Theo taken in by Barbours

Theodore Decker, orphaned at thirteen when his mother was killed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art bombing, was taken in by the Barbour family of Park Avenue. This temporary arrangement, born of crisis, became the crucible in which Theo's adolescent grief, guilt, and survival instincts were forged, setting the course for his adult life in the worlds of antiques and crime.

Crisis and Arrival

On the night of April 10th, after wandering the city in shock and finding his mother missing, Theo returned to his empty Sutton Place apartment. A social worker from the New York Department of Child and Family Services, Marjorie Beth Weinberg, called to inform him of his mother's death. The next morning, social workers Enrique and a Korean woman took him to a diner and explained he was a minor in need of emergency custody. When they asked for a family friend, Theo gave them the number of Andy Barbour, his best friend from elementary school. The social workers drove him to the Barbours' white-glove building on Park Avenue, where the midnight doorman Kenneth let them in. Mr. Barbour, in rumpled office clothes, opened the door and led Theo inside. Mrs. Barbour, a cool and composed society figure, offered him Platt's room and told him he was welcome to lie down. Andy, woken and hauled from bed, sat beside Theo on the edge of the bed in Platt's dark green room, and after a long silence, said only, "Wow." Theo replied, "Yeah."

Life in the Barbour Household

The Barbours' enormous, lightless apartment became Theo's refuge. He found solace in its massive, opulent, pre-war gloom, a private-club atmosphere of burnished oak and lamplight. Visitors came to see him: his social workers, a pro-bono psychiatrist named Dave, people from his mother's work like Mathilde, and friends from her NYU and fashion days. Mrs. Barbour managed these visits with a controlled politeness, breaking them up if they dragged on. She also managed the Social Services machinery behind the scenes, shielding Theo from the press and from Enrique's relentless interrogations about his father's whereabouts. She even put a stop to the questioning, telling Enrique that the man clearly didn't want to be found. The household's routine was altered for Theo: the maids were no longer permitted to listen to the news, and the morning Times was taken directly to Mr. Barbour's study to keep Theo from seeing upsetting articles. Andy stayed home from school with Theo for the first few days. They sat over the chessboard, Andy playing for both of them, while Theo's mind replayed the moment he and his mother ran up the museum steps. Theo spent his days counting the hours since her death, going over their last meals, and staring at pigeons on the window ledge. At night, he lay awake in the bunk bed, missing his mother with a hard, physical longing, and recalling memories like her picking a thread off his school jacket.

The Decker Grandparents and a New Future

Social Services eventually contacted Theo's paternal grandparents, Bob and Dorothy Decker, in Maryland. Dorothy, who was not Theo's biological grandmother, claimed she was unwell with a back ailment, and they said it was not practical for Theo to stay with them. They offered to pay for him to stay in a Holiday Inn near their house. Mrs. Barbour broke the news to Theo, who felt ashamed that his grandparents didn't want him. She assured him it was settled that he would stay with the Barbours for the next few weeks and finish his year at school. A greeting card later arrived from Dorothy, offering to send a bus ticket while alluding to vague medical conditions that made it difficult for them to "meet the demands" for his care. Theo was struck by the card's picture of a wilted flower, which seemed inappropriate for someone whose mother had just died. The prospect of living with his grandparents was unimaginable; he remembered their house as a place of handstitched sayings and a plastic countertop dehydrator, where his grandfather had yelled at him to keep his hands off his model train set. The Barbours' invitation to spend the summer in Maine offered a reprieve, and Theo felt a dizzying lift, as if the entire Atlantic Ocean lay between him and Grandpa Decker.

The Ring and the Painting

During his stay, Theo carried Welty Blackwell's ring with him almost everywhere. Mrs. Barbour noticed it and examined it, identifying the stone as carnelian and the intaglio as a griffin or winged lion. She saw an engraving inside that read "Blackwell," a name that rang a distant bell for Theo. He ignored her advice to put it in a safe place. The painting he had taken from the museum remained in the apartment, in the bag he had brought out. He was aware of it in a nagging way, knowing he would have to get it back to the museum, but he missed one chance to return it when Mrs. Barbour turned away investigators who had shown up at the apartment. Later, at school, two investigators, Ray and Morris, questioned him about the day of the bombing. Theo, terrified they would ask about the painting, steeled himself, but they never did. The official story was that the painting was destroyed, which left Theo plenty of time to decide what to do. He kept quiet, looked at maps with Mr. Barbour, and let Mrs. Barbour take him to Brooks Brothers for deck shoes and sweaters.

Departure and Legacy

When Theo's father, Larry Decker, and his girlfriend Xandra arrived from Las Vegas to take him away, the Barbour chapter ended. Mrs. Barbour came down to the curb to see him off. She gave him a quick, ladies-who-lunch air kiss and said, "You were an awfully good guest, Theo." She did not seem particularly upset to see the last of him. Theo felt sick to be leaving. The Barbour apartment, with its Chinese porcelains and silk-shaded lamps, had been a world of safety and order, a stark contrast to the chaos that awaited him. The experience of being taken in by them, however temporary, left an indelible mark. It gave him a model of a different kind of family, one of wealth and composure, and it was within those walls that he first began to understand the power of objects and the weight of secrets. Years later, after Andy and Mr. Barbour drowned, Theo reconnected with the family. He married Kitsey Barbour, a decision that was as much about returning to that lost world of safety as it was about love. Mrs. Barbour, now a widow, told him she had always thought of him as one of her very own, even when he was a little boy.