Before I Say Good-Bye (5 page)

The smile vanished, though, as Sam realized that in a way he was like that car. He had sidestepped a number of obstacles to get to this point in his life, and now a major hurdle was being thrown in his path, threatening to block it completely. For the first time since he was a teenager, he found himself suddenly vulnerable for prosecution.

He was a fifty-year-old, large-boned man of average height, with weathered skin and thinning hair, and an independent nature. He had never bothered to give much thought to his appearance. What made him attractive to women was his air of absolute self-confidence, along with the cynical intelligence reflected
in his slate-gray eyes. Some people respected him. Many more were afraid of him. A very few liked him. For all of them, Sam felt amused contempt.

The phone rang, followed by a buzz on the intercom from his secretary. “Mr. Lang,” she announced.

Sam grimaced. Lang Enterprises was the third factor in the Vandermeer Tower venture. His feelings about Peter Lang ranged from envy, over the fact that he was the product of family wealth, to grudging admiration of his seeming genius at optioning apparently worthless properties that turned out to be real estate gold mines.

He crossed to his desk and picked up the receiver: “Yeah, Peter? Thought you’d be on the golf course.”

Peter was in fact calling from his father’s waterfront estate in Southampton, which he had inherited. “I am, as a matter of fact. Just wanted to make sure the meeting is still on.”

“It is,” Sam told him, and replaced the receiver without saying good-bye.

seven

N
ELL’S NEWSPAPER COLUMN,
called “All Around the Town,” ran three times a week in the
New York Journal.
It contained a potpourri of comments on what was going on in New York City, its subjects ranging from the arts to politics, and from celebrity events to human-interest features. She had started writing it two years ago, when Mac retired and she had declined Bob
Gorman’s request that she stay on to run the New York congressional office.

Mike Stuart, the publisher of the
Journal
and a longtime friend to both Nell and Mac, had been the one to suggest the column.

“With all the letters you’ve written to the op-ed page, you’ve virtually been working for us for free, Nell,” he had told her. “You’re a damn good writer, and smart too. Why not have a try at getting paid for your opinions for a change?”

This column is another thing I’ll have to give up when I run for office, Nell thought as she walked into the study.

Another thing?
What am I thinking about? she asked herself. After Adam left that morning, she had gone through her usual routine with anger-fueled energy. In less than half an hour she cleared the table, tidied the kitchen and made the bed. She remembered that Adam had undressed in the guest room last night. A quick check there revealed that he had left his navy jacket and his briefcase on the bed.

He was too busy slamming out of here this morning to remember them, Nell thought. He probably was stopping at a job site; he just had on that light, zip-up jacket. Well, if he needs his jacket and briefcase, let him come back for them, or even better, send someone else to get them. I’m not playing errand girl for him today. She picked up the jacket and hung it in the closet, and she carried the briefcase to his desk in the small third bedroom that had become their study.

But an hour later, sitting at her desk, showered and dressed in her “uniform”—as she referred to her jeans, oversized shirt and sneakers—it was impossible to
ignore the fact that she had done nothing to make this situation easier. Hadn’t she as much as told Adam not to come home tonight?

Suppose he takes me up on that? she asked herself, but then refused to consider the possibility. We may be having a serious problem at the moment, but it has nothing to do with the way we feel about each other.

He must be at the office by now, she decided. I’ll call him. She reached for the phone, then quickly pulled back. No, I won’t call. I gave in to him two years ago when he asked me not to run for Mac’s seat, and I’ve regretted it every day since. If I equivocate now, he will see it as a complete surrender—and there’s just no reason why I should have to give it up. There are plenty of women in Congress now—women who have husbands and children they care about. Besides, it’s not fair: I’d never ask Adam to give up his career as an architect, or to forego any part of it.

Nell resolutely began to go through the notes she had put together for the column she was going to write this morning, but then, unable to concentrate, she put them down.

Her thoughts went back to last night.

When Adam slipped into bed, he had fallen asleep almost immediately. Hearing his steady breathing, she had moved closer to him, and in his sleep he had thrown his arm around her and murmured her name.

Nell thought back to the first time she and Adam met—it was at a cocktail party, and her immediate impression of him was that he was the most attractive man she had ever met. It was his smile—that slow, sweet smile. They’d left the party together and gone out to dinner. He had told her that he was going out of
town on business for a couple of days but would call her when he got back. Two weeks had passed before that call came, and for Nell they felt like the longest two weeks of her life.

Just then the phone rang. Adam, she thought as she grabbed the receiver.

It was her grandfather. “Nell, I just saw the paper! I hope to God that hotshot Adam hasn’t got anything to worry about with this investigation into Walters and Arsdale. He was there during the time they are looking into, so if there was any hanky-panky going on, he must have known about it. He needs to come clean with us; I don’t want him hurting your chances of winning this election.”

Nell took a deep breath before she responded. She loved her grandfather dearly, but there were times when he made her want to scream. “Mac, Adam left Walters and Arsdale precisely because he didn’t like some of the things he saw going on there, so you don’t have anything to worry about on that front. And by the way, didn’t I tell you yesterday to please lay off that ‘hotshot Adam’ stuff and all that goes with it?”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

Mac ignored her comment. “See you tonight. And speaking of which, I called Gert to wish her a happy birthday, and I’ve got to tell you, I think the woman is nuts. She told me she is spending the day at some damn channeling event. Fortunately, though, she hadn’t forgotten about tonight, and she says she is looking forward to the dinner. She also remarked on how much she was looking forward to seeing your husband; said she hadn’t seen him in a long time. For
some reason, she seems to think the sun rises and sets on him.”

“Yes, I know she does.”

“She asked me if she could bring along a couple of those mediums she hangs out with, but I told her to forget it.”

“But Mac, it
is
her birthday,” Nell protested.

“That may be, but at my age I don’t want any of those nuts studying me—even from a distance—to see if my aura is changing, or worse yet, fading away. I’ve got to go. See you tonight, Nell.”

Nell replaced the receiver in its cradle and leaned back in her chair. She agreed with her grandfather that Gert was a true eccentric, but she wasn’t “nuts,” as he had said. After Nell’s parents died, it was Gert who had provided her with a great deal of support, becoming a kind of combination surrogate mother and grandmother. And, Nell reminded herself, it was precisely because of her belief in the paranormal that Gert was able to understand what I meant when I said that I felt that Mom and Dad had been there with me, both on the day they died and when I was caught in the riptide in Hawaii. Gert understands because she gets those feelings too.

Of course, for Gert they are more than “feelings,” Nell thought with a smile. She is actively involved in psychic research and has been for a long time. No, it wasn’t Gert’s mind that Nell was concerned about, but her physical health, because her great-aunt had not been well lately. But she’s made it to her seventy-fifth birthday with most of her faculties intact, and the least Adam should do is put in an appearance tonight, Nell reflected. His refusal will disappoint her terribly.

That final realization erased any thought Nell might have had of calling Adam to try to put things right between them. It would happen eventually, she was confident of that. But she wasn’t going to be the one to take the initiative—at least not right now.

eight

D
AN
M
INOR HAD INHERITED
his father’s height and rangy shoulders, but not his face. The sharply sophisticated and handsome features of Preston Minor had been softened and warmed by their genetic blending with the gentle beauty of Kathryn Quinn.

Preston’s ice-blue eyes were darker and warmer in his son’s face. The mouth and jawline were rounder and more relaxed. The Quinn genes gave Dan the full head of somewhat unruly sandy hair.

A colleague had observed that even in khakis, sneakers and a T-shirt, Dan Minor looked like a doctor. It was an accurate appraisal. Dan had a way of greeting people with genuine interest in his expression—interest that was followed by a second searching glance, as though he were checking to make sure everything was all right with them. Perhaps it was fated that Dan would grow up to be a doctor; certainly it was what he always had wanted. In fact, Dan had not only always known that he would be a doctor, he also had always known that he wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. It was a choice based on very personal reasons, and only a handful of people understood why he had made that decision.

Raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland, by his maternal grandparents, as a young boy he had learned to treat his occasional and infrequent visits from his father with increasing lack of interest, and eventually lack of interest grew into contempt. He hadn’t laid eyes on his mother since he was six, although a snapshot of her—smiling, hair windblown, her arms wrapped around him—was always kept in a hidden compartment in his wallet. The photo, taken on his second birthday, was his only tangible memory of her.

Dan had graduated from Johns Hopkins and then done his residency at St. Gregory’s Hospital in Manhattan, so when they asked him to come back and head up their new burn unit, he accepted. By nature somewhat restless at heart, and with the sobering knowledge that a new millennium had begun, he decided it was time for a change in his life. He had established a solid reputation at a Washington hospital as a surgeon, specializing in burn victims. By then he was thirty-six, and his elderly grandparents were moving to a retirement community in Florida. And while he was as devoted to them as ever, he no longer felt the need to be in such close proximity. As for his father, nothing had improved between them. About the same time his grandparents moved to Florida, his father remarried. But Dan had skipped his father’s fourth wedding, just as he had skipped his third.

The new assignment in Manhattan began on March 1. Dan wound up his private practice and spent a few days in New York looking for a place to live. In February he bought a condo in the SoHo district of lower Manhattan and shipped to it those few items he wanted to keep from his minimally furnished Washington apartment. Fortunately, he also had his choice of the handsome furnishings
from his grandparents’ home, so he was able to put together a space with a bit of flair.

Sociable by nature, Dan enjoyed the farewell dinners and gatherings his friends threw for him, including the ones he had with the three or four women he had dated over the years. One of his friends presented him with a handsome new wallet, and when he switched his license and credit cards and money to it, he hesitated, then deliberately removed the old picture and slipped it into the family album that his grandparents were taking to Florida. He knew it was time to put it and all it represented behind him. An hour later he changed his mind and retrieved it.

Then, feeling both nostalgic and unburdened, he saw his grandparents to the Florida-bound train, got in his Jeep and drove north. It was a four-hour drive from the railroad station in D.C. to his new home. Arriving at his place in Manhattan, he dropped his suitcases, made several more trips to unload the car, then parked it in the nearby garage. Anxious to see more of the new neighborhood, he set out to look for a place to have dinner. One of the things he had liked best about the SoHo area was that it was alive with restaurants. He found one he hadn’t tried on his previous forays, bought a paper and settled at a table near the window.

Over a drink he began to study the front page, but then raised his eyes and began to watch the people passing in the street. With a conscious effort he focused again on the article he had been reading. One of his millennium resolutions had been to try to stop the random search for what he knew would never be found. There were just too many places to look, and the chances of ever finding her were so very dim.

But even as he reminded himself of that resolution, a persistent voice whispered inside his head, reminding him that one of the reasons he had moved to New York was his hope of finding her. It was the last place she was spotted.

Hours later, as he lay in bed listening to the faint sounds of the traffic on the street below, Dan decided to give it one last shot. If by the end of June he had found nothing, then he would give up his search.

Adjusting to a new position and a new environment took up much of his time. Then on June 9th he was delayed with an emergency operation at the hospital and had to wait until the next day to make what he swore would be one of his final attempts to find his mother. This time his destination was the South Bronx, a still-desolate area of New York City, although somewhat improved from what it had been twenty years before. Without any real hope or expectations, he began asking the usual questions, showing the picture that he still carried with him.

And then it happened. A shabbily dressed woman who looked to be in her fifties, her face careworn, her eyes listless, suddenly smiled. “I think you’re looking for my pal Quinny,” she said.