Chapter 1
AVRIL
Those goddamn Hermès Birkin bags were all over the party.
I never understood the appeal of them—they were these awful boxy things with strange angles, kind of like a failed geometry test. And the cheapest ones started at around ten grand. They, like the wristwatches everyone in my circle of acquaintances wore, served as a sort of secret handshake. If you didn’t have one of each, well, then you weren’t in the club. I considered it the price of admission. And if you truly belonged, you had an assortment to choose from, depending on the day and your mood.
And yup, I had one. I’ll admit it. I caved to the pressure. I might have preferred to carry one of those thirty-dollar pleather jobs you can get at Target, but hey, did I want these people to know about my humble beginnings? Half them probably couldn’t even say where the Target store was (there were two—or was it now three?—in Manhattan).
People think that when you grow up and leave behind the confines of school and peer pressure, you’re free. You can do whatever the hell you want. And maybe that’s the way it is for some people. But not for me.
The bullshit of growing up was just practice for my day-to-day existence.
If I wanted a life, friends, and to keep my marriage to one of the most successful men on Wall Street afloat, I had to be on top of my shit. I had to look the part, play the role, speak the language. It was really that simple. But that didn’t mean it was easy.
Interestingly, my husband of three years, Devon Crane, knew little of my past. I’d shared some, but not a lot, in order to satisfy any questions he, his family, or his business associates had. And fortunately, there weren’t many questions—they’d seemed perfectly content with knowing I’d grown up in Baltimore, daughter of a local restaurateur, and not much more. It was a respectable and comfortable upbringing, they knew. What they didn’t know was that I had no complaints about my middle-class past, didn’t feel underprivileged in the least, and had always enjoyed shopping at the humble Target. That additional information might have been a bit too much for them to process. Consequently, it never came up. I kept that to myself, like a few other tidbits about my life.
So, it seemed the social pressures of growing up had turned out not to be something escapable, but in reality, one long warm-up practice for the world I married into. A world of aforementioned Hermès bags, private jets, limousines, and chic parties in the Hamptons.
But to tell the truth, as glam as it sounded, my lifestyle introduced pressures I’d never seen coming. To deal with them, I kept my head down, figured out how to fit in, which was not hard if you spent enough money on enough of the right things, and tried to stop wondering why Devon Crane wanted to marry someone like me in the first place.
From where I stood on a terrace, just above a sprawling lawn overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, I watched people arriving at the fancy party. The crashing waves of the incoming tide drowned out the din of both conversation and the live music, making it look like people were moving their mouths without sound.
And my husband was nowhere to be found. Shit.
So I decided to look for him.
When I took my first step, my heel, my expensive spikey high heel, wedged between two brick pavers. The resulting jolt caused me to slosh gin and tonic out of my glass and all over my sister’s watch, which I wore on my right wrist. Dammit. I shook the cocktail off my arm and made sure the minute hand was still moving. If anything happened to that watch, well, I didn’t know what I’d do. It was the only one I ever wore. Devon had insisted on gifting me a variety of much fancier ones in the time since we’d been married, and even one with diamonds for my thirtieth birthday, but I wasn’t about to stop wearing Lisette’s. It was all I had left of her.
I recovered my balance and continued walking down the uneven (because, of course) brick steps leading to another tier of bars and catering and very thin, very well-dressed people. Still no Devon. When my purse vibrated with the buzz of my phone, it was just a call from my assistant, Dagney. I let it go to voicemail. I could catch up with her later. Whatever it was, I trusted her to handle like the pro she was.
“Can I bring you another drink, miss?” a pony-tailed server asked. She must have witnessed my fumble because she handed me a napkin and relieved me of my nearly empty glass.
“Thank you,” I said to the pretty young woman, who hurried off for the bar.
When I was re-loaded with a new beverage, I spotted a gaggle of women I knew from the charity circuit. I made my way toward them, this time being careful about where I stepped, and keeping my drink far from Lisette’s watch. As I got nearer, the ladies, decked out in their best Hamptons casual-chic, turned in my direction. The odd thing was, though, that none returned my wave or smile. They just turned back to their huddle, inching more tightly together like a little pack of animals trying to keep warm. But it was too early in the season for any Fall crispness. In fact, we were nearly all wearing sleeveless dresses, and naturally, very expensive sunscreen.
But what really seemed off was that as I wove through the party, I spotted a couple other people, really just acquaintances, who also looked away from me. Was there something wrong with my dress? Had a bird crapped in my hair?
I scooted over to the edge of the patio as nonchalantly as possible and pretended to admire the crashing waves and seagulls dive-bombing the surf. I ran my hand through my hair. All clear there. I looked down at my dress, which was also flawless. Nothing but one tiny wrinkle, caused by the limo’s seatbelt. Okay. Let’s try again.
“Hi everyone,” I said with a giant smile, approaching the crowd of tightly packed women.
“Oh, hi, Avril. Great to see you,” one of them said. The others just looked at each other, taking tiny sips of their drinks and holding their Birkin bags closer.
What t
he hell? We’d been in one of our charity meetings only a couple days before. Everything had seemed normal then.
“Great to see you, too,” I squeezed out with forced cheer. Something was off. I could smell it. Socializing with this crowd followed a strict set of rules. One tiny whiff of variance in peoples’ behavior, and you knew something was up.
And it seemed that something had to do with me.
When it became clear no one else had a single thing to say, I knew to cut bait. “Well, I’m going to keep wandering. Hey, if any of you see my husband Devon, can you tell him I’m looking for him?”
Someone half-laughed, half-coughed. Okay, something was definitely up. And these bitches were not sharing a thing.
“Bye, Avril,” one of them called as I walked away.
I waved over my shoulder without turning. Fuck them. I might live in their world now, but that doesn’t mean I’d left Baltimore completely behind. I had enough smarts to be a bitch, too, when it was needed.
Nodding at a few other familiar faces, I made my way to a bench away from the crowd. First, I returned Dagney’s call.
“Hey, Dagney.” She was a godsend of an assistant, probably better at running my art gallery than I was. I’d be completely lost without her.
“Avril! Hi. Was just calling to let you know that new artist you wanted decided to sign with us. We can schedule his show next time you’re in the gallery. I’m so excited.”
Yes. I was, too.
“That is amazing. Great work. I’m out in the Hamptons at a party, waiting for Devon.”
“Really? Have fun. I’m just finishing some things up,” she said.
I’d been hoping to pull in the city’s hottest surrealist painter, and it looked like my convincing had worked. My gallery was lucky enough to have a solid track record of signing some of the brightest new artists around, and selling the shit out of their work. It gave me no small satisfaction to beat out the more established galleries in the city. Brokering art was a tough business, and I was a long way from being profitable. But luckily, my husband was supportive of my passion and was always ready with his checkbook, prepared to cover any of the gallery’s losses.
Some people would call mine a hobby job, but I wasn’t dabbling. I was seriously committed to building a real business.