The Companion Read online

  “My room now,” she said, as smug as a house cat.

  “Good for you.”

  She sighed and sat down on the mattress, arms folded. Then she leaned forward to peer down at the car in the driveway.

  “So you’re just getting, like, adopted?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to be adopted. I’ll be a ward.”

  “They’re probably going to make you their servant or something.” She didn’t sound entirely disappointed by this idea. “Lock you in the cellar and all that. I’m sure you’ll be miserable.”

  “You never know.”

  She sat back and shook her head. “Ridiculous.”

  “Yep.” I finished folding my third and final T-shirt and stacked it in the bag on top of the other clothes.

  “If you’re rich now, will you send me stuff?”

  “I’m not rich,” I said.

  She pointed out the window. “That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car. You’re rich.”

  “It’s not my money,” I said. “I’m the servant, remember?”

  She snorted. “Fingers crossed.”

  “Make yourself useful,” I said. “Take the sheets off the bed.”

  She obeyed without complaint, reaching across to pull the fitted sheet out from under the mattress.

  Then, driven by curiosity, I asked, “What kind of stuff would you want me to send?”

  “Hmm,” she said. “A pair of sunglasses. Like, really nice ones. And a crossword-puzzle book. And—”

  I reached into my backpack, pulled out a crossword-puzzle book, and lobbed it at the bed. She picked it up, studied the cover, quirked her mouth into a smile, and went on.

  “—a better phone?” She watched expectantly to see if I was going to give her mine.

  I was not.

  She shrugged. “So your whole family is dead, right? No grandparents or aunts or anybody?”

  “Nope,” I said. “My parents were only children and my grandparents are all dead.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “I have aunts, but it doesn’t do me any good. My mom’s sisters. They won’t take me because they think I’m too much like my mother. I don’t care, though. I turn eighteen in seven months, and then I’ll go do my own thing.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “New York,” she said. “I’m going to be a model.”

  I looked at her in disbelief, but even as I prepared to mentally dismiss the idea, I suddenly felt as if I was seeing her clearly for the first time—that simple, odd face. The impossibly tall, slender frame. I could totally see her slinking down a runway in some outlandish outfit. Her scowl was perfect for it, too.

  “Good luck,” I said. “I think you could be a model, actually.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t asking for your opinion.”

  Never change, Tam.

  “Anyway, you’re the lucky one.” She dumped the bundle of sheets on the floor.

  “You keep saying that,” I said. “I don’t know if you realize how much my life has sucked over the past three months.”

  She stretched out on the bare mattress, relishing it. “I never said your life didn’t suck. Only that you’re lucky. Those are two totally different things.”

  Huh. Were they?

  “For instance,” she said. “My mom is a homeless meth head who stole my grandma’s life savings and her pills, which is probably why Grandma died. Be careful who you let handle your meds, by the way.”

  I was about to reply, but she silenced me with a finger.

  “My last foster family fed me exactly one bowl of generic-brand Cheerios per day. I had a kitten there, but Palmer House made me give it away before I could come. I haven’t seen my brother in seven years. My life sucks. And yet—no rich people have ever, even once, swooped in to adopt me. Hence, unlucky.”

  I looked down at the SUV waiting to cart me off to an enormous estate in the country, owned by millionaires who (I assumed) would not actually make me live in the cellar and carry trays of food around.

  Then I looked at Tam, whose left hand was curled around a small stuffed kitten wearing an Easter hat.

  Well, maybe I am lucky, I thought. But my life still sucks.

  “So then—” I said, and I wouldn’t have gone on except she took the trouble to open her eyes and look at me. “If things are so terrible, what’s the point?”

  “The point of what? Of life?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I mean . . . it’s so hard.” I felt myself blush. “I can’t believe I used to think there was anything wrong with my life. I was so ignorant.”

  She shrugged. “Nobody has a perfect life. My cousins are rich, but they hate themselves.”

  “Doesn’t everybody hate themselves?” I asked.

  Tam’s eyes narrowed contemptuously. “No. I don’t. I’ve never done anything bad enough to hate myself. Have you?”

  I felt as if our eyes were locked together. She was waiting for an answer, but I didn’t have one. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t want to say it.

  “You’re overthinking this,” she said finally. “You’re alive, so you might as well go along with it. There’s no big secret. You live, and then you die, and that’s it.”

  “That’s it?” I half laughed.

  “That,” she said, closing her eyes, “is plenty.”

  I carried my bags and the bundle of bedsheets to the door. “Tam, we could have been friends if you weren’t such a jerk.”

  “I don’t want to be your friend,” she said, not even bothering to open her eyes. “I don’t like you.”

  I closed the door and went downstairs.

  I didn’t bring the toothbrush.

  CHAPTER

  3

  I’D NEVER BEEN to a country estate before. I didn’t actually know what a country estate was, but I had a vague idea that it was where a duke or an earl would live if we had dukes and earls in America. I figured Mr. Albright was being melodramatic about what would end up being a big house in a nice suburban neighborhood.

  I was wrong.

  I mean, it was a big house, yes. It was enormous. But it wasn’t in a nice neighborhood—it wasn’t in a neighborhood at all. It was (as one might have guessed) out in the country. About ten minutes before coming into view of the stone pillars at the entrance to the property, we’d passed through a minuscule town with one traffic light, a small row of stores, a used-car lot, a doctor’s office, and a single-story building with a sign reading COPELAND COUNTY SCHOOL. And that was it, as far as the local society went.

  I watched helplessly as the signal on my phone weakened, like blood draining from a body, and then disappeared altogether, replaced by two small words: NO SERVICE. It wasn’t that I had any friends to call, but it still felt strangely and almost spookily like being cut off from the world, or going back in time.

  The SUV slowed as we approached an elaborately scrolled iron gate centered in a brick wall that went on forever on both sides of us, and Mr. Albright looked over at me from his spot in the driver’s seat. He was in his forties, balding, and judging by the puffiness around his eyes, could have used a good night’s sleep. His gray suit jacket was draped over the seat between us, and his sleeves were rolled up.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. “It’s a new beginning for you.”

  What was I supposed to say, that I wasn’t ready? I nodded and tried to smile and went back to looking out the window.

  Mr. Albright was the Sutton family’s business manager, which meant (he’d told me) that he handled just about everything for them, because when you had that much money, everything was business. He described them as if they were dolls in a collection, with an odd, patronizing note in his voice. But at the same time, he never missed a chance to say that looking out for their family was basically the purpose of his life.

  To his credit, despite this gre
at sense of combined ownership and deference he felt toward the Suttons, my going there didn’t seem to worry him. In fact, he acted like it was natural, even charming, that they should take me in.

  To me, it seemed kind of random and strange, but what do I know about how super-rich people think?

  Here’s what I did know: John Sutton, the patriarch of the family, had gone to law school at Northwestern with my father twenty years ago. One day, they both happened to be swimming laps in the college pool, and John, who hadn’t been feeling well, slipped into unconsciousness in the water. My dad crossed the two lanes between them, pulled him out of the pool, and performed CPR.

  “Thus saving his life,” Mr. Albright had said in the garage office at Palmer House, interlacing his fingers as if he were offering a silent prayer of thanks. “And so, when the news reached Mr. Sutton that your family had encountered this great tragedy, he felt compelled to reciprocate in any way he could.”

  Your family had encountered this great tragedy. He said the words so impersonally, as if the deaths of my parents and sisters were footnotes in a legal document. Then again, what were his alternatives? What did I want him to do, break down and cry about it?

  The iron gates began to open for us. Not wanting to seem overly awestruck, I tried not to crane my neck to see the house. I may have spent six weeks brushing my teeth with someone else’s hair, but I had a smidgen of pride left.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to crane my neck. Copeland Hall, as Mr. Albright called the house, was too big to miss. It was a huge gray building, both long and tall, with boxy outcroppings and peaked roofs and windows, and towerlike projections poking out from various places. Ivy clung to the stone walls, and gnarled trees threw patches of dappled shade against the facade.

  When the SUV rounded a corner, I spotted a pair of huge wooden double doors on the side of one of the stone rectangles that bulged off the main structure. The doors faced the side of the property, not the front, as if the house was turning away, hiding its face from visitors.

  A two-story garage with spaces for six cars hulked behind the building, and we pulled all the way into one of the bays before the SUV came to a stop.

  “Leave your things,” Mr. Albright said, as if my luggage had consisted of five trunks, eight suitcases, three hatboxes, and a birdcage. “I’ll bring them later.”

  I looked helplessly at my backpack, not wanting to be parted from it. After only six weeks at Palmer House, I’d begun to develop the anxiety that all the girls shared—the nagging feeling that someone wanted to steal from me. But seeing the lumpy, overstuffed canvas and the broken zipper that only closed halfway, I decided to leave it behind.

  “We’ll go in the side entrance,” he said, leading the way toward a single door near the corner of the building.

  I scanned the grounds as we approached the house. The lawns were immense and lushly green in the summer sun. It was a pleasant day, not too hot, with a light breeze. Birds twittered lazily from their shaded hiding places and a squirrel hunched under a bush, working hard to tear apart some small fruit or nut.

  I live here now, I thought, trying the thought on like a dress.

  Shouldn’t a person feel a rush of emotion at the thought of being part of such a grand place? Shouldn’t I feel happy? Or intimidated? Or . . . lucky?

  I felt . . . nothing.

  Until, that is, I stepped through the door behind Mr. Albright and saw the Suttons standing right there, waiting for us.

  Then I felt something: completely embarrassed.

  I’d assumed I’d have the chance to wash my face, brush my hair, psych myself up.

  But instead, I found myself being inspected by a man and woman standing about ten feet away—a perfectly matched set of well-bred, meticulously presented rich people.

  Mrs. Sutton, who was as sleek and slim as a greyhound, wore an ivory sweater and a pair of pale beige pants, with pointed-toe copper-colored flats. Her hair fell in a glossy light brown sheet, just skimming her shoulders. Her watch and earrings were simple gold. Her makeup was subtle and flawless, setting off the glittering brown of her eyes and the pearly white of her teeth. Her smile was warm and welcoming. She was, in a word, tasteful.

  Mr. Sutton looked a little less comfortable in his own skin but no less refined. His long-sleeved shirt was blue and crisp, and the hem of his gray trousers broke in just the right spot over his shining loafers. His hair was silvery brown, cropped close to his head, and he wore a smile that had a touch too much tension behind it to be perfectly sincere.

  They were elegant in a casual, uncomplicated way—not like showy rich people from the city but like people so rich they don’t have to live in the city. Their money lived there, and they hired Mr. Albright to carry it back and forth for them.

  “I’m sorry to surprise you,” Mrs. Sutton said, seeing what must have been a mortified expression on my face. Her voice was as smooth and polished as the rest of her. “We’ve been so looking forward to your arrival that we couldn’t bear to wait in the sitting room like a couple of posed dolls. We wanted to meet you right away . . . but now I can see that wasn’t very thoughtful of us.”

  “Nonsense, Laura, she’s fine,” Mr. Albright said cheerily. Then, turning to me, he said, “Margaret, allow me to introduce you to John and Laura Sutton.”

  “At your service,” Mrs. Sutton said, her smile more subdued.

  There was silence as everyone waited for me to speak. I didn’t think I was going to be able to come up with anything, but when I opened my mouth, a few words tumbled out. “Thank you so much for having me,” I said. “It means a lot.”

  To my horror, Mr. Sutton stepped closer and put a hand on my shoulder. “For a very long time, I’ve wanted to repay the debt I owed your father. I’m glad to have a chance, and I’m sorry that it’s under these circumstances.”

  I tried to think of a suitable response.

  “Oh, John, now’s not the time for speechmaking,” Mrs. Sutton said, swooping over and swatting him away. “I’m sure Margaret wants a few minutes by herself before we descend on her.”

  I did, desperately. But maybe their classiness was rubbing off on me, because it seemed impolite to go off alone so soon. “I’m okay,” I said. “Could I please maybe have a glass of water?”

  They leaped into action, thrilled to have a task. Mr. Sutton rushed away to fetch the water, while Laura ushered me down the hall to a room where the blessed rehydration could take place.

  “The west parlor,” she said, with a subtle flourish of her slim hand. “Please make yourself comfortable.”

  I looked around as she steered me toward a small sofa. The room was like something from a museum—every detail looked as if it had been left untouched for a hundred years. The walls were polished wood, adorned with large paintings of horses and hunting dogs. The furniture was ornate and old-fashioned. The love seat I found myself on was upholstered in a satiny fabric of blue and white stripes, with tufted green velvet pillows nestled in the corners.

  Mr. Albright waited off to the side while Mrs. Sutton perched on a leather armchair and looked at me like I was the dessert cart at a fancy restaurant.

  “Was the drive all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Long, though, wasn’t it?” She glanced almost accusingly at Mr. Albright, as if the distance were somehow his fault. “Did you get lunch?”

  “A long ride, but very pretty,” I said. “And yes, we did have lunch.”

  “We stopped in Hopkins,” Mr. Albright said in his own defense. “We had sandwiches.”

  “Oh, Hopkins, that’s good,” she said, relaxing and sitting back. Then she sat up again. “You have to tell me if there’s anything we can get for you. We aren’t in town every day, but we can send out if there’s something you require.”

  I was about to deflect the question, but then I realized I
had a real need. “I could use a toothbrush, I guess,” I said. “I left mine at Palmer House.”

  “Palmer House,” she repeated. “Is that where you were staying?”

  I nodded.

  “Was it nice? Did you have friends?”

  I stared straight into her eyes, which were nearly the same brown as the wood paneling on the walls behind her. Despite her kindness, their undeniable generosity toward me, I couldn’t help feeling that this was all some kind of assessment. A test.

  Better pass it.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “It was very nice. I had a lot of friends.”

  I could feel Mr. Albright’s eyes on me. “Excellent facility,” he agreed. “Bright, a lot of natural light.”

  “That’s good,” she said, compassion in her voice. “I imagine the girls there have all had a hard time. It’s nice to think they have a comfortable place to live. I—I guess I just don’t feel that girls belong in ‘facilities.’ But of course that’s not a problem for you any longer. You live here, Margaret, with us. And you absolutely must let us know what we can do to make you feel at home.”

  Let’s see. If I were at home, I would be in my room, on my bed, listening to music and browsing my friends’ social media accounts to see what everybody was up to. And my parents and sisters would be alive. So good luck trying, Laura, but I can’t see that happening.

  “We only have one rule here, really,” she said. “To respect one another—and the house, of course. I find that if respect is in place, everything else falls into line.”

  Doable. “Of course,” I said.

  The sides of her eyes crinkled in approval as Mr. Sutton came through the door with a glass of water—not a normal glass, but one made of intricately cut crystal that weighed about three pounds. I thanked him and took it with both hands, sipping as carefully as I could and then resting it on a coaster that Mrs. Sutton slid across the enormous wooden coffee table.

  She fidgeted and looked up at her husband, who was still standing off to the side. “I was telling Margaret that I don’t think girls belong in facilities.”