Richard continued walking until he reached Belgravia and his house that betrayed no signs of being home to London’s most notorious womanizer. The five-story, freehold house had been in the Arrington family for generations, but Richard didn’t let any of the neighbors know that. As far as they were concerned, he was a bachelor tenant who worked long hours and had few visitors. He liked it that way. I’m not Lord Dublinshire yet, Richard thought. Not bloody yet.
FORTY
Richard changed his habits after his encounter with Jenny. He got rid of his standing reservation at The Savoy, and he only dated on occasion. His run as London’s most elusive bachelor was fun, to be sure, but the last thing Richard wanted was to bring shame to his family. He had two years of memorable conquests to help keep his mind off Rebecca, and Richard knew he was lucky to escape the time period without any unwanted diseases or children.
“It’s time to be a grown up,” he told himself as he looked in the mirror while getting ready for work. He was twenty-six now and, as the Dean of Harvard Business School once told his class, the time for youthful indiscretions was over.
For the next several years, Richard poured himself into his work. Without nighttime escapades clouding his mind, Richard rose through the ranks at his firm and was made a full partner days before he turned thirty-one. He also developed a taste for politics and was watching the rise of the Labour Party with keen interest. His family, like most of the aristocracy, were Conservatives. But Richard’s time in America taught him the importance of seeing both sides, and Labour’s offer to lower taxes made the business-minded Richard even more interested in the party. He didn’t tell his father that, though, when he asked to start sitting in on parliament staff meetings. Richard merely claimed he wanted to start the learning process since the House of Lords seat would be his one day.
“I’m glad you’re finally coming around, my boy,” his father said after one of the meetings. “It’s important for people like us to take our positions seriously. We have a legacy to uphold. Speaking of,” he added, “I think it’s time you find a wife and produce an heir.”
Richard groaned. “Do you really have to phrase it like that, Dad? Can’t there be any mention of love or romance?”
“No. Not in our world, son.”
“Fine,” Richard replied. “I’ll start the search.”
FORTY-ONE
Three weeks later, Richard was an hour late to work. Tricia, his assistant, was beginning to worry. Then he started walking down the hall.
Tricia smelled Richard before she saw him. Even at the height of his dating life, he usually did a better job hiding his escapades from the night before.
Today is a definite exception, she thought.
Richard’s hair was tousled, his clothes disheveled, and a scruffy shadow emerged from his normally clean-shaven face. Richard walked past Tricia’s desk, and she was hit by a wave of cheap beer and cigarettes . . . a combination that she knew meant last night was particularly bad. Most evenings, Richard left his office in The City and either went home or made his way to Soho or Mayfair for a quiet dinner with friends.
But cheap beer and cigarettes? Tricia shook her head. Those things meant that Richard, Viscount Arrington spent the night before in a grungy dive bar that would have kicked him out if they knew he was the son of a peer.
Richard stopped in his doorway and mumbled a gruff “coffee” to Tricia before going into his office and shutting the door.
His assistant delivered Richard’s coffee a few minutes later. She placed the drink on the desk and stepped as far away as she could. He smells awful, Tricia thought, resisting the urge to cover her nose. “Dare I ask?” she ventured.
Richard raised his head up from the desk to sip the coffee. Still wearing yesterday’s suit, he grabbed a newspaper article and tossed it toward his assistant.
Tricia looked down at the paper in her hand, which she saw was the latest edition of the Harvard Business School alumni newsletter. Underneath a picture of a mother and baby was a caption:
Mrs. Rebecca Lewis-Bailey, Class of 1986, and her husband are pleased to announce the birth of their son, Jonathan Hubbard Bailey. Born October 2, 1994, in New York City. Jonathan joins older sister Sarah, age two.
“She gave him a son,” Richard said. “A fucking heir.”
Tricia knew better than to respond. Instead, she counted to five in her mind, placed the article back on Richard’s desk, and left the room.
So that’s who she is, Tricia thought as she sat down at her desk. She knew her boss had been in love once before – a deep, painful love from which he never fully recovered. She gathered that much over the years from bits and pieces of conversations. But never a name. Or when or how Richard knew the woman.
A business school classmate. An American, no less, Tricia thought. Or at least she lives in America now. The assistant shook her head. Poor Richard. The love of his life just gave birth to a son and heir . . . only it wasn’t his son or his heir.
FORTY-TWO
Upstate New York
2001
Rebecca spent her fourteenth wedding anniversary alone at her cabin in the Hudson River Valley. Both of her kids were at summer camp in Maine, and she and John were supposed to have a romantic weekend by themselves. But Dr. Bailey, now an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, changed his plans at the last minute and claimed he couldn’t get away from work. Rebecca didn’t know if it was true or not, but by that point in her marriage she wasn’t surprised.
What would have surprised me, she thought as she stepped outside onto the cabin’s porch, is if we actually had a romantic weekend. Here or anywhere. Rebecca bent her leg backwards and stretched out her quad, then switched and did the other leg. After warming up, she stepped off the porch and ran to the left, down a dirt path that was two feet wide.
The cabin was Rebecca’s happy place – where she went to escape the rigors of her job as a partner at Goldman Sachs. The ten-acre property in Wappingers Falls, New York reminded Rebecca of her small hometown in Georgia, only with less humidity, fewer mosquitos, and no gossip from nosy neighbors.
Rebecca’s other stress release was running. She was as thin, if not more so, than she had been in business school and stayed that way by running at least three times a week. When they bought the cabin, Rebecca hired contractors to cut a trail through the property. There was a five-mile loop that started at the house and wound through the trees, past the pond, and along the riverbank before making its way back to the cabin.
She did some of her best thinking while running, but today’s thoughts swirled in dark clouds about her troubled marriage. Everything looked perfect on paper, and things were good in the beginning. But when Rebecca refused to stop working and began making more money than John, the relationship turned sour. He started working longer hours and traveling to more and more medical conferences. Rebecca knew he was probably seeing other women, but she didn’t have any proof. And she didn’t want to find any. Not with two young kids at home.
“I haven’t succeeded because of John,” she said aloud as she ran. “I’ve succeeded in spite of him. We were never a good match to begin with.”
There was a part of Rebecca’s personality that ran deeper than anything cotillion and sweet tea could wash away. A spirit in her blood that spoke of moccasins rather than heels, beads rather than pearls, and red skin rather than white. Rebecca’s mother called herself ‘Black Irish’, but the truth was she was part Creek. And Rebecca was part Creek. The part of her that struggled and fought and yearned to be free.
John Bailey, on the other hand, was as English as English could be – with one set of grandparents immigrating after the First World War and the other after the Second. A piece of bitter irony, Rebecca knew, since the man she rejected and the man she married had so much in common. Ethnically, anyway, she thought.
John had wanted a pretty trophy wife who would bear him even prettier trophy children, and he gambled that he could convert Miss Lewis from a
Harvard-educated career woman into a proper Southern housewife. “A smart wife means smart kids,” he told his friends at his bachelor party. “Besides, she’s from Georgia. All good Southern girls eventually turn into their mothers.”
FORTY-THREE
By the end of the summer, John and Rebecca were still on speaking terms but lived more like roommates than spouses. The detached approach to their marriage lifted some of the tension in their home, and everyone – including their kids – seemed happier.
If Rebecca had her way, her family would live in Rye or White Plains or some other sleepy suburb of the city. Not for her sake, of course. Rebecca hated to commute. But for her children’s sake. She wanted them to have the kind of upbringing she did: slow, calm, and as protected as possible. The exact opposite of what they have here, she thought while she sipped her morning coffee from the balcony of their Manhattan condo. She and John bought the three-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side when their daughter Sarah was born. It was nice, to be sure, and provided the family with everything they needed. But it’s still the city, Rebecca thought as a police siren screamed by on the street below. Central Park is nice, but a private yard is better. The Subway is great, but learning to ride a bike in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood is a slice of Heaven. The investment banker sighed. Living in Manhattan was another trade-off she made in life – this one in order to please her husband. Others, like working full time or traveling for business, were decisions she made for herself. But the fact that they were her choice didn’t lessen the anguish or guilt she felt on days like today, when the nanny had whisked her kids off to school while Rebecca was still in the shower. She felt the pain especially hard today since she was headed down to DC for meetings for the rest of the week.
Mommy guilt, Rebecca thought. My kids’ nanny and teachers know them better than I do. And certainly spend more time with them. Rebecca blinked her eyes to hold back tears. She didn’t have time to redo her makeup before she left for the airport. You chose this, Becky. Anyone can change a diaper or drive carpool – very few people can do what you do at work. You didn’t put yourself through everything at HBS just to sit home and knit.
The last thought hit Rebecca hard, and she knew she would be fixing her mascara in the taxi en route to LaGuardia. Not because she hadn’t enjoyed her classes or her time at the world-famous business school. But because of another trade-off she made; another ‘what if’ that haunted her on days like this. Richard. Her first love. My only true love, if we’re being honest, she thought. I loved him too much to let him throw it all away for me, Rebecca reminded herself. Besides, that’s long done now.
FORTY-FOUR
A mid-September morning dawned bright and beautiful, and Richard admired the weather outside his office window. As the day continued, his thoughts turned to leaving the office early and getting in a game of tennis with Geoff. Richard opened a new email draft to propose the idea to his friend, and a news alert popped up on his screen: Plane Crashes Into NYC World Trade Center.
Holy shit, Richard thought, quickly turning on the small TV in his office. BBC One was beginning coverage of the crash, and Richard turned up the volume. Tricia walked into the room to join him.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. They’re saying it was an accident, but I don’t see how you accidentally fly into a skyscraper.”
Twenty minutes later, Richard and his assistant watched live as a second plane flew into the other World Trade Center tower.
“Oh my God,” Tricia whispered, covering her mouth with her hand.
Richard’s thoughts jumped straight to Rebecca. “She has to get out of there.”
He looked up the office number for Goldman Sachs and called it, but no one answered. After several tries, Richard opened his desk drawer and started pulling out pieces of paper, throwing them over his shoulder when they weren’t what he was looking for.
“Where the bloody hell is my business school thing?”
“What thing?”
“You know, the alumni one with all of the names and contact information.”
Tricia left the room for a minute and returned with a small white booklet.
“Here you go, sir. It was in the file cabinet.”
Richard snatched the item from Tricia’s hands and flipped through the pages until he found the directory.
“Here she is,” he said, picking up his phone. “Rebecca Lewis-Bailey.”
Richard dialed her cell phone number. No answer. He tried again. Still no answer. In the frantic minutes and hours that followed, even as his own office was evacuated in an abundance of caution, Richard continued to try to reach Rebecca. He didn’t care what it looked like, didn’t care that they hadn’t spoken in years, and didn’t even care what Rebecca or her husband would think. He had to reach her. Had to know that she was okay. That she was alive.
****
In New York City, Rebecca was walking north on Broadway – part of a sea of dust-covered zombies exiting the war zone that was Manhattan’s financial district. She saw that people were trying to call her from all over the country and the world, but Rebecca wasn’t interested in answering. She was focused on making one call: to her children’s school.
Rebecca’s feet were beginning to hurt, and it was only then that she realized she left the Goldman Sachs building wearing her four-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. She kept a pair of ballet flats at her office and wore those when walking to lunch or other errands, but everything had happened so fast that she barely remembered to grab her cell phone and house keys before running for her life.
The first two Duane Reade stores that she passed were abandoned by frightened workers. It wasn’t until the corner of Broadway and Grand, over a mile north from her office, that Rebecca gave up and ducked into a drugstore. She grabbed the first pair of cheap, plastic flip-flops that she saw. The bright purple, polka-dotted shoes were hideous, but they felt amazing on her blistered feet. Placing a $50 bill on the abandoned checkout counter, Rebecca and her $4.99 shoes continued their march north toward her children.
FORTY-FIVE
It was 3:00am in London before Richard finally reached Rebecca. He had stopped trying to call, and instead stayed awake watching news coverage and keeping an eye on the black screen of his phone – praying for it to ring.
He picked up as soon as the small, silver Nokia flashed her name.
“Rebecca??”
“I thought it might’ve been you,” she replied in a tired voice. “Twenty-eight missed calls from the same number in London.”
“I had to know you were okay.”
“I’m alive,” Rebecca said. “‘Okay’ is going to take some more time.”
Worry replaced the relief that Richard had been feeling. “Are you injured?” he asked.
“No, no, I’m fine. Well, I have nasty blisters on my feet from walking so far. But all things considered . . . ”
Her voice trailed off and Richard could hear muffled sobs on the other end of the line.
“I’ll let you go,” he said. “Thank you for calling me back. I really just needed to know you made it out.”
“Is it . . . is it alright if we stay on the phone a little longer? The kids are asleep and John is at the hospital. He probably won’t come home for days. I’d just . . . I mean, it’s nice to have someone to talk to. To fill the quiet.”
“Of course,” Richard replied. “Of course, darling.”
Rebecca heard the term of endearment but didn’t object. She was alive when thousands of others weren’t. If the day had taught her anything, it was to stop pushing people away.
“How are your kids?” Richard asked, trying to find a good subject to discuss.
“They’re shaken up. Sarah is nine and Jonathan is only seven, so it’s hard to explain to them what’s going on. They’ve never been alive during wartime . . . they don’t understand what it is to have an enemy like this.”
“What happened, Becks?”
She let out a long
, trembling breath. Richard wasn’t the first person to ask her to recount her harrowing experience – her parents, brothers, and friends all had as well. But there was a comfort in Richard’s voice. Comfort in his concern for her, and a trust built many years earlier that let her know she would be safe with him.
“My office is at 85 Broad. A five-minute walk from the Towers. We’re downwind, though, so all of the smoke and debris was floating by in the sky outside my window.
“We didn’t know what it was, at first. Maybe a bomb. Maybe an accidental plane crash. Nobody knew anything.” She paused. “Then the second plane hit.”
Richard wanted to respond, wanted to reach through the phone and wrap his arms around her in a hug. But instead, he stayed silent and listened.
“We all evacuated at that point. The trains had stopped running, so I walked. I left my office in such a hurry that I forgot to grab the flats I always keep underneath my desk. I walked in my heels, and after that I walked barefoot until I found a Duane Reed that was open where I could buy a pair of plastic flip-flops. Then I walked some more. No cabs anywhere to be found.
“I finally got ahold of the school about thirty minutes into the walk. The kids were fine . . . they were all being held in their classrooms until a parent or nanny came to get them.” She scoffed in disbelief remembering the day. “It took me two and a half hours to walk from my office to Trinity School. It would normally take about thirty minutes by car. Two and a half hours in a dusty, sweaty business suit and $5 flip-flops from the drug store. Plus another fifteen minutes home after that.”
Every Star in the Sky Page 10
