“No, it won’t. It’ll be incredibly dull. These things always are.”
Susan looks at him, the expression in her wide-set blue eyes her only means of conveying her concern.
Thom’s sister, like Joyce and Mother and just about every female in their circle, has resorted to regular Botox injections to erase the slightest facial indication that their teenaged years have passed. Apparently, the inability to truly smile or frown is a fair trade-off for the absence of wrinkles.
“You’re in a terrible mood today, Tommy,” Susan observes. “What’s wrong?”
“I wish I were out there all by myself sailing,” he says promptly, looking wistfully again at the white triangles on the horizon.
Susan reaches up to pat her motionless blond coif, as though it might have been mussed by the mere thought of skimming the open sea on a boat after a thunderstorm.
Thom smirks, thinking a hurricane couldn’t budge his sister’s well-gelled and thoroughly sprayed hair. There was a time when her style was as footloose as her outlook.
Now both her mane and her spirit have been smothered into submission.
When did she become Mother?
Thom mentally answers his own question promptly:
Susan became Mother the moment she agreed not to marry the Oscar-winning actor she adored.
Thom, however, refuses to become Mother. Or Father, for that matter.
With his long, lean build, distinct cleft chin, and bold eyebrows that form straight slashes above piercing dark blue eyes, he might bear a startling physical resemblance to the late scion of the Brannock family. But fortunately, that, and a passion for his work, are about all he has in common with Thomas III—and all he wants to have in common with him.
Father was a no-nonsense corporate raider by day; a gallivanting rogue by night. On some level, Thom once pitied him, being married to manipulative Mother in a socially and economically suitable match that was reportedly arranged by their parents with all the romance of a corporate merger.
Thomas III led a life that was driven by others’ expectations, in both business and family matters. Who wouldn’t feel sorry for him?
On another level, Thom grew to despise his father for keeping a mistress—perhaps many—behind Mother’s back. On the surface, Thomas III might have played by the rules, conforming to others’ expectations and marrying the prim beauty handpicked for him by his parents. But he indulged an untamed rebellious streak until the day he died.
Now that Thom is a man, sharing boardrooms and barrooms with colleagues of his late father, he’s found himself privy to bawdy paternal escapades that he’d rather not know about. He never lets on to his father’s peers that he finds his father’s behavior reprehensible. Nor does he like to admit to himself that he might possess a shred of, if not tolerance, then at least empathy.
“Sailing alone when there are whitecaps is risky,” Susan comments, interrupting his thoughts.
“The best things in life are risky.”
“That’s a ridiculous statement.”
Thom shrugs. He finds himself doing that a lot these days. Especially with Susan. And with Joyce.
Yes, Joyce frequently inspires shrugs, eye rolls, and shudders on his part, but he tends to suppress them whenever he can. When he can’t, she seems to think he’s merely teasing. She has no idea that he disagrees with just about everything she says and does.
At least, he doesn’t think she realizes it. Maybe she does, and simply pretends things are hunky-dory so that . . .
Well, why would she do that?
Because she doesn’t want to make waves? Because she’s afraid that if she does, he won’t marry her?
Marriage to Joyce. Now there’s a stomach-churning thought.
Marrying Joyce would be to Thom what marrying Mother was to his father.
He really should break up with her sooner than later. The longer he dates her, the more convinced she’ll be that they have a future.
Which they don’t.
No matter what Mother chooses to believe.
The trouble is, dating Joyce is easier than not dating anybody. Because when he’s not dating anybody, Mother has a way of parading eligible women past him as though he’s a judge at the Miss Blue Blood America Pageant.
“I’m trying, Tommy, but I really can’t think of one worthwhile thing in life that’s risky,” Susan presses on.
“You mean, besides sailing?”
“I don’t think sailing is worthwhile.”
“You used to.”
If he closed his eyes and let time slip away, he would see her as a carefree teenager, wind in her sun-streaked blond hair, a broad grin crinkling her sunburnt, freckled face as she handily hoisted the sail on one of their father’s boats.
But that was before she was diagnosed with the heart condition that threatened her life. It’s been under control for years, thanks to medication, but Susan will never be the same devil-may-care girl she once was.
“Well I was just a kid back then,” she echoes Thom’s thoughts aloud. “Kids are supposed to be reckless. I’m an adult now, Tommy, and so are you.”
“Yeah, well, I think you need to learn how to live a little.”
“Live a little? I’m not dead, brother dear. I’m married.”
Thom fights the urge to tell her that in her case, it sometimes seems like the same thing.
Instead, he says, “Sushi.”
“Sushi?” She looks around. “What are you talking about?”
“Some people think eating raw fish is risky.” Some people, including Joyce, who is hard-pressed to find anything she can order in Japanese restaurants, Thom’s favorite places to eat out.
Sushi is raw and she doesn’t do raw. Tempura is deep-fried and she doesn’t do deep-fried. Noodles are carbs and she doesn’t do carbs. She doesn’t do red meat or shellfish, either. While perusing restaurant menus, she likes to tell him about all the reasons she doesn’t do any of the above. Dining with Joyce is about as much fun as a medical seminar.
“Eating raw fish is risky,” Susan informs Thom. “You can get food poisoning. Not to mention, it’s disgusting.” He’s certain that if she could wrinkle her nose, she would.
“I happen to like it. Yup. Sushi is one of the best things in life.”
“Sushi? Sailing? That’s the best you can do?”
“Bungee jumping. Hostile corporate takeovers. Rare hamburgers. Climbing Mount Everest. Driving fast. Swimming with sharks. Rocketing to—”
“Okay, I get it.”
“—Mars,” he concludes, utterly unfazed by the utterly unfazed expression on his sister’s face.
“So those are the best things in life?” she asks.
“I can come up with more.”
She shakes her head, holding up a hand. “No! I get it. I just don’t happen to agree. You don’t have to risk your neck to do something meaningful. There’s something to be said for stability.”
Thom would shrug, but he’s sick of shrugging. He’s beginning to think talking to Susan is a waste of breath when it comes to philosophical discussions about life. She was once his greatest ally, but she’s become one of them and not just because of her heart condition. He hasn’t seen a glimmer of her former self in years. Not since Christmas in Aspen, right before she got married, when he unexpectedly hit her square in the face with a snowball he’d been aiming at a tree.
The next thing he knew, his big sister was instinctively scooping and throwing in retaliation. The two of them romped in the falling snow for a good five minutes until, breathless and ruddy-cheeked, they were caught in the act by an incredulous Wade.
Susan’s then fiancé wasn’t amused when she attempted to draw him into the fray with a perfectly aimed snowball.
Thom will never forget the look on Wade’s face, or his own guilt when Wade reminded his fiancée that physical exertion could trigger her heart condition, or his sinking feeling as he watched his sister’s smile fade and her embarrassed attempt to quickly brush the white
from her hair and wool dress coat.
In no time, it seemed, Susan was once again draped in white . . . only then, it was silk and lace, and she wasn’t giddy with exhilaration the way she had been during the snowball fight . . . or the way a bride should be on her wedding day.
It was as though Susan had slipped into an alternate universe, leaving behind her kid brother—and the promising spark her life had once held.
She had traded all that for Wade and a last name that’s abbreviated on the NASDAQ and emblazoned on more than one old stone building in Manhattan.
Stability.
That’s what Wade represents, all right.
It’s what everyone seems to crave these days.
Everyone but Thom.
Yes, he really should break up with Joyce, before she gets the wrong idea.
“What’s the matter?” Susan asks.
He looks up to see her watching him, blue eyes still full of concern. With her head turned at this angle in the slender beam of sunlight that’s slipped through a hole in the western sky, he can see the faint hint of freckles beneath the layer of pancake makeup on her nose.
“Nothing’s the matter,” he lies. “Why?”
“You sighed.”
“I did?” Oops. “I was just thinking about Joyce.”
The tight skin around his sister’s mouth attempts to curve into a semismile. “She’s lovely.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t explain to his sister that his sigh wasn’t the kind of sigh one sighs when one is appreciating loveliness.
Susan, after all, adores Joyce.
Mother adores Joyce.
Susan and Mother assume Thom also adores Joyce.
That’s part of the reason he’s been avoiding the breakup. It’s going to be messy. Nobody is expecting it. Least of all, Joyce. For all she knows, he’s been out shopping for engagement rings in his nonexistent spare time.
Which reminds him . . .
“I’ve got some business to take care of before the party,” he tells Susan, his thoughts already flitting ahead to the conference call he needs to make and the report he needs to finalize to prepare for the Saltwater Treasures takeover bid.
“You’re starting to sound just like Wade. All work and no play.”
“Mmm.”
“The party will be a success. The weather is supposed to clear up. And the grounds look lovely. Not a violet in sight.” The smile Susan’s face is incapable of producing is evident in her voice as she gestures at the acres of impeccable lawn below them.
Thom can’t help chuckling. Violets are the bane of Mother’s existence every June. He remembers her instructing the gardener to pluck by hand every offensive purple blossom that dared to mar the green landscape at home. Thom and Susan secretly thought they were pretty, but never dared pick a bouquet of the miniature blooms Mother considered weeds.
Thom strides toward the house, grateful for the one thing in his life about which he can feel passionate: his work. If it weren’t for that . . .
Well, what else would he have that matters?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Money, art, real estate, cars . . .
None of it is worthwhile. None of it inspires him.
Thank God, Thom thinks as he steps into the air-conditioned mausoleum that is his summer home, for work.
Static.
There’s so much static, Annie can barely make out the word. But it was there. She heard it. She knows she heard it.
Hello?
She is certain, in this moment, that her life will never be the same again. That something incredible—something impossible— just happened.
Hello?
It’s just a word. She clutches the receiver hard against her ear, shock waves echoing through her brain along with the two syllables she couldn’t possibly have heard just now. But she did.
She knows she did, dammit. She heard it.
Yes, it’s just a word. A word everyone says when they pick up the phone. But nobody—nobody—says it quite like he does.
Hello?
“Andre!” she shrieks when she finds her voice at last, at the precise moment her legs give way against a fierce tide of panic. She sags against the counter, shivering, noting somewhere in the back of her mind that a wintry draft has permeated the kitchen.
“Where are you? Andre? Andre!”
Static.
“Mommy?”
She looks up at the sound of Milo’s voice, sees him and Trixie standing in the doorway. Somehow she processes the image through a mental maelstrom and realizes that her children are frightened.
“It’s okay,” she manages to say, “it’s okay. I’m just talking to . . . to . . .”
“Daddy?” Milo asks solemnly.
“No!”
“You said Andre. That’s Daddy’s name.”
“That’s because I’m . . . I’m talking about Daddy. Go back and watch your shows, sweetie. Go. Take Trixie.”
Miraculously, they go.
She staggers with the phone through the screen porch and to the backdoor, slips out into the rain, wailing her husband’s name.
The connection is terrible, the static deafening. And yet, she can just make out Andre’s voice, coming from a great distance, coming from . . .
No. This can’t be happening. This is impossible. Andre is dead. She saw him, dead. Touched his cold hand.
Cold.
She shudders, trying to keep that atrocious memory at bay, but it drifts in like a stiff breeze off the water, prickling the skin at the back of her neck.
They let her see him in the morgue. He was lying on a table, covered in a sheet, eyes closed.
She always heard that the dead were cold, but she never realized the term was literal. Not until she grasped her husband’s eerily solid, icy hand, the one with the familiar scar on the knuckle. He’d gotten it from a fish hook years ago.
She’d held that hand countless times; now only the scar was familiar.
How could he have been so cold? He died in the heat of summer, nothing was cold on that awful day. Nothing but his hand.
Intellectually, she knows that the weather is warm again today. Hot, even, out here in the sun. And yet . . .
She’s shivering. She’s chilled to the bone.
“Annie . . .”
She sinks to the back step, her body quaking.
It’s him. His voice. Despite the static, despite the fact that it can’t possibly be him, it is. It’s him.
A sob escapes her along with his name. “Andre. Please. I need you. Andre . . .”
Static.
He’s speaking, but she can’t make out what he’s saying.
She listens helplessly, straining to decipher the snatches of sound.
Only two words are clear.
“Kids.”
“Love.”
Oh, God. This can’t be happening. She tells herself it can’t be happening. She rakes a hand through her hair, shakes her head, tries to snap out of this . . . this . . . dream. Or nightmare. Or hallucination. Or whatever it is.
She closes her eyes, knowing she’ll wake up any second. She’ll be in her bed. Their bed . . .
She opens her eyes.
She’s still collapsed on her back steps, the static is still in her ear, an inexplicable iciness still surrounds her—or perhaps radiates from her—and there’s still no sane explanation for what she’s hearing.
“I love you, Andre,” she says plaintively.
Static. A jumble of faint, incoherent words. And then . . .
“ . . . love . . .”
It’s barely audible. She can’t discern the phrases that come before or after, but that doesn’t matter. She knows what he’s saying.
He loves her.
She feels him here. All around her. Inside her. Feels him in a way she hasn’t in months.
A slow warmth has begun to infuse the strange chill.
“We need you, Andre,” she begs. “Please. I don’t k
now what to do without you . . . please tell me what to do . . .”
A garbled rush of sound, but in its midst, she again picks out a word.
“ . . . job . . .”
Annie pounces on it. “What about a job? Andre, what? I can’t hear you. Please . . . please tell me what to do.”
“. . . Merlin . . .”
Her breath catches in her throat. That was clearer. Still staticky, but unmistakable.
“What about Merlin?”
“. . . job . . . tonight . . . go . . .”
Three words, buried in a garbled jumble of others.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, Andre,” she says plaintively. “Please . . . I can’t hear you.”
“. . . love . . .”
“I love you, Andre. I love you. I love you.”
“. . . love . . .”
Again.
He’s telling her he loves her.
Salty tears stream into her mouth.
“I love you.” She says it over and over, until the static gives way to abrupt silence, and the connection is broken.
Chapter 3
Just south of the quaint rows of shops in Southampton lies a residential neighborhood into which Annie has never before had occasion to wander.
Tonight, as a warm June ocean breeze stirs her curls through the open car window, she isn’t wandering, but driving with a purpose.
The purpose, ostensibly, being to earn enough cash to keep her family afloat a little longer.
But there’s another reason she’s here.
Because your dead husband told you to come? her inner voice scoffs as she consults the scribbled directions on the seat beside her, then makes yet another turn down yet another leafy seaside street lined with mansions partially hidden beyond dense green walls of privet.
You and your imagination, Annie.
Obviously, her forte has gotten way out of hand.
In fact, if Erika weren’t at that conference in Florida, Annie probably would have called her this afternoon to ask which stage of grief entails delusory telephone conversations with one’s late spouse.
Of course the call wasn’t real.
Annie was certain of that moments after the imaginary call supposedly ended.
It was almost as though she came to from a fainting spell, finding herself huddled on the back steps clutching the phone.