“It’s okay, I like this place,” Ashley lied.
Well, she does like it better since he put up the new wall and bought her all new bedding and a new dresser where she can keep her things. She used to just have a drawer in his—which was fine, because Daddy doesn’t have tons of clothes, like Mom does.
Ashley can hear him rattling pots and pans beyond the new partition, and something smells good: butter…and batter.
Pancakes!
She stretches and gets up, walking barefoot into the little kitchenette.
“Sleeping Beauty! There you are.” Daddy is standing at the griddle on the stove, a spatula in one hand and a can of Red Bull in the other. He drinks one every morning, to wake up.
He has a stubbly face, his dark hair is standing straight up the way it does before his shower in the morning, and he’s wearing his weekend-morning uniform: T-shirt and boxer shorts.
On the counter, beside the box of Hungry Jack mix, she sees a telltale empty plastic produce container. Peering into the mixing bowl, she sees that the creamy batter is studded with sliced red berries.
“Strawberry pancakes?” she asks excitedly.
“Your favorite. What do you feel like doing today?”
“I don’t know…What do you want to do?” That’s the great thing about Daddy. He doesn’t schedule things way in advance, like Mom does. He likes to play it by ear.
“How about if we go to the movies?”
“Okay.”
“Want to ask Meg and her mom to come along?”
“Yes!”
“Good. That’s what we’ll do, then.”
Ashley smiles as she watches him heap her plate with golden-brown silver-dollar-sized pancakes, then dab them with butter and smother them in maple syrup.
Mom makes her eat boxed cereal for breakfast at home.
Unsweetened cereal, like horribly dry shredded wheat or those disgusting fiber pellets that look like cat food. She refuses to buy the good stuff like Cap’n Crunch and Lucky Charms, especially since Ashley needed a filling at her last dental checkup.
“There you go.” Daddy hands the plate back to Ashley. “Dig in.”
“What about you?”
“I’m making mine now. Eat those while they’re hot.”
Ashley perches on a stool at the breakfast bar that separates the kitchen from the living area. She has to clear a space for her plate; the counter is covered with mail and stacks of legal documents from Daddy’s job.
Ashley isn’t sure exactly what he does…He’s some kind of lawyer, she thinks.
“But lawyers are rich,” her friend Meg said when Ashley mentioned that once. “How come your dad isn’t rich like my dad?”
Ashley has no idea, but she’s glad her dad is nothing like Meg’s dad, who is divorced from Meg’s mom. He’s snooty and he lives in a fancy house in Stockbridge with his snooty new wife and their two bratty little kids. He just had a heart attack not too long ago, from working too hard. Meg’s stepmother said Meg can’t spend the night there anymore because they’re trying to reduce stress. Like Meg would cause extra stress compared to his bratty other kids who are there all the time.
Meg hates her stepmother, who wears clothes only from Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, and other expensive designers Ashley has never even heard of.
Ashley doesn’t blame Meg for hating her. She herself would probably hate having a stepmother, too.
Unless it was somebody nice. Like Meg’s mom, Cynthia.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get my mom to marry your dad?” Meg asked once. “Then we could be sisters.”
Ashley agreed that it would be cool, and she and Meg spent a couple of days cooking up matchmaking plans.
They gave up, eventually. Her dad and Meg’s mom are friendly, but they don’t seem like they’re in love. Meg’s mom isn’t that pretty, either. Not like Ashley’s mother. So maybe that’s why Daddy isn’t interested in her.
Anyway, as much as Ashley would like to have Meg as a sister, if she was going to have a stepmother, she would rather have Brynn than anyone else.
Too bad Brynn is married to Mr. Saddler.
If she wasn’t, Ashley would definitely try to get her to marry Daddy.
Mom probably wouldn’t like that, though. Even though she hates Daddy. Something tells Ashley she wouldn’t want her friend marrying him.
Especially if Ashley would rather live with Brynn than with her. Which she would.
“What are you thinking about, Ash?” Daddy asks, glancing up from the griddle.
“I’m thinking sometimes I wish I didn’t live with Mom,” she blurts.
Daddy immediately sets aside the spatula. “Why is that?”
“No, I…” Ashley shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s just not home that much.”
This weekend, of course, Mom has a good reason to be away. One of her old friends died in Boston. Ashley doesn’t know the details, but it must have been a car accident or something, because it seems like it happened unexpectedly.
Even Daddy was nice to Mom about it. He actually hugged Mom when he picked up Ashley last night.
Mom looked pretty stiff when he did it, though.
Like she didn’t even want him to touch her.
Which Ashley thought was rude, because Daddy was only trying to be nice.
“Ash, do you want to come here and live with me?” Daddy asks now. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Not really. Well, maybe she wants to live somewhere with him—not necessarily here. And maybe she wants Brynn to be her stepmother…
Anything you want in this life can be yours, Ashley, Mom always says. All you have to do is be willing to work for it.
But she’s talking about careers. Not impossible fantasies.
Daddy is still watching her, waiting for an answer.
Behind him, on the stove, the griddle is starting to smoke.
“Dad!” Ashley points toward it.
He turns away, but he doesn’t change the subject.
“If you want to live with me, Ashley, you can,” he tells her, as he slides the tip of the spatula beneath a singed pancake and flips it. “All you have to do is say the word.”
She remains silent, once again hearing her mother say, Ashley will live with you, Pat, over my dead body.
Fiona marvels at the irony that she’s driving to Boston on this glorious October morning, while James Bingham is traveling in the opposite direction. She knows his current whereabouts because he called her as he was leaving his house in Wellesley about an hour ago, just as she was leaving hers in Cedar Crest.
At some point, she’s sure, they’ll pass each other on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
In fact, she’s actually been keeping an eye on the oncoming traffic, hoping for a glimpse of his sleek black Mercedes.
Which is ludicrous, because there are hundreds of black Mercedes driving on the Mass Pike this morning.
And because you’re a grown woman, not a high school girl. Or did you forget?
There’s just something about James that makes her feel decidedly girly-giddy.
Right, a sardonic voice pipes up in her head, that would be his power and money.
She won’t deny that those things first drew her to him, but it’s beyond that now. She’s falling for him, for real.
Next thing you know, you’ll be calling his house and hanging up.
Rolling her eyes, she lights a cigarette and cracks the window. Then, realizing it’s warm enough out there to lower it further, she does, relishing the wind in her hair.
James loves her hair.
That was how it went a step further between them than it should have, really, the other night. There they were, having a 2 AM after-dinner drink in an elegant Back Bay martini bar, and James commented that he would love to see her let her hair down for a change.
Her laugh fluid with top-shelf vodka, she protested, “I’m relaxed right now.”
“I mean literally let your hair down, Fiona,” he said, and r
eached out brazenly toward the clip at the back of her head.
In one swift move, he had it unfastened and her hair was falling down her back.
The next thing she knew, he was taking her hand and leading her out of there, and she was casting professional decorum to the wind…
Not a brilliant move on her part. Not just because he’s her client and she can’t afford to lose his account, but because he’s her future. She’s already decided that.
And, as she likes to tell her daughter, Anything you want in this life can be yours. All you have to do is be willing to work for it.
Well, she’s going to work to win James Bingham.
Luckily, she nipped things in the bud before they went too far…that time. Next time, she might not be able to muster enough willpower to leave him and make the solitary wee-hour drive from Boston back to her own bed.
Provided there is a next time.
For now, because he’s miles away and because she isn’t an infatuated teenager, she should put him out of her head.
That plan lasts all of the few seconds it takes her to switch the car stereo from radio to CD and press PLAY.
The CD that comes on is the same one she was listening to as she drove home after leaving James that night, the night Tildy died.
She turns up the volume and the opening drums reverberate through her as she exhales a stream of smoke into the warm breeze.
U2; it’s an old CD, a relic of her high school days. And her college days. And her life with Pat.
You’d think she would have long since given up anything associated with her ex-husband, but she doesn’t know new music, doesn’t have time for it. She just sticks with the tried and true.
Anyway, she still loves U2. She and Deirdre had major crushes on Bono when they were kids, arguing over who would get dibs on him if they ever crossed paths.
As if two scrawny preteens from a working-class household had a chance of hooking up with rock superstars.
But they spent a lot of time arguing about it. Fee always maintained that she should get Bono because she’s a few minutes older than her twin, and Deirdre could have The Edge. Deirdre protested that she had the lead singer’s name tattooed on her arm in ink.
Of course, it was from a Bic pen. But she refused to wash it off for a whole year, hiding it from their parents and going over it again whenever it started to fade.
When her twin confessed her true sexual preference years later, Fee even brought that up, unable to shed her disbelief.
Deirdre snorted. “Believe it or not, Fee, I never slept with Bono.”
“But you wanted to!” Fiona clung to her flimsy “evidence” out of…what? Shock? Dismay? A sense of betrayal? They were supposed to share everything. Deirdre’s secret was huge.
“We were, what, twelve? And even then, I knew. I just talked about Bono—and boys—because you did. I wanted to be normal, and I didn’t think I was.”
Coming to her senses, Fiona assured her sister that it didn’t matter who she slept with—unless, of course, it was Bono.
“I get permanent dibs on him now,” she reminded Deirdre with a laugh.
And the air was clear again.
Deirdre was grateful for her support, and it was the only family support she had. Mom and Dad had kicked her out, and she couldn’t live with Fee in the sorority house. She crashed there for a couple of nights, but Fee had to tell her she couldn’t stay. It was against house rules.
So Deirdre went from there to Europe, where she had adventures and fell in love—a few times—and even saw U2 play live, in Dublin.
“They play live over here, too,” Fiona couldn’t help telling her sister during that fleeting, long-distance phone call.
“I know, but…Have you seen them?”
No, she hadn’t. That was back in the bad old days when she was stuck in a dive apartment with a new baby, flat broke, fighting nonstop with Pat.
She sat at home, wistful, resentful, as her twin sister traveled all over Europe. She brooded and she played her U2 CDs, including this one. The music helped get her through that unhappy time in her life.
Now, listening to Bono wailing “A Sort Of Homecoming,” Fiona is struck anew by the lyrics, and she isn’t thinking of her turbulent marital past with Pat.
See the sky, the burning rain…
Nor is she even thinking of James Bingham, though she certainly was when she drove home after she threw caution, and professional decorum, to the wind, that night in Boston.
She will die and live again…
No, as she drives to the funeral of her sorority sister, unmercifully slain on her birthday, she isn’t thinking of anyone but Rachel Lorent.
Isaac waits to turn his cell phone back on until he’s in the rental car and safely on his way to Brookline. Boston isn’t an entirely familiar city to him; it was tricky to negotiate the network of roads leading away from Logan Airport.
But now he’s on the right track, and he can relax…if only for a few minutes.
Or, maybe not, he thinks as he realizes there’s a message from Kylah.
“I woke up, and you were gone.” Her tone is unmistakably brittle. “I thought maybe you were out for a run or something, but who am I kidding? I know something’s up with you, Isaac. And I’m sick of feeling like you’re avoiding me…or lying to me, which is even worse. So don’t call me until you’re ready to tell the truth about whatever it is you’ve been up to lately. I’m not stupid.”
No, she isn’t stupid.
And she deserves better than this.
He dials her number—their number—without even thinking through what he’s going to say.
She answers on the third ring.
“It’s me. I’m in Boston.”
“Boston?” she echoes. “On business?”
For once, he doesn’t hesitate. “No. Not on business.”
There’s a pause.
“I didn’t think so.”
“I’m sorry, Kylah.”
She’s silent.
“We should probably talk…”
She snaps, “I’ve been trying to.”
“I know…and I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Everything else he can possibly tell her; but every single line that comes into his head about this sounds like a lousy cliché.
I can explain…
It’s not what it looks like…
You have to trust me…
He says none of that.
Only, “I promise to make it back to New York for the wedding.”
“Why would you?”
“Because you want me there…don’t you? And because I want to be there,” he adds hastily, more decisively.
But he can tell she doesn’t believe him.
Understandable, since he doesn’t believe him either.
He doesn’t want to get dressed up in a tux and go to a fancy catering place out in Great Neck. He doesn’t want to sit at a table with an eclectic assortment of strangers whose dates and spouses are also in the wedding party.
But he’ll do it. For Kylah.
Because if he doesn’t do it—if he doesn’t start stepping up—he’s going to lose her.
“If you don’t make it back here for the wedding,” Kylah says tearfully, “then you can go to the apartment instead, and you can pack up all your stuff. Just make sure you’re gone before I get back.”
“I’ll be at the wedding, Kylah. I promise you.”
Another pause.
Then, “Are you in love with someone else, Isaac?”
Yes. But it’s not what you think. Not at all.
CHAPTER 15
The church is quintessential New England: white clapboard and stained glass, its steeple rising majestically against a backdrop of glorious peak foliage and a cloudless sky that is precisely the shade of Matilda Harrington’s eyes.
The throng of press and curious onlookers is held at bay behind police barricades.
There is no funeral procession, no h
earse, no casket.
According to the newspaper reports that gleefully dredged up the family’s tragic past, there was none of that for Matilda’s mother and brother, either, twenty-five years ago. Their bodies were incinerated in the crash; there were no remains.
Matilda’s savaged corpse has yet to be released to the family. When it is, reportedly Jason Harrington will have his only daughter cremated and the ashes buried in the family plot in Brookline.
Standing beneath a dappled canopy of red maple leaves, Quincy surveys the crowd of mourners making their exit down the broad brick steps. Deb and Mike are posted nearby, doing the same thing.
First to emerge from the church, as soon as the double doors opened, was Jason Harrington. Boston’s answer to Donald Trump looked wan and ravaged, supported by his loyal friend, the celebrated Troy Allerson, by his side.
They kept moving, their faces veiled by the requisite dark shades as the press snapped photos and shouted their names. Holding Allerson’s hand was his striking young wife, head bent, wiping tears from behind her own sunglasses. The three of them disappeared into a limousine that immediately drove off toward the Harrington mansion.
Now the remaining well-heeled contingent, similarly clad in dark designer clothes and sunglasses, is slowly making its way toward the line of waiting town cars stretching down the street.
The others mingle on the sidewalk in the unseasonably hot Indian summer sunshine, hugging, weeping, chatting in muted tones.
Quincy watches them carefully, wondering if Tildy’s mystery lover—assuming Ray Wilmington was telling the truth—might be among them.
Her e-mail account yielded a confirmed reservation for the Glenwood Springhouse in Central Massachusetts this weekend—which explains the cryptic G.S. entry in her date book. Obviously, the letters weren’t initials after all, but shorthand for her weekend getaway plans.
She had reserved the inn’s Weekend Romance package, which means she probably wasn’t planning on a solo escape.
Was her boyfriend planning to join her? And why was she so secretive about her relationship?
Quincy has a couple of good theories: either he was married, or dirt poor, and thus unsuitable. Or all of the above.
A sudden brisk breeze kicks up, stirring the branches overhead.
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