The Nest: America’s hottest new bestseller

“I’m serious,” he said. He lifted her hands out of the soapy water in the sink.

“Leo”—she held herself rigid—“I was clear.” Her posture was combative, but he could hear something new in her voice, a fleeting hesitancy.

He inched closer. “You said no fucking. I respect the no-fucking rule.” Leo was entirely focused on her. His desire was physical, yes (it had been twelve weeks, not counting a couple of breezy flings with the rehab physician’s assistant in the weight room), but he also remembered how much he’d loved this part, getting past her prickly exterior, cracking her wide open like unhinging an oyster. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, how satisfying it was to watch her steely carriage collapse a little, hear her breath catch. How good it felt to win. Fuck the firefighter.

She sighed and looked past him, out the rear windows, into the Brooklyn night and the snowflakes ecstatically spinning in the beam of the floodlight on her back deck. Her hands were wet and cold and the warmth of Leo’s fingers around her wrists was disorienting.

Leo couldn’t read her expression. Resigned? Hopeful? Defeated? He didn’t see desire yet, but he remembered how to summon it. “Steph?” he said. She smiled a little, but the smile was sad.

“I swear, Leo,” she said quietly, nearly pleading. “I’m happy.”

He was close enough now to lower his face to her neck and breathe in her skin, which smelled as it always had, faintly of chlorine, making him feel as if he could swim into her, assured and buoyant. They stood like that for a minute. He could feel his racing pulse gradually slow and align with the reliable rhythm of her constant heart. He pulled back a little to look at her. He ran his thumb along her lower lip, the same way he had with the marble carving earlier, only this time the lip yielded.

And then, from the backyard, an enormous crash splitting the outdoor quiet like a clap of thunder. Then flickering lights. Then darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Leo arrived at the Oyster Bar, he worked some magic with the surly maître d’. Within minutes the Plumbs were seated and had unconsciously arranged themselves around the red-checkered tablecloth according to birth order: Leo, Jack, Bea, Melody. They shed coats and hats and made a little too much of ordering “just water and coffee.” Leo apologized for running late and explained how he was staying with a friend in Brooklyn (Stephanie! Bea realized), and he’d taken the wrong train and had to retrace his steps. Obligatory chatter about how Brooklyn had become so crowded and expensive and why was the subway so unreliable on the weekends anyway and, well, the weather certainly didn’t help, snow in October! Then they all fell uncomfortably silent—except Leo, who seemed utterly calm while appraising his brother and sisters, who all looked back at him, ill at ease.

The three of them wondered how he did it, how he always managed to be unruffled while putting everyone else on edge, how even in this moment, at this lunch, where Leo should be abashed, laid bare, and the balance of power could have, should have, shifted against him, he still commanded their focus and exuded strength. Even now, they were deferentially waiting, hoping, he would speak first.

But he just sat, watching them, curiously attentive.

“It’s good to see you,” Bea finally said. “You look well. Healthy.” Her light affection made Jack’s shoulders relax, Melody’s face unclench.

Leo smiled. “I’m happy to see you all. I am.”

Melody felt herself blush. Embarrassed, she put her hands to her cheeks.

“I guess we should get right to it,” Leo said. In the taxi down from Central Park, he’d decided to address the unpleasantness head-on. He realized, somewhat surprisingly, that he’d given precious little thought to this moment during his long weeks at Bridges. He’d been so focused on Victoria and the dissolution of their marriage that he’d failed to consider the repercussions of Francie’s actions. To be fair, he hadn’t entirely understood Francie’s actions until a couple of weeks ago. When George first told him that his mother was funding the Rodriguez payout, Leo’d had a brief moment of hope that she was using her own—or Harold’s—considerable resources. Alas.

“I know you want to talk about The Nest,” he continued, satisfied to see their surprise at his direct approach. “So first, I want to say, thank you. I know you didn’t have to agree with Francie’s plan and I’m grateful.”

Bea looked at Melody and Jack, who both shifted a little in their seats; they all looked confused and troubled.

“What?” Leo said, processing what was happening a minute too late.

“We hardly had any choice in the matter,” Jack said.

“We didn’t know until it was done,” Melody said.

“Really?” Leo turned to Bea. She nodded.

Ah. Leo leaned back and looked around the table. Of course. He mentally berated himself for that bit of miscalculation while, briefly, experiencing a wave of elation because Francie had acted so decisively and singularly on his behalf. But Leo quickly realized he was wrong about that, too. Francie hadn’t come to his rescue; no doubt she’d rescued herself—and Harold. Leo could hear Harold now, his adenoidal voice going on and on about what was all over the East End.

Bea warily watched Leo absorb this new bit of information. “I tried calling you, Leo,” she said. “Many times.”

“Right,” he said. “Okay.” This complicated things.

When Leo and Victoria were first engaged, shortly after he sold SpeakEasy and “went on sabbatical” (as he thought of it) and after she refused to consider a prenup, he’d opened an offshore account during one of their diving trips to Grand Cayman. He’d acted on a whim while she was off shopping. The account was perfectly legal, and although he’d planned on telling Victoria about it, he found himself not telling her. He thought of it as a little insurance, a private pension of sorts, maybe a way to keep some of his money protected in case of a stormy day. As his marriage began to deteriorate, he started bolstering the balance. One upside to the prodigious way he and Victoria spent money was that she stopped noticing where the money went. A few thousand here, a few thousand there; over the years it added up. He thought about the money all the time and the day he would just pick up and leave. What had kept him from doing it years ago was the hope that Victoria would tire of him first, fall in love with someone else and leave him so he could avoid a financially decimating divorce. When it became clear she never would (why couldn’t he have married someone just as beautiful but not so strategic?), he surrendered fully to the more libertine aspects of his life. He wasn’t sorry to see the diminishing balances on their joint accounts. So even though the accident had been a humiliating and unfortunate event, it had also—in a strange way—loosened him from the life he was already desperate to escape. For months he’d expected Victoria’s lawyers to find and triumphantly expose the funds, but nobody had. He had nearly two million dollars hidden away, almost exactly what he owed The Nest. He’d never touched a penny of the low-interest savings account; it was safe and sound. Liquid. If he replenished the fund to pay his siblings, his two million would be divided by four. The math hardly worked in his favor.

“I wish I had the money sitting somewhere and could write you all a check,” Leo said. He placed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward, looking each one of them straight in the eye. He hadn’t run a company for all those years without learning the art of a quick recalculation, without learning how to work a table. He still mostly needed to bide time. “But I don’t. I’m going to need some time,” Leo continued.

“How much time?” Melody said, a little too quickly.

“I wish I had the answer to that,” Leo said, as if having that answer was his most fervent desire on earth. “But I promise you this: I am going to start working immediately—and hard—to rebuild. I already have some ideas. I’ve already started making some calls.”

“What’s the plan?” Jack said. He wanted specifics. “Is there a way for you to borrow the money you owe us? Pay us off and owe somebody else?”

“Very possibly,” Leo said, knowing that his chances of getting anyone to lend him money at the moment were nil. “A lot of things are possible.”

“Like what else?” Jack said.

Leo shook his head. “I don’t want to throw out a lot of what-ifs and maybes.”

“Do you think you might have the money—or at least some of it—when we were expecting to get it?” Melody asked.

“In March?” Leo said.

“February. My birthday’s in February,” Melody said, too panicky over how the conversation was going to be indignant.

“I’m March,” said Bea.

“Right.” Leo beat out a little rhythm on the table with his thumb and pinkie. He looked like he was doing a complex equation in his head. They all waited. “How about this?” he finally said. “Give me three months.”

“To pay us?” Jack said.

“No, but to have a plan. A solid plan. I don’t think I’m going to need three months, but you know how tough financing is these days.” He directed his last comment at Jack. “You’re a business owner.” Jack nodded in solemn agreement. Bea suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Leo. He really was full of shit. “And figure in the holidays, when it’s tough to pin people down. I think I need three months to come up with options,” he said. “Ideally, more than one option that will have you seeing full payment as soon as possible. I’m not promising February, but I am promising that I’ll work as hard as I’ve ever worked on anything to try and make good.” He looked around the table again. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

PART TWO

CHAPTER EIGHT

Paul Underwood ran his literary magazine, Paper Fibres, from a small warren of offices up a worn flight of stairs in a slightly sagging building that stood in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. He’d bought the four-story brick front before the Dumbo section of Brooklyn became DUMBO, when the masses of migrating Manhattanites had been priced out of Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill but still had their hearts set on the aesthetically pristine, historically important, and relatively affordable brownstones of Park Slope or Fort Greene. He’d stumbled into the small wedge of a neighborhood one bright summer Saturday after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. Leisurely heading north, he’d found himself wandering through the industrial blocks and admiring the streets of blue-gray Belgian bricks laid out in appealing patterns, threaded through with defunct trolley tracks. He’d noted with approval the absence of expensive clothing boutiques, high-priced coffee shops, restaurants with exposed brick and wood-burning ovens. Every fourth building seemed to be an auto body shop or some kind of appliance repair. He liked the vibe of the place; it reminded him of Soho back when Soho had energy and grit, a little theatrical menace. Down by the waterfront a sign indicated that the scrubby park populated with crack dealers and their customers was slated for expansion and renovation, and he noticed that the same developer had signs all over the neighborhood heralding the arrival of warehouse-to-condo conversions.

Standing on a corner of Plymouth Street that afternoon, in the waning days of the twentieth century, listening to the clank and rattle of truck beds as they rumbled over the approach to the Manhattan Bridge to his north, watching the sun illuminate the massive arches of the Brooklyn Bridge to the south, Paul Underwood saw his future: a For Sale placard on a seemingly abandoned corner building. At the top of the building’s reddish-brown façade he could make out the faded, white letters of a sign from the long-defunct business the dwelling once housed: PLYMOUTH PAPER FIBRES, INC. He took the sign as an omen. He bought the building the following week and started his literary journal, Paper Fibres, the following year.

Paul lived on the top floor of the building (two bedrooms, nicely renovated, meticulously furnished, spectacular views) directly above the Paper Fibres offices, which were crammed into the front half of the third floor. The back half of the third floor and the entire second floor housed two modest but increasingly lucrative rental apartments. At street level there was a lingerie store. La Rosa didn’t sell fancy lingerie, nothing lacy or push-up or see-through, but what Paul thought of as old-lady lingerie, matron underwear. Even the plastic torso mannequins in the windows looked uncomfortable, bound tightly with brassieres and girdles that resembled straitjackets with their rows of steel hooks, dangling elastic belts, and reinforced shoulder straps. Paul had no idea how they stayed in business, had never seen more than one customer in there at a time. He had his suspicions, but the rent check was on time every month so as far as he was concerned La Rosa could launder hosiery or money, or sell whatever they liked to the odd selection of male customers who usually left empty-handed.

Paul went to great pains to keep his home and work life separate. He never brought work “upstairs,” he never appeared in the Paper Fibres offices in what he thought of as civilian clothes, always dressing for the commute one quick flight down. Every morning he put on one of his exquisitely tailored suits and chose a bow tie from his vast collection. He believed the butterfly shape beneath his chin provided a necessary counterweight to his overly long face and inelegant hair, which was baby fine, mousy brown, and tended to stick out around his ears or at the crown.

“You can get away with colorful ties,” his ex-wife had told him, diplomatically referring to his rather unremarkable features—gray eyes that were more watery than striking, thin lips, a soft, almost puttylike nose. Paul never minded his ordinary looks. They lent a valuable invisibility in certain situations; he overheard things he wasn’t supposed to hear, people confided in him, errantly judging him harmless. (His looks didn’t always work in his favor. There was the recent lunch, for example, which he’d scheduled with a young poet after their e-mail exchanges had turned flirtatious. That she’d been disappointed in his appearance versus the muscular wit of his correspondence had been abundantly clear by the look on her face. Well, he’d been surprised, too. Surprised to discover that she didn’t remotely resemble her author photo with its glossy hair, hooded eyes, and come-hither glistening lips.)

Paul valued routine and habit. He ate the same breakfast every day (a bowl of oatmeal and an apple) and then went for a morning walk along Fulton Ferry Landing. On weekdays he never deviated from his route, becoming an expert chronicler of the waterfront in all its seasonal mutations. Today the wind was fierce, battering the hearty souls brave enough to be outside; he leaned into it, pitching himself forward and wrapping his scarf more tightly around his neck. He loved the river, even during the grim New York winter, loved its steely gray shimmer and menacing whitecaps. He never tired of the view of the harbor; he always felt lucky to be exactly where he was, the place he’d chosen to belong.

As he headed toward the far edge of Fulton Ferry Landing, Paul saw Leo Plumb’s familiar figure sitting on one of the benches closest to the water. Leo and Paul had taken to walking together every so often. Leo looked up and waved. Paul picked up his pace. He’d actually begun to look forward to the days when Leo would join him at the bench. Stranger things had happened, he supposed.

PAUL HAD BEEN LIVID when SpeakEasy magazine folded and Leo hadn’t invited him to help start the website that would eventually grow into SpeakEasyMedia. Leo hadn’t taken everyone from the print magazine, but he’d taken those generally considered the sharpest, the most desirable, and Paul had always believed himself to fit squarely in that category. Maybe he wasn’t the most talented writer, the most fearless reporter, but he was reliable and capable and ambitious and shouldn’t all those things count for something? He met deadlines, his copy was pristine, and he pitched in where needed even when it wasn’t his responsibility. He did everything you were supposed to do to earn the things you wanted. He was nice

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