A Fortune of Sand

Marjorie spends the night beneath her open bedroom window during a storm, resolving to seize control of her destiny. She decides she will no longer be a victim of her family’s deceptions and will get answers about their schemes or expose them to Hank, the newspaper reporter. The next morning, her mother, Lilah, brings her breakfast. Marjorie conceals her plans, telling Lilah she will go to the yacht club with Helen Hardwick—though inwardly she knows she will not attend the dance at all. Before leaving, Lilah makes a cryptic comment about Marjorie’s dress form, winking in a way that suggests a hidden understanding.

Rereading a letter from her Uncle Jamie, Marjorie deduces he and her mother share a significant secret and that her father, Duncan, is vengeful. She speculates that Jamie might be her biological father, which she thinks could explain Duncan’s resentment and his plot to have her institutionalized at Eloise Asylum.

Later, Chet slides a typed, mock obituary for herself under Marjorie’s door as an apology. The note references Chet’s desire to protect her younger sister from institutional banishment, confirming Chet’s awareness of Duncan’s plan. The realization prompts Marjorie to connect the pieces: It was not Chet but her mother who left the brochure for the Nightingale residency in her room, providing her with an escape.

Marjorie drives to Charles Bonafante’s estate on Windmill Pointe, nervous but determined to get answers. Bonafante meets her at the gate and directs her to park inside the garage, making Marjorie wonder whether he wants her car hidden from the street. He leads her to the back of the house, where a private dinner for two is set on the veranda overlooking Lake St. Clair.

The romantic setting makes Marjorie wary; she understands that beneath the beautiful surface lie hidden truths. She challenges Bonafante’s description of the program as an artistic residency and later admits she is furious when he recognizes her anger. Bonafante confirms they are alone, having given his staff the evening off. Despite a strong attraction to him, Marjorie remains focused on her goal, sensing an “invisible curtain” between them that conceals the full story.

Marjorie demands to see the file that Dock kept on her, and Bonafante agrees. He explains the residency is his sister Juliette’s project, created because of her own wrongful confinement by their father. Marjorie presses him about his own mysterious work, and he admits he helps people with “delicate matters.”

She reveals she knows her father, Duncan, blackmailed her friend Peter Howell into swapping fake jewels for real ones at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Marjorie proposes a plan: Using a fake Cartier consultant from Paris who will approach Cecile, make her believe the sapphire has a unique provenance and an existing buyer, and sell it to her—with the proceeds going to Peter. In exchange for his assistance, she asks for a lawyer to help free her friend Ivy from Eloise Asylum. Bonafante agrees.

The conversation darkens as he warns that her father is dangerous. Marjorie discloses her suspicion that Uncle Jamie is her real father, and Bonafante reacts with sudden comprehension but does not confirm her suspicion. He then reveals several shocking truths: Marjorie’s grandfather, fearing Duncan might try to permanently silence her, had quietly come to Bonafante after the DIA heist; Cecile’s recent party was a diversion for a double heist targeting both a widowed jeweler’s store and his home, where his elderly mother fought back; and, most disturbingly, he believes Duncan’s liquor is being poisoned in an “inside job.” Overwhelmed, Marjorie breaks down, and Bonafante comforts her. To prove his trustworthiness and protect her, he offers to break his own rule against socializing and escort her to the yacht club dance.

Bonafante drives Marjorie to the Detroit Yacht Club on Belle Isle. He parks his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost himself, advising her to “never surrender your keys or your car” (262). As they approach the entrance, they are greeted by Mr. Hardwick, a man who previously caused trouble for Marjorie over one of her dress designs. Bonafante is pointedly dismissive of Hardwick’s attempts at conversation. The sight of the famously reclusive Bonafante arriving hand in hand with Marjorie creates an immediate stir among the high-society crowd, and they enter the club to a wave of shocked whispers.

Inside the yacht club ballroom, Marjorie’s family—Graham, Chet, Cecile, Lilah, and Duncan—are seated at a table. Chet reassures Graham that the crowded event provides an even better opportunity for their plan against Duncan than Cecile’s party, noting that their father is already drunk. The room’s chatter stops as all eyes turn to Marjorie and Bonafante, who enter looking completely absorbed in one another. Stunned, the Lennoxes watch as the couple walks past them to join Granny and Gramps at a table with the prominent Alger family.

Duncan dismisses the scene as a “pity date,” but the clear intimacy between Marjorie and Bonafante suggests otherwise. Cecile is bewildered, recalling that Marjorie had claimed to be dating a cop. As the family processes the shocking development, Chet erupts in loud, triumphant laughter, proclaiming that Marjorie is “brilliant.” Graham, meanwhile, feels a sickening dread, wondering whether his grandmother’s prediction that they were all “fucked” was right.

At her grandparents’ table, Marjorie navigates the crowd’s intense scrutiny with Bonafante’s support. A man from the exclusive retailer Himelhoch’s approaches to praise her dress; when she reveals she designed it herself, he contrasts it with a Paris import from the new House of Schiaparelli and gives Marjorie his business card. Soon after, Hank, the reporter, tries to approach their table, but Granny and Gramps aggressively ward him off.

Sensing Bonafante’s discomfort with the public attention, Marjorie creates an excuse to leave, pretending she left her purse in the car. Once outside, she admits it was a pre-planned escape. On the drive back to his estate, Marjorie contemplates her next move: She considers using the fake sapphire to con her family but worries that doing so would mean sinking to their level, while the Himelhoch’s opportunity offers a path toward building her fashion business. She asks Bonafante about the fears that shape him. He replies that one should not entertain demons but “stamp them out” immediately (273). His intensity is both attractive and unsettling, and she wonders what kind of man he truly is.

Back in Bonafante’s kitchen, he and Marjorie share food, wine, and an intimate conversation. When Marjorie mentions the recent death of a local gossip, Myrtle Branley, Bonafante begins to laugh. He reveals a secret: Mrs. Branley is not dead. Her supposed death is a “smoke screen” for a police sting operation she proposed to catch a ring of thieves in Grosse Pointe; she is actually hiding at a health spa.

The shared secret and laughter deepen their connection. As the mood shifts from playful to passionate, Marjorie pulls him closer. He kisses her intensely, and the attraction that has simmered between them finally ignites. He lifts her from the counter and carries her upstairs.

Graham is awakened at dawn by a servant with an urgent summons from his grandfather. Believing his and Chet’s plot has succeeded and his father is dead, Graham rushes downstairs, filled with a sense of dread. However, Gramps is not there to report a death but to confront him with a newspaper article detailing the scandalous behavior at Cecile’s recent party. The story exposes numerous family secrets, including an allusion to a woman who crashed a plane—which Graham identifies as Lilah taking flying lessons—Chet’s secret obituary writing, and the fact that Graham continues to wear his eye patch despite no longer needing it.

Furious, Gramps reveals he knew about the murder plot all along and had intercepted and swapped out Graham and Chet’s own “inheritance dust” with laxative powder. He chastises Graham for being a “bloody amateur” and for dishonoring the family. Graham confesses he wore the patch as a constant, public reminder of his father’s cruelty. Gramps reminds Graham of another family secret he previously entrusted to him: He stole the Lennox name, while the “real Lennox” lies buried in a shallow garden in Scotland. Gramps proposes staging a “quiet miracle” to explain Graham no longer needing it. When Graham asks about Marjorie’s appearance with Bonafante, Gramps is unsurprised, calling Marjorie an important ally and warning Graham never to cross Bonafante. Graham then notices that neither his father nor his grandfather is mentioned in the damning article, and a sly look on Gramps’s face makes him suspect his grandfather was the reporter’s source.

The next morning, Marjorie and Bonafante have breakfast on his terrace. He gives her the newspaper, and she is amused by the article exposing her family’s secrets, noting that she and Gramps were conspicuously omitted. Their conversation confirms the deep, unspoken connection between them.

Bonafante—whose given name, he reveals, is Luc—proposes an “intimate elopement.” Marjorie expresses her wariness, insisting she values her independence and will not become anyone’s property. He assures her he wants a partnership of equals and asks her to consider it.

Luc then explains how he orchestrated events to protect her. After asking her grandfather’s permission, he had Gramps place the dinner invitation in her room. He also arranged for her mother to “stumble upon” the Nightingale residency brochure, knowing she would give it to Marjorie as a way to escape Duncan’s plan to have her committed. He knew that Dock’s report confirming her sanity would be her best defense.

As Marjorie prepares to leave Bonafante’s estate, he asks her to let him accompany her, but she declines. Driving away, she contemplates the choice before her. A right turn leads to her family home, Glen Arden, where she could confront her family with the truths she now possesses and potentially claim the “crooked crown of Lennox glass” (291).

However, she questions the value of such a victory. Beneath the seat she finds a gift from Luc—a long silver strand—which she spools around her neck. Thinking of who truly needs her, Marjorie makes her decision. She smiles, turns left away from Glen Arden, and calls out, “Santa’s coming, Ivy. The sleigh is on the way!” (291).