And most of all, Luke, her Luke, whom she had loved for so long, appeared to be a puppet manipulated by Hayley’s false friend. He was unable to see Fiona as Hayley saw her now. She was not worthy of Luke, and Hayley knew it was up to her to show him that.
And she knew just how and when to do it.
The Edward R. Murrow Awards dinner, the event that created this whole situation, was coming up. It would be a night no one would forget for a long time. Hayley would see to that. Since she had been relegated to what she now saw as the thankless tasks, the grunt part of the work, no one checked on her. She could make that evening anything she chose it to be. It was completely in her control.
Mikey stuck his head in the door, glancing nervously around, wondering if Hayley had stashed a mallet somewhere to hit him over the head. She had not spoken a civil word to him since that little incident about the borrowed money on the night of the train crash.
“You’re not going to yell at me again, are you?” he whined.
“That depends. I want you to do something for me.”
Mikey was only too eager to clean up things with his meal ticket. And he hated it when Hayley was mad at him. She could be very scary. “Sure, name it.”
“It involves Eddie Rivers,” Hayley said casually.
“Oh, jeez, Hayley. I gotta steer clear of him for a while. You know, until I can work out the details of a business deal we have a misunderstanding about.”
“How much do you owe him?”
Mikey was starting to back toward the door. “It’s nothing like that!”
“How much?”
“About eleven large. More like twenty with the vig.”
“Twenty thousand dollars! How could you let that blood sucker…” She forced herself to calm down. “You do this thing for me, I pay off Eddie Rivers. All of it.”
Mikey stared at her. “For real?”
“For real.”
“Oh, Hayley. Sweetie. I don't know how to thank you. The guy’s been talking about, you know, car rides, accidents happening. Scary stuff.”
“I’m not doing it to keep you from getting tossed in the East River. It’s a business arrangement. You do a job for me, I pay your debt.”
Mikey couldn’t stop fidgeting. Something about the ice he saw in his sister’s eyes was frightening him. “What do I have to do?” he asked cautiously.
“It shouldn’t be a problem.” Hayley smiled. “It’s right up your alley. I want you to steal something for me.”
TWENTY-THREE
Fiona was putting the finishing touches to the plans for Luke’s award dinner. She had to check and double-check every detail in advance as there would be no time for last-minute adjustments. Luke had insisted that his fiancée be sitting at his side on the dais, when he received the honor.
She walked out onto the small terrace that ran the length of Luke’s Chelsea apartment, and watched a humongous ship make its way down the river and out to sea. Most likely the behemoth was headed for some island in the Caribbean, with imported white sand and twelve-dollar drinks sprouting little paper umbrellas.
How her life—hers and Luke’s, and even Hayley’s—had changed since that fateful train ride. She had become ill with a chronic lung infection, from drinking half a muddy river, had acquired a slight limp that lingered from a badly sprained ankle, and a fiancé! Luke had asked her to marry him even before the National Guard helicopters lifted them from the riverbank, and then whisked them to safety and a firestorm of unwanted publicity.
She could no longer simply go to work. Instead she had to fight her way through a crowd of reporters to enter the Celebration offices, or her Gramercy Park apartment.
Miraculously, the paparazzi had not yet found Luke’s New York pied-à-terre, but despite the elaborate routes they used to travel here undetected, both she and Luke knew this precious privacy could be over at any time. She found herself sympathizing with celebrities.
Two long, one short ring on the bell. It was Hayley. Fiona buzzed her in, happy for company. Hayley had been fantastic throughout the mania. Usually she could be moody, or at the very least quixotic, but from the moment she showed up in Fiona’s hospital room at New York Presbyterian, she had been a model of sympathy, good cheer, and compassion.
Fiona hugged her and told her how grateful she was, the minute she walked in the door.
“No need to thank me, Fiona,” Hayley said, putting down a large bundle of papers. “I keep telling you, it could have been me on that train with Luke, me who was thrown from the cliff, me who could have ended up half-dead in a fishing cabin with Luke. None of this would have happened, if only I’d listened to you and taken that meeting myself.”
“Be glad you didn’t listen to me, Hayley. It was no picnic.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Hayley said quietly, and lapsed into a long silence.
Fiona hugged her again. Despite her good cheer, it was clear the near-deaths of the two people closest to her in the world had had a profound effect on Hayley.
“Of course listening to me about losing the blue hair might be something worth reconsidering.” Hayley absently touched the tangle of blue polyester curls that had not left her head in public since the train accident.
“I like it this way,” Hayley had said each time Fiona questioned the look. “Time for me to make peace with who and what I am.”
“Who you are is a great friend,” Fiona said. “And if you like looking like a Smurf, I like it too. I won’t even complain when you walk down the aisle as my maid of honor. I might shock the world and wear a pink wig.”
“I think it’s about time you shocked the world,” Hayley said pleasantly. And I intend to help you every step of the way, she thought, but did not say.
She dumped an envelope filled with DVDs onto the table. “For the film clips. You usually do them.”
“Problem is, I can’t get near the office.”
“No worries,” Hayley said with a small smile. “I’d like to handle it this time. Seating charts done?”
“All done. It’s quite a cast of characters. The mayor is coming, the governor, heads of crime-fighting units from all over the country,” Fiona confided. “They’re even going to show the presentation live on CNN. This is a really big deal.”
“People have been trying to nail Eddie Rivers for years and maybe this will do it.” Hayley appeared to be concentrating on the stack of DVDs. “Does Luke know about…you know…you and Eddie Rivers?”
Fiona shot her a sharp look. “You mean, you and me and Eddie Rivers? When we were waitresses in his bar? Not accomplices. We had no money. It was a job.”
Hayley looked hurt. “Hey, I meant nothing by it. I just know Luke is a maniac on the subject, and I wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea if he felt you were keeping things from him.”
“I plan to tell him about it when the time is right.”
“What’s the point of making a big deal out of it?” Hayley asked. “Like you said, we were just waitresses.”
Fiona felt strangely uneasy, but before she could discuss this with Hayley, the door burst open and Luke came bounding in. He picked Fiona right off her feet and whirled her around.
“I missed you,” he announced, covering her face with kisses.
“Put me down,” Fiona laughed, loving every minute of it. “You’ve only been gone four hours.”
“They were a very long four hours,” he replied, reluctantly returning her to the floor.
They were so lost in one another, neither saw the look of raw pain on Hayley’s face. She gathered up the DVDs and put them back in the envelopes.
“I will leave you two to drool over one another. I’m still waiting for a few clips, but I can put them together later.”
“Not so fast, there, lady,” Luke said, sweeping her up in a brotherly hug. “We need to discuss your hair, and how great you look in blue.”
“Button it, Fred,” she said, feigning a lightness she did not feel. “Every bride needs something blue and I’m
it.”
“Okay, okay, I can’t fight both of you.” He gave her an affectionate kiss on the head, which did nothing to improve Hayley’s mood. “How’s everyone’s favorite gambler these days?”
“I assume you mean my baby brother.”
“Do you know another arch criminal?” Fiona asked.
Hayley shot a nervous look at Fiona. “What do you mean?” she said, and scrambled around to finish packing up her things. “You guys have a great night. I’ll be back tomorrow to finish this.”
And she was out of the door.
Luke had great instincts. It was one of the reasons he was a successful investigative reporter. “What was that all about?”
“Oh, you know Hayley.” Fiona wasn’t looking at him.
“Yes, I do. I’ve known her all my life. And I know when she’s covering something up. You want to tell me about it?”
Fiona went back to the terrace. The sun was beginning to set over the Hudson River.
“We started to talk about this on the train,” she said, studying the colors in the sky. “Just before the crash.”
“I remember. I asked if you knew Eddie Rivers and you said ‘look at the river’.”
“I explained that when Hayley and I were trying to start our business, we took any job we could find to make money to rent the office, do advertising, stuff like that.”
“What does that have to do with Eddie Rivers?”
“We applied for jobs at a restaurant. Well, a bar, really. It was kind of seedy, but since neither of us had any experience we were just glad they hired us, and didn’t ask too many questions.”
Luke studied her. “What kind of bar?”
“According to Hayley, it was a wise-guy bar. She said it reminded her of the Badda Bing Club on “The Sopranos”. They tipped really well.”
“The Velvet Swing? On Eleventh? Naked dancers?”
“Yep. That’s the place.” She tried to lighten the moment. “One of your haunts?”
“One of Eddie Rivers” places. Where he brings some of the women he imports from Asia.”
“Luke, we knew nothing about that! Nothing. We quit after two months.”
“Tips fall off?”
“Mikey fell in.”
“What do you mean?” Luke didn’t take his eyes off her.
“He started coming around, you know, to hit Hayley up for money,” Fiona explained. “But then he found a better source of cash. A nice little loan-sharking business went on in one of the back rooms, and Mikey always needed a couple of bucks.”
“A lot more went on in those back rooms.”
“We didn’t know that, Luke. We were dumb, just out of college. We quit as soon as they started threatening Mikey.”
Luke studied her. “I wish you'd told me this up front.”
“I got a little busy jumping off a train, and nearly drowning. Forgive me if I didn’t think to give you my résumé.”
Luke pulled her to him. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m just a little nutty on the subject of Eddie Rivers. It could have happened to anyone. I’m glad you told me about it.”
Fiona didn’t respond.
“Sorry to be such a jerk.”
“I’m the one who was a jerk. But I can’t go back and fix it. If this changes things for us—”
He interrupted her. “Nothing will change things for us! Whatever happened back then, between you and Eddie Rivers, is the past, over and done with!” He held her to him tightly.
Is the past ever really over, Fiona wondered silently, clinging to this man she loved more than her own life. She breathed a silent prayer that it could be.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was early on the day of the Edward R. Murrow Awards dinner. The morning had dawned clear and sunny. A perfect beginning for an unforgettable occasion.
Hayley was curled up in her green chair, surrounded by the past. Her ever-present talisman, the scrapbook she had carefully kept on Luke from the time they were kids, was on the floor, open to the page showing him grinning at the camera from his first anchor desk, somewhere in Iowa.
Yearbooks from Miss Porter’s were stacked on the table next to the chair. On her lap sat the memento of her first year there. The year Fiona saved her. She looked at the picture of the two of them, standing arm in arm in front of the gates to the red-brick campus. Even in fifth grade, Fiona already had the look of a winner. She would be the one to score the winning goal, to win the debate with her arch rival, Ethel Smith, to get the lead in the play. To get the guy.
Next to Fiona, Hayley looked like the school mascot. Skinny, sallow from too many summers in her only playground, the junk-strewn space underneath the Triborough Bridge. She looked every bit like the scholarship student she was. Yet there she was, basking in the radiance that surrounded Fiona, beaming like she’d just won an Olympic medal.
What a fool she had been. Fiona hadn’t wanted a friend; she’d wanted a disciple. And Hayley was only too happy to take the job. She couldn’t blame Luke, not really, for falling under her spell. It happened to everyone. It had happened to her and she hadn’t figured it out for twenty years.
But she knew where she stood now. No more second fiddle! No more! Soon everyone would know who and what Fiona truly was.
The door burst open, but was kept in check by the chain lock. It was Mikey.
“Hayley! Let me in!”
“Hold on for a minute.” She quickly collected the yearbooks and scrapbooks and locked them safely away in the desk, while Mikey continued to pound incessantly on her door.
“Open the door. You’re going to get me killed.”
Hayley took her time getting to the door. Mikey dashed in, out of breath and looking afraid.
“Jeez, Hayley, I need a drink. Get me a drink.”
“I have some wine but it’s not cold.”
“Don't you have any booze? What’s the matter with you?”
“What’s the matter with you! Do you want the wine or not?”
Mikey grabbed it, unscrewed the cap and chugged right from the bottle. “God, this is crap!”
“You’re welcome,” she said, taking the bottle from him, wiping the top and depositing it in the refrigerator. “So did you get it?”
“If Rivers ever finds out about this, I’m a dead man.”
“You're as good as dead anyway, unless you’ve come up with another way to get the twenty grand to pay off your loan. Give it to me.”
His hands were shaking as he pulled a DVD out of his jacket and handed it to her. “How did you even know these things existed?”
“I worked there, remember? I kept my eyes open.” Hayley studied the DVD, turning it over and over in her hands.
Mikey took the wine out of the refrigerator and downed another slug. “Where’s my money?”
“What money is that?” Hayley was rather enjoying tormenting her brother. It was a nice change of pace.
“Don’t pull that!”
Hayley extracted a large wad of bills from under the icemaker in her freezer. “I want you to go directly to that blood sucker, Eddie Rivers. Give him this, get a receipt, and get out of there, for good.”
Mikey counted the money eagerly. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Did you hear me? This is the end of the line. I mean it, Mikey. You mess up again, you're on your own.”
Mikey turned on the charm, hugging her. When she tried to pull away he picked her up and sat her on the kitchen counter. “You say that, but we’re a team, you and me. When one of us needs something, the other provides.”
“Gee, Mikey,” she said. “Seems to me like one of us is always the needy, the other the eternal provider.”
“Families don’t keep score,” he said, planting a big kiss on her cheek. He headed for the door, taking the half-empty bottle of warm wine with him.
“Hey, I didn’t ask. Is this for some bachelorette party prank on Fiona?”
“Something like that,” she said, sliding the DVD into her handbag. “Something like that.�
�
TWENTY-FIVE
There was an enormous turnout of dignitaries who wanted to honor Luke and his team from CNN, when they were presented with the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in electronic journalism.
Even before the train crash, demand for tickets and prime seating had been brisk. After the crash, and the tidal wave of publicity, the dinner had become the hottest ticket in town.
Fiona arrived early. She was dressed in a delicate lavender lace creation that clung gracefully to her voluptuous body. Her earrings, an engagement gift from Luke, were emerald-cut amethysts surrounded by diamonds, and they enhanced the color of the gown. She had been nervous about not being on the floor, but she had checked everything half a dozen times, and Hayley assured her she could handle things perfectly well. Their crew had been trained by both of them, and most events went off without a glitch.
“You deserve everything you’re getting tonight,” Hayley told her, hugging her fiercely. “Now you go up to the dais and join Luke. I’ll take care of everything.”
Fiona hugged her back. “You have been so great through all this. Tonight wouldn’t be happening without you.”
Hayley ran her fingers through her electric blue wig. “Go. We’re starting.”
Up on the dais, Luke was looking around for Fiona. He caught her eye and smiled.
“Okay, I’m going.” Fiona walked a few steps, and then turned back. “And you're sure the video clips are in the proper order? I haven’t even had a chance to screen them, and I always do that several times.”
“There’s been no time,” Hayley said. “The network held up the footage of Eddie Rivers’ joints, until the lawyers could tell them categorically that they wouldn’t be sued. Stop being a nervous nelly. It’s all good. Now let me go and change into my party clothes.”
“You look fine, Hayley. Really. I’m getting to like the blue hair.”
“It’s a statement. But I’ve got something else in mind for tonight,” Hayley said, hurrying away.
TWENTY-SIX
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