Trust Fund Babies

by Jean Stone

  He tented his fingers in his thoughtful manner. He let her continue.

  “We’re already more than the camp, you know. We’ve been providing a few hundred kids with costly medication. I pumped my money into it because I thought the lives of a few kids were more important than my own financial gain.”

  He held up his hands. “Stop.” He smiled. “You don’t have to convince me of your good deeds. I’m not the enemy.”

  She laughed and rolled her eyes. “My mother’s presence lingers in the air, God rest her odd, pathetic soul.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “How much do you need?”

  How much do you need. Would it really be that simple?

  “Twenty million to start.” The figure Gabrielle had offered seemed a good place to begin.

  He could have whistled or coughed or choked for that matter, but Connor was Connor so he did no such thing. Instead he said, “How about if we start with ten? Then you can let me know how you’re doing raising other funds, and we can discuss more at that time.”

  It was all so matter-of-fact, as if he’d anticipated this moment and thought out his response. How about if we start with ten? Did that mean he did not expect her to share his bed as well?

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She studied his still-good-looking face and wished she’d been a different kind of woman who’d not felt the need to divorce him. She wished she could have loved him with the ease with which she loved Mack. Life would have been much less complicated. “You’re the greatest,” she said, and meant it.

  With a quick smile, Connor stood up. “And as much as I would like to spend all evening here, I’m afraid I have other promises to keep.” He looked over her shoulder and broke into a smile. “Good evening,” he said, but not to her.

  Nikki turned around and saw a lovely woman walk toward them in a long white dress, a pale yellow sweater tied around her shoulders. She had short-cropped pale yellow hair and a wide smile for Connor. Her lips were painted in soft, subtle coral and her teeth were straight and perfectly capped.

  He walked over to the woman and kissed her on the cheek. “Nicole,” he said, turning back to Nikki, who sat in deadened silence. “I’d like you to meet Louise Garth. Louise, Nikki Atkinson, my former wife.”

  So Connor had not come early and had not come out to Aquinnah for peace and quiet or to make guru business deals.

  Nikki stood up and shook Louise Garth’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she said, then smiled at Connor. “Dee didn’t tell me you’d brought a guest.”

  He laughed. “Our daughter does her best to keep us both off guard.”

  Nikki laughed in return, a combination of consternation and relief. She did not have to go back to Connor; she could have her money and he could have his lust elsewhere. Perhaps he had, at last, found patience for a relationship and love.

  She hoped her laugh had not lasted too long. She cleared her throat. “So I’ll see you both at the wedding?”

  Connor smiled and slipped his arm around Louise Garth’s waist. “I’m looking forward to it,” Louise said with what seemed genuine sincerity. “I understand it’s going to be quite a gala.”

  Nikki smiled again. “Oh, yes, I’m sure it will be that.” But as she said good-bye and walked away, a small, surprising hole of loss began to form somewhere inside her, and she wondered why life always had to change and if she, indeed, was finally ready for it.

  Her best friend had her husband, now she wanted her goddamn apartment, too.

  That night, Mary Beth went home. The crisis had passed for Molly; she would stay in the hospital a few more days: Sam did not yet know when, or if, she could go back to camp. They agreed to stay in touch, though Mary Beth did not know why.

  When she got home she did not check the many messages that flashed wildly on her machine; she wanted only sleep: Maybe tomorrow she’d know what to do. Alone in her king-size bed, however, she tossed and turned for hours, longing for the big, comfortable hospital chair and Sam and Molly and the small room so filled with love, longing to quell the loneliness of no one near.

  It made her think of Gabrielle, abandoned as a child, alone across the ocean, with no one there who loved her, with no one there she loved to hold her hand or tell her she was pretty or to giggle with in the darkness the way she and Nikki often had, no one to share the painful things, like death and abortion and having to live up to the great name Atkinson every time you breathed.

  Under her satin sheets, Mary Beth moved her hand to her flat stomach, remembering that Vineyard summer as if it were last week, knowing that if she ever contracted Alzheimer’s like her mother, the abortion would be one thing that would never leave her mind.

  Get it over with, Aunt Margaret had said, and so she had.

  Dorothy, of course, had agreed, because she always deferred to Margaret, the stronger, wiser sister.

  No one had ever asked if Mary Beth had cared.

  No one except Nikki, who had been upset about it, more, perhaps, than Mary Beth, for Mary Beth was in denial, the place she’d spent her whole damn life because it had been easier than admitting that her father was a drunk and her mother was a weakling.

  Poor Dorothy. Dot. The smiling woman who had never had a clue that life was more than debutantes and parties and white gloves and matching bags and shoes. The smiling woman who was better off with Alzheimer’s than knowing that the money was all gone.

  Get it over with, Aunt Margaret said, because a girl who had a baby out of wedlock was not welcome in society, and that would not be appropriate for an Atkinson, the same family who thought nothing of sending a seven-year-old girl off on her own and pretending it was for the good of everyone concerned.

  She closed her eyes and realized how thin her life had been, hanging on to the veneer of the family name.

  And that was when Mary Beth decided she would accept the offer on the apartment; she would sell it to Roxanne.

  She would sell it and she would divorce Eric, the father of the one child she had been allowed to keep because Shauna had been “legitimate” according to the rules.

  And when Mary Beth had divorced him, she would work toward helping others, because it was the only thing that made sense in this greedy, screwed-up world. Maybe she’d even help Nikki: Wouldn’t that be a twist?

  But first, Mary Beth would have one last, sweet revenge.

  It did not matter if it was the twenty-first century and the dictates were “different.”

  Sliding out of bed, she painstakingly dressed in her favorite Michael Kors outrageous miniskirt and transparent shirt and Ralph Lauren stiletto boots that made her feel ten feet tall. It did not matter whether the dictates were different or that it was three o’clock in the morning. She needed to look her finest: Old Mary Beth needed to let them know she was not going to make this easy. She could always burn the outfit later; in fact, she was certain she would.

  Moving like a thief through her own house, she then called a cab to the back entrance so she would not see Jonathan the doorman. She knew Roxanne’s address by heart, not because she went there often, but because a penthouse in Trump Tower was a hard address to forget.

  “Well, well,” Mary Beth said when Eric, her husband, opened the door. “Fancy meeting you here.” She pushed past him and went into the foyer, the huge, white marble foyer that must be even bigger than the room where Ms. Post had stashed her gloves.

  “Mary Beth,” he said, which was nice, because that was her name.

  “How long, Eric? How long have you been screwing my best friend?”

  Just then the best friend walked in from the hall, carrying her spoiled dog, stroking its fur as if it were a penis, Eric’s penis, Mary Beth supposed. She wore a floor-length silk robe: Mary Beth had been with her when she’d bought it. “About nine years,” she answered.

  Mary Beth nodded. She supposed if she calculated backwards she’d discover that was about the time their sex life had dwindled and she’
d started seeing other men. She also supposed she could have asked when they saw each other, but she knew there would have been plenty of times—when Mary Beth was doing Mary Beth things, when she and Roxanne couldn’t synchronize their schedules, when Eric made his supposed trips for his damn coin collecting, which could have been bogus for all she knew.

  She felt a touch of satisfaction that she’d disallowed the last trip to Brazil.

  “Why do you want my house?” she asked Roxanne, but it was Eric who answered now.

  “I’ve always liked the place,” he said. “It’s home. And, God, Mary Beth, you need the money. Roxanne and I decided we’d be doing you a favor.”

  A favor?

  Roxanne set down the spoiled dog and lit a cigarette. Then, suddenly, Mary Beth did not care about the rest. She no longer wanted cigarettes, she no longer wanted nasty habits. No more cigarettes, no more Hanks under the bed. Just Mary Beth, in person; plain, new Mary Beth.

  “By the way, Eric,” she said, turning back toward the door, “I cannot keep you from your daughter’s wedding, but if you bring your tart, I shall serve your balls for dinner. And if you think you’ll get one cent from me in the divorce, I shall sue the asses off both of you.”

  As she strutted through the doorway, she noticed four Elsa Peretti candlesticks standing on the marble table. She wondered if they were Shauna’s wedding gift, then decided that no longer mattered, either.

  27

  Carla promised Gabrielle she would call the gendarmes or the Polizei, or whatever the police called themselves in Switzerland, as soon as Gabrielle left for Italy. They could not, however, get Gabrielle on a flight until Tuesday. Exhausted and bleary-eyed, they found a small hotel and slept until morning, until it was time for Gabrielle’s journey to Florence, then Siena and back to Stefano.

  Alone at last, Carla formulated a plan. However, it did not, no way, include the gendarmes, because she needed to see Lester face-to-face, one-on-one. She needed to tell him how many people he had hurt.

  She tried to call Sam for advice. Alice told her about Molly’s seizure, and said that she was recuperating fine, but they were in New York, and what in God’s name was she doing in Zurich?

  Carla hung up the phone and knew she was on her own, sink or swim, to find the murdering bastard on whom she had wasted her life.

  * * *

  He was standing on the hillside with his back to her, tanned and lean and muscled from his work. He did not look as he had when first they’d met in Paris: He was polished then, dressed for the consorzio, Count Bonelli, not the laborer Stefano.

  And yet he had the same effect now as he’d had on her then. Tiny knots formed inside Gabrielle’s stomach and an ache swelled in her throat, and Gabrielle thought she’d never seen a better-looking man in all the world. The afternoon sun was behind him, splaying a glow of amber around him, a halo that outlined his body against the plump, purple grapes.

  The grapes, Gabrielle suddenly realized. They were getting plump and they were turning deep purple. She stooped to the small row of vines beside her and touched the fruit. It had been warmed by the sun; it glistened with the mist gently sprayed upon it. She plucked a grape and popped it in her mouth. Juicy. Sweet. Dense.

  Oh, God! She nearly cried out loud. It would be a banner year. The crops were healthy at long, long last, the vintage would be prime.

  The curse upon Stefano had apparently been lifted.

  “This may be the year for the consorzio.”

  She stood up and turned from the sound of his voice. “That’s good, Stefano. You deserve the best.”

  They stood in the sun, husband and wife, two lovers who knew well each other’s curves and caresses, each other’s pleasures and pains. Two lovers now unsure which way to look or how to stand or whether to touch.

  He knew your secret and he didn’t tell you. The words rang through her head followed by one word of caution: Angelina.

  She forced herself to summon the anger over each loss and every betrayal. Her mother. Her father. Hateful Aunt Margaret.

  Lester Markham.

  And Stefano.

  One at a time she pulled up the anger. And when she felt strong enough, she dared to look at her husband and say, “We need to decide if I shall go or stay. But first, I must see Rosa.”

  He did not say a word about the money or that she had come back without warning. Stefano had merely asked Enzio to call his sister and have her pack Rosa’s things.

  “I did not want Angelina to stay here,” he told Gabrielle as Gabrielle surveyed the cupboards deciding what to cook for supper, to help Rosa believe this was an ordinary day, a happy homecoming, perhaps, not the ruse that it was. “I did not want gossip in the village that Angelina and I might be lovers, because we are not. I sent Rosa to her house so Angelina could baby-sit.”

  Gabrielle did not admit her doubts. She felt relieved, but wished, in part, that she was not. Her mission would have been easier if he had someone else.

  But for now, Rosa was coming and Gabrielle was home. She would make a big frittata with Swiss chard and prosciutto and freshly grated Parmesan. It was one of Rosa’s favorites. Taking the iron skillet from the peg on the wall, she wished that Stefano would remove his presence from the air around her.

  Instead, he sat down at the butcher block. “Gabriella,” he said, “I never wanted your money. I married you because I loved you.”

  She set the skillet on the stove more firmly than she’d intended.

  “Was that why you didn’t tell me?” he continued. “Did you think I’d take it from you?”

  She closed her eyes. “Stefano, my money had nothing to do with you. I put it in Zurich long before we met.”

  “So no one would find out. Why, Gabriella? Had your family hurt you so much? Was it your way of getting back at them? By letting them think you did not need them, any more than they had needed you?”

  She turned from him. Outside the kitchen window, dusk settled across the hills, its pink veil kissing the vines, blessing the rich crop. After this season, Stefano would not need her money. His family fortune would be returned; he would be free to find another woman to become his countess, an Italian woman—Angelina, perhaps, after all.

  “My mother was murdered,” she said with suddenness.

  A heartbeat passed.

  “Oh, Gabriella,” he said. “I did not know.…” He went to her. She stepped aside.

  “Lester Markham pushed her from the lighthouse. I saw him do it. It happened twenty-seven years ago, but I only remembered yesterday.” Outside the window Gabrielle no longer saw Tuscany, but the top of the lighthouse from which her mother fell in surreal, flowing motion until she hit the rock jetty and blood seeped from her delicate mouth and stained the beautiful lace collar of the beautiful white dress and the thin blue ribbon that had somehow come untied.

  “Gabriella.” Stefano slid his arm around her and she did not have strength enough to stop him.

  “My aunt Margaret could not face the shame. So she lied to everyone and sent me away. I was seven years old.”

  He moved close behind her, he drew her toward him, his body warmed hers. “Seven? Not much older than our Rosa.” He rested his head against hers.

  “She is not yours, Stefano,” Gabrielle said.

  “Yes, she is,” he replied, too soon to have absorbed her words. “She is the baby I watched be born, the daughter I have raised and loved. She could not be more mine if it had been I who impregnated you and not the man who did.”

  Gabrielle stood still, all tension drained, too limp for emotion.

  He had known. He had known about her money and he had known that Rosa was not his and he had never said a word about either, and he had loved her anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “No,” he said, “I am the one who is sorry. I am sorry we could not have been more honest with one another from the start. I guess I always knew this day would come, but I hoped it never would. I hoped we could live here in our
villa, you and me and Rosa. I hoped we would never have to let the rest of the world inside.”

  The words could have come from her, she felt them so deeply, too. But there was still one more thing that she had to say.

  “Stefano,” she said. “There is something else.”

  He listened, not moving, as if nothing she’d say would change how he felt.

  “I hope this is a banner year for the Castello di Bonelli. Because soon you will have another heir. I think I am pregnant, my darling Stefano. Perhaps this one will be a boy.”

  A slow moment hung in the sweet air, and then on her cheek was the wetness of his tears.

  It was an elegant beige stucco mansion, parked on the edge of Zurich, with a long front walk, wide stone steps, and a wraparound plantation porch filled with pots of colorful summer flowers. It did not look like Lester’s taste, but how much taste could one afford with no money of one’s own?

  Carla marched up the walk, thinking of her new friends and how he’d cheated them. She thought of Gabrielle—God, he had killed her mother. She did not think about what he’d done to her; she no longer could accept that she’d once loved this man.

  This murderer.

  This scum.

  When the majordomo belonging to the Baroness von Friedberg opened the door, he said why, yes, of course, Herr Markham was at home.

  Carla did not bother to congratulate her instincts: She was too filled with rage.

  He would not come to the door—why would he? The majordomo returned and said he’d been mistaken, there was no Herr Markham in residence. She shoved the tuxedoed man aside and, on her square, sensible heels, stomped in the direction from which the servant had just come.

  Lester stood in a big room that held several sofas and side tables and a gleaming grand piano, and had floor-to-ceiling windows with heavy drapes tied back with thick golden cords. He was next to a bar, pouring a drink.