Jacqueline laughed. “You know, sooner or later you’ll have children of your own and you’ll have to figure all this out.”
He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. “Well, not anytime soon.”
The elevator opened into the lobby and Harper led his sister to the car waiting out front and on to one of his favorite restaurants. They were seated quickly and both ordered seltzer with a twist as they settled into the quiet booth.
“How are you doing?” Harper asked gently.
“I’m all right, I suppose. As well as can be expected.” She gave him a weak smile and he searched his mind for something to say.
“What are your plans now?”
“I think I’ll spend the summer at the beach house, then I’ll think of something. I need to go back to Cyprus at some point and pack my things,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands as they tore the paper napkin into smaller and smaller pieces.
He reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. “Hey, anything you need at all, I’m here for you, all right?”
She nodded without looking up. The waiter came and took their order and the appetizer arrived without Jacqueline saying a word. William talked about his day and told what he thought was an amusing anecdote about a client lunch, but she didn’t so much as crack a smile. She just nodded at intervals in the conversation and fiddled with her bracelet.
“Can we get a bottle of Malbec, please?” he asked the server. He knew Liz would gloat about it later, but he didn’t know how much more of this sad silence he could take.
He took a fortifying gulp of his own wine while encouraging Jacqueline to drink hers. Every time her glass went below half way, he topped it off. At least it seemed to relax her.
“You’re lucky, William,” she said as she pushed asparagus around on her plate.
“How so?”
“You’ve always known exactly what you wanted to do, exactly how you wanted to live your life. It was all mapped out, all you had to do was follow the road signs.”
He looked at her in surprise for a moment, then said, “What on earth makes you think that, Jackie?”
“Look around.” She gestured with her hand. “Taggston, HarperCo, New York.”
“And you think that’s exactly how I wanted to live my life?”
She looked up, surprised at his vehemence. “It’s not?”
“No! It absolutely isn’t!”
“You always seem so sure of yourself and what you’re doing. I just thought,” she trailed off.
Harper tiredly dropped his forehead into his hand. “Jackie, I did what I was supposed to do, what I was told. I had a legacy to preserve, a name to uphold. It wasn’t that I always knew what I wanted to do, but that I always knew what I was supposed to do. I just got lucky that I like it and happen to be good at it.”
She opened and closed her mouth a few times. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have chosen business if you’d had a choice?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn’t. But I can tell you that I would have pursued other things, other hobbies. I would have had more of a life and other interests outside work.”
“Like what?”
“Like photography.”
Jacqueline’s eyes widened.
“Liz bought me a camera for Christmas, she thought I would be good at it or something. Anyway, I’ve been fooling around with it, just a little here and there, but when we were on our trip I really got into it. I’m not saying I would have gone pro or anything like that, but it would have been nice to have a hobby so far removed from work all these years.”
“You play golf,” she said softly.
He laughed. “I hate golf! I only play it because it’s useful for business. Most sports I play are actually informal business meetings except for the odd racquetball match with Jamison. The point is that I never really sat down and found out what I loved doing, what I enjoyed, because I’ve been too busy with work and commitments to consider my own desires beyond what I wanted for dinner.”
“Are you saying I should figure out what I want?”
“No, yes, I don’t know. Maybe. It couldn’t hurt, right? Maybe you could go back to school for architecture. You’re still young, and you used to be interested in it. Or maybe you could start a remodeling business. Lord knows you have the knowledge base.”
“You think I should go back to school?” she asked.
“If you want to. I think it’s a viable option. Why not?”
She exhaled loudly and turned her head to the side toward the people walking past their table. “You surprise me, William.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You’ve changed a lot. I can only imagine it’s Liz’s influence that’s done the trick.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps you never knew me very well,” he said quietly, his eyes on the table between them.
“Perhaps you’re right. Maybe I just thought of you like Father and never considered you in your own right.”
“Do you think Dad would have been against you pursuing architecture?”
She guffawed. “Are you joking? Of course, he would! He was! He made that very clear nine years ago when I was looking at universities. ‘A Harper woman takes her family and position seriously.’” She said in a distant imitation of her father’s voice.
“He said that to you?”
“Are you really surprised? What am I saying, of course you are. You were the golden child, you could do no wrong.”
William laughed cynically. “What are you talking about?”
“Father adored you. He was always taking you with him on his trips, bragging about you to all his colleagues. I was just window dressing, you were the one he was proud of. The heir, his pride and joy,” she said bitterly.
William breathed out forcibly and leaned back into the seat, then finally laughed dryly. “Wow. Lizzy was right,” he said, shaking his head.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Listen, I’m sorry things were rough between you and Dad, but I’m not him. And hey, Mother adored you. That’s got to count for something, right?”
She nodded and looked down. “Sorry, William. You’re right, you’re not Father and I shouldn’t treat you like you are.”
“Just figure out what you want, Jackie. You’re young, you’re smart, and you have almost unlimited resources. Surely you can find contentment, hmm?”
She smiled. “You really are different, you know.” He looked at her in both exasperation and curiosity. “You’re warmer, more approachable. Kinder.”
“Thanks, Jackie. I think.”
She laughed and let the subject drop.
*
“Can you believe all this time she thought I was the favorite?” Will asked incredulously as he flossed next to Liz that night.
Liz shrugged. “Yeah, sort of.” He shot her a questioning look. “Hey, I’m not trying to start anything, it’s just that your family isn’t exactly encouraging to its female members.”
“How do you mean?”
“Seriously? Have you honestly not noticed it?”
“Aunt Julia is a bit stuck in her ways, but she hardly speaks for the entire family.”
“Actually, she sort of does, but that’s another topic. My point is that the women are expected to do and be certain things. Be impeccably groomed and marry the right man, stay in shape, be the perfect hostess and a force in society, and of course, produce the all-important male heir. Volunteering for a charity is acceptable, but nothing that gets your hands dirty. If you must work, do it in the family firm. Of all the women in your family, Caroline is the only one I’ve met who actually has a job.”
Will stared ahead for a moment, then opened and closed his mouth twice before responding. “So are you saying that Jacqueline has felt stifled all this time and that’s why she thought I was the favorite? She perceived all this freedom?”
“Yes, basically. She obviously didn’t understand that you had as little choice as she h
ad, possibly less. She could at least pursue other things—hobbies, hotel renovations—while you have been glued to the company since you did your first internship when you were how old? Sixteen?”
“Fifteen.”
She pointed her toothbrush at him. “That’s my point. You never got to dream about what you want to do when you grow up. Sounds like you two had a lot in common all these years and just never talked about it.”
“How did you get so smart?” he asked with a smirk and a step in her direction.
She turned to rinse her mouth in the sink. “Good genes.” She flashed her freshly cleaned teeth at him and brushed past to the bedroom. “And she obviously doesn’t realize that while she had a strained relationship with your father, you had the same with your mother.”
“Yeah, I wonder about that.” He followed her out of the bathroom. “I mean, she was old enough to remember that I wasn’t around while she and Mother were doing all this stuff together. Didn’t she ever ask where I was? Did it never occur to her that it was a bit odd how segregated we were?”
Liz shrugged. “It’s amazing the things you don’t notice when you’re thirteen. Or maybe she just saw what she wanted to see. She seems to have a habit of that.”
They turned down the bed together and started fluffing pillows and turning off lights.
“What was your parents’ marriage like?” Liz asked after a minute.
“Distant. Hostile sometimes. They really didn’t like each other. I’ve often wondered how they managed to have two children, though I suppose they were probably at least marginally happy when they were first married and I came along.”
Liz asked the next question carefully. “Was your mother different with you before Jacqueline was born?”
He thought for a minute. “I suppose she was a bit. She was more involved. She would read to me,” he said with a soft smile. “She read me The Secret Garden when I was five. She would sit on this little sofa in the nursery every night and we would cuddle under a quilt until I fell asleep. I’d forgotten about that.” His voice faded out and he looked toward the window, blinking rapidly.
“Sounds lovely,” Liz said quietly. She flipped the switch on the bedside lamp and climbed under the covers. “Come hold me, Will. My snuggle tank is low.”
He smiled and climbed in beside her, spooning his knees behind hers and wrapping his arms around her, his face nuzzling her hair and neck.
“Goodnight, my Lizzy.”
“Goodnight, my William.”
**
The following week, Jacqueline and William made a tour of the old family home on the upper west side. Jacqueline needed to get her things out and Will needed to decide what he would do with it now that it was all his. Neither had had the time recently, and of course they were both looking for reasons to avoid it. They knew it would stir up old memories, many unpleasant, and neither was eager to begin. But eventually, it couldn’t be avoided, so one day Harper left work early and met his sister in the lobby of the Beresford. They gave each other identical looks of trepidation before taking the elevator up.
Most of the furnishings in the apartment were covered in sheets. After Mr. Harper senior died, Harper spent the next year traveling to various offices all over the world, ensuring stock holders and CEOs that Taggston would continue to be a thriving conglomerate. He lived out of hotels except for when he was in London, where he spent roughly half his time. When he came back to New York to stay, he only lived in the apartment for six months before he and Jacqueline got in an enormous argument over how to handle some minor repairs. He wanted to just fix the problem, she wanted a full-scale renovation. Because they both owned it equally, neither could do anything. They agreed to disagree and she went back to England to finish college and he bought his own place. Everything in the Beresford was covered and loose items were packed until the siblings could agree on what to do with it.
Now, nearly four years later, they each had the feeling that they were returning to the scene of a crime. Liz had suggested they do this without her, allowing the siblings some time to deal with their family issues. He was now feeling how utterly wrong that decision had been. He and Jacqueline needed some kind of buffer between them. He stepped away from his sister where she was looking under a sheet in the living room and sent Liz a text asking her to come as quickly as possible. He sent her the address and avoided his sister until his wife arrived.
“You didn’t tell me you had a place in The Beresford!” Liz exclaimed when William opened the door for her fifteen minutes later. “I thought it was just in another swanky apartment building, not next door to Seinfeld.”
“Seinfeld’s actually three floors down,” he said smoothly, guiding her into the living room. “Now, I need some help here.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t know what’s happening. Are we looking through boxes? Who gets what? How do we decide? How do we not have another enormous row?”
“Okay, calm down. This is obviously a touchy situation. You said you wanted to air the whole thing out and go through things, right?”
“Yes, that was the original plan,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Then why don’t we start there? Let’s remove all the coverings off the furniture in the living room. There aren’t too many boxes in there and then you’ll have a place to sit. Do you want to call a cleaning service to come in and give everything a good dusting?” She ran a hand over a side table and looked at the dust on her fingers.
“Yes, that’s a good plan. I’m sorry, Liz. I thought this would be easy. We’d come in, look at a few boxes, she’d choose a few mementos to take back to England with her, we’d move on. I forgot how much stuff there was,” he said looking at the boxes piled in the hall, “and I didn’t count on how weird this would all be.”
She rubbed his arm. “I know, babe. It’s got to be bizarre coming back after all this time. Why don’t you ask Evelyn to get a cleaning service in here and I’ll go find Jacqueline?”
He nodded and stepped away to make the call to his assistant while Liz went down a long hallway looking for her sister-in-law. Halfway down, a door on her right was open. She stepped inside and saw Jacqueline sitting on a pink tufted chair in the corner.
“Was this your room?” she asked softly.
Jacqueline startled and looked up. “Yes. It hasn’t changed since I was a child. After Mother died, I was sent to school in Switzerland. I hardly came back here.”
Jacqueline studied the bookshelf next to the chair, lost in her memories. Liz looked around quietly. Most of the furniture was covered in white sheets, but she could see that the bed had a canopy and the walls were a soft shade of pink. The floors were a light inlaid wood, a large carpet rolled up against one wall. The room was large with high ceilings and thick crown moldings, its bones very classical and almost regal-feeling.
“William is hiring a cleaning crew to come in and get the dust off everything. It will be easier to look through things that way,” Liz said, feeling like she had to break the silence somehow. “I’ll go see how he’s getting on.”
Jacqueline nodded in response and Liz backed out quietly, leaving the other woman to her memories. She found Will in the living room again, just hanging up the phone.
“That was Evelyn. A crew will be here first thing in the morning,” he said. “It shouldn’t take them more than a day or two to get everything cleaned and ready.”
She nodded. He and Jacqueline both seemed to have slipped into awkwardness and she thought she should do something before the silence became oppressive.
“I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since eleven. Do you two want to get some dinner?”
“Sure, that sounds fine,” he said.
“Why don’t you call Angelo’s and see if we can get a table. Say twenty minutes out?”
He nodded again and she went to get Jacqueline who was sitting in the same position she’d left her in. Shaking her head, she led both Harpers out the door and down the
elevator. Being outside seemed to wake them up somewhat and dinner was subdued, but not as bad as she was afraid it would be.
Liz was not looking forward to cleaning out that apartment. If this was how they acted after only half an hour there, how would they cope with actually opening the boxes? A big part of her didn’t want to know, but another was burning with curiosity.
Two days later, the apartment was clean and ready. Jacqueline had contracted a moving service that was going to ship everything she wanted to England for her. Liz suggested she start on her room since there was likely to be little argument over anything in there. William started in their father’s study. Liz sent him in with two boxes, one marked ‘William’ for things he definitely wanted to keep, the other marked ‘Optional’ for things he thought Jacqueline might want or that he didn’t care about either way.
Liz walked into the study looking for Will and found him sitting on a leather sofa, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. She walked over to him quietly and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“You all right, babe?” she asked.
He took a ragged breath and she felt his shoulders shake with the strength of it. He looked up at her with red eyes and a pale face. He just stared at her, not saying anything or even blinking.
“Baby?” she said quietly. She dropped to her knees and scooted between his legs, wrapping her arms around him and squeezing him tight. “What is it?”
“Lizzy,” he whispered. He closed his eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Okay. You don’t have to. It’s all right. Come with me.”
She took his hands and pulled him up. He stood in front of her for a moment, perfectly still. After a couple of deep breaths, she led him out of the room, walking slowly, Will’s eyes trained to the floor. She took him to the kitchen and immediately turned on the electric kettle and started making a cup of tea. Thank you, Evelyn, she thought as she looked at the basket on the counter filled with Will’s favorite coffee, tea, and assorted snacks.
He sat in a chair at the small round table and sipped slowly.
Green Card Page 47