Olivia’s mother had had a fling with William. She’d been his flavor of the month twenty-nine years ago, and when Candace Hearn told him she was pregnant with his child, he ended the relationship. She won her settlement and had tried to foist Olivia on her father since the day she was born. William had never been interested. Fatherhood wasn’t among his interests or priorities.
Except for the summer she turned sixteen. A summer she never allowed herself to think about.
“Those staffers on the associate level would do well to emulate Olivia Sedgwick’s style,” Desdemona said, smiling at Olivia.
Olivia felt her cheeks burn. She also felt the eyes of her coworkers and her immediate supervisor, Vivian, narrow on her. Thanks to being Desdemona’s pet, most of Olivia’s coworkers hated her. Those who took the time to get to know her, like Camilla had, realized that Olivia wasn’t the affected snob they thought she was.
“I can handle the Nicole Kidman interview,” Vivian said to Desdemona. “It’s the cover story, so—”
Desdemona held up a hand. “So Olivia will handle it for you. Do you really think you can represent Glitz magazine with leaky tits and baby spit-up on your blouse?”
Vivian burst into tears. Hormonal, I-can’t-take-another-minute-of-you tears.
Olivia closed her eyes and shook her head. This was so unfair. Desdemona was so unfair. But instead of threatening the editor in chief with a discrimination suit, Vivian simply sobbed, then ran out of the room. No one would ever back her up anyway. Desdemona was too powerful.
“Waddling doesn’t become anyone,” Desdemona said under her breath with a tsk-tsk tone, then returned her attention to the meeting minutes.
And Olivia thought Desdemona couldn’t possibly get any more vicious.
“Do yourself a very big favor,” Camilla whispered to Olivia. “Never get pregnant.”
Too late, Olivia thought. Not that she was pregnant right now. But she had been once. A long time ago.
As Olivia settled herself in bed with an article to edit (how many pieces on Botox was Glitz going to run?), a boy’s face flitted into her mind, a good-looking face with intelligent, kind hazel eyes. This was not the dream boy, though once upon a time, he had been Olivia’s dream man. Not that Zachary Archer at sixteen had been a man, of course.
Olivia could still see the way Zach’s sandy brown hair fell over his forehead. She could still see him so clearly.
It had been so long since that summer—since that lonely fall and winter and heartbreaking spring—that thinking of Zach and what she’d gone through had lost its power to send her to her knees. She had no idea how she’d managed to get through that time and then immediately afterward, college, as though she’d graduated from a regular high school like every other incoming freshman. Her mother had used the Sedgwick name and legacy to get her into her father’s alma mater. Olivia would be walking across campus, forcing herself not to think of Zach, but his face would appear before her mind’s eye and the pain would whoosh the air from her lungs.
She’d spent her college years either studying or crying, which didn’t allow for friends. And then after college she’d come home to New York City, where she’d grown up just off Park Avenue in a small apartment her mother had managed to buy with her settlement from William. Her mother had a contact at Glitz, and Olivia, still numb, had come back to life just a little. Working for a fashion magazine like Vogue or Glitz had always been her dream. Olivia’s relationship with her mother had improved in those early months, when Olivia had had something else to think about other than Zach.
Other than the pregnancy. The birth. The news that had come so cruelly.
“Why isn’t it crying?” sixteen-year-old Olivia had asked the nurse, still unsure whether she’d had a boy or a girl.
“Because it’s dead,” the nurse had said flatly. “Stillborn.”
She’d fainted then and had woken up alone in a small, airless room. When the nurse’s words had come back to her, she’d gasped and dropped to her knees and then screamed. The same nurse had come rushing in and told her to “stop making such a racket,” that it was the middle of the night.
Her mother was all she’d had after that. Her father couldn’t stand the sight of her after that summer. Her sisters had no idea that Olivia had been pregnant and shipped off to a home for unwed mothers hours up the Maine coast. They had no idea that she’d been forced to put the baby up for adoption. Or that the baby hadn’t taken a single breath. And so Olivia had distanced herself from her sisters even more. Her mother had been an only child, so there were no aunts, no cousins to turn to. Just Olivia and her memories.
Her father’s name had gotten Olivia the job at Glitz, and she’d been there ever since. Five years. She’d started as an editorial assistant to Vivian and had been promoted twice. Desdemona had often hinted that Olivia could count on having Vivian’s job, too.
Tears burning her eyes, Olivia set the article aside and glanced out the window of her skyscraper apartment building; flurries blew around in the January wind. Despite the warmth of her apartment and her cozy down comforter, she shivered. The idea of stealing her boss’s job while Vivian was on maternity leave—a weeklong maternity leave—made her sick to her stomach. Sometimes Olivia thought about leaving Glitz, but crazy as it sounded, she liked her job very much; she was suited to it, and she adored Camilla. Despite the bitching and backstabbing, Glitz had provided Olivia with work she loved, structure, a life. And with a mother like Candace Hearn, Olivia had learned to tune out bitching. Backstabbing was another story. Her mother might have had a shrill shell, but inside she was something of a marshmallow. Desdemona Fine, on the other hand, was a shrill shell inside and out.
Out of the corner of her eye, Olivia noticed the red light blinking on her answering machine. She’d been so wrapped up in memories and work when she arrived home that she hadn’t even thought to check her messages.
She padded out of bed and pressed Play.
“Livvy, dear, it’s Mother. I ran into Buffy Carmichael. You remember Buffy, darling. She chairs so many charity events. Anyway, Buffy mentioned that her son, Walter, is recently separated, and of course I gave Buffy your number, so expect a call, dear. He’s very wealthy. She showed me a photo and he’s no Orlando Bloom, but at your age you can’t afford to be picky about looks—only about income. Bye, dear. Oh—I’d really like you to consider changing your mind about tomorrow. I’d really like to be there when you find out what your father left you in his will. Ta-ta!”
Olivia rolled her eyes at the phone. She’d gotten out of bed for that? And why couldn’t her mother talk like a normal person?
At your age ... Please. Olivia was twenty-nine! Young. And she couldn’t care less about a man’s looks or income. Once she’d moved back to New York and started working at Glitz, Olivia had numbly dated many different men—grad students, CEOs, a plumber (whose pants did not hang down), a chef, a mechanic, a shrink. The list went on and on. She dated. She had sex. And that was about it. She tried—really tried—to fall in love with several of the men she dated; she tried to develop real relationships with them, but a piece of her—the most important piece, the deepest piece—just didn’t come out of its hiding place. It had once. With Zach. Maybe you loved like that only once.
She hoped not. She’d last loved like that when she was sixteen. If that was her last hurrah—her only hurrah—she was in big trouble.
And no, Mommy Dearest, you can’t come with me tomorrow. Tomorrow, Friday, January thirtieth, was the day she was to receive her father’s letter from his lawyer. An envelope with her name on it. To Be Opened No Sooner or Later Than January 30.
Olivia had no idea what the date could possibly mean. Why January 30? It was just an arbitrary day, but perhaps it meant something to her father.
Her sister Amanda had already received her inheritance letter a month ago (also on a specific day); it had stated that Amanda would inherit their father’s million-dollar brownstone on the Upper West Side—if she followe
d a bunch of ridiculous and arbitrary rules for a month, such as not looking out of certain windows or going in certain rooms. Her father had even arranged for a watchdog to ensure that Amanda followed his rules to the letter—literally. That watchdog ended up becoming Amanda’s husband. The happy couple—who donated the brownstone to a children’s charity—was now on an extended honeymoon.
Olivia was so happy for Amanda. She was still getting to know Amanda and Ivy, her other sister, who was engaged. Both my sisters are getting on with their love lives, and I’m stuck getting fixed up by my mother.
She had no idea what her father had in store for her—or if she’d bother jumping through his hoops. He owned only two other properties: a cottage in Maine and an old inn in New Jersey. He wouldn’t leave her the Maine house. Not after what happened there.
The summer she had turned seventeen, Olivia had gone back to her father’s cottage for her annual summer vacation with him and her sisters. It had taken so much out of her to agree to the trip. But Zachary hadn’t been in town. His family had moved away, she’d heard. No one knew where. She kept hoping she might hear something of what became of him, but no one knew. And no one really cared. Zach Archer, whose father was famous for falling down drunk in the middle of the street during the day, and whose mother was famous for sleeping with other women’s husbands for small favors, didn’t have much of a chance in Blueberry, Maine, a coastal town of wealthy year-rounders and summer tourists. When Olivia had known him, people liked to shake their heads and say, “That poor kid.” Zach had hated that.
Perhaps William left me the New Jersey house, Olivia thought, heading into the bathroom. She’d never thought of her father as “Dad”; she’d always referred to him as her father, or William. She had called him Dad just once, thinking it might soften him, make him see inside her, listen to her, but it hadn’t.
Anyway, she was sure the bequest would come with some silly rules about doors to open and windows not to raise. Maybe she’d accept the terms of the will and donate the house to a charity close to her heart, as Amanda had done with her inheritance. Olivia would probably have to spend a month at the house—and the idea of spending a month in her father’s world made her faintly sick—but she could always commute to Manhattan from New Jersey. She’d need more time to handle all her boss’s work while she was on maternity leave anyway.
Olivia headed into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and took out the jar of $100-an-ounce cucumber nighttime moisturizer that Camilla had swiped for her from the beauty department’s goodie bags (the magazine got so many expensive freebies). She breathed in the fresh scent and looked at herself in the mirror. At times like this, when her face was fresh scrubbed and her hair was down (she liked wearing chignons at work) and her elegant outfits were replaced by an old Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt and her comfiest yoga pants, she could still see the sixteen-year-old girl she was before her life changed forever. Before she began spending a part of every day in a playground—sometimes just a few minutes, sometimes hours—just to imagine what her baby might have grown up to be like at every stage, every age.
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Copyright © 2007 by Janelle Taylor
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2759-1
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