“Why didn’t Dylan go with you?”
“My father took the answer to that question to his grave. I missed Dylan terribly. I didn’t miss anything else. Our house had been a cold place and my mother was a monster. It didn’t take me long to love the Jacksons and the life they structured around making me a happy little girl. Like I said, in this my father chose very well.”
“Maybe your father felt he could handle raising Dylan alone, but not you.” It was a wild guess for a question that would never be answered.
“That’s possible. Maybe he thought a lot of things. One day, probably after I’d asked about Dylan for the millionth time, my father said he’d been sick. A few days later, Dylan was ‘dead’. What possible purpose could inflicting that kind of grief on me serve?”
“I only talked to your father once, in the hospital. He was a pretty cold man. It’s possible he thought that telling you and your brother the other sibling was gone was his way of giving you both closure.” I laughed. “I’m not allowed to use that word around Dylan. It reminds him of his time with his shrinks.”
“I had my share of counseling, too. I didn’t mind it, though. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely heal, but the psychologists helped, they really did. My brother should be grateful. Some kids never get any help.”
“Your brother still has nightmares. He had one about you the other night.”
“I think nightmares are a permanent part of my landscape. Aunt Cindy—Mrs. Jackson—would hold me and wipe the sweat from my face. Sometimes I’d get up in the middle of the night and just barf for no reason.”
“Do you have anxiety attacks too?”
“Not as many as I used to.”
“Dylan says it does get better with time. I hope it will for you, too.”
“Tell me what my brother’s like.”
“Complicated. Intense. Funny. Charming. Intelligent. Athletic. Determined. Caring. Sometimes confused.”
“Did he ever have that growth spurt he was so looking forward to?”
I smiled at that question. “Did he ever. Your brother is over six foot three and drop dead gorgeous. He’s a masculine version of you. Women find him irresistible. And you both have the same killer eyes.”
“An unfortunate adjective,” Dawn said as her expression clouded. “Because when I look in the mirror . . .”
“I know, you see Francesca staring back at you. If your eyes weren’t so beautiful, I’d suggest you get colored contacts. Maybe after the two of you get back together, you can look in the mirror and see each other’s eyes instead of your mother’s.”
“You certainly paint my brother as an Eagle Scout.”
“I’m in love with Dylan, what do you expect?” Of course I left out a review of his awesome talents as a lover. Important though that was to me, I figured for a sibling it would be way too much to share.
She dropped me at the station and walked all the way to the platform with me.
“I hate to see you go. I want to hang on to this afternoon.”
“I have your number and I’ll call you soon, I promise. If you have to call me, don’t be offended if I pretend you’re a telemarketer. If Dylan’s by my side I can’t acknowledge you.”
“Okay. But call soon.”
“I will.”
Riding back on the Metro North I started to regret playing ‘Detective Waters’. Dawn had wanted to hop the train and come back with me to Manhattan. As happy as I was to find her and get to know her even a little bit, I was keenly aware that I had overstepped. Taking it on myself to pursue my ‘hunch’ was risky and now I would face the payoff.
Before I made any confessions, I was going to have to be patient. I really, really wished I could go to Dylan’s new lawyer and tell him what I knew.
I was wound as taut as Dylan’s brand new shiny watch when we met up for drinks that afternoon.
“Buy yourself a present?” I asked. He was sitting in one of the bar’s banquettes making exaggerated sweeps of his hair so I’d notice his wrist. I was glad there were few people in the bar at that early hour. “Stop that, I see it. You look like a fool.”
“Like it?”
“I guess if you’re into gold watches . . .” It was a bit gaudy for my taste, but I had to admit that on Dylan’s tanned wrist, it looked quite at home.
“Actually, I’ve never been a watch person. Cell phones are just fine for letting me know the time. I bought this on the advice of my lawyer.” He reached under the table and brought out a small box and handed it to me. “We can be a matched set.”
“Dylan, I really don’t need an expensive watch.”
“Consider it an investment in our future. Take a look at these.” He handed me an incredibly heavy envelope that contained gold coins in little plastic cases. “Twenty-five ounces of pure gold.”
“Why on earth are you buying this stuff? And do you really think it’s wise to flash this kind of money around?”
“I told you, Blake Harrington told me to try to max my father’s credit card out with what he called ‘hard assets’ like gold. And yes, right after I showed them to you I intended to put them in the hotel vault. Plenty of guests here have stowed a lot more than a measly fifty grand here.”
“Why does your lawyer want you to max out the card?”
“He’s got an idea that Spencer might not be telling me the whole truth. There are a couple of things in the will that don’t look right to him.”
That was very good news. It jived with what I had learned from Dawn. I had new hope that maybe this ridiculous separation between the two of them might soon be over. Maybe it could be resolved without my intervention at all.
“I guess that’s good news, right?” I asked. I hated having to appear naïve but I needed to know as much as I could about Dylan’s meeting with the lawyer.
“I think it’s excellent news. If Spencer’s trying to pull something, chances are the real will—if there is one—won’t have such a bizarre hitch to it.”
“What do you mean if there is one? You can’t possibly believe that a man of your father’s wealth would not have a will.”
“I suppose not. But remember, my father was a very strange man. I don’t put anything past him, including leaving his legacy in a state of chaos. I don’t think he held me or my sister in high regard.”
“True. He was a cold one.”
“I also have to brace myself for the possibility that the real will may cut me out of the inheritance completely. He could have left it all to Dawn.”
“But she’d share it with you!” As soon as I’d said it I had to qualify it. “I mean, don’t you think she would?”
“I don’t know. She’s had quite a few years to look for me if she wanted to connect with me.”
“What about you? You didn’t try to connect with her, did you?”
“I thought she was dead,” he said. Then a look of realization crossed his face. “I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this! Do you think it’s possible that she also thought I was dead?”
I was so glad that particular light got turned on. It would be a lot easier on Dylan if he knew at least part of the truth. Yes, his sister was alive and no, she hadn’t been deliberately hiding from him. “Yes, Dylan,” I answered with certainty. “I think it’s not only possible but likely that Dawn was lied to just like you were.”
Chapter 28—Dylan
“Slap me if you catch me being so stupid again. Of course that’s it. She thought I was dead. I thought she was dead.” It was obvious. My sister wouldn’t have looked for me if she thought I was long gone.
“You weren’t being stupid, Dylan. Sometimes the dust has to settle before a person can make sense out of a situation.”
“True. Just like the will. I was in shock and just swallowed Spencer’s act and his version of the will as the gospel.”
“Your lawyer really doubts him?”
“On his counsel, I called Spencer today from the office. I told him I needed money in order to get set up here
, clear my head and get ready to jump into Monarch fresh and energized. I told him I needed a vehicle, a place to live, yada, yada.” He took off his watch, fished around in the shopping bag he carried and put it back in its box. “I really don’t like this thing at all.”
I took mine off and handed it to him. “I don’t either. What about Spencer?”
“He’ll wire—and I quote him here—a few hundred thousand dollars—into my account tomorrow, first thing. Once that’s in place, Blake Harrington will move. He felt it was important for me to have a safety net in case things get ugly.”
“I like the way your lawyer thinks.”
“That’s why I bought the coins and watches. If it turns out that I get screwed, I’ll have something to fall back on.”
“Does Harrington think you could get screwed completely?”
“Are you worried that I might have to work for a living?” I asked.
“I hope no matter what happens you’ll work. I couldn’t stand it if you did nothing but spend money for the rest of our lives.”
I took her hand. “I like the sound of that, baby, ‘the rest of our lives’. Our life.”
“I didn’t mean to assume anything.” She drew her hand out of mine. “I just . . . well, never mind.”
“I will not never mind. And what makes you think I’d object if you made the assumption that we’d be together for ‘the rest of our lives’? I mean it. Have I given you reason to think I wouldn’t want a commitment to you?”
“No. No, you’ve given me no reason to think that.” Rene wouldn’t meet my eyes and it bothered me. A lot.
“So, it has to be coming from your end, this hesitation,” I said angrily.
“Dylan, we’ve been all over this. I’m not hesitating about anything. Every time you want me to tell you I’ll be with you forever, your life is in such flux that we can’t plan past the next twenty four hours. I love you. I love you completely. You are my only. Can’t that be enough for you?”
Of course she was right. I was pushing her and the timing was pretty awful. I might or might not have a fortune. The two options offered a slew of different possibilities. Any discussion of our future was kind of ridiculous under the circumstances. And, it was enough to know that she loved me completely and exclusively.
“It is enough,” I kissed her and immediately wanted more. “Loving me is enough. I’m grateful for every moment. What you say to shoving all this bling into the hotel safe and going shopping?”
“Again? How much shopping can a person do?”
“I’m just following my attorney’s wise counsel. He wants me to spend until I reach the limit.”
“You realize that as soon as you walked out of the store with that watch on the value plummeted? Jewelry is like a used car. I know. A couple of years ago I tried to pawn some diamond studs my parents gave me.”
“I pointed that out to Blake and his response was that at this point I wasn’t spending my money at all. If the worst happens I have all this shit to sell or enjoy. His second statement was that if the fortune does settle on me, it’s so vast that whatever I spend on the credit card won’t matter.”
“Strange but logical. Okay, where to?”
“Wherever your heart desires, my princess.”
Rene was thinking hard. “I’ve got a sneaky and possibly brilliant idea.”
“I love seeing that mischievous grin in your eye.” She looked beautifully wicked.
“Gift cards.” She announced smugly.
“You mean like a Bloomies gift certificate?”
“No, I mean like a gift card like you’d give to someone that’s like cash. We can use your credit card to buy gift cards until we can’t buy any more! Once the approval goes through and the card is in your hand, there’s no going back.”
“That is a very, very brilliant idea.”
We found a drugstore a few blocks from the hotel and bought every card they had loading them with the maximum of $500. 00. When they ran out of cards, we took our stash of eighty thousand, five hundred dollars back to the hotel and added it to the gold and watches in our safety deposit box. Then it was on to the next store and the next.
In less than an hour, we racked up $203,500 in cards and finally hit the wall.
“I’m sorry, sir, but your card has been declined,” the last wide-eyed clerk informed me and Rene and I burst into maniacal laughter.
“Oh no!” Rene cried in mock horror. “This is terrible. How dare they decline your card?”
I hung my head. “I’m so sorry darling. How embarrassing.” The clerk handed back my now useless credit card and around sixty thousand in gift cards.
Keeping a few cards in my wallet, I made the last deposit of the day into our now quarter of a million stash in St. Regis’ safe.
“I hope Spencer doesn’t get wind of my orgy of charges before he sends the money,” I told Rene as we lay on the bed. We were both staring up at the ceiling and feeling a little spent from all that spending.
“That has got to be one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever been part of,” she said with a giggle.
“It was an inspired idea, my love. Give yourself a pat on the back.” Rene sat up and did exactly that.
“Now, I’m starving. For you and for dinner. Which comes first?” She got up and began to casually strip her clothes off. I loved seeing her undress in front of me so comfortably. Naked had become natural and it suited me just fine.
“Dinner can wait. Your ripe body is the food I need right now.”
In my life I had known the great pleasure of many women’s bodies, but with Rene I knew communion. With this woman I finally learned the meaning of intimacy.
Chapter 29—Rene
Dylan had the power to remove me from myself. His lovemaking took me out of the preoccupation of my day and into a world where it was simply our two bodies wrapped up in becoming one. I was grateful for the miracle of discovery we shared.
We had a gluttonous dinner of small plates at a nearby bar whose interior was designed to resemble an underwater seascape. We happened upon the Shoreham by chance. We didn’t want to go too far, so we just walked a couple blocks and wandered into the first place that appealed to us. What the meal lacked in luxury and originality it made up for in sheer tastiness. I’ve always loved the Spanish tapas meals made of up small nibbles of many different things. Our meal was more or less an American version of that and it was a good choice.
Before we slept, we made the slow easy love of two people already satisfied but never quite sated.
Dylan’s body was a wonder to me. I lay on my side next to him and traced over his muscles with the tip of my finger exploring all the tight honed peaks and valleys of his chest, watching his nipples seize and my nail grazed their tips. Goosebumps broke out around the chocolate brown areolas and he shuddered a little.
“Sensitive?”
“What you do to me woman.”
“I like doing things to you.” I put my head on his chest and laid my palm flat against his belly. “I think your body is perfect. Did you know that? I never get tired of looking at you.”
“I feel perfect. It’s a big shiny present every time we make love.”
I slept in the shelter of the arms I loved, but it took me some time to get there. Once Dylan settled into a soundless slumber, my mind drifted back to the afternoon and Dawn. I was uncomfortable having a secret from Dylan. Well intentioned or not, it was a deception and it made me squirm. I knew I had to hold onto it a little longer, but I hoped it wouldn’t be too long.
When Dylan checked his bank account early in the morning, there was a pending wire transfer of three hundred thousand dollars.
“Wow. I honestly didn’t think Spencer would be able to pull that off,” he told me as he stared at his computer screen. “That is an impressive load of cash.”
“I’d be willing to bet my parents don’t have that much in their retirement account.”
“If all goes well, your parents won’t ever have to worry
about their retirement account again.”
It was a generous thing to say, but the assumption that Dylan would be taking care of me and my family felt a little presumptuous. All that money was going to take some getting used to. “When you say ‘pending’, what does that mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure. My experience with wire transfers is pretty limited. I’ve lived off that piece of my father’s plastic we had so much fun with yesterday.”
“So there’s still a chance that the transfer won’t go through.”
“I’m going to call my bank and see what I can do about getting the deposit cleared ASAP. I’m sure for that kind of money they’ll be willing to push it along. The fact that I maxed out a quarter of one of Daddy’s millions on that credit card could alert Spencer or worse. I’m hoping he’ll get that news after the fact.”
The bank assured him that ‘pending’ was just a formality and that the wired funds should be accessible for withdrawal by early afternoon. We went for a walk and had breakfast in a typical New York coffee shop. I was fascinated with the wide variety of people eating there. There were a couple of Hassidic Jews with corkscrew forelocks, dark hats and long coats just a table away from an Arab woman and her daughter in hijabs. These folks were mixed in with plenty of men and women in immaculately tailored business attire, a smattering of construction worker types and store clerks in matching branded knit shirts. New York really was a unique place.
We stopped by a newsstand and Dylan was disappointed they didn’t offer Marlin Magazine. “I miss the sea already. The magazine would give me a fix,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s a terribly popular publication in Manhattan,” I told him. “I haven’t seen one person in this city yet in a fishing shirt and a pair of flip-flops.”
We passed by an optical store and killed some time picking out sunglasses to replace the ones that we bought in the Azores. Even a little thing like that reminded me that life had changed, at least for me, in a big way. It ate up one of our $500 gift cards just for mine. His were a card and then some.
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