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Authors: Marie Bostwick

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BOOK: Threading the Needle
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The tears that had pooled in Madelyn's eyes spilled over and ran silently down her cheeks. Tessa bit her lower lip and blinked, trying to keep herself from crying too.
“I'm sorry, Madelyn. You're not . . . it's not that I don't like you, but . . . you're just too much. You try too hard. I don't want to hurt you. . . .”
Madelyn's nose was running. She swiped at it with the back of her hand. “Shut up,” she said in a raspy voice. “Just shut up. I don't have to listen to you anymore. I want my bracelet back.”
Tessa looked confused.
“The friendship bracelet I made for you. I want it back.”
Tessa pulled up the sleeve of her coat to expose her wrist and hesitated a moment before pulling off the bracelet and handing it to Madelyn.
“I'm sorry.”
Eyes still swimming with tears, Madelyn glared at Tessa, shoved the bracelet inside the pocket of her jacket, and ran away without saying another word.
Ben laughed, made a megaphone of his hands, and called after her. “What's the matter, Maddie? Breaking up too hard to do?”
Tessa stood silently with her fists clenched at her sides, watching Madelyn's retreat.
When Madelyn was out of sight, Tessa spun around and, making a windmill of her arm, slapped Ben as hard as she could across the jaw in the exact spot Madelyn's book bag had hit him a few minutes before.
“Ow!” Ben covered his jaw with his hand. “What was that for?”
“For being mean to her! And for making
me
be mean to her!”
Tessa made a fist and punched him as hard as she could in the shoulder three times. “And that's for trying to stick your tongue in my mouth! And that's for grabbing my boob! And that's for being such a pervert!”
Ben backed away from her, but she followed him, kicking him in the shin with her red snow boot. Keeping one eye on the furious girl, he bent down to pick up the schoolbooks he'd abandoned in the snow. “You're crazy! You know that?”
He retreated across the yard at a pace that wasn't quite a run. Looking over his shoulder he yelled, “And weird! You're just as weird as your girlfriend!”
“Well, I'd rather be weird than a perverted creep!” Tessa yelled back. “Hey, Ben. Let me give you a tip. Next time you try to kiss a girl, think about brushing your teeth first. My dog has better breath than you!”
When he was gone, Tessa wiped her tears on the back of her sleeve, picked up her books, and went inside. She ran upstairs to her bedroom and didn't come out of her room for the rest of the night. Mrs. Kover left a cheese sandwich and glass of milk on a tray outside her door. It went untouched until Rex found it, wolfed down the sandwich, and lapped up the milk as far as his tongue could reach, then knocked over the glass with his paw to get at the rest, and lay down next to the empty tray and took a nap.
 
Chest heaving from the exertion of running across the snowy yards, Madelyn slid open the heavy wooden garage door, tugged on a piece of grimy string to turn on the overhead lightbulb, and walked past Edna's DeSoto to the wooden worktable under the side window.
She pulled Tessa's bracelet out of her pocket, then took off her own, laid both on the worktable, and smashed the beads over and over and over again with a hammer until there was nothing left of them but a tangle of twisted fishing line and a pile of pale blue dust. She swept the glittery remains into a rusting dustpan, dumped them into the trash, and dried her eyes before going inside.
After closing her bedroom door, she dumped her coat and books on the floor, then flopped backward onto the blue and white patchwork quilt that covered her bed. She lay there, dry-eyed, and stared at the ceiling some minutes before reaching her decision.
Rising from her bed, she crossed the room and picked up the dollhouse. The miniature furniture was scattered by the abrupt movement and the ever-smiling members of the doll family toppled onto the floor in a heap.
Edna, who was walking to the bathroom to take the afternoon dose of her liver pills, frowned as she met her granddaughter in the hallway.
“What are you doing with that thing?”
“Putting it in the attic. I'm too old to play with dolls anymore. It's all just make-believe anyway.”
Edna snorted. “I was wondering when you'd finally figure that out.”
 
The next day, Tessa failed to turn in her homework and Mrs. Bridges had no choice but to give her detention. Concerned about this uncharacteristic lapse on the part of her favorite student, the teacher called Tessa's mother and asked if everything was all right at home.
When Mrs. Kover explained about the situation with Madelyn, Mrs. Bridges said, “Well, I'm sorry she's so upset, but between you and me, it's for the best. Madelyn isn't the sort of girl Tessa should be spending time with.
“Forgive me if I sound harsh, but I've been a teacher for thirty-six years. I've seen girls like Madelyn before. Once they hit high school, they turn wild. Get themselves into all kinds of trouble and bring other girls, good girls from good homes, girls like Tessa, along for the ride. You're lucky this friendship ended when it did.
“Mark my words, Sarah, Madelyn Beecher will come to a bad end.”
1
Madelyn
August 2009
 
I
try to resist the urge, but as I sit in the offices of Blackman, Janders, and Whipple, located on the forty-eighth floor of the Mancuso Tower, a cathedral of excess located on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-sixth Street, I can't stop myself from adding it all up in my head and marveling at the true price tag of what Sterling used to call “a lifestyle.” How did I fail to see it before? And how am I going to live without it?
How am I going to live at all?
The Oriental rug that sits under the antique mahogany partners desk of my attorney, Eugene Darius Janders, is hand-knotted silk and worth thirty thousand dollars at least—enough to buy a new car. It's very fine, though not as fine as the one in the library in our house in the Hamptons. I mean, the house that
used
to be ours. And if I added up the rest of the furnishings in Gene's office, it would probably be enough to buy a nice little cottage in the country for cash. Not a cottage in the Hamptons, mind you, but someplace quiet and removed from the city. Connecticut, maybe.
Then there's his wardrobe. Gene's suit is summer-weight wool, tan, two button, side-vented, custom made, probably in London, priced somewhere between five and seven thousand, which, even in New York, is enough to pay a month's rent for a two-bedroom apartment in a very decent part of town. His blue paisley tie, designed by Brioni, retails for one hundred and ninety-five dollars—enough to buy a week's groceries. I think. It's been a while since I did my own grocery shopping.
And the shoes. Oh, the shoes! Hand-tooled calfskin, individually and exquisitely custom made by John Lobb for a very small, exclusive clientele—the trust-fund set, celebrities, the upper echelon of Manhattan's successful lawyers, men like Eugene, a few brokers and money managers, including my husband, Sterling Baron, once one of New York's most successful fund managers, now one of its most notorious—men who don't balk at spending five thousand dollars for shoes. Only the very well-heeled can afford to stride down the sidewalks of New York in a pair of made-to-measure Lobb loafers.
Forgive me. That was a terrible pun, I know. But these days I have to take my humor where I can find it. At the moment, nothing about my life is especially funny.
Four months ago Sterling and I spent, for more than it takes to buy a pair of Lobb oxfords, a weekend in the Boathouse Suite at The Point, a very exclusive resort on the shores of Upper Saranac Lake, and we did it without even looking at the bill.
Was that only four months ago? That seems another lifetime, another life . . . because it is.
Exclusive. What a word. I used to think it meant limited to a small number of the “best” people, but I've recently come to realize it means limited to whoever can pay, a club to which my membership has just been rescinded, as Eugene was now explaining.
“Bottom line is, Madelyn, you're broke.”
I laughed nervously. “You mean broke like I'll have to rent out the house in the Hamptons this summer? Or broke like I'll have to apply for food stamps?”
“Madelyn, haven't you been listening to anything I've said?”
“I've been trying very hard not to.”
“You don't
have
a house in the Hamptons anymore. The feds have seized it, and the condo in Vail,
and
the Bentley. The only reason you're still in your apartment is because I convinced the judge to give you until the end of the month to move out.”
I felt a pressure in my chest. For a moment, I wondered if I might be having a heart attack, but I'm only fifty-six and in perfect health. I wasn't dying; I was panicking.
“But where am I supposed to go? Can't you get the judge to change his mind? I had nothing to do with this! I didn't cheat the investors out of their money, Sterling did. The investigators have cleared me of any wrongdoing. I knew nothing about it.”
It's true. I didn't know anything about it. Sterling was rich when I met him, rich when I married him, and as time went on, he just got richer. He never talked to me about his business. There was no point, he said; matters of high finance were way over my head. “You can't be smart
and
beautiful, Madelyn, so why don't you stick to beautiful? That's what you do best.” When we first married, he said it with a laugh, but after a few years, with a sneer.
Sterling was one of the most successful fund managers in New York. Even in years when the market was down, Sterling's investors made ten percent minimum. Nobody cared how, not until Bernie Madoff was exposed and suddenly the success of money managers with the Midas touch, people like Sterling, was called into question.
I didn't even know Sterling was under investigation until we came home from our weekend at The Point. I remember everything about that weekend, how strange it felt, not because we hadn't been there before—we go to The Point at least two or three times a year—but because of the way Sterling was acting. He was . . . how shall I explain it? Attentive. He looked at me, looked me in the eye the way he hasn't looked at me in years. I wondered what he wanted. I kept waiting for him to say something, or do something, or ask for something. But he didn't. He just kept looking at me. And he held my hand when we walked to dinner. He hadn't done that since . . . well, not for a very long time. And he didn't bring his cell phone along. He didn't make or take any calls for the entire weekend. Maybe that doesn't seem unusual, but that's because you don't know my husband. Once, we went to dinner at the White House and Sterling left during the salad course to take a call from his secretary. Of course, he was sleeping with his secretary at the time, but that particular call, I believe, was about business.
Anyway, Sterling didn't talk on the phone once that weekend. He talked to me. He listened to me. And for a little while, it was nice, almost like it was in the early days, when he cared, back in the days when I cared too. So long ago.
We didn't talk on the drive home. Sterling seemed to pull into himself. I kept going over the weekend in my mind, thinking that maybe, just maybe, we might be happy, that Sterling had undergone some transformation, decided to be a real husband to me. I wondered if that could be true. And I wondered if it wasn't too late.
Returning home, we were met by stern-faced FBI agents who handcuffed my husband and took him away while I stood watching, hoping I'd wake up from this nightmare soon. I didn't.
Sterling seemed unfazed. With his hands behind his back, half hidden by the starched whiteness of his French cuffs, he calmly told me to call Mike Radnovich and cancel their golf game and then to ask Gene to meet him at the police station.
Gene has never liked me. The feeling is mutual, but he's very good at his job. If anyone could get us out of this mess, it was Gene.
“Seriously, Gene, can't you do something? Talk to the judge, get me some more time? You did it before. I didn't do anything wrong, so why am I being punished? Where do people expect me to live? On the street?”
Gene leaned forward, his forearms resting on his desk. “Madelyn, don't you get it? No one cares. Over the years, Sterling took twenty billion dollars from his clients, told them he was going to invest it for them, all but guaranteed them a minimum ten percent annual return, and then sat on the money. Compared to Madoff, Sterling is small potatoes, but still . . . a billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money. People are angry and they're looking for someone to blame.”
None of this was news to me, not anymore. Gene had given up referring to the charges leveled against Sterling as “allegations” weeks before. Eugene Janders is a brilliant litigator, but he's not a magician. Even his talent has its limits. After looking at the evidence, Gene said that Sterling's only chance of not dying in a prison cell was to plead guilty, display remorse, and hope for a lenient judge.
He was probably right. Even so, I couldn't help but notice that Gene offered this advice right after our bank accounts had been frozen. You can call me cynical (and you'd be right), but I couldn't help but wonder. Would Gene have been quite so ready to throw in the towel if Sterling still had access to an almost unlimited supply of cash to pay for the services of Blackman, Janders, and Whipple? Sterling's admission of guilt might be his best shot for a lighter sentence, but it was also the cheapest way for Gene's firm to rid itself of an unwinnable case and a client whose pockets weren't nearly as deep as they'd been. It was all very convenient.
“Sterling kept the game going by reeling in new fish and using their money to pay off his longer-term investors. As well as,” Gene said after a dramatic pause—he had a habit of always speaking as if he were addressing a jury—“financing his lavish lifestyle . . . and yours.
“A lot of people have lost a lot of money, Madelyn. Little old ladies don't have enough to pay rent at their assisted living communities. Folks who were looking forward to a secure retirement on a golf course are realizing that they're going to have to keep working for years to come. Parents who had scrimped and saved to make sure their kids could go to college are filling out applications for educational loans that will leave them in debt for years. Families are losing their homes. Charities that entrusted their endowments to Sterling are being forced to cut back programs or even close—”
“I know that!”
Gene shook his head sorrowfully and continued, ignoring my interruption. “And every time those people turn on the television, or boot up the computer, or flip through a tabloid, they see a picture of Sterling coming through the door of his private plane—with you behind him. Or Sterling at the helm of his yacht—with you sitting next to him. Or Sterling, in his custom-made tuxedo, walking down the red carpet at a Broadway premiere—with you on his arm, wearing a diamond choker from Harry Winston—”
“I don't have it anymore! I had to give it up. All my jewelry, everything Sterling ever gave me. Even my engagement ring,” I said through gritted teeth. The loss of the ring didn't bother me. If I hadn't had to surrender it to the court, I'd have happily thrown it in Sterling's face.
“No judge who cares about public opinion,” Gene droned on, “and that's all of them, is going to stick out his neck to help the wife of Sterling Baron right now. No one cares about your problems, Madelyn. People have problems of their own.”
“I understand that! And I feel terrible about it, but it's not my fault. If I'd known what Sterling was up to, I'd have left him, or stopped him, or . . . something, but I
didn't
know! I'm as much a victim of his schemes as anyone else,” I said, ignoring the twitch at the corner of Gene's mouth.
“I've lost everything too. What am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to go? The government has seized all our assets, frozen all our accounts.”
“So you were paying attention.”
“Yes!” I snapped. “I know I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, Gene—Sterling was always so quick to remind me—but even I can understand words like ‘Madelyn, you're broke'!”
Gene reached into the breast pocket of his jacket.
“Don't bother getting out your handkerchief, Gene. I'm not going to cry.”
He stared at me, to see if I meant it. I stared back.
“Just tell me what I'm supposed to do now. What have I got left? There must be something.”
Gene's eyes flitted over the surface of his desk as he looked for and eventually found a blue file folder. “There is,” he said, opening the file. “You've got an account in your name, and your name only, which is a good thing, at the Connecticut National Bank.”
“I do? Oh, wait! I do! I remember now. The money I'd saved before I married Sterling. I'd forgotten. It's been sitting there all this time?”
Gene nodded. “And gaining interest.”
“Really? It can't be that much, though.”
“It isn't,” he said. “New Bern National is pretty conservative. Still, your average return over the last thirty years was a little more than seven percent, which means your little nest egg is now worth $119,368.42.”
A hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Less than the cost of my surrendered diamond choker. Less than the annual maintenance fee on the penthouse apartment I had to vacate by the end of the month, leaving everything behind—my furniture, my paintings, my china—everything but my clothes and what few possessions I could prove had been mine before my marriage.
“Cheer up, Madelyn. It could be worse. You could have invested your money with Sterling. Then you'd really be broke.” Gene started to chuckle, but I shot him a look filled with such loathing that he dropped his eyes and mumbled an apology.
“I was just trying to help you see the bright side.”
“I'm sure.”
He cleared his throat and shuffled the papers in my file. “I've got some more good news,” he said officiously. “I lit a fire under my associates, got them to hurry along the probate of your grandmother's estate. It's done. You can claim your inheritance free and clear. Good timing, don't you think?”
BOOK: Threading the Needle
3.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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