Envious of the Lorrimans’ fortune and Lucy’s close bond with her daughter, Caroline Drummond Murray looked down her nose at Nancy’s mother for being vulgar and nouveau. In fact, the Lorrimans were anything but vulgar. They did, however, wear their wealth unapologetically, enjoying the finer things in life unencumbered by innate British embarrassment, and they brought their daughter up to do the same. It never occurred to Nancy to apologize for her parents’ new Bentley or for the fact that she always flew first class, any more than it occurred to her to boast about those things. Unlike Scarlett, whose brother, Cameron, was going to get Drumfernly, Nancy stood to inherit her family’s entire fortune one day, but she never made a big deal about it.
Glancing to her right now, at the stricken profile of Nancy’s father, Scarlett wondered if that day might not come sooner than her friend expected. Morty Lorriman must have aged twenty years since she’d last seen him two years ago, on the fateful trip to New York when she’d first laid eyes on Brogan O’Donnell. At Tiffany. The same night she’d had that humdinger of a fight with Jake.
Oh God, Jake. Would she ever be properly over him? She’d been in New York two weeks now, so she hadn’t seen him in person since Oscar night, but he seemed to have absorbed by osmosis the fact that their relationship was over. When she called the next day, to tell him about Nancy’s mother and that she was leaving town for a while, he’d been polite and sympathetic. But he’d already begun referring to “us” in the past tense. He’d even offered to deliver Scarlett’s things back to the cottage without being asked.
In one way she was relieved to be spared the official breakup talk and pointless postmortem. She also wouldn’t now have to go to his apartment and collect her stuff in person, thus avoiding any possibility of a relapse. However mad she got at him, she did have an uncanny ability to find herself giving in to temptation the moment he laid a hand on her arm, or so much as glanced toward the bedroom.
But in another way, it hurt to see him letting her go so easily. If he was heartbroken, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.
“Here you go, Scarlett honey.” Morty handed her a hymn book, which she took with guilty thanks. Poor man. The illness that had killed Lucy had clearly ravaged him too, turning his salt-and-pepper hair a uniform, saintly white and draining the blood from his cheeks.
“This is the last hymn.” Nancy’s voice in her ear startled her. “We’re all going to The Plaza afterwards, for the reception. There’s space for you in the family car.”
“Oh, no, sweetie, really, I wouldn’t want to impose,” Scarlett whispered back. “Your dad might want to talk to you privately.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Nancy, looking in her father’s direction and seeing the same haggard, defeated old man that Scarlett had just been pitying. “He’s right on the edge. If I give him a window, I’m scared the floodgates’ll open and he’ll break down completely. And what do I say if he asks about the movie?”
Paramount had called last week, just days after her mom had passed away, and confirmed Nancy’s position as creative advisor on her comedy script. It meant big bucks, her first really big credit…and a full-time, paid position in LA. Though he hadn’t spelled it out in so many words, her dad had dropped numerous hints over the past few weeks about how much he needed her home in New York and how lonely he was without her. So far she hadn’t had the strength to tell him about Paramount’s offer, but she couldn’t put it off forever.
“He won’t ask,” said Scarlett. “Not today.”
“I guess not,” said Nancy. “But ride with me all the same, will you?”
As it turned out, the three of them drove across town to The Plaza in almost total silence. Father and daughter gazed blankly out of their respective blackened windows, while Scarlett sat between them, making intermittent small-talk with the driver about the beauty of the service and the flowers, and the unseasonable spring chill that had seized New York. It wasn’t until they got to the hotel and Nancy was finished with receiving line duties that she was able to whisk her friend off to an upstairs ladies’ room for a private chat, their first real conversation of the day.
“D’you want to give us a minute?” Nancy glared at the uniformed Puerto Rican maid hovering over the washbasins with towels and soap like a superfluous human dispensing machine. “I need to talk to my friend alone.”
“Sorry,” the maid shrugged. “I not allowed to leave my station. Hotel policy.”
Pulling out a fifty from her purse, Nancy pressed it into the woman’s hand.
“I’ll explain to your manager if you get in trouble,” she insisted, manhandling her out the door. Hanging the Restrooms Closed for Cleaning sign up outside, she locked herself and Scarlett in.
“Probably thinks we’re doing drugs,” she said, forcing a smile as she collapsed into the attendant’s chair. “Either that or we’re two sex-crazed lesbian goths who like to fuck each other in toilets.”
Scarlett leaned back against the wall. “You OK?”
“Not really.”
Nancy ran her hand through her hair. “There’s been so much to do, and I’ve had to do it all. Dad can’t butter his own toast in the morning. I think he’s still in shock. I’m so fucking tired I can barely speak.”
“Of course you are,” said Scarlett sympathetically.
“And I know it’s ridiculous, but I miss Che Che. I do.”
“Why is that ridiculous?”
Nancy shrugged. “I don’t know. Because we were only together a few months, and for the last third of that time he was a complete selfish, self-righteous jerk?”
“I could say the same about Jake,” said Scarlett. “Unfortunately it doesn’t make breaking up any easier.”
“He called this morning. Offered me his ‘condolences.’” Nancy’s brow knitted into a contemptuous frown. “I swear to God, Scar, he sounded like a freakin’ funeral director or a shitty greetings card or something. Condolences? Who uses a word like that? It’s like saying the weather is ‘clement,’ or my new girlfriend is really ‘personable.’ Asshole. Why couldn’t he just say he’s sorry? Why couldn’t he tell me he loves me?”
She was looking up now, her jaw jutting forward defiantly, a pint-sized ball of righteous indignation. Tinier than ever in her fitted black Dolce & Gabbana skirt-suit and vintage Izzy Blow pillbox hat—the grief and stress diet had taken pounds off her naturally curvy frame—she might almost have appeared fragile if she hadn’t been so mad.
“Men aren’t always the best in these sorts of situations,” said Scarlett vaguely. “Jake’s got all the tact of a Sherman tank in a butterfly house.”
“Do you think I’m a bad daughter?”
Nancy’s anger seemed to have vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and her voice sounded querulous. To her dismay, Scarlett saw that she was crying.
“What? No, not at all. Why on earth would I think that?”
“Because my mom just died, and here I am crying about some stupid guy.” She spat out the word angrily. “Because I’m abandoning my dad when he needs me most, just to take a job.”
“You’re not abandoning him,” said Scarlett firmly. “You’re getting on with your own life, which is exactly what your mom would have wanted you to do. Your dad’ll want it too, once he gets through this initial period of shock. Besides, it isn’t just a job. It’s your big break, babe. If you didn’t go back, I’d kill you.”
Nancy smiled and blew her nose noisily on one of the maid’s linen napkins.
“D’you ever see him still? For Trade Fair stuff?”
Apparently they were back to Che Che again.
“Not really,” said Scarlett. In fact she had seen him a couple of times before she came out to New York, but she didn’t see the point in rubbing salt in Nancy’s wounds by admitting it. She’d even taken him out for lunch in Oscar week to thank him for bringing the NPR program back from the dead and spent most of the meal pleading with him to swallow his pride and get back together with Nancy. The w
hole thing was so stupid. Any fool could see the two of them belonged together. But he was stubborn as a mule—as stubborn as Nancy herself—and hadn’t given an inch. He reminded Scarlett of a Yeats poem she’d learned at school, something about too long a sacrifice making a stone of the heart. She liked Che Che and admired his principles. But surely only a heart of stone could fail to be moved by Nancy’s sorrow and need right now?
“Probably just as well,” sniffed Nancy, pulling herself together. “I feel bad I haven’t asked about you and Jake. I know you must be hurting too.”
“Nah,” lied Scarlett, “not really. It was a mutual decision, and it’s for the best. We’re still gonna work together. We can still be friends.”
Nancy gave her a “yeah, right” look that said it all.
“I’m serious,” said Scarlett. “I mean, we’re both adults. Why shouldn’t we stay friends?”
“Firstly, only one of you is an adult,” said Nancy. “And secondly, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember you ever being friends in the first place. First you hated each other. Then all of a sudden you loved each other. And now…”
“Now, we drive each other crazy,” said Scarlett.
“Yeah, well,” smiled Nancy, “at least you’ve been consistent in that.”
Across town later that evening Diana stared out a grimy cab window and pulled her cashmere wrap more tightly around her shoulders. For once the little life inside her had stopped wriggling. Asleep, she assured herself, although the hideous fear that her longed-for baby might die in the womb never quite left her. Every kick was a relief and a joy, even the ones that kept her awake at three in the morning, tortured with back pain and nausea.
Outside a blustery March night was in full swing. Even from the warm confines of the cab she could see how bitingly cold the wind was. She wondered, yet again, about Danny—where he was, whom he was with tonight, whether he thought about her and the baby at all. Contact between them had dwindled lately and was now mostly restricted to one regular weekly call after her ob-gyn appointment, a progress report on the baby’s health. Diana found each of these calls torturous. Longing to reach out to him, missing him like a physical pain, she had no idea how to break through the cold, businesslike tone with which he spoke to her. Rarely did he confide any information about his own life. When he’d taken a job as a lowly shop-floor salesman in a West Village jewelry boutique, Diana heard about it not from Danny but through a mutual friend. Similarly, he never once asked after her, as opposed to the baby. It didn’t occur to her that perhaps the pain of separation was too great for him to bear; that it was all he could do to make it to the end of those desperate conversations without breaking down in tears. All she saw was a frostiness that at times seemed to border on hatred. She had no idea how things would play out once the baby was born, what role if any he would play as a father. But she tried not to think about it. Having read in countless magazines that stress could harm one’s fetus and even cause lasting learning difficulties, she was determined to keep her life as calm and comfortable as possible.
It was this desire, this need for calm, that had brought her back, slowly, into Brogan’s life. Certainly guilt was a key factor in her decision to start visiting him regularly. What kind of person would she be to turn down a dying man’s tearful request for reconciliation? A man who, whatever wrongs he may have done her, she’d loved once with all her heart?
But other forces were at work too. Living with her parents, a lifeline when she’d first split with Danny, had rapidly turned into an unhealthy situation. While she lived under their roof, they felt entirely free to bombard her with unwanted advice, about the baby, Danny, her divorce, everything. The ceaseless background noise of criticism was making it very hard to maintain the Zen-like inner peace that her unborn child apparently needed if it wasn’t to run amok with a machine gun in the high school cafeteria the moment it turned thirteen.
When Brogan first suggested she move back in to the marital apartment, Diana rejected the idea out of hand. Their divorce might be on perma-hold, but the truth was she was still in love with Danny. She needed time to grieve for that relationship before she could even think of beginning another. As for going back to Brogan, every shred of logic and reason that had survived the onslaught of her pregnancy hormones argued against it. She’d been unhappy with him for so many years, quite apart from the issue of his violent, unpredictable temper. Their marriage, as it had been, was no environment in which to raise a child, whatever lingering affection she might feel for him now that he was sick.
And then of course there was the cancer itself. The operation to remove his primary tumor had been successful, and since then the army of specialists caring for him had declared his response to chemo to be “satisfactory to good,” whatever that meant. Brogan still referred to himself in conversation as “dying,” but whether that was the reality or a cynical attempt to maintain her sympathy levels and attention, Diana didn’t know.
What she did know was that his need for her, emotionally, was real. Unlike Danny, Brogan bombarded her with calls, sometimes as often as fifteen times a day. His solicitousness for her health and happiness bordered on the obsessive—it was almost as if he needed to focus on her to distract himself from his illness and to keep his spirits up, something the doctors had told her could be vital for his recovery. On a more practical level, with Brogan hospitalized four weeks out of five (every four weeks he had a break from chemo to recuperate and regain some strength), she would have the apartment almost entirely to herself. In the end the lure of regaining her privacy and getting away from her parents proved too much. She’d accepted his offer and moved back in.
So far, despite her misgivings, she had to admit the arrangement had worked out well. Brogan was once again picking up all her bills, quietly making sure she was taken care of. She visited him daily in the hospital, visits that he let her know meant everything to him, although he was careful not to push her on the subject of their getting back together. There’d be time enough for that once he was well—whatever he might say to Diana, in his own mind Brogan never doubted his recovery—and after the baby was born. For now, he was happy to have her home again and, though she might not have realized yet, back under his control.
“You can pull over here,” she told the cabbie as they approached Minx, the new, hot Asian restaurant in the West Village. Released from hospital this morning, Brogan had insisted he was well enough to eat out and arranged to meet Diana for dinner. He carefully hadn’t termed it a date, although clearly that was what he believed it to be. In a masterstroke of tact he had even checked himself into The Plaza for the week with his nurse instead of coming home to the apartment, because he “wouldn’t want to invade Diana’s space.”
Diana was duly impressed. Putting others’ needs before his own was certainly something only the “new” Brogan would do. He kept telling her that the cancer had changed him, but it was actions like this that spoke so much louder than words.
Winching herself out of the taxi—she was only six months along but already felt comically huge and ungainly—she paid the driver and, with a smile at the windswept doorman, hurried inside the warm restaurant.
“Do you have a reservation? Name?” The frazzled Asian hostess barked at her crossly. In a crotch-skimming minidress and silver go-go boots, the girl looked like she’d just walked off the set of an Austin Powers movie. Diana felt fatter and frumpier than ever.
“I’m meeting a friend,” she said. “His name is O’Donnell.”
Immediately the girl replaced her scowl with a smile as broad as it was fake.
“Of course,” she beamed. “Welcome to Minx, Mrs. O’Donnell. If you’d like to follow me, your husband’s already at the table.”
“How the hell do you do it?” Brogan, with the aid of a cane, got to his feet as Diana approached his corner table, the best in the house. “Six months pregnant and you’re the most beautiful girl in here by a country mile.”
“Those drugs mus
t have affected your eyesight.” She smiled, kissing him gently on the cheek as she took her seat. It was an effort to hide her shock at his appearance. She’d seen him every day in the hospital, but somehow out in the real world, in a suit rather than a medical gown, his bald head, taut, green-gray skin, and wasted frame looked a thousand times more pronounced. “I’m a whale.”
“You’re a goddess,” he insisted. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Cranberry juice, please. And let’s order food right away.”
“Yes, ma’am,” laughed Brogan. “Never come between a pregnant lady and a meal, right?”
It was bizarre, sitting down to dinner together at a swanky restaurant. As if the last two years—Danny, the baby, the cancer, the divorce—had never happened. But the atmosphere was buzzing, the food ambrosial, and to Diana’s surprise she soon found herself relaxing and even, dare she say it, enjoying herself.
“I hope it wasn’t too much for you,” said Brogan, his voice full of concern as she stifled a yawn. “Coming out so late.”
“Hey, I’m only pregnant,” she joked. “You’re the one with cancer. I’m sure the doctors said you were meant to be resting this week.”
“They said ‘relaxing,’” said Brogan. “This is relaxing. I do have to catch up on a little work later, though. Once you’re safely tucked up in bed.”
“Work?” Diana raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Darling, you know me. If I can’t work, I might as well be dead,” he said cheerfully. “Aidan’s meeting me here at eleven for a drink and to run through some stuff. It shouldn’t take long.”
Diana wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Aidan Leach? You still use that guy?”
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