E l y s e feel like time should slow right down in a place like this, but instead, it’s going way too quickly. Honestly, I can see why Sinclair’s family guards the privacy of Fairwater so fiercely. It’s heaven on earth. We had a quiet evening yesterday: a walk around the grounds, colorful leaves crunching underfoot, then dinner—a delicious lasagna that his houseke eper had left in the fridge for us with a smooth red. We soaked in Sinclair’s big claw-foot tub—that got dirty very quickly—and took ourselves off to his bed for a r epeat performance. It was all perfect, but the best part by far? Not having to drag myself away from him at the end of the evening. Instead, I stayed, and I got to find out for myself that the Sinclair Voss is one hundred percent a snuggler. I surface from the sle ep of the dead in his cloud-slash-bed when he gathers me in his arms and entangles his legs with mine. With my head tucked under his chin and my face buried against his chest, I’m in the coziest, hairiest, best-smelling cocoon ever. And when he rolls me over onto my back, and pins my wrists over my head, and fucks me slowly, lazily, I gaze up at him and wonder how it can feel even more intense between us here. There’s something about being out of the city, about being totally marooned with him, that could almost have me believing that it’s him and me against the world. Afterward, when we’re recovering from our earth-shattering orgasms, we lie facing each other on the mound of pillows and he strokes across my forehead. Down my nose. Along my jaw. “Wanna know something crazy?” “What?” I ask. “When I’m not with you”—he clears his throat—“I, uh, can’t see your face. In my mind, I mean. I try so hard, and I can bring up the essence of you, but your actual features are a blank. It’s as if my brain knows just how badly I need to see you and shuts it down. It’s fucked up.” I stare at him. “I think maybe I try too hard,” he continues. “I want to see every single detail, and I can’t. And it kills me, because when I’m with you I feel like I could commit every eyelash to memory for all eternity. It’s one of the—many— reasons I hate letting you go at the end of the night.” I don’t know what to say about the weird visual brain-fail he gets or the intensity of his words, so I murmur, “I’m sorry. I guess I have the advantage here—every time I want to see you, I just google you.” His face softens. “Yeah. Or just pull up Page Six, right?” “Exactly.” “Can I take your photo?” he asks, stroking some stray hairs off my face. “I’ll ke ep it PG. I just—I wanna remember you right now, as you are.” “But I just woke up,” I protest. “I probably have sle ep in my eyes.”
“When I say you couldn’t be more perfect right now... You have this glow about you, and I’d like to think I put it there.” I smile shyly. “I’m pretty sure you did.” “Damn right. So I’d like a little memento.” “Okay,” I say, rolling onto my back and tucking the sheet under my armpits so I don’t give him a boob pic. I trust Sinclair, but the thought of him having something that intimate of me long after he’s walked away is too painful. Being photographed like this is intimate enough, in a way my modeling career hasn’t pr epared me for. But once he’s snapped a few photos, smiling at me like I’m gifting him the moon, he shows them to me... and in an instant, I can see that every single feeling I have for him may as well be written across my face in black Sharpie. B RUNCH IS excellent scrambled eggs and sautéed spinach and even more excellent coffee in Sinclair’s kitchen. And then he says, “Would you like to see the main house?” I sit up straighter. “I’d love to.” I’m nervous, in a strange way. The Lindens feels like Sinclair’s sanctuary, but I imagine Fairwater itself to be more like a museum filled with artifacts of old money and unthinkable power, the likes of which I cannot imagine. The very fact of knowing how unknowable it is to the American public makes looking around it feel forbidden, even if I’m here as a guest. I can’t help but wonder if Sinclair’s family knows I’m here. I can’t help but think what they would make of me. Nothing good, I guess. His mom would probably be horrified that her son let a regular girl from Jersey set foot in her family’s palatial home. But they’re not here, and I am. We make the short walk from The Lindens across the main stretch of lawn, clutching travel mugs of coffee. I can’t imagine how incredible this yard is in spring and early summer, when the grass is bright green and all the trees and flowers are in full bloom. It must be like a Martha Stewart wet dream. The back of the house—the side facing the water—is all mellow gray siding and the crispest of white pops on the windows and pillars. It’s a much bigger version of Sinclair’s house, and it should be so grand it’s terrifying, but it’s not. It’s so... organic, maybe? Like it’s an extension of its environment. It’s just beautiful. “It’ll be cold,” Sinclair warns as he lets us through a door at one end of the house. “The heating won’t be on.” I hold up my coffee. “I’m good.” We enter via a huge utility, and my first thought is that a whole load of processing must go on in here, given the endless wooden work surfaces, washers, dryers, and floor-to-ceiling cupboards. From there, we find the kitchen. It is huge beyond all belief and very Long Island, I guess, in its style: off-white cupboards and high ceilings and the biggest industrial range I’ve ever seen—it might actually be two, next to each other. Yeah, that looks like sixteen burners right there. It’s beautiful, but not in a flashy, magazine-type way. More like a real family has grown up in it... even if they’re mega-wealthy and do a ton of large-scale entertaining. You can tell it’s been here forever and gets updated in fits and starts. The big dresser over by the far wall is a different shade of white from the rest of the kitchen, and the bay window has seats cushioned in blue-and-white ticking. I can easily imagine a younger Sinclair, all towheaded and sandy, racing through this room to beg a snack on his
way back from swimming or sailing in the sound, and that makes me feel gooey inside. “This is a happy room,” I tell Sinclair. “Yeah.” He looks around, hesitating. “I guess it is. My mom doesn’t actually cook, but it was always a good source of food. Our chef when I was growing up, Bernadette, was an epic cook. There were always sheets of oatmeal cookies over there. She was a feeder.” We walk out into the main hallway. Its paneled wood is barely visible beneath an endless muddle of paintings (mostly of sailboats), framed certificates and rosettes, and family photos. “My mom’s shrine to our illustrious sailing careers,” Sinclair deadpans. “And by that, I mean hers, too. The woman is obsessed.” “She still sails?” I ask, tugging him by the hand toward a cluster of photos. “God, yes. Every day in the summer, pretty much.” “Ohhh,” I say softly, my eyes clamped to the images. “Oh my God.” There are so many photographs of the Voss children—three boys and a girl, all dark-haired, all with huge grins and the golden tans of people who know what it means “to summer.” Some are formal photos with near-identical dress, the kids lined up in height order; more are your everyday family snaps, if your family looked like a Ralph Lauren photoshoot every day, that is, the four of them giving and receiving hugs-slash-headlocks or in full, glorious action, playing tennis or waving from boats or lying like puppies on top of each other. They look so vibrant and healthy and gorgeous: the all-American dream, shared by so many and actually lived by only the fewest elite. “Let me see,” I murmur, setting my mug down so I can scan one photo on a sailboat with my left hand because Sinclair is gripping my right like he’ll never let it go. I let my pointer finger drift across the image until... “That one! Is that you?” He’s standing at the end, hair sticking up in all directions, a slack-jawed look of disbelief on his face as one of his brothers attempts to climb up on the edge of the boat. He must have been around thirteen or fourteen. It’s just a single, lovely, privileged moment of many, but it’s been caught on film forever, and I find myself eternally grateful to whoever captured it. “Bingo,” the fully grown version of the boy says beside me, and I squeeze his hand tighter. So handsome—then and now. “Twelve-year-old me would have been madly in love with you,” I say with a sigh, and he chuckles, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “That is very encouraging.” There are endless sitting rooms in this house, all with beachy vibes and all feeling more faded and lived-in than Sinclair’s version, as if he commissioned exactly what he wanted whereas these rooms have simply e volved. They all have huge bay windows with lovely, cushioned window seats. In the biggest room, there is a whole line of double doors leading out onto the veranda and down to the lawn. Parties here must be a lot of fun. I imagine a lot of smart, old-money people traipsing out through those doors and down over the perfect lawns.
“Do you do fireworks here on the Fourth?” I ask, sounding wistful even to my own ears. “Can you bear it if I say we have a great display over the water?” I pretend to double over in pain. “Not really.” He laughs. “Cut me some slack. God knows I need some incentive to be persuaded to spend time with my family.” “I’m pretty sure that incentive is all around us, my friend.” “Touché.” He hesitates, leading me out of the room and back down the hall. “Are you ever going to trust me enough to tell me why you’re living with your sister?” I’m quiet for a moment. “It’s not a matter of trusting,” I say finally. “It’s just—I don’t want to burden you with my problems.” It’s more than that, really. I don’t ever want him to think I’m dropping hints about our dire financial straits or that I’m some kind of gold digger with a sob story. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he says. “No one has more secrets than my family. But you could never be a burden. You can share anything with me.” I decide right here and now that I’ll tell him the nuts and bolts of our situation but none of the financial strain. “My sister had an accident a few months back,” I say in a rush. “She got knocked off her bike by a hit-andrun driver.” I glance up at him to see his face draining of color. “Jesus,” he says in a strangled voice, coming to a halt in front of a closed door. “That’s horrific. Did they catch the driver?” I shake my head. He’s staring at me in horror. “You’re kidding me. Was she okay, though?” “I mean, she lived, but not really. She shattered her hip and her pelvis. She’s had major reconstructive surgery but the rehab is seriously tough. She has a little girl —” “Your niece. I remember.” “Yeah. Fleur. She’s five. So obviously, that made things more complicated. We all agreed together that they’d move back in with my dad, because his place is single-story, and that I’d move back home, too. It made sense. There’s a lot of stuff she needs help with that you don’t want your dad getting in volved with, if you catch my drift.” He’s staring down at me. “Jesus, that’s so rough. So you’re all living together...” “... in my childhood home. Got it.” “Where were you living before?” he asks, turning the knob and opening the door so we can enter a spacious, wood-paneled study. “Hell’s Kitchen. But, honestly, it’s kinda nice to be home, you know? I don’t mind it. We’re in Bayonne, and we’ve lived there all our lives. We have a good support system. Sometimes it’s nice to be out of Manhattan.” “Tell me about it. So... how is everyone doing? Your sister? Your dad?” “We’re good.” I give a decisive nod as if I’m trying to convince us both.
Barely solvent, but good. “My sister is working from home. I take her to PT. My dad and I juggle the school run for Fleur around work—he has an auto r epair shop nearby. Everyone pitches in, and it just about works. I honestly think it’s been good for Dad in a weird way, having the house full of his girls again.” I don’t mention that, for every extra ounce of joy it’s brought him, it’s probably added a pound of stress. “Yeah.” Sinclair turns me so he can slide a hand beneath my hair and tilt my face up. It feels like he’s studying me hard, reading my face like a polygraph. “How long since your mom passed, again?” “Three years.” I screw up my face. “So it’s good for him, to ke ep busy. But that’s why I haven’t been able to sle ep over. It’s hard, with Sylvie still so de ep in recovery.” “I get it.” He shakes his head. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I can’t even imagine. Is Fleur’s father in the picture at all?” “No,” I say, and he shakes it again. “How did you get away, in the end?” I smile up at him. “My mom’s best friend moved in for the weekend. She and her husband are family—he’s worked with my dad for over thirty years. Anyway, Auntie Glo—that’s what we call her—is sle eping in my childhood twin this weekend, right next to Sylvie, so she can help her go to the bathroom and shower. She’s brought mountains of food and has big plans. I think she might just be an angel sent from heaven.” “I am so very glad,” he says, his hand moving through my hair, “that you have someone in your life you can lean on, because it sounds like everyone else is leaning on you.” “No, that’s not it,” I protest. “Honestly, it’s a team effort. It’s just good that I mainly work in the evenings, because it frees up my days to be available. And I do my casting calls when Fleur is at school, so it’s all good. It works.” Just about. But he’s shaking his head. “And now I’m demanding all of your time, too. It’s the last thing you need.” “You kind of make it worth my while,” I whisper, beaming at him. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. Just about.” I want to tell him that my evenings in his apartment have brought me back to life, that they’re the most selfish, indulgent, heavenly thing about my entire existence. But I don’t. “Well then,” he says, “I’m glad I managed to lure you away to my evil lair for a couple nights. Sounds like it’s about time you took a break.” “I’m glad, too.” He bends and presses the softest kiss to my mouth. “Speaking of evil lairs, this is Voss HQ, location for generation upon generation of evil masterminding.” I look around. It’s a very impressive space, slightly dark, given all the wood paneling. But impressive, in any case, heavy on oil paintings (more sailboats) and carved wood. In the center of the room sits an enormous
desk, topped with green leather, its gilded borders mostly rubbed away. “It looks like a regular rich-person study to me,” I say. “Such an innocent. You have no idea. My parents—particularly my mother—and my grandfather and his father have ruined a million lives from that desk right there.” He releases me and walks over. “See this stamp?” I go to join him. On the desk is an old-timey ink pad and rubber stamp. “Please tell me it’s not an Alchemy stamp. That would be too weird.” He throws back his head and laughs. “No. Far worse. It’s a Voss stamp. Look.” He opens the ink pad and presses the stamp onto it, hard. “Hand.” I hold mine out, and he stamps me in the same way that I stamp him each night at Alchemy, only, when he removes the stamp, it’s not a red “A” but an ornate black “V” surrounded by a crest-like shape. I stare down at it. “It’s official,” Sinclair says. “You’re Voss property now. I own you.” I smile up at him. I like the sound of that. He puts down the stamp and picks up another one, turning it over so I can see the underside. It’s the same image forged in brass. “This is the proper one,” he says. “The wax version. When my mom wants to silence someone, or erase someone, or ruin a life, she uses the wax. God forbid a letter shows up in your mailbox with a wax Voss seal on it. You know you’re done for.” “I can’t tell if you’re joking,” I say, searching his face. Suddenly, the room feels colder, more ominous. Something shutters over his face. “Just remember, you don’t secure a place like this in society without being willing to do what it takes.” “Okay,” I say slowly, “but you’re not like that, right?” Every instinct in my body tells me Sinclair is a straight-down-the-line kind of guy, whatever sins his ancestors have committed to get him here. He gives a little laugh, but it doesn’t sound like he’s amused. He turns my hand over so that the stamp is hidden and, dipping his head, presses a long, slow kiss to my palm. When he lifts his head, his face is brighter. “The point is, there are some pretty freaky ghosts in here, so we should probably exorcise the place.” I think I see where this is going. “Any idea of how we do that?” “Yeah, and it’s a good one.” He pats the edge of the desk suggestively. “I’m going to need you to hop up here for me like a good girl.”