Later

7

Now check this out.

It’s the fall of 2009. Obama is president, and the economy is slowly getting better. For us, not so much. I’m in the third grade, and Ms. Pierce has me doing a fractions problem on the board because I’m good at shit like that. I mean I was doing percentages when I was seven—literary agent’s kid, remember. The kids behind me are restless because it’s that funny little stretch of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The problem is as easy as soft butter on toast, and I’m just finishing when Mr. Hernandez, the assistant principal, sticks his head in. He and Ms. Pierce have a brief murmured conversation, and then Ms. Pierce asks me to step out into the hall.

My mother is waiting out there, and she’s as pale as a glass of milk. Skim milk. My first thought is that Uncle Harry, who now has a steel plate in his skull to protect his useless brain, has died. Which in a gruesome way would actually be good, because it would cut down on expenses. But when I ask, she says Uncle Harry—by then living in a third-rate care home in Piscataway (he kept moving further west, like some fucked-up brain-dead pioneer)—is fine.

Mom hustles me down the hall and out the door before I can ask any more questions. Parked at the yellow curb where parents drop off their kids and pick them up in the afternoon is a Ford sedan with a bubble light on the dash. Standing beside it in a blue parka with NYPD on the breast is Liz Dutton.

Mom is rushing me toward the car, but I dig in my heels and make her stop. “What is it?” I ask. “Tell me!” I’m not crying, but the tears are close. There’s been a lot of bad news since we found out about the Mackenzie Fund, and I don’t think I can stand any more, but I get some. Regis Thomas is dead.

The jewel just fell out of our crown.