some kind of exclusive credit card just nudged that up a bit. Huh, he really does come from money.
I realize now that while Connolly might seem a walking rich-boy stereotype, he’d actually been downplaying it. The car and the clothes were enough. He wasn’t going to flash around his black credit card. He wasn’t going to talk about his downtown house. He wasn’t the kind of guy who wedged “Harvard MBA” into every conversation. He’s been actively trying to cloak that part of his life, and as laughable as his efforts may have seemed, he did manage better than I could have imagined, because this house tells me that I’m not dealing with multimillionaires. The Connollys are full-out billionaires.
This house is . . . Well, first, it’s not a house. My window might be too tinted to see more than shapes, but we pause at a gate and then we keep driving, past buildings and vast expanses of lawn. It’s not even an estate. It’s a freaking compound, and even with the windows up, I catch the distant crash of waves. They own an oceanfront estate less than an hour outside Boston.
As we drive into the compound, though, I’m not straining to see the main house. I’m sure it’s magnificent. I don’t care. What I’m thinking about is the secured gate we passed through and the high walls that surround the estate. The boundary between the Connolly family universe and the real world. I keep thinking of what Connolly said about being the one who escaped, only to learn otherwise.
Connolly had stepped through that gate. Strode through it into the world, his family at his back. Leaving behind his childhood home. Not taking up residence in one of the guest houses, not staying in the compound with all the security money could buy. He left this behind for an independent life.
Yet the gate is an illusion. The walls are an illusion. That wall isn’t a barrier restricting the Connollys’ power to this little corner of the world. They have found every possible way to reach beyond it and tether their son to his family name. A Harvard education . . . with strings attached. An independent life . . . with strings attached. A prime-real-estate home . . . with strings attached.
I can boggle at Connolly for not seeing the strings, but I haven’t been putting myself in his place. His parents’ control of his life was so absolute that he really had felt as if he’d escaped. He’d thrown off the heavy chains of family responsibility and oversight, and so can I blame him for missing the gossamer threads that still bound him to that world?
I blame his parents. They wove those feather-light bonds and let him think he’d escaped, only to reel him in as soon as he started exploring the possibility of more.
As soon as he met me.
No, that oversells my importance in Connolly’s life. He’d clearly had the ambition and independence to break out of the most obvious bonds as fast as he could. Meeting me has made him realize he wants more, and to his parents that means I’m responsible. It isn’t Connolly opening his mind to the new possibilities reflected in my life; it’s me trying to drag him—kicking and screaming—into my mundane middle-class world.
Rather fittingly, as we near the house, it starts to rain. Or maybe it’s mist from the ocean. That’d be fitting, too—stake your claim on some of the best property in Massachusetts and end up with nonstop drizzle.
Whatever the cause, the rain streaks the windows enough that I only get a blurred impression of a huge, sprawling house. The SUV pulls into a garage around back. Leon motions for me to wait, and then comes around to open my door. I don’t wait—I try the door myself—but it only opens from the outside.
It’s Leon who escorts me into the house. I made the mistake of favoring him earlier, and he’s leaped into the role of “good cop.” I need to guard myself against that. Remember no one here is going to help me. I can only hope he was telling the truth when he said this was just a meeting.
Leon escorts me through a back door and down several halls, semi-dark with blank walls. Staff quarters. That’s the impression I get, though I may have just seen too many old movies.
Leon stops and opens a door, and then we get the sort of corridor I expect, complete with paintings of long-dead Connollys. I don’t look at them. I register their existence and the family resemblance and keep going.
“Ms. Connolly is in here,” Leon murmurs at last, nodding toward a thick wooden door. “It’s Mr. Connolly’s office. He’s at home, but I don’t know whether he’ll be joining you.”
He opens the door before I can ask any questions. I wouldn’t. I just want to get this over with.
“Ms. Bennett,” he announces once the door is open.
One look inside that room, and I remember the first time I’d visited Connolly’s office. From his air of old-Boston money, I expected an old-Boston office, complete with massive wood desk, cut-glass scotch decanter and antique globe. Instead I got Connolly’s Nordic, minimalist style. Now I walk into exactly what I’d first imagined, down to the cut-glass bottles and antique globe. The only difference is that it’s twice the size of our living room at home. It’s half office and half library, the shelves filled with leather-bound editions that I’m sure no one is allowed to actually read.
My gaze goes first to the desk. It’s empty. I turn to look into the library and see two wingback chairs. A woman sits in one.
I’ve seen Marion Connolly on a video screen. Swap gender and hair color, and she’s the spitting image of her son, from her pale skin to her green eyes to her scattering of freckles. When I walk in, she doesn’t rise until I’m halfway to her, my hand extended. Then she gets up, ignoring the hand and says, in a cool voice with a faint Irish accent, “This is not a social visit, Kennedy.”