“There’s the Sultan’s,” George said, pointing, and Peter looked down into her eyes, which had gone suddenly merry, and for an instant he was thirteen. The Sultan was their private joke, one of the lost pieces of childhood, the imaginary owner of a vast white abomination of a house that stood on a peak overlooking Oyster Bay. As young children, they had sailed to the bay with Max and moored overnight, the Sultan’s house a main part of the entertainment. They watched lights go on in various oddly shaped windows, strained to hear the music of a harem, and craned to see the colored candles flicker across invisible lawns. George, the storyteller, spun elaborate tales of the lives lived behind the Sultan’s vast doors, and once, at the age of eleven, had even tried to run away to the palace in a dory, only to be rescued by the Coast Guard several hours later.
“You know, the awful thing is, it was sold to a Saudi oil magnate two years ago,” she said. “Life imitating art.”
“I find that somehow comforting,” Peter said. “The Whitney clan’s childhood need not be impoverished. Their mother can go on inventing lives for the Sultan, and their dreams will be filled with strange music and the heavy scent of hashish.”
“Or four a.m. nightmares.”
“I hope this doesn’t cause any,” Peter said with a nod toward Casey.
Georgiana’s merriness faded abruptly, and her lips flattened into a thin line. “I have to believe that scattering dust is less disturbing than lowering a coffin into the earth. And it’s not as though they even knew Rusty.”
Peter kissed her hair briefly, once, and she looked up at him gratefully. “Thank God you’re here, Packy,” she said, using his childhood name. “I couldn’t handle Mother alone.”
“Of course you could,” Peter said. “You’re the one she still speaks to.”
“There’s one disadvantage to that,” George said. “I’m also the one who has to listen to her.” She dropped her arm from his waist and flapped the loose folds of her jacket, searching for a breath of coolness. “And she’ll get over her silence, wait and see. Laying the whole Rusty thing to rest will help immediately.”
“She’ll never lay it to rest,” Peter said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “She might have to wake up and care about someone else in the family. Your kids, for instance. There’s a luxury to obsession, you know. It justifies all sorts of selfish behavior.”
George looked at him speculatively and said nothing. He felt himself coloring slightly, and he glanced away from her, back to little Casey. George was thinking of Alison, he knew; his own selfish obsession, his excuse for solitude. Perhaps he was too much Julia’s son. He turned and looked out over the water, at the Sultan’s house, as Hale slowed the motor.
“Okay,” Hale shouted. “I’m going to idle here instead of throwing out the anchor. Doc Pritchett, would you ask Mrs. Mason to come above deck, please? With the—remains?”
“I’ll go,” George said. A brief, wistful smile, a smile that asked Peter’s forgiveness, flickered across her tanned face as she turned toward the hatch. As if honesty should have to be forgiven, he thought. That was the essence of George: her short, dark hair; the eyebrows arched like a gull’s wings; the ready smile and constant desire to please. Where had she come from in this family?
The Seventh Wave slowed, the throttle’s vibration thrumming dully through the fiberglass hull, and its forward momentum slackened almost to motionlessness. Peter looked toward the cockpit, studying Hale as he turned and backed the boat until it faced away from the Long Island shore. Hale was slight and trim, with a quiet, bespectacled face that suggested rock-solid predictability. His once-sandy hair was fading and thinning with each passing year, the only sign that he was facing forty-five. He seemed to bear the stress of his job and his large family with comforting steadiness. He inspired his children with confidence and respect, but not with fun. For that, they turned to Peter.
Hale’s head swiveled to the cabin’s hatch, and Peter followed his gaze. George, holding the box containing Rusty’s ashes, was helping his mother as she stepped gingerly from the ladder to the deck. It was the way Julia Mason allowed her driver to assist her from her car, the way she had taken the hands of a hundred servants during the course of her life. Despite years of exposure to sailing, she had never acquired sea legs; Peter thought it a deliberate refusal, as though in her world ladies did not become too comfortable with anything outside their expected competence. Her head came up as she gained the deck, and she looked straight at him, then allowed her gaze to shift without expression beyond him to the water. This was what she termed “cutting someone dead.” He had just been declared persona non grata by his mother.
“Josh—Abi—come here, we’re ready,” George said, her head swiveling as she did her reflexive Whitney count. As the children scrambled across the deck, she looked for Peter, and he moved silently to join her. She took a deep, shaky breath, as though she were standing at the top of a steep ski run, bracing herself for the descent. Doc Pritchett was at her side, lifting her burden gently from her hands, and turning solemnly toward the leeward side of the boat.
“Almighty God of the vast and changing sea, take Rusty to the depths of your great heart and keep him in everlasting light. He was a child of these tides, he was tossed by these swells, he loved their terrible power and fierce gifts. He understood the blessings You gave to those who master the craft of the ocean. Most of all, he paid homage to Your power, with his understanding that no man ever truly holds dominion over the waves, as no man can rule the Lord; but each of us can aspire to chart a true course. Amen.”
“Is the sea God’s great heart, Mom?” Maxie asked.
“Uncle Rusty thought so,” George said.
Dr. Pritchett held aloft the box Peter had brought with him from Boston, and the wind from the sea caught Rusty’s ashes and carried them in a fine veil out over the sound. For the first time since Rusty’s death, as he watched his brother’s dust sift into the ocean, an aching knot of sorrow formed itself in Peter’s throat and would not be ignored. Peace to you, Rusty, of late, unhappy memory, he thought. I don’t ask for forgetting. We’ll none of us have that, the rest of our lives. He stared at the roiling water an instant and then turned back to George. Two large tears were coursing down her tanned cheeks, and her eyes were swimming; tears not for these ashes, but for him, and for herself—for the rifts that went unhealed, for their vanished dream of childhood.
He looked at his mother. Her fists were clenched at her sides, her arms stiff, and as he watched she stumbled like an automaton to the rail and clutched at the slender steel cord. The boat rolled in the swell, and Julia Mason, disregarding her balance, leaned toward the water as if intent upon following her son into the sea. Dr. Pritchett reached for her swiftly, discreetly, as though she had stumbled and he had merely steadied her; and the moment passed. She turned toward Peter and George, her arms slack and her eyes glittering.
“From the day you were born, you couldn’t stand it,” she said. “That he was everything you’re not. One of those the gods loved.” She looked past Peter, but her words were meant for him all the same. “You had to destroy him, didn’t you?”
“Mother!” George said.
“You burned his body. Burned!” At that, Julia Mason’s face crumpled and she was wracked by a harsh, guttural sobbing that seemed to break her in half. “I never got to see him again.”
“What did Nana say, Mommy? What did Nana say?” Casey’s hand was in her father’s free one, and her eyes were solemn.
“I said your uncle is a murderer,” Julia said, and she struggled past them to the hatch.
George looked after her, uncertain whether to follow, then bent down to Casey. “Nan’s not well,” she said. “Don’t worry about anything she said.” She looked up at the ring of serious children’s faces and smiled at them uncertainly.
Chapter 26
After dinner it rained. They laid a
fire in Hale’s library and sat before it, books forgotten on the leather chesterfield, gazing into the flames. Georgiana’s legs, sheathed in bright red wool, were drawn up under her, and her face was pensive. Hale sat behind his desk, studying his laptop. Julia had gone to her room upon their return from the boat and had refused dinner. The children were scattered about the house, and the echoes of their voices drifted faintly through the old plaster walls.
“Poor old Malcolm,” Georgiana said. “He must have been wild to see you. How awful to be so old, and sick, and alone.”
“Not alone,” Peter said. “He has Betty.”
“Oh, yes, but Peter! It’s so senseless.”
“What is?”
“That he’s estranged from his granddaughter! Don’t you remember? The daughter of his only son, the naval fighter pilot. The one shot down in a training run.”
“No, I don’t remember.”
“Well, it was years ago,” George said, “and nothing important enough for you to remember, but they raised her from babyhood, and then broke with her over some stupid transgression. There Malcolm is, dying without a word to his last relative on earth. It makes me so angry.”
“How like you, George,” Hale said, looking up at her fondly over his glasses, “to worry about other people’s families.”
She stood up restlessly and walked to the window, pressing her face to the glass. Her breath left a pale fog of condensation against the darkness. “It’s just that pride is so infuriating, don’t you think? Like you and Mummy. It gets in the way of so much. But I suppose it’s easier than feeling.” She paused, and shivered. “This rain is awful. Peter—” She slid down next to him, her eyes fixed on the fire. “Do you remember how it snowed the day we buried Daddy? Relentless, so cold and still. I stood by the windows and watched it mount up on the hemlocks, thinking of him lying out there in the ground, in the cold. It broke my heart.”
“I remember.”
“I’d feel the same way about this rain, if we’d buried Rusty.”
“It seems less heartless, doesn’t it, releasing him into the ocean.”
“Air, water, earth, and fire, all the elements. Yes, it seems right. I’d like that to happen to me. Remember, will you?”
Peter nodded. The logs, still green, were steaming gently, and the flames were blue to their edges. He felt drained and sluggish, as though he could remain before this fire indefinitely, unspeaking, unthinking, and beyond all emotion.
“How long will you stay, Peter?”
He roused himself. “Just until morning. There’s too much to be done.”
“I was almost forgetting, wasn’t I? It’s not over, even with him gone.”
“No.” Peter glanced at Hale, working in his contained circle of quiet, and felt his spirits sink. Why disturb this peace? Because Merry Folger’s hard green eyes awaited him back on the island. “And if it’s going to end, you have to tell me about the letter.”
“The what?”
“The letter. The one Rusty sent you from Rio, the one you didn’t mention when I called and told you about his death.”
There was a silence. Georgiana’s face had frozen. Hale still stared calmly at his screen.
“They found a copy in his luggage. Did George tell you about the letter, Hale?” Peter asked.
“Naturally. It concerned me,” Hale said imperturbably. He looked up at Peter and waited.
“I suppose I should have mentioned it,” George said in a rush, “but when you called with the news that Rusty was dead, it didn’t seem important anymore. In fact, it seemed like . . .”
“A godsend,” Peter finished.
George looked down at her fingers, which she’d locked together in her distress, and she nodded rapidly. “Yes. I didn’t know what the letter was about, you see,” she said. “And then I asked Hale.”
Hale cleared his throat quietly and took off his glasses. He passed his hands across his eyelids and sighed.
“When did you get the letter, George?” Peter said.
“The Saturday of Labor Day weekend,” she whispered. “But we didn’t talk about it until after Rusty was dead.”
“He was clever, sending it to George,” Hale said. “He knew I’d never pay him. He figured she’d just put up and shut up.”
“How nice,” George said bitterly. She unfolded her long legs and reached for the drinks tray. “Scotch, Peter?”
“Three fingers. What’d he have on you, Hale?”
“My career,” Hale said comfortably. “And the belief I’d do anything to hang on to it. His mistake, of course. My one rule in life is that I must be able to walk away from anything. I’ve kept my resignation in every drawer of every desk I’ve ever used. That’s the sort of freedom Rusty could never understand. The freedom from desire.” He strolled over to the leather sofa and stood staring down at the fire, his hands in his pockets. “I suppose you’d like to hear about it.”
“I’ve got no choice.” Peter took the Scotch from George’s hand. “If it has to do with the final days of Rusty’s life, I have to know.”
“It seems silly to go into stuff that happened ten years ago, and I suppose the details are irrelevant in the eyes of the law. But they make a more interesting story.” He accepted a glass of Scotch from his wife and placed his hand on her glossy cap of hair. The gesture moved Peter. Hale was such a private man. “George and I were married the summer before your father died.”
“I remember. You met at a Salomon party.”
“ME was a major client of the corporate finance department; Max came to a Salomon dinner and brought Georgiana. Julia was in Capri, I think.”
“Paris,” George corrected automatically. “For the collections.”
“Whatever. Max brought George. I fell in love with her then and there.”
“Hale,” George said softly.
“I talked to her a bit, but I’ve never been the most dynamic man at a party, and she was absolutely dazzling. Max Mason’s only daughter, twenty-seven years old and utterly unaware how beautiful she was. I was thirty-five and beginning to lose my hair, I had survived three lousy love affairs, I’d made money and I’d had success, but I was just another guy in a dark-blue summer suit and expensive handmade shoes. I hadn’t the slightest idea how I’d ever see her again.”
“Enter Rusty,” Peter said.
“The firm had essentially given Rusty his job three years before as a favor to Max.”
“I thought you’d brought him on.”
Hale shook his head. “Too junior, frankly. I didn’t become a director until a few years later. No, Rusty was a bond trader—just the sort of job a Mason would take. I only ran into him occasionally, in the elevator, that sort of thing. But I tried to strike up a friendship with him because of George. At first he ignored me completely.”
“Until I started working on him,” George broke in. “What Hale hasn’t told you is that I was utterly infatuated with him from day one, and kept pumping Rusty for information. He was so—urbane, so—sophisticated. He knew how to hold a conversation. I got Rusty to ask Hale for drinks a few times so I could see him, but he was so terribly shy. He would never ask me out.”
“Then one day, Rusty came by my desk and invited me to your home in Greenwich. It may have been his one disinterested act of our entire acquaintance.”
“And you came,” George said, her voice thrilling. “I thought then there might be hope.”
“That weekend was a glimpse of life as it could be,” Hale said. “In the midst of a wonderful family, their happiness, that beautiful home—”
“You poor ass,” Peter laughed.
George shot him a look of hurt and surprise.
“You’re right, of course,” Hale said. “But I didn’t find that out until later.”
“After you’d been married a year. When Rusty came and asked you
for your stock. Or rather, George’s.”
Hale looked down at the brandy and swirled it thoughtfully in his glass. “Oh no,” he said. “That was later. He offered me the money first—what I thought was his money. A loan to buy shares of a company called Ultracom. A company Rusty said was likely to be the target of a takeover. A sure thing. Make a profit and pay back the loan when you sell the shares, he said. What a crock.” He looked up at Peter, and his eyes were flat.
“You, too,” Peter said.
Hale nodded. “It seems you know what went wrong with the plan. The takeover company became the target and pulled out of its tender offer, and Ultracom’s value fell. We lost our loan instead of doubling our money. That’s when I found out the takeover company was ME. And that the raider was Mitch Hazlitt.”
“Rusty hadn’t told you?”
Hale shook his head. “He was still smart about some things. He knew I was shy of trading on his information in the first place—it’s always a stupid risk—but if I’d known where the information came from, I’d have gone to Max and told him Hazlitt was sniffing around the deal. I was older than Rusty, remember. I dealt in equity. I knew what a man like Hazlitt was capable of. But when it all came out, it was too late. I was in up to my neck. And I’d dragged Georgiana with me.”
“I only wish you had,” George said softly. “None of this might have happened.”
“You couldn’t have changed anything,” Hale said. Then he looked back at Peter. “When things went wrong, Rusty and I were in a hole. As you can imagine. First, there was the matter of the loan—it had to be repaid, and to Hazlitt, not Rusty; neither of us had the money. We’d already taken a loss in the stock we’d purchased with the loan. Then there was the broader consideration—Max. The fact that we’d traded on information leaked from ME. I spent a whole day out of work, walking the paths in Central Park, wrestling with the mess in my mind.”
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