Crossroads

by Belva Plain

  Jeff rubbed his aching head—he seemed to have a headache all the time now. He’d debated long and hard about turning over so much to Jewel. Fortunately she was too stupid—or disinterested—to understand what he was doing. But for some reason he hadn’t transferred the house to her yet. It wasn’t because he had any attachment to it; he hated the damn place and always had. There was just something about handing her the roof over his head that made him feel vulnerable. But face it, he was vulnerable. You couldn’t be more vulnerable than he was.

  And he had to do what vulnerable people did, salvage whatever he could. He pulled out his cell phone, called his lawyer, and told him to prepare the paperwork for the transfer.

  “I’ll be landing in Wrights town in half an hour,” he said. “Be in my office. I want to get this done.”

  If it were done . . . then ’twere well it were done quickly. That was a quote from somewhere; he couldn’t remember the source. His head was throbbing now. Putting the house in Jewel’s name would tie them together for a far longer time than he’d wanted.

  For a while now, he’d known he wanted to leave Jewel. Because of Gwen. He wanted Gwen now as much as he had once wanted his private jet and the Lamborghini. As much as he had once wanted Jewel. He had dreamed of being a free man for Gwen so he could ask her to free herself too. But that dream was over. It belonged to a time when he could still make choices.

  He closed his burning eyes. He hadn’t wanted to make Gwen his mistress, but there was no other way. He had to have her, even if he couldn’t free himself for her. She was the one bright spot in the world. And with everything he was going through he deserved something bright and hopeful in his life.

  As the jet was landing, there was a call on his cell phone. His lawyer needed a copy of the deed to the house.

  * * *

  Jewel had spent the morning working out in her home gym. When she was finished, she headed for the bedroom to shower and change. The master suite was in the opposite wing of the house and as she walked down the halls they echoed with her footsteps. Except for the servants, the place always seemed to be empty now. It was meant to be a party house, crammed with admiring guests and the sounds of drinks being poured and laughter. When it was silent, there was something chilling about it. At night, when Jeff was gone—and that was most of the time these days—Jewel would lie in her bed listening to the silence, and think about her home when she was growing up. And in her memory now it wasn’t as ugly as she’d thought it was back then, and all the noise and confusion didn’t seem as bad to her as it once had. At least it had been alive. And there had been times when they had laughed—even Pop. Jewel would turn over on her down pillow and she’d realize that the five-hundred-thread-count pillowcase was wet—and she’d feel the tears on her cheeks.

  There were times when she thought she’d die of loneliness. She’d even gotten so desperate that she’d gone back to Times Past—ostensibly to shop, but really to sit in the un-air-conditioned, unheated back room with Patsy Allen and talk.

  Jewel picked up her pace; sometimes it seemed as if it took forever to get from one part of her home to the other. Once she had loved that, but now she had changed. So much had changed since she’d built this house.

  Jeff was coming home from a business trip this morning and there had been a time when she would have rushed out to the airport to meet him. He would have been so eager to see her that he wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off her. There had been a couple of times in the early days when he hadn’t, and only the tinted glass partition prevented the limo driver from having a great show.

  But Jeff had been tired of her for a long time now. He thought she was so thick she didn’t realize it, but of course she did. She’d known for years that he had girls, and there had always been the danger that he’d fall in love with one of them.

  Now she was afraid that it had happened. She knew how Jeff acted when he was in love—she’d been around the last time it had happened—and the signs were all there. And Jeff being Jeff, if he really was infatuated with some woman, he’d want to throw over everything like one of the heroes in those stupid operas he loved so much. He would want a divorce.

  Jewel had finally reached the bedroom. She stripped off her workout clothes and headed for the bathroom.

  She didn’t want a divorce. And she would fight against one with everything she had. But if she was honest about it, being Mrs. Jeff Henry hadn’t been all that great. Her husband’s money hadn’t bought her a place among the blue-blood women who ran the charitable events for the museum, the hospital, and the symphony. They’d take her donations, and they’d even ask her to sit on the board, but she couldn’t keep up with their talk about books and politics and art and music. And Cassandra Wright was on many of those boards, letting everyone see her animosity toward Jewel. So Jewel never was invited to the homes of the women she wanted to cultivate; she never went to the intimate dinner parties or the casual cookouts where they and their families bonded.

  Jewel and Jeff belonged to the most exclusive country club in town, but she didn’t play tennis or bridge and Jeff only used the place for JeffSon entertaining, so she’d never made any friends there, either. The wives of the men who worked in the upper echelons of JeffSon were polite to Jewel, but they kept their distance—and she could understand why. Being a friend of the boss’s wife was too tricky. What if you had a falling-out with her?

  The women Jewel enjoyed the most were those JeffSon employees who would be thought of as “girls” well into their fifties—women’s lib be damned—the secretaries and receptionists. Jeff ’s faithful “office wife”/secretary, Rosetta, and Barbara who answered the phone at the front desk, were Jewel’s kind of people. She knew either of them would be thrilled to be invited for a long poolside lunch featuring margaritas and gossip, but she couldn’t ask them. She was Mrs. Henry and she couldn’t fraternize with secretaries and receptionists.

  Jewel went into the shower stall—four thousand dollars for the steam system alone—and let the hot water soothe her muscles that were aching from her recent workout. She wished the hot water could take away the aches that went deeper.

  Because it hurt to know that your husband didn’t want you anymore—even if you had never been deeply in love with him.

  And it really hurt to know that he didn’t care enough about you to try to pretend otherwise. But she had made her bed and it was a cushy one and she wanted to go on lying in it. She’d be damned if she’d let anyone kick her out of it.

  The phone began to ring. There was an extension in the bathroom. As she was drying off, she picked it up. It was Jeff.

  “I need you to bring a copy of the deed to the house to my office this afternoon,” he said tersely. “Go into my study. Open the left-hand bottom drawer of my desk, and—”

  “Why do you want that?” Jewel blurted out. She felt herself go cold in spite of her steamy shower. What the hell was he up to? Was this the phone call she’d been dreading? Was there really another woman as she’d suspected?

  “I need it, Jewel. Now, you’ll find it . . .”

  “What do you want with the deed?” Panic made her shrill.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m planning to put the house in your name! I’ll explain when you get here. Now will you listen while I tell you where the deed is?”

  She listened. And she was happier than she had been in months. Because if the house was going in her name, that meant things between them couldn’t be as bad as she’d thought they were. If Jeff was giving her the house, then he wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  Gwen tried to concentrate on the cranberry bread she was supposed to be making, but it was a lost cause. She simply couldn’t focus on measuring baking soda and sugar when she wanted to dance around the apartment from sheer happiness. In three days she’d be giving her first reading of her book. The event was to take place in a library in Langham, a town that was about forty-five minutes north of Wrightstown. Her publicist wanted her to
have this experience as a way of getting her feet wet before her actual book tour, which began at the end of the month. Stan was planning to drive up with her so he could cheer her on, and then they would spend the night in a charming old inn in the town—just to add a little romance to her triumph, he said. He was so excited for her. In fact, Stan and her mother seemed to have started competing for the title of Loved One Who Is Most Proud of Gwen. When Stan had turned to Cassie for help, that had softened her mother toward him. “He’s got a good heart,” she now told Gwen. “And he does care about you.” She hadn’t said he was smart or competent—but still, it had been high praise coming from Cassandra Wright.

  And then just when it seemed that things couldn’t get any better, Stan had decided it was time to buy a house. Gwen had been thrilled, but she felt she had to make something clear.

  “I’d love to move, you know that,” she told Stan. “But you should also know that I’ve changed. I know I can be happy anywhere as long as I’m with the right person.”

  “Got anyone special in mind?” he’d asked.

  “There’s this guy . . . he’s a little stubborn and he always needs a haircut and he never has learned to put his socks in the laundry, but I’m kind of partial to him. . . .”

  “How partial?” he’d whispered.

  She’d nodded toward the bedroom. “I’ll be glad to show you any old time. . . .”

  Then of course all thoughts of houses and home ownership were forgotten. But the next day Stan had asked her to make an appointment with a real estate agent and she’d started looking.

  Gwen picked up the flyer on the house she’d seen that she wanted to show Stan. Every time she thought about it, she was pleased with herself all over again. Because she hadn’t chosen an ancient farmhouse in the middle of nowhere—as she knew Stan would expect her to. Instead she had found a place in a well-established, though decidedly unfashionable, suburb called Brookside. It was far enough out of the city for her to see trees and birds, but it was close enough for Stan to have a little hustle and bustle if that was what he wanted. Brookside was perfect.And so was her life.

  * * *

  “This is Stan Girard again, and I really need to speak to Mark Scotto,” Stan said to the assistant who had answered Scotto’s phone. “This is the second time I’ve called.”

  “I’m well aware of that, Mr. Girard,” came the supercilious reply. “But as I said, he’s been on the phone all afternoon with Tokyo and I can’t disturb him.”

  “Okay, when he takes a break, give him this message. I think I’ve discovered something that could be very serious. There’s an error in the figures in the JeffSon newsletter we’re sending out this month. We’re reporting profits on two of our electrical plants that can’t be true. I work with both plants and I know that for a fact. I’m not sure where the faulty figures are coming from; I’ve been trying to track down the source, and quite frankly I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “I’ll relay your message to Mr. Scotto”—the voice on the phone sounded a little rattled now—“and I’m sure he’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  It seemed that Mark Scotto’s important business with Tokyo could be interrupted after all, because five minutes later Stan’s phone rang.

  “Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Stan,” said Scotto after Stan had explained the problem again. “I’ll follow up on it personally and I’ll be in touch to let you know what I’ve found out.” The man’s tone was smooth and reassuring. Maybe a little too reassuring. Stan would remember that later.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  For two days Stan waited to hear the results of Mark Scotto’s investigation into the inflated figures in the JeffSon newsletter. There was nothing from the man. Not even an e-mail.

  When Stan tried to call his office he was told that Mr. Scotto was in yet another meeting—which was interesting, because Stan himself wasn’t going to any meetings. They were still being held every day—he could hear his colleagues walking down the halls to the conference room—but he was not asked to join them.

  Instead, he was informed by various secretaries and assistants that those meetings he had been scheduled to attend had been cancelled. They said he would be told when they were rescheduled, but that never seemed to happen. And there were no more deliveries of the reams of paperwork that usually appeared in his office. None of this would have bothered him—certainly he didn’t miss the busywork or the useless meetings—but there was no other work for him to do.

  On the fourth day he was summoned to Jeff Henry’s gray and chrome office. His boss looked weary. And angry. He got straight to the point.

  “Stan, I understand from Mark that you’ve been poking around in some areas of the company that—to be perfectly frank—are way off your turf.”

  “I just noticed that there was a problem with the newsletter—”

  “Get this through your head, Stan, okay? There is no problem. Mark vets that newsletter personally and so do I. Now, thanks to you, he wasted hours of his valuable time going through the whole thing again. Only to discover that there’s nothing wrong.”

  “But the figures—”

  “Stan, we have one of the best accounting firms in the country. These guys are tops—we’re talking MBAs from Harvard and Yale with years of experience at Fortune 500 companies. With all due respect, do you really think that you with your high school diploma and a couple of night courses at a trade school could catch a mistake that slipped by them?”

  Stan didn’t. Not really. But he didn’t like the sneer on Jeff Henry’s face. Or the contempt in his voice. “I know what I saw,” he said stubbornly. “I know that the profits we’re claiming are bogus and—”

  “Oh, that’s a great technical term, Stan.” The voice was dripping with sarcasm now. “ ‘Bogus profits.’ I’ll be sure to remember that. In the meantime, let me explain a few facts of financial life to you. A company the size of JeffSon—which is not to be confused with a little penny-ante electrical shop that rewires Aunt Millie’s old lamp—depends on its good image. We have worked hard—way too hard—to build the reputation of JeffSon to . . . ,” he paused, “to allow our reputation to be damaged by a disgruntled employee.”

  “I never said I was—”

  “I’ve cut you a lot of slack, pal. I paid you in cash when you didn’t want to take JeffSon stock for your business—and given what it’s worth today, what a brilliant move that was. You have never been a team player and I looked the other way. But when it comes to spreading rumors . . .”

  “I asked a question!”

  “You didn’t know what the hell you were talking about! And now you’re too damn stubborn and arrogant to admit that you were wrong!”

  And that was when Stan quit.

  * * *

  “You quit your job?” Gwen cried. “Why, Stan?” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice but she couldn’t control it. She’d been so happy, and now this. And Stan was getting that stubborn look on his face that meant he wasn’t going to explain. He was just going to expect her to accept one more time that he was right. “You didn’t think you should talk it over with me?”

  “It wasn’t something I planned. It just happened.”

  “That kind of thing doesn’t ‘just happen.’ You did it. You quit.”

  “But it was almost as if I didn’t have any choice.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, Gwen, and I think Henry was trying to make me quit.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “I’ve seen him in action, and when he wants something to work, he’s smooth. But he was insulting me—treating me like something he’d scrape off the bottom of his shoe. He had to know I wouldn’t put up with it.”

  She couldn’t believe that. Not of Jeff Henry. “You’re not making any sense. Why would he want you to quit?”

  “Because I started asking too many questions, and he wanted me gone. Now, if I should try to tell anyone
what I know, I’ll just be a former employee who couldn’t cut it and left.”

  Stan had already told her his suspicions—that there was something going on at JeffSon that was, to use his word, dicey. She definitely couldn’t believe that. Not about a huge, prestigious company that was lauded in all the media. Obviously Stan was in over his head. He’d seen something that he didn’t understand, and he’d gotten all worked up about it. I don’t think Stanley is sophisticated enough to be involved with a group of smart people who are on a fast track, Cassie had said. And Gwen had been so proud of Stan for proving she was wrong. Now he was proving that Cassie was right. And what about Jewel Fairchild Henry? She was going to be thrilled to think that Gwen’s husband couldn’t make it at JeffSon.

  “Isn’t this all a little far-fetched?” Gwen demanded. “A little like all those conspiracy theories about the grassy knoll?”

  “I know what I saw, Gwen.”

  “I’m sure there’s some logical explanation for it.”

  “I asked for one and no one would tell me anything. They’re cooking the books!”

  “I just don’t believe a man like Jeff Henry would do something like that!”

  “But you do believe your own husband is too stupid to understand basic math!”

  “I didn’t say that!” But of course it was what she’d been thinking. Close anyway.

  “I just meant that Jeff is a great businessman—a genius—he doesn’t have to do things like cook the books, or—”

  But now Stan was angry. “Oh, yes, I know how you feel about Jeff Henry!”

  “What is that supposed to mean?’

  “You have a crush on the man.”

  “That is not fair!” But maybe the reason it stung so much was that it was just a little bit true? “And it’s a lousy thing for you to say.”