Miraculously.
She keeps her eyes closed, and images float into her mind. From a dream she had on her wedding night in Los Angeles.
Nick, loving her.
She thinks she knew, even then, that it was too vivid, too real, to have been a dream – that Nick was actually with her. She doesn’t understand how, but maybe in life there are some things it’s better not to understand or rationalize. All she’s certain of is that now, at this very minute, she knows for sure. She knows.
She opens her eyes. Everything seems brighter. Clearer than before.
A baby.
Nick’s baby.
Holly smiles into the mirror.
JUNE
Chapter Fifteen
‘You’re seven months pregnant, Nina.’
‘I think I know that, Phoebe.’
‘You get backache, you’re tired, you pee all the time.’
‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘You won’t be able to sit still for hours on end, and you can’t go in and out of a courtroom because you have to keep on peeing.’
‘I suppose I can’t.’
‘The doc said you shouldn’t travel unless you really need to.’
‘Okay, Phoebe.’
‘And it isn’t as though I can’t do this without you.’
‘I said, okay, Phoebe. You can go without me. You should go without me. I’ll stay at home and keep house.’
‘You’ll stay in the office and keep Ford Realty running.’
‘Okay, Phoebe.’
‘And Nick can keep house.’
‘Don’t you just love new men?’
Ever since her sixth month, when she’d had an episode of light bleeding – which her obstetrician had reassured them had been minimal and of little concern – it had been an almost ceaseless battle for Nina to stop both Nick and Phoebe from over-cossetting her. They didn’t seem to realize how great she felt, how unimaginably wonderful. Some of that well-being, she accepted, was due to hormonal changes, but she knew, too, that it was far more significant than chemistry. This new life growing inside her, this constant companion, was bringing her a tranquillity she had never known before. Not even Nick, who had given her so much joy and confidence and ease, had brought her such extraordinary peace as this unborn child of theirs.
‘I can understand Nick fussing.’ Nina had said to her sister more than once, ‘but you’re usually so sensible.’
‘Since when?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Since always.’
‘I’ve never been an expectant aunt before.’
‘Well, all I can say is thank God Dad’s in Arizona,’ Nina said. ‘If he were here too, driving me crazy, I don’t know what I’d do.’
‘You should make the most of it,’ Phoebe told her. ‘Once the baby’s born, we’ll all ignore you.’
‘I look forward to it,’ Nina said.
The trip to Los Angeles was necessary because Ford Realty was having to sue Bradley, Pearce, Dutton, an LA-based corporation, for reneging on a property deal. It was not either of the Ford sisters’ idea of fun; they both tried to avoid legal tussles whenever possible, but there was just no avoiding this one because there was simply too much money at stake. BPD had, initially, been Nina’s client, but since she and Phoebe pooled information at the close of almost every business day, it was perfectly feasible for Nina to give a deposition to Michael Levine, their attorney, and for Phoebe to make the journey from San Francisco without her.
‘You know I don’t really like LA,’ Phoebe reminded Nina.
‘I know you don’t.’ Nina’s sympathy was ironic.
‘I suppose I’ll just have to make the most of things.’
‘I suppose you will.’
‘Think I should stay at the Beverly Hills?’
‘Oh, definitely. Where else could you stay?’
‘And I suppose I should drag myself out to Rodeo Drive at least once.’ Phoebe sighed. ‘Maybe look out for something gorgeous for you to wear in the last couple of months.’
‘Don’t waste money on me,’ Nina said. ‘I’ll be skinny again soon enough.’
‘Maybe I’ll just pick up something wacky for the baby.’
‘You’re going to be in court, remember?’
‘Not all the time,’ Phoebe said. ‘They always have a million adjournments – think of the OJ trial.’
‘This is not murder, Phoebe.’
Phoebe sighed again. ‘I know.’
Chapter Sixteen
The other side has won, but neither Holly nor Stanley Pearce, her client, was expecting any other outcome, and Holly knows that she has at least succeeded in keeping BPD’s financial pain well below the threshold they can afford.
‘Pearce may give you a rough ride after the verdict,’ Alan Zadok warned her a week ago, ‘but that’s only because you’re new.’
‘And I’m not a partner,’ Holly said then.
Zadok shook his balding head. ‘Pearce knows this is small potatoes. And I’ve told him you’ll do a fine job.’
‘Not a bad result, Ms Taylor,’ Stanley Pearce concedes now, shaking her hand. ‘I’d have preferred an outright win, of course.’
‘As would I, Mr Pearce,’ Holly agrees.
She doesn’t apologize for losing; she knows she has nothing to apologize for. Holly hates losing at anything, but this case was cut and dried long before the file was dumped on her. Besides, she has other, more important things on her mind.
She looks across the courtroom at her opponents. She’s been wondering ever since being assigned the case which of the partners would show.
Stanley Pearce takes his leave. Holly spends a minute or two assembling her papers and files, keeping one eye on Michael Levine and his client.
She waits for the right moment. And then she stands and walks across the room.
‘Ms Ford?’
The redhead looks up. ‘Yes?’
‘Charlotte Taylor.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Congratulations,’ Holly says. She nods at Levine. ‘To you both.’
‘You, too,’ Levine says. ‘Good job.’
‘You won.’
‘Sure did.’ Levine grins.
‘Shall we?’ Phoebe Ford rises from her chair, ready to leave.
‘Ms Ford,’ Holly says, ‘do you have a moment?’
‘Of course.’ Phoebe looks a little puzzled.
‘It’s a personal matter,’ Holly assures Michael Levine.
‘Fine with me.’ Levine checks with his client. ‘See you outside?’
‘Sure,’ Phoebe says.
Holly waits for the other lawyer to go. She wonders if Phoebe’s going to remember her face. She makes a mental wager that even if she does, the other woman won’t make the connection to the New York signing.
‘I’m sorry to hold you up, Ms Ford.’
‘Not at all.’
‘I just wanted to tell you how much I loved Firefly.’
Holly watches the other woman’s pale face light up with genuine pleasure. It’s so easy to make people feel good.
She goes swiftly on. ‘I’m expecting a baby and I’m really looking forward to the day when I’ll be able to introduce my own child to the book.’ She pauses. ‘I just wanted to let you know that. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Hardly,’ Phoebe says. ‘It’s a wonderful thing to hear.’
‘Firefly’s a wonderful creation,’ Holly tells her.
‘Only partly mine,’ the other woman points out.
‘I know.’ Holly pauses. ‘It must have been a happy collaboration for you and your family.’
‘It was,’ Phoebe confirms.
‘Not every woman gets along so well with her brother-in-law.’
Phoebe smiles. ‘Nick Miller’s very special.’
‘He must be,’ Holly says.
She can see Phoebe looking at her with a touch of renewed curiosity, and knows that her memory has been jogged.
‘Is something wrong?’ Holly asks.
Phoebe shakes her head. ‘For a moment I had a feeling we’d met before.’
They say their farewells and begin to walk out of the courtroom.
Another wager won, Holly thinks.
Near the door, Phoebe stops.
‘The Wordsworth quote,’ she says, softly. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
Holly smiles. ‘Yes, it was.’ She wonders if the blonde would have been as sharp.
‘When’s your baby due?’ Phoebe asks her.
‘Not for a long time yet,’ Holly answers.
‘I’m happy for you, Ms Taylor,’ Phoebe says.
Holly’s pleased with the way things have gone. It doesn’t bother her at all that Phoebe Ford remembered her. Moments like that only serve to sharpen the game. Holly loves games.
She started devising this one soon after she realized that she was pregnant during her visit home to Bethesda. Though, of course, it all really began about eight months before that when she met Jack – her perfect excuse to move West. There are many more games to come. Games within battles within her own special war. Holly especially likes games with risks attached to them. They are, after all, what have always made her function best, even as a child; the risk-taking, the gambles against the odds.
If only Nick hadn’t betrayed her, it would all be so much simpler, so much more straightforward. Holly would not have been forced to marry Jack, would not have felt compelled to make love to another man. But Nick has taken this other woman, this wife, and though Holly knows, without question, that, ultimately, she will forgive him, there are punishments to mete out first.
The eventual outcome, of course, is not in doubt.
Nick will come back to her.
Her prize.
This is not Ford Realty against BPD.
This is the real thing.
Chapter Seventeen
‘The strangest coincidence,’ Phoebe told Nina later on the phone.
It was early evening in her room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The ‘pink palace’, as it was fondly known, had been renovated from top to toe since Phoebe had last found reason to stay there, and what had been exquisite before was even more so now. Outside, the evening air was soft and fragrant with bougainvillaea, oleander and jasmine. Somewhere, not too far away, someone was partying. Phoebe could hear a piano and laughter, and gossip and the chinking of glasses, none of it intrusive, simply adding more delicate layers to the whole.
‘Remember the woman at one of the book signings in New York in April?’
‘I remember a lot of women,’ Nina said.
‘The one who dictated the quotation you thought was bizarre.’
‘The Wordsworth?’ Nina did remember.
‘She was the attorney for the other side.’
‘For BPD?’ Nina was surprised. ‘She’s a lawyer in LA?’
‘And a good one,’ Phoebe said.
‘Did you speak to her?’
‘She came over after the hearing and told me she was pregnant, and that she was looking forward to introducing her child to Firefly. Wasn’t that nice of her?’
‘Very nice,’ Nina agreed. Her hands moved automatically to her own belly.
‘How’re you feeling?’ Phoebe asked.
‘Wonderful.’
‘She-he kicking much?’ Phoebe refused to call the baby ‘it’.
‘Not too much. More when you’re around.’
‘Eager to see Aunt Phoebe. Wise she-he.’
‘What are you doing tonight, Aunt Phoebe?’
‘Room service. I’ve ordered just about everything there is. I’m starving.’
‘Enjoy it,’ Nina said.
In the background, Phoebe heard Nick’s voice.
‘What’s Nick saying?’
‘He says well done, and he sends his love,’ Nina transmitted.
‘Give him a hug from me,’ Phoebe said.
‘See you tomorrow, darling,’ Nina said.
‘Don’t forget to tell Nick about Wordsworth.’
Chapter Eighteen
Holly and Jack are in the tub in the master bathroom of Jack’s house, a few blocks from Brentwood Country Club on San Vicente Boulevard.
About five hours have passed since the resolution of Ford Realty v Bradley, Pearce, Dutton. The Taylors have eaten dinner, and now they are reading briefs in the tub. They both love their bath. It’s large, round, gleaming black and doubles as a jacuzzi, and since Holly installed a splash-proof reading stand on a gilt arm which swivels to any chosen position to suit the bather, Jack has decided that it’s the closest place to heaven.
Holly stops reading.
‘I’m going to go into private practice,’ she says, as calmly as if announcing a shopping trip to Rodeo Drive.
‘What?’ Jack is startled.
‘You heard me.’
‘What are you talking about? You’ve only just joined Zadok, Giulini.’ Most people skip the ‘O’Connell’ when they talk about the firm. ‘I thought you were happy there.’
‘Not really,’ Holly says. ‘You know I’ve always wanted my own criminal law practice.’
‘It’s news to me, honey.’
‘I told you when we first met,’ Holly says, though she knows she told him nothing of the kind. She could not have done because she only decided it herself at six o’clock this very evening.
Jack reaches out to switch off the air jets. He’s frowning, he looks concerned. ‘Honey, I remember I asked you if you’d considered joining the DA’s office, and you made a point of telling me then that you wanted to stay in corporate law.’
‘I didn’t say that exactly,’ Holly says and switches the jets back on.
‘Yes, you did.’ Jack smiles at her, his indulgent smile. ‘Don’t you remember? You told me you graduated third in your class and made Law Review and passed the bar exam first try, and I told you you were probably the stuff to go to the top as a prosecutor if you had a mind to, and you told me you preferred the cooler cut and thrust and impersonality of corporate law. Too much humanity in crime, you said.’ He nods, pleased. He takes pride in the agile, retentive memory that has served him so well as an attorney. ‘Those were your exact words, Charlotte, honey.’
Holly leans back, reaches for her Chanel soap and begins washing her left leg, starting at the foot. ‘Well, if they were,’ she says, steadily, ‘maybe I wasn’t quite ready back then to share my inner ambitions with you.’
Jack watches her for a moment, the arched foot with its painted toenails, the strong, slender calf and thigh. His wife has the capacity to turn him on with the slightest effort. It appears now that she also has the capacity to take him completely by surprise.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So what’s your plan?’
Holly smiles. ‘Look for suitable premises, commission my sign—’
‘Charlotte Taylor. Attorney at law. Just like that.’
‘Just like that.’ Holly begins soaping the inside of her left thigh, then stops and hands the bar of Chanel to Jack. ‘Feel like helping me?’
‘Always,’ he says softly, taking the soap.
‘Look for clients,’ Holly goes on.
‘Want my help with that?’
‘I don’t know. I’d rather go it alone, if I can.’
Jack nods and leans forward, reaching between his wife’s legs. ‘What about your father? He’ll want to support you too.’
‘I expect he will.’ Holly shuts her eyes as Jack rubs the soap over her clitoris, imagining, as she almost always does, that his hands are Nick’s. ‘I hope I won’t need him.’
Jack stares at her, half perplexed, half admiring. This is a wild, and probably unwise, idea of hers, but then, of course, potentially brilliant as Charlotte is, she does seem to have a track record of making spur-of-the-moment decisions. And since one of those was to abandon a perfectly healthy career in Manhattan to come West with him – and since he makes more than enough money for both of them – he decides he isn’t about to rock their marital boat by arguing about this new scheme.
Especially not when he’s as iron-hard as he is right now.
Chapter Nineteen
It comes back to me sometimes in fragments: bright, painful flashes of feeling. But the memories themselves, alas, are all too whole. I wish they were not.
When Holly, the teenager, first realized that I was surviving too well without her, she decided to take her revenge by spreading a rumour around our high school that I had sexually assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl. Being mercifully unsubstantiated by real accusation, the rumour died a natural death, but it was a frightening and ugly time for me. My parents backed me up, knew it was all lies, yet they still blamed me indirectly. I had, after all, been guilty of the crime the Bournes had accused me of, and I had hurt Holly badly – and I was damned lucky she hadn’t gotten pregnant – so I had no choice, Ethan and Kate both said, but to put up and shut up.
At least one thing was clear, I figured: Holly’s love had turned to hate. It wasn’t right for me to hate her back, I realized, since she’d only been lashing out with lies because of her own wounds. But Holly hated me now, for sure. And yet the next time I had anything resembling a conversation with her – about eighteen months after the summerhouse disaster – and told her that I would be leaving Bethesda soon to study fine art and film art at NYU, you might have thought, from the shock on her face, that I’d told her I had two months to live.
I had been in New York for a little over a year when, in the fall of 1986, Holly showed up one Sunday morning at my apartment on Christopher Street in the Village. She had changed a lot. The nymphet was gone, and in her place was a composed young adult law student. She was only there, she told me, to say hi, because we were both at NYU now and it seemed foolish to pretend we weren’t. She was living in a dormitory and content. She liked the way I looked, liked my hair long and tied back in a ponytail, liked my new beard. She said I looked like a pirate. She also said that she couldn’t stay long because she was meeting friends, but that it felt good to know she had a big-brother-type to turn to if she ever needed help. If I didn’t object.
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