The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

  Sam couldn’t answer. Her throat felt like a gaping maw, air crashing in so fast that no words could escape the other way.

  The horror of all this laid bare, after years of ignoring and festering, was like some grotesque wound breaking out of its cast. Raw and moist, tender—a thing too vile for the outside world.

  He continued, “She’s fourteen years old. Not eight.”

  “Stop.”

  “I know you don’t spend much time with kids, kids were never your bag, but a fourteen-year-old and an eight-year-old have different conceptions of—”

  “Please stop,” Sam said.

  Something in this quiet request did stop him.

  They faced each other in the small dorm bedroom, their feet on hardwood, the window open and a balmy summer breeze wasted.

  “For you to walk in here,” she began, “and make an assumption like that—”

  “Assumption! Yep, that’s what it was, an assumpt—”

  “—assumption like that,” Sam persisted, “is so reckless, so cynical. And it does impact Joss. No matter what she…knows, or doesn’t know. It does impact her.”

  Abe seemed to consider a few responses, now raising a finger, now animating different parts of his face hotly.

  He took a retiring step back. “You win, I’m terrible.”

  “Abe.”

  “No, let’s tell the truth. You’re smarter than me. After all, you went here.” He crooked his finger overhead. “Why argue? You’re better. You’re always going to win.”

  Sam’s despair deepened. She’d almost forgotten this tactic of Abe’s in the years they’d been skating around each other. It had been common in earlier days. Sam wasn’t right—she just argued better. She was a better fighter. Conflict didn’t come naturally to Abe. He preferred the high road.

  “Look, I just…” She held her forehead. “There’s an explanation here, about Jamie. But I almost don’t want to give it. I don’t think you deserve it.”

  “You’re right, hundred percent. I absolutely don’t.” Abe spread his arms wide. “I have no idea what compels you to keep hanging around a piece of human trash like me.”

  He dropped his arms and pouted. Sam had a dozen bad urges—to yell at him, to tear those elbow rips to the cuffs, to walk right past him out the door.

  But she contained them.

  The situation looked fishy to him. Maybe it was fishy—after all, what had those touches with Jamie at the gallery been?

  Oh, who cared? Whether Abe’s case here was weak or staggeringly weak? That he was being small-minded and graceless? The man had flashed these traits for so long, with such consistency, that they’d lost their capacity to shock.

  Against all this, Sam steeled herself the same way she always had: by remembering herself at seventeen, the day she’d learned her parents were divorcing.

  Her mother told her in the car. Sam had just finished an Arsenic and Old Lace rehearsal, plunked down in the passenger seat with a granola bar, and Mom looked across the center console and said, “Your father and I broke up.”

  She then explained Sam could choose who she’d like to live with, and they would work the housing/moving-out situation to fit her desires.

  Patting Sam’s hand like, Look how considerate we’re being.

  Sam had reared up in shock. She couldn’t get her seatbelt off—it felt like a flat snake squeezing her torso. The car was running. They were in a high school parking lot.

  Sam’s entire world had bottomed out that day. For months she couldn’t lay her cheek against a pillow without thinking of it. She dropped out of Arsenic. She stopped doing the reading in English—how could you care about made-up people from two hundred years ago after this?

  She wouldn’t do it to her own daughter—not at fourteen. At nineteen, maybe. Not at fourteen.

  “Let’s start over,” Sam said, stooping at the bed. “Joss and I found a brick…”

  Chapter 13

  They all went to the renaming—Sam, Joss, Laurel, Abe. Sam didn’t see an alternative. She had told Jamie—and more importantly Joss—they would go, and to back out because Abe had shown up would’ve been to acknowledge some transgression on her part.

  Since the blowout, Abe had adopted a kind of pushy fatalism. “You want to take me to the Gallagher gala?” Raising one holey sleeve again like a shield. “Really?”

  Sam shrugged. “We can buy you a shirt. If you want.”

  She’d chosen the floral yellow dress herself, simple stud earrings, and half-inch heels.

  The whole situation was bizarre and hard to process mentally, but stable. Joss had hugged them both as they’d emerged from the bedroom, her body so light, feeling like reeds in Sam’s arms.

  “Yeesh—college, right?” Sam had said. “Too crazy.”

  From there forward, everyone had just feigned amnesia. Tomorrow, next week—there would have to be a reckoning, but not here.

  Now the group walked to Gallagher College. Campus had surrendered its shine in the reunion’s waning hours. Trash bins overflowed. Two maintenance workers walked Orange Street with the tails of their shirts out. The stone facades looked a shade grayer to Sam.

  Laurel made small talk with Abe about NYC music acts. He, to his credit, engaged Joss about her trip, asking what-all she’d seen and whether she wanted to follow in Mom’s footsteps now.

  Near the college, they saw network news trucks jammed bumper to bumper. A camerawoman moved her silver-foil shade behind a broadcaster. A huddle of people was stapling poster board onto wood sticks. Some kind of protest?

  It was strange, these streets Sam used to walk in sweatpants hosting a national event.

  A national battle.

  She texted ahead to Jamie, who met them at the gate.

  “I got us seats,” he said with a wink to Joss. “Right up by the stage.”

  He and Abe ignored each other as they all moved into the courtyard, which glittered with banners and balloons, passed hors d’oeuvres, hair. Here came Charlotte Gallagher breezing between groups, orchestrating with deft hand motions. There were Joan and Bernadette Gallagher, the bookend legislative bulwarks, anchoring boisterous discussions.

  “Dad!” Joss said, pulling her father’s hands into her own lap. “It’s Lem, Lem Gallagher!”

  Abe noted the presence of a singer-songwriter he used to call “formative for my own stuff” with a nonplussed nod.

  He said, “We’re among the Beautiful People.”

  Sam groaned and was thinking what she might say to counteract the effect of his snarkiness on Joss, but it wasn’t necessary.

  Because Joss had found Owen Gallagher.

  “Other side of the stage, look!” She tugged Sam’s dress, straining for a better view. “We’re so close—I can’t believe we’re so close.”

  Owen was shaking hands with a woman in hijab and two men in suits. His off hand roamed familiarly along their shoulders and down to the elbow. A thousand-watt grin never dimmed on his lips.

  The group mingled ahead of the speeches, following Jamie through the festivities. He introduced them as “my dear friends” and found ways to bring them into topics—“Maren, you’re still managing the endowment for the Joffrey? Joss here is quite serious in ballet…”

  Sam had the thought that Jamie was adjusting awfully well to the scene—then reminded herself Juba was no primitive village. Who knew what Jamie had been doing the last ten years? Maybe he’d been doing functionary work on the clan’s behalf, writing grants, attending cocktail parties.

  Sam didn’t think so. But he could have been.

  “Good good, you made it.”

  Claiming this voice with a hustling step into their circle was Jamie’s sister, Charlotte.

  She quirked her brow at Sam. “Davenport ninety-six, right? I was four years behind in Trumbull.”

  As they traded smiles, Sam couldn’t decide whether it was modest or ridiculous of Charlotte to provide her year and college affiliation, as though a person of her global stature needed co
ntextualizing.

  Ah, cut her some slack, Sam decided. It’s modest.

  Sam said, “And these people with me are Joss…Laurel…and my husband, Abe.”

  “Pleasure to meet everybody,” Charlotte said, giving only the merest doubletake at Abe’s appearance. “Has Big Bro given you the tour?”

  In school, Sam had known Charlotte only in passing. Now she liked the younger woman instantly, her energy, her appetite to lead—not an aide or minion in sight.

  Charlotte Gallagher made things go. Herself.

  “And you remember our mother, Joan?” she said, pulling over the Massachusetts senator. “You did a sail with us in Nantucket, didn’t you? Would’ve been your senior year, April? Chilly.”

  Sam nodded, amazed by Charlotte’s recall. It was said she could name any employee in SmartWidget’s Silicon Valley office within a week of their starting—a claim Sam had found outrageous before but made sense now.

  Joan Gallagher’s shake was brittle. “Of course. The daffodils were radiant, as I recall.”

  Jamie, ever attuned to insincerity, said, “They never met. Mom was in Washington that entire semester, busy with immigration reform.”

  Charlotte puffed her cheeks at Sam conspiratorially. What a stickler, huh?

  Sam said, “Thank you so much for having us to the ceremony. This is tremendous.” Her eyes traveled the bunting, the balloon arches, the temporary steel stage. “Are you both speaking?”

  “Just Mom,” Charlotte said. “I’m better in the bowels, toiling away with the plumbing.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “You’re laying it on a little thick, Char.”

  She punched his arm. The interaction cheered Sam, the powerful Gallaghers behaving like any pair of siblings.

  She allowed a wispy daydream to sprout, visions of life in the clan. Seasonal New England meals, leek and potato soup on verandas. Talk of art and education reforms, boys in suspenders ducking under picnic tables, girls doing each other’s French braids.

  Sam wasn’t in these scenes, exactly, more of a floating-eye observer, soaking in the mood, smelling centerpieces, the Atlantic crisp on her neck…

  Abe’s voice pierced it all:

  “Do they know about the brick yet?”

  Jamie’s face lost two shades. Charlotte broke off gesturing to a stagehand.

  Sam said, “It really isn’t—I mean, we’re still trying to figure out the best way to—”

  “Brick?” Charlotte said. “What brick?”

  Abe grew louder as the spotlight seemed to find him. “The brick Rock Gallagher used to kill that guy. That guy—his Yale roommate, wasn’t it?”

  Nobody spoke up to confirm or refute this. Fortunately the courtyard was buzzing, the speeches about to start, and other groups didn’t seem to be listening in.

  Abe continued, “Sam found it. It was boarded up in the fireplace—their dorm fireplace. She’s got it in a bag in her room. He’s a fascist. Pruitt. We can put him away.”

  Sam experienced these words as falling, slow-swerving knives. She reached vaguely for her husband, touching his shoulder, unsure if she wanted to stop him or steer him or what. The courtyard felt small.

  Charlotte faced her brother, the lightheartedness of seconds ago gone. She seemed angry. Is she upset Jamie didn’t tell her earlier? Or something else? That he brought us here at all?

  She said, “This isn’t an ideal place to talk.”

  Abe asked if she had ideas about what to do.

  “Do about what?”

  “About the brick,” he said. “Who we take it to.”

  “Look, this—this is the first I’m hearing of it.” Again Charlotte glared at her brother. “I take it you knew about this?”

  Jamie looked queasy. “I told them I didn’t want to pursue it. Nothing good would come.”

  “Nothing good?” Abe repeated. “What’re you smoking? You can use this—you can nail Rock Pruitt. And Sam found it. You should be on your knees thanking her.”

  He sneered at the Gallaghers. It was an expression Sam had come to loathe, but now? She felt herself lining up behind Abe. She and Joss had found the brick—then delivered it right to them. Why wouldn’t they be grateful?

  “That was a long time ago,” Charlotte said. “Physical evidence…I mean, you’re talking twenty years…”

  A chuckle escaped her lips, which irked Sam. She felt suddenly ashamed—for the pride she’d felt in her discovery, for the hope. For daydreaming about leek and potato soup.

  She felt ashamed on her family’s behalf.

  “He’s not wrong,” she spoke up. “If this could stop Rock Pruitt, why not shout it from the rooftops?”

  “I’m sorry—you’re right,” Charlotte said. “This is all new. It’s a lot to assimilate.” She kneaded her fingertips into one temple. “Clearly it’s useful information, I—I shouldn’t have been dismissive. I apologize.”

  Before Sam could accept or not accept, the first speaker mounted the stage: Kalifa Babajide, the former U.N. chief and longtime Gallagher ally.

  Charlotte excused herself to hustle stragglers into chairs. When Jamie began ushering them to the front row, Sam balked—but Joss was already heading that way with a floaty smile.

  As Babajide tapped the SmartPodium and began, tension rippled through their six padded folding chairs. Laurel, at one end, kept peeking down the row.

  Jamie folded and refolded his arms, seeming uncomfortable at how the discussion had ended—or not ended.

  Did he feel torn between acknowledging Sam’s discovery and steering clear of the feud?

  Was he irked they’d mentioned the brick in front of Charlotte, worried she was going to take it and run? She sure hadn’t seemed eager to run.

  Kalifa Babajide gave a dynamic introduction to the Gallagher legacy, regaling the audience with tales of ideas championed and rights bills passed. His formal accent and sober appearance—black dashiki with gold trim, shaved head—imbued his message with gravity.

  “The world over, there exists one surname that all peoples know stands with the seekers of progress,” he said. “That name—the name this fine institute of learning honors today—is Gallagher.”

  Eyes forward, Sam checked Charlotte Gallagher in her periphery. Charlotte looked at ease, following Babajide’s words with smiling nods.

  Maybe there wasn’t any tension here. Maybe Sam was only conflating her own emotions—about the brick, about Abe and Jamie—with the Gallaghers’ confused reaction.

  Charlotte Gallagher was dealing with presidential politics, a clan of incorrigible loose cannons, the reemergence of her only sibling after pretending he was dead for a decade—all on top of her day job, running the second-largest technology company on the planet.

  Would she really sweat some brick in a bag?

  Babajide spoke beyond his allotted ten minutes, and Lisa Vance after him went even longer—the warrior for child welfare, a rising star in the Democratic Party. This pushed Joan Gallagher’s scheduled 3:20 speech back to almost four o’clock.

  Charlotte caught her mother on her way to the stage.

  “Might trim the middle section,” Sam heard her say. “Make sure we get Owen on before the evening news cutoff.”

  The senator took this under advisement with thinned lips.

  Charlotte sat down muttering, “By all means, everybody do whatever the hell you like…”

  Sam glanced up the row to check on Joss. The speeches were solid but probably less than riveting to fourteen-year-old ears. Sam figured she might’ve slipped off a shoe for some idle piano-toes stretches.

  She hadn’t. Joss seemed to be drinking in every detail, the positioning of cameras, tonal cues from the SmartPodium. And, above all, any preparation surrounding Owen Gallagher—who was just visible through a pair of stone archways, getting makeup feathered onto his face.

  During Joan’s speech, Abe leaned over. “How much audio have you taken?”

  Sam squinted. “Audio?”

  “The documentary,” he
said. “You recorded some background clips, right?”

  She nodded, wondering about his interest. Is he excited for me? Or just seeing dollar signs?

  “Who cares about the Gallaghers?” Abe’s hoarse voice didn’t quite lower to a whisper. “Go straight to the cops, we’re golden.”

  Beside her, Jamie leaned forward in his chair. Sam inhaled, moving her chest and shoulders between the two men.

  Again, she wasn’t sure quite what Abe was about—what was driving this sudden support of her.

  Finally, it was Owen Gallagher’s turn to speak. Crisp strides carried him onstage, whipping the fabric of navy suitpants. He dipped his brow and jutted his chin at media personalities in the crowd.

  “Thanks, thank you,” he began. “It’s my great honor to be here at the christening of Gallagher College. And this weather, man! Almost feels like we could be at my alma mater.”

  Polite chuckles met the reference, which Sam believed was to Stanford.

  Amid flash pops, shutter clicks, and the SmartPodium’s dull blups, Owen launched into the meat of his talk. He emphasized the importance of scholarship, of supporting the Academy—whose primacy to the culture had never been challenged the way its foes were challenging it today. He used an earnest thumb-forefinger point for emphasis. He sustained eye contact. He sprinkled in stories of Iowans or New Hampshirites he’d met who worried about the affordability of higher education.

  Joss listened without blinking.

  Abe huffed every few minutes.

  Sam felt tired, and great and awful at once. She could barely conceive of being back to work at WNYC tomorrow.

  “…like to conclude by thanking my dear friend, Kalifa Babajide,” Owen was saying—nearing thirty minutes in. “Or, as I like to call him, my little brown cheerleader.”

  Sam stiffened out of a light doze. For a moment, she thought she’d heard wrong—but one look around the courtyard told her she hadn’t.

  Camera operators rose up from their viewfinders. Charlotte Gallagher’s teeth were a foot tall.

  Onstage, Owen looked like he’d just swallowed a goldfish. His eyes zipped from side to side, scanning, searching. The general panic caught to him. A knot of confusion—or heat, or calculation—came into his forehead.