The Jinx. Jennifer Sturman
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stone and brick of Trinity Church a few minutes before ten. I joined the slow-moving queue to sign the guest book and then found a seat in one of the ornately carved pews halfway down the nave. The church was packed, which was fitting given Tom’s prominent role in the community. I could barely make out the tops of Barbara’s and Adam Barnett’s heads in the first pew.
The service began, and I alternately stood, sang and sat as directed. The formal rituals that accompanied death always left me numb, and I had a bad habit of automatically tuning out during any sort of lecture. My eyes wandered, taking in the crowd. I recognized both the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts, along with one of the state’s U.S. senators. Several other faces were familiar to me from Grenthaler board meetings. I looked for Sara, wondering how she was holding up, but I didn’t see her, which wasn’t surprising given the masses of people in the church.
As the minister rambled on, I thought again about Tom and Barbara and their unlikely union. They really could not have been more different—even if you accepted that opposites did, in fact, attract. Tom was descended from a long line of erudite and genteel New Englanders. He had joined the staff of Grenthaler Media as a graduate student in international affairs, intending to work part-time as he pursued his doctorate. Soon he had dropped his classes and joined the company full-time, becoming Samuel Grenthaler’s partner and a significant force in the growing enterprise.
Nancy Sloan theorized that Tom had been slow to marry because he was secretly in love with Anna Porter, the wife of his best friend and partner. He was nearly forty-five when he met Barbara. By then, she’d left her pageant days and an unsuccessful first marriage behind and had moved to Boston with her young son to take a position as the host of a local daytime talk show. A statuesque blonde, perfectly coiffed with the signature big hair of her home state and always dressed in bright Escada or Chanel suits, she was a surprising success in a town that prided itself on its intellectual heritage. But she retired from show business shortly after marrying Tom to dedicate herself to home and family. Nowadays her skin had the tight shiny look that betrayed the attentions of a plastic surgeon, and she maintained her size four with a fierce devotion to exercise and diet, but she was still a stunning presence. Every time I saw her I felt dwarfed and frumpy by comparison and immediately noticed that my stockings had a run or that my nails were a mess. She was also an aggressive extrovert, invariably peppy and talkative and with a Texan drawl that coated her words like syrup.
Her son, Adam, was in his late twenties now, tall and lanky and completely lacking in his mother’s charisma. Tom had formally adopted him soon after he and Barbara married, but there was something nervous about him, as if he never felt that he really belonged. He was a bit of a mama’s boy, too, and he still lived at home, in a third-floor apartment that Tom and Barbara had fashioned into a bachelor pad. I doubted, however, that the pad was seeing much action. I was amazed that he’d actually gotten up the guts to try to romance Sara. It seemed obvious to me that she was way out of his league.
I spied Grant Crocker across the aisle and a few rows up, recognizing him from the rigid set of his broad shoulders and the military-short brown hair. Yet another man who didn’t seem to realize that Sara was way out of his league. He turned and met my gaze, as if he’d felt my eyes on his back. He gave me a friendly but subdued nod before turning back around. I wondered, and not for the first time, how such a handsome boy-next-door face could belong to such a domineering jerk.
After a eulogy from an old friend of Tom’s and a final benediction, the service drew to a close. The guests were invited to the Barnetts’ house for a reception directly following the service. Tom’s body had already been cremated, per his request. The congregation stood to let Barbara and other immediate family pass before we filed out.
Barbara’s blond head was bowed, and she had linked her arm through Adam’s, who guided her dutifully up the aisle. Several older couples followed, whom I imagined to be assorted relatives. Edward and Helene Porter, Sara’s grandparents, were among the group, a stately white-haired pair I’d met at Grenthaler board meetings. Then the other rows began emptying out. I still didn’t see Sara. I wondered if maybe she’d left through another door, wanting to avoid the crush outside.
I’d turned to walk up the aisle when Grant Crocker materialized at my side. “Rachel,” he greeted me, his voice appropriately hushed to reflect our surroundings. “What brings you here?”
“Tom was my client,” I explained, “and Sara Grenthaler and I worked together when she was a summer associate at Winslow, Brown. And I needed to be in town for recruiting, anyhow. How are you, Grant?”
“I’m fine. But this is a sad day.” He put his hand on my elbow as we made our way up the aisle. He’d always been quick to go through the motions of chivalry—opening doors and offering to carry stacks of heavy client presentations—but from him they’d always rankled, knowing as I did that the flip side of his chivalry was chauvinism. And his sanctimonious tone made me wish somebody else was there to hear it, so that we could joke about it later. “I felt it was important to be here,” he added. “For Sara. Since they were so close.” He said Sara’s name with a proprietary air, which I thought was odd given what she’d told me the previous night.
“Have you seen her anywhere?” I asked.
“No. In fact, I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
“We probably missed her in this crowd,” I replied as we emerged from the church into the crisp air. A few flakes of snow had started to fall, precursors of the major storm that was expected that weekend.
“Probably,” he agreed. “Are you going to the reception?”
I made a quick decision. My presence among the several hundred who were likely to descend on the Barnett house would hardly be missed. Nor would it be an appropriate time to discuss Barbara’s ten-percent stake in Grenthaler Media. “No, I’ve got to get back to the Charles. We’re doing the second round of interviews today and tomorrow.”
“I guess I’ll see you at the Winslow, Brown thing tomorrow night, then.” I’d almost forgotten that Winslow, Brown was hosting a cocktail party Friday for the candidates we were asking back to New York as well as previous analysts, like Grant, who had offers outstanding to return to the firm after graduation. I stifled a shudder at the thought of once again having to work with Grant on a daily basis.
“I guess so,” I said, striving to be polite. There was nothing technically wrong with anything Grant had said or done in our brief exchange, but just being around him seemed to rub me the wrong way. I said goodbye, glad to extract my elbow from his grasp and be at least temporarily done with him, and walked down Boylston Street in search of a cab. I found one idling at the corner of Clarendon Street and got in, asking the driver to take me to Harvard Square.
I felt apprehensive, and I tried to figure out why. Clearly, a memorial service was not the most soothing event, nor was it comforting to think about Grant Crocker being back in my life full-time should he return to Winslow, Brown in the fall. But there was something else. I realized that I would have felt better if I’d known for sure that Sara had been at the church. It was strange that neither Grant nor I had seen her. And I couldn’t imagine that she would have missed the service.
I busied myself on the trip back to Cambridge by calling my office to check in with Jessica. I also tried Peter, just to say hello, but his cell phone went straight into voice mail. I left a message then leaned back in my seat, staring out the window. The cab rounded a final curve, zooming past the business school campus to the left and the familiar red brick buildings and cupolas of the undergraduate campus across the river. We turned off Storrow Drive and made a right-hand turn onto the bridge and into an unmoving line of cars.
The driver braked abruptly, cursed at the traffic and added his horn to those that were already honking. After several minutes during which we traveled only a few feet, I paid him and got out. I’d get to the hotel faster by walking. The driver happily pocketed my money and made an illegal U-turn, tires squealing, to return to Boston.
I turned up the collar of my coat against the harsh wind and made my way across the bridge. At its foot, the yellow crime-scene tape remained with its accompanying flock