He hadn’t had a traditional childhood with Little League and hockey sticks; he’d blown out birthday candles in the Court of St. James’s ambassador’s residence rather than Chuck E. Cheese. But because of their myriad journeys, they had always been together, meeting Otto or flying back home, seats A and B.
“ONE HOUR UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!” Ryan Seacrest yelled as crowds cheered.
How did all this time pass? It was like Allison’s husband had once said of those weary years of parenting: The days are long but the years are short . Cole was out on his own, the human glue that kept her fused to Otto for so long. Eden flopped back in her pillows and cried herself to sleep.
She woke up the next morning feeling as if she had been out all night, even though she didn’t even stay up long enough to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. She stared again at the cracks on the ceiling. No. She refused to allow herself to lie there any longer. She couldn’t spend another night like the one she just had. No way. She would simply have to move the hell on.
She forced herself to get out of bed and meandered zombielike to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, then reached for her new miracle moisturizer she’d splurged on at Bloomie’s. The salesgirl had given her some spiel about it being made in a rural Japanese monastery, where the monks all had shriveled and wrinkly and disgusting raisin faces but their hands looked shockingly smooth and infantile. It had sounded better than the whale sperm and sheep’s placenta crap Allison slathered on for $600 a pot. In this new chapter, a new year, Eden would have to start taking care of herself. She closed the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and beheld her clean, lined face in front of her. There she was: one year from forty.
As she slowly rubbed the moisturizer onto her cheeks, she tilted her head, looked at herself, and found her lips beginning to smile. Workmen still hollered, and more than one of Clyde’s friends had made a pass, confessing an enamored heart after a drunken dinner party. She would be fine. She still had it. Right?
She would not waste time. She would take Allison’s friends up on their offer to go on the prowl, even if she was ambivalent. If you want to get hit, you gotta go out in traffic! The many fish in the sea were not going to fly through her window; she had to go and hook ’em herself. And deep down in the vast ocean of her mind, Eden scuba’d to the bottom to summon the hope she still could.
16
You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
—Bob Hope
I t was nearly five thirty when Chase got the call.
“Chase, it’s your mother.”
His mother, who never wept, simply had to say his name through a wall of tears, and Chase knew. He had been finishing the piles of work on his Midtown desk, watching the clock out of the corner of his eye, hoping to get back to his grandmother’s bedside. But it was too late.
He staggered to his parents’ apartment on Fifth Avenue, awash with grief. As always when there was a crisis in The Family, cousins, advisers, and old friends gathered in lockdown mode in the penthouse. Here we all are again , Chase thought, surveying his uncle Johnson, aunts, the family lawyers, and Dewey Riley, the head of DuPree Family Office, who managed and controlled Brooke’s and her sisters’ lives.
After Chase greeted everyone with a somber, shocked tone of despair, he saw Liesel enter the room, her face downcast.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said, hugging him. “I know how much Ruthie meant to you.”
He hugged her in silence and looked down at her face. Her pristine preppy beauty remained intact despite her sadness; her shoulder-length blond hair was crisply pulled back in a short ponytail, a Hermès scarf tied around her neck. At twenty-eight, she had the aura of a fortysomething grown-up, in charge and ever pulled together. She embraced Chase and offered
“ONE HOUR UNTIL THE NEW YEAR!” Ryan Seacrest yelled as crowds cheered.
How did all this time pass? It was like Allison’s husband had once said of those weary years of parenting: The days are long but the years are short . Cole was out on his own, the human glue that kept her fused to Otto for so long. Eden flopped back in her pillows and cried herself to sleep.
She woke up the next morning feeling as if she had been out all night, even though she didn’t even stay up long enough to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. She stared again at the cracks on the ceiling. No. She refused to allow herself to lie there any longer. She couldn’t spend another night like the one she just had. No way. She would simply have to move the hell on.
She forced herself to get out of bed and meandered zombielike to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face, then reached for her new miracle moisturizer she’d splurged on at Bloomie’s. The salesgirl had given her some spiel about it being made in a rural Japanese monastery, where the monks all had shriveled and wrinkly and disgusting raisin faces but their hands looked shockingly smooth and infantile. It had sounded better than the whale sperm and sheep’s placenta crap Allison slathered on for $600 a pot. In this new chapter, a new year, Eden would have to start taking care of herself. She closed the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet and beheld her clean, lined face in front of her. There she was: one year from forty.
As she slowly rubbed the moisturizer onto her cheeks, she tilted her head, looked at herself, and found her lips beginning to smile. Workmen still hollered, and more than one of Clyde’s friends had made a pass, confessing an enamored heart after a drunken dinner party. She would be fine. She still had it. Right?
She would not waste time. She would take Allison’s friends up on their offer to go on the prowl, even if she was ambivalent. If you want to get hit, you gotta go out in traffic! The many fish in the sea were not going to fly through her window; she had to go and hook ’em herself. And deep down in the vast ocean of her mind, Eden scuba’d to the bottom to summon the hope she still could.
16
You know you are getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.
—Bob Hope
I t was nearly five thirty when Chase got the call.
“Chase, it’s your mother.”
His mother, who never wept, simply had to say his name through a wall of tears, and Chase knew. He had been finishing the piles of work on his Midtown desk, watching the clock out of the corner of his eye, hoping to get back to his grandmother’s bedside. But it was too late.
He staggered to his parents’ apartment on Fifth Avenue, awash with grief. As always when there was a crisis in The Family, cousins, advisers, and old friends gathered in lockdown mode in the penthouse. Here we all are again , Chase thought, surveying his uncle Johnson, aunts, the family lawyers, and Dewey Riley, the head of DuPree Family Office, who managed and controlled Brooke’s and her sisters’ lives.
After Chase greeted everyone with a somber, shocked tone of despair, he saw Liesel enter the room, her face downcast.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said, hugging him. “I know how much Ruthie meant to you.”
He hugged her in silence and looked down at her face. Her pristine preppy beauty remained intact despite her sadness; her shoulder-length blond hair was crisply pulled back in a short ponytail, a Hermès scarf tied around her neck. At twenty-eight, she had the aura of a fortysomething grown-up, in charge and ever pulled together. She embraced Chase and offered
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