A ruling passion : a novel (74 page)

"I'd be glad to. But I think your dad would like to do that."

"I'd ask him too. I just thought, you know, having two people read it, and maybe you'd think of things he wouldn't, like a woman might look at it in a different way; think of different things..."

Valerie nodded seriously. 'Tou're probably right. But this is pretty far in the future, isn't it?"

"A few years," Chad said, and added casually, "by then you'll probably be here a lot."

Valerie's eyebrows rose, and that was when Nick came through the

back door to join them. "Didn't you want anything to drink?" he asked Valerie.

"Oh, I forgot," Chad said. "Sorry. Would you like a drink? There's wine and iced tea and soft drinks and the other stuff—gin, bourbon, vodka, Scotch, campari—we've got like a whole tavern here."

"Iced tea," Valerie said. "It sounds wonderfiil."

"If you're too warm, we can go in," said Nick.

"No, I'm fine. All I need is some iced tea."

Chad went to the bar built on the terrace, against the brick wall of the house, and Valerie and Nick sat in the cushioned chairs. "Has Chad been telling you about the garden?"

"Yes. It's quite wonderfiil. I have a tiny one where I live, but this is magnificent."

"Where do you live?" Chad asked.

"In a coach house in Falls Church."

"A coach house? That's like a garage, right?"

'7ust about." She took the drink he handed her, and the three of them sat quietly at the round glass table. It was shaded by an arching red-maple tree, and as the sun moved lower in the sky a light breeze came up. Valerie felt warm and comfortable, and very happy. "It was built for horse-drawn coaches—the horses were in the stables—and there was an apartment upstairs, for servants. Now it's a two-story house, very tiny, but nice too."

"So do you live there alone?"

"I live with my mother."

Chad stared at her, and Valerie knew he was thinking she was a litde old for that sort of thing. "Is she sick or old or something?"

Valerie smiled. "No, she's fine. She had some trouble and lost her money, so she came to live with me."

"So what does she do?"

"Chad," said Nick.

"Sorry." Chad's face was red. "I didn't mean to be nosy."

"If s all right; I'd tell you if I didn't want to answer," Valerie said gendy. "My mother doesn't do much of anything. I think she might look for something pretty soon, though; she seems awftilly bored lately. About a month ago she started cleaning out file cabinets that go back years." She smiled to herself. "I told her a job in an art gallery would be less work and more ftin."

"What did she say?"

"She said I was probably right, but it's hard to go looking for a job when you've never done it."

"It must have been very hard," Nick said, looking at Valerie. "And even harder to make a success of a first job. Not everyone could do it."

"A second job," Valerie said with a faint smile. "I was fired from my first one." And then she remembered she had never told him that.

"Fired?" Chad asked. 'What did you do?"

"Forgot that I worked for someone else and didn't make all tlie rules. Could I have some more iced tea?"

Chad jumped up and refilled all three glasses. "Did you lose your money, too, like your mother?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Chad," Nick said again.

"I'm sorry/^ Chad said loudly.

'*Yes," Valerie said. "I lost all my money, and thafs why I'm living in a coach house and working for your dad. And I'll tell you something, Chad. I hated losing my money—I still hate it because I can't do most of the things I used to love doing and I lost my farm, where you saw me that day, remember?—but right now, with all the things I'm doing, and the job I've got, and the friends I've made, I'm having a wonderful time."

"Oh." He set her glass and Nick's before them. "So do you—"

"Now that's not fair," Valerie said lightly. "There's lots more I want to know about you. Tell me what you do besides garden and paint and play drums."

Chad launched into a description of his school, his friends, his weight lifting, the books he read, and his bicycling. "Dad lets me go all over Georgetown; I really know my way around. It'll be better when I drive, though."

"Why?"

"Oh, you know, it rains, sometimes it snows; it's a real pain sometimes. I really wish I could drive now. Dad's going to teach me."

"Doesn't the school do that?"

"Yeh, but they're stupid. They mostly do the simulator; you hardly get in a car at all. There's this one thing they do, though, that's not too shabby; my friend's brother did it—"

"Chad," Nick said suddenly, "what time are you supposed to be ready to go out?"

"Oh, no/' Chad groaned. "I forgot. Couldn't I call and say I can't come?"

"No, you know you can't. It's been almost two months since the last time, and you have to go. You should be in front of the house at— what time?"

"Six-thirty. It's not nearly that."

"It's six o'clock, and you have to get dressed."

"It only takes five minutes. Can't I at least finish this thing about driver's ed?"

Nick looked at his son's bright face, and thought about the past hour, when he had talked more openly with Valerie than, as far as Nick knew, he had ever talked to his mother. "Sure," he said. "Just don't drag it out."

Chad finished his story, but his enthusiasm was gone, and his face had lost its eagerness. "I guess I've gotta get dressed," he said reluctantly. "Or, wait, first I want to give Valerie a present. I mean," he said to her, "you might not be here when I get back. Well, you probably will, I won't be gone very long, but anyway I want to do this now, okay." Don't worry. Dad, it'll just take a minute." He went to a toolshed almost hidden behind a shrub, and took out a pruning shears. "You said you love roses and you wished you still had them."

"Yes," Valerie said. For some reason she felt like crying.

Chad knelt beside the group of rosebushes Valerie had admired earlier, and examined each flower, looking for the finest. Valerie and Nick looked at each other, and he covered her hand with his. "Thank you," he said very quiedy. "You talked to him as if he's an adult. He loved that. So did I."

"He's a lovely boy," Valerie replied sofdy. 'Tou must be so proud." Faindy, a sound caught her attention. "Is that a—?"

"Immensely proud," said Nick. He too had heard the doorbell, but it barely registered with him; he was thinking of Valerie's hand beneath his, he was breathing in her fragrance, he wanted to kiss her.

Elena also heard the doorbell, from the laundry room, and went to answer it. "Good evening, Mrs. Enderby," she said. "Chad is in the backyard."

"He's supposed to be waiting in front," Sybille said. She and Chad had agreed to that; she hated coming into this house, knowing Nick usually managed to be somewhere else when she arrived.

"You're ten minutes early," said Elena. "And they have a guest; Chad must have let the time get away from him."

"You mean he forgot." Sybille walked through the entry foyer to the kitchen and then to the breakfast room. At the back door she glanced through the window, and stopped short. On the terrace, dappled with sun and shade from the maple tree, Nick sat at the glass table, his back to her. And Valerie—^Valerie!—sat beside him.

Standing in the shadowed room, Sybille watched Nick remove his hand from Valerie's as Chad turned toward them from the rose bed. She saw Nick sitting close to Valerie, and she saw her son walk toward them and place in Valerie's hands five perfect ivory-colored roses. She saw Nick smile and Valerie lean forward and kiss Chad on the cheek, brushing her hand lightly over his hair. She saw Nick put his hand on Valerie's again, as Chad threw his arms around her and kissed her cheek.

Sybille stood in the shadows and watched the three of them together, and then she turned, shoving roughly past Elena. Almost running, she reached the front door, and then was outside, where her limousine waited. She sat in the back seat, her breathing raspy and shallow. And as the driver pulled into N Street, and drove out of Georgetown, deep inside Sybille, so deep she was not yet aware of it, something snapped.

Sitting in the living room, beside three file cabinets crammed into a corner, Rosemary caught the scent of the five perfect roses from across the room. When Valerie had returned home, very late, she had put them into one of her mother's Baccarat vases before going to bed. The next morning, they were the first thing Rosemar}^ talked about.

"They're very lovely," she said when Valerie came down to breakfast. "What time did you get in?"

"About three." Valerie skipped coffee; it was already too hot. Barefoot, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, she put ice cubes in a glass of orange juice and joined Rosemary in the living room. There was no air-conditioning in the coach house.

"You haven't told me anything about him," Rosemary said.

"I know." She paused. "Do vou remember Nick Fielding?"

"No. Who is he?"

"Someone I knew in college. I told you about him, and you met him when you and Daddy came to Stanford."

"I don't remember. That was fourteen years ago; how should I remember?"

Valerie smiled, a private smile. "It doesn't matter; I remembered."

"He's doing well if he lives in Georgetown," said Rosemar}^. She was sitting on a low stool next to the file cabinets, surrounded by stacks of paper, waiting for Valerie to tell her which she should keep and which to throw out. She had been doing it for almost a week, as if it were suddenly urgent that the files be organized. And it was urgent; Valerie knew that. It filled Rosemary's hours; it gave her something to

do that could be seen and measured. It came close to a job. "How wealthy is he?" Rosematy asked.

Standing beside her, Valerie dreamily leafed through some of the papers on an end table. "Very," she said. "He made it all himself; he started with nothing."

"How impressive. And not married, I assume."

"Divorced," Valerie said. "He has a wonderful twelve-year-old son he's brought up by himself. They're so close, such good friends, I love watching them and being with them, being part of the litde family they make when they're together."

'Tou're in love with him," said Rosemary.

Valerie's hands stilled on the stack of papers and she looked through the open window at the park across the street. "Sometimes," she said at last.

"What does that mean.>"

"I guess it means I'm just not sure. Every time I think about Nick I start to worry about tomorrow or next week or next month... how much different we'd be from our first time around. I enjoy being with him—I had the most wonderful time with him and Chad—but there's always that fear that I'll make a mistake, or he will, and we won't be able to deal with it. I get the feeling we're so... fragile. As if we ought to tiptoe and speak in whispers to keep from breaking apart."

"I don't understand that," Rosemary said. "If you love him and he loves you... Does he?"

"Yes. I think so. But he's being careful, too. He's been married once; I have, twice; I think we ought to go slow and maybe tiptoe a litde bit, don't you?" She smiled faintly. "I didn't use to do that, I know; I used to rush in, and figure I could take care of any problems that came up. I never used to be afraid of anything."

"You're not afraid; you have enormous courage. You know that, after what you did when Carlton's plane crashed."

"That was one time," Valerie said slowly, "one incredible time in my life when I was more than I ever thought I could be. I haven't seen much evidence that I could do anything like it again."

"But you've done so much since then! You work, you take care of me... Really, Valerie, you ought to believe in yourself You and Nick too. I should think you'd both have learned enough by now to be pretty sure of what you want, and to recognize it when it's in front of you, and then to go after it."

Valerie smiled. "It sounds so simple. Maybe, one of these days, we'll get past what we're afraid of—"

"But that's what I just said: you shouldn't be afraid of anything! The worst has already happened to you: you lost all your money After that, what could you be afraid of?"

A small laugh broke from Valerie. Bending down, she kissed Rosemary on the cheek. "Failure," she said quiedy "And being hurt. I guess I'm more afraid of that than anything else."

Rosemary hesitated. "So you want to love him. And have him love you."

Valerie sighed. "Yes," she said. She turned, wanting to change the subject, and sat in a chair beside her mother. She picked up a pile of papers. "Where did these come from?"

"The oak file cabinet."

"Carl's," Valerie said. "It was in his office at the farm. We probably ought to keep everything, at least for awhile. If anything ever turns up..." She picked up one pile and then another. "It looks as if he never threw anything away. These receipts go back ten years; I hadn't even met him then." She leafed through them. "Here's last year... repairs on the farm... heating bills for the Adirondacks house... maintenance on his plane... fuel ... all those trips we took up there, I didn't realize there were so many." She put the stack of papers down, her face pensive. Then she frowned. "That's odd."

'"What?" Rosemary asked.

"I thought I saw..." She leafed through the pile again, stopping halfway through. "Fuel bills from the Lake Placid airport for April, May, June, the spring before the crash, and then later that year, in October and November. That can't be right; we never went in those months." She went through them again. "April," she murmured. "May, June... Even if I'd forgotten one time, I wouldn't have forgotten all of them. We didn't take those trips."

"He probably went alone," Rosemary said.

"No; the only place he went alone was New York; he had a lot of business trips that year—" She looked at the papers in her hand, then at Rosemary. "My God, I can't have been that blind."

"You mean he lied when he told you he was going to New York?"

"He didn't lie. He said he was going to New York. And I assumed he meant New York City."

"But why would he go to Placid? That's no place to be alone. Oh." She looked at Valerie. "He wasn't alone."