Keepsake (16 page)

“It’s a lovely apartment. I like it very much, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to live in my mother’s ‘room of her own.’
As you suggested, it is helping me in my quest for understanding,” she added with a wry smile.

“Excellent.” He returned to his chair and resumed his seat.

She noticed his hands. Was it her imagination, or were they trembling? How different he seemed from the dapper, energetic
Armand de Sevigny who had joined his wife on the Power Perspectives dais just minutes before her assassination. She felt a
sudden and unexpected wave of sympathy for him. The loss of his wife had drained him of his own vitality.

“The only thing that continues to be difficult for me is that I still feel haunted by my mother’s death,” she said slowly.
“It’s hanging over everybody’s head, I guess. I don’t know whom to talk to, whom to trust.”

“I don’t blame you. My own trust is given only to a select few. I’ve been betrayed too often.” His voice was not very steady,
and April wanted to reach out and offer him her comfort. “My advice to you is to be extremely careful about whom you give
yours to.”

“Good advice. I don’t want to end up the way she did.”

“How sad to have to think of that. Yet you must. And trust is something you feel in your heart. It has no logical component.”
He paused. “If you choose to trust me, I will do my utmost to be worthy. If you don’t, I will certainly
understand. You are in an unenviable position, and to trust too easily could be dangerous for you.”

She knew he was right. Trust never came easily for her. If she had been more able to conquer her fear that everyone whom she
allowed to become important in her life would, sooner or later, betray or abandon her, her personal life would have been considerably
happier.

“Perhaps, my dear, I have asked too much of you. Perhaps we all have. You are a young and vital woman. You should not be burdened
by such worries.”

“Strangely enough, I like the job. It’s challenging. I’m not sure what I think of Rina’s theories, but I am drawn to the idea
that it’s possible to change one’s bad habits, focus upon one’s strengths and talents, and turn one’s life around. It’s such
a comfortable fantasy—the thought that one might be able to remake oneself and start over with people.”

“But a fantasy nevertheless,” he said gently.

She looked at him. “You’re a cynic.”

“No, a realist. My wife was an idealist. Her entire philosophy is set upon an overly optimistic base.”

Interesting, April thought. Everybody seemed to have a different view of Rina. She was a bitch, she was an angel, she was
a pragmatist, she was an idealist. No wonder she wouldn’t come into focus. She had been something different to everyone.

Which reminded her… “Charlie asked me this morning if I knew anything about a manuscript that my mother was writing at the
time of her death. Apparently her editor telephoned, asking about it.”

“I thought her latest self-help book was already in production at her publisher.”

“This wasn’t one of the Power Perspectives series. It
was an autobiography. Was she writing such a book, as far as you know?”

Armand pressed his palms together and rested his chin upon them. “I suppose it’s possible. Sabrina was always writing something—books,
speeches, articles. The computer was one of her favorite toys.”

“I hate computers,” April confessed. “Sometimes I feel as if I’m the only one on the planet who doesn’t know how to operate
one.”

“I am similarly ignorant. My son is scathing about my refusal to deal with electronic robotry, but I’m too old to change.
Sabrina was far more modern in her thinking than I.”

“So there was no autobiography among her things after her death?”

“No. Although, now that you mention it, she did occasionally mention that she would like to write her memoirs someday. I had
assumed she intended to wait until her public life was somewhat less active. I don’t believe she’d started work on the project,
but I could be wrong.”

Charlie had seemed convinced that the manuscript existed. Was this another sign of distance between husband and wife? What
had their relationship really been like? How much time had her mother actually spent at the West Side apartment? Were Rina
and Armand estranged?

They chatted politely for several more minutes, then Armand rose, kissed her gallantly on both cheeks, and bid her adieu.

As he left, his shoulders seemed stooped, as if he bore a great burden on his back.

April had wanted to hug him, but she’d held back, afraid of offending his dignity.

And besides, it was confusing to feel such a pull of affection and sympathy for the man who had stolen away her mother.

Quietly, Kate replaced the receiver of the extension phone in her bedroom. She curled up on the bed. She was coming to visit.
Mrs. Tulane. Daisy. She’d called to tell Daddy what flight she’d be arriving on. And there wasn’t anything Kate could do to
stop it because Daddy thought he knew everything and he never listened to her.

How could he be dating a woman as phony as Daisy Tulane? It was disgusting. He must be desperate. “I hate her,” Kate muttered.

Maybe she could figure out a way to get rid of her somehow.

And then she’d find somebody better for him. Somebody younger. Somebody suitable. Somebody real. Somebody who would take his
mind off the lady politician who was always smiling and cooing and pretending to be something she wasn’t.

Kate reached under her bed and pulled out Gran’s laptop
computer. She turned it on and called up a file and started typing rapidly:

“I’ve found the perfect woman for my father. Her name is April, and some people think she might have killed Gran, but I know
she didn’t do it, even if Gran did abandon her when she was my age. I’m probably the only person around here who knows what
it feels like to be abandoned by your mother. It makes you angry and it makes you sad, but it doesn’t make you a murderer.

“She’s really cool and I think she’s pretty. She has dark red hair that curls and looks heavy. (Mine just hangs and it won’t
stay the way I comb it and even the barrettes slide out.) She’s got big eyes and a pretty smile and I think Daddy would be
crazy not to like her. Of course I don’t know if she’d like him (personally I think he’s a geek) but Gran told me that he’s
actually handsome and that women think he’s hot.

“You wouldn’t know it, though, from the way he acts. He’s started seeing Daisy Tulane and she’s a total loser. Worse, in fact.
She’s—”

Kate stopped, thought for a moment, then closed the file. She’d been planning to write more, but she had a better idea.

She went downstairs. Her father was in the library hunched over his computer. “Hey, Dad.”

He jumped and she realized she’d startled him. Uh-oh. She hoped he wasn’t going to yell at her. Seemed like all they’d been
doing lately was yelling at each other.

He turned his head. “Hey,” he said. He glanced at his watch. “Kinda late, isn’t it? Tomorrow’s a school day. Did you finish
your homework?”

“Yes.” She went over and leaned her hip against the side of his desk. His screen was full of numbers, as usual—some sort of
spreadsheet. He had some neat accounting
software—Kate had seen it advertised in her computing magazines.

“When’s your next math test?”

“I don’t know. Next week. I’ll ace it, as usual.”

“Don’t get too confident.”

“Why not?” Kate was the best student in the whole seventh grade in math, everybody knew that. She didn’t even have to study—math
just came naturally to her. English was harder, especially since they were doing all this stupid grammar this year. If they’d
just let her write, she’d be happy, but no, they had to waste all this time figuring out whether sentences contain adjectival
or adverbial clauses.

“Just because something comes easy to you doesn’t mean you should neglect it.”

“I don’t neglect it.” As usual, he didn’t even know how much time she spent on math… or anything else. Of course, it was just
as well that he didn’t know how much time she spent writing. “I’m doing my homework,” she’d say, then go into her room and
shut the door. The homework itself she polished off in an hour or so. The rest of the time she was spinning stories, sometimes
in her head, sometimes on a diskette.

“Dad?”

“Mmm?” He was looking at his screen again.

“You know April? The one they were saying murdered Gran?”

He turned his head. “That’s nonsense, Kate. Who was saying that?”

“I thought everybody was saying it.” Chill, Dad, she was thinking. “It’s not true, I know. But people say a lot of things
that aren’t true.”

He looked at her in silence for several seconds, then said, “Are your friends at school giving you a hard time about your
grandmother’s death? If so, I hope you’re not
letting it bother you. If there’s any unpleasantness I can come in and have a talk with the principal.”

Daddy to the rescue, she thought, unimpressed. It was a little late. A couple of kids had given her a hard time, yeah. So
she’d given
them
a hard time, and that had been the end of that. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody. “It’s not a problem.”

He looked relieved. “Good.”

If it was a problem, she thought sadly, he would really hate to be bothered by it. “Actually, it’s about April.”

“What about her?”

“I was wondering if we could, like, invite her over to dinner this weekend? I don’t think she knows anybody. And besides,
she’s family, sort of.”

Now she had his attention. “You want me to invite April Harrington to dinner?”

He said it as if it were the stupidest idea he’d ever heard. Kate felt her face begin to turn. But she raised her chin defiantly.

“Yes,” she said. “In fact, I want to invite her over on Saturday afternoon to do something with us first, and then to dinner.
I want to take her to the Museum. She told me she likes art.”

“Kate, you hardly know April Harrington. And I don’t know her at all.”

“Well, she can be my guest, not yours. But I think you’d like her, too. She’s pretty, Daddy. And I guess she isn’t married.”

His eyes narrowed, and Kate realized she’d made a mistake. She didn’t mean to blurt it out like that, but he made her nervous
when he looked at her with those cold eyes that seemed to see right through her. He made her forget that she was going to
be subtle and slip underneath his defenses and not let him know that she thought he and
April Harrington would be a perfect couple, and that maybe they’d fall in love and maybe even get married, and then she’d
have a mother again.

“Actually, Kate, my friend Daisy is coming this weekend. I know she’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

“She couldn’t care less about me.”

“What nonsense. She always asks about you.”

“Well, I don’t like her. And I don’t see why you have to invite her here all the time.”

“I invite her here because she’s the most important woman in my life right now. You’re old enough, I think, to understand
such things.”

Kate raised her eyebrows. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand.” She paused, looking right at him. “You’re not screwing
her, right? I mean, you can’t be.”

“You’re out of line, Kate,” he said in that clipped, controlled tone she hated.

“I don’t care! I hate Daisy Tulane and I hate you.”

Kate ran from the room, trying to reach the privacy of her bedroom before bursting into tears. She made it, but only just.

Great, just great, she thought when she was able to get control of herself again. She wasn’t being smart about this at all.
That was one of the reasons she hated Daisy—because Daisy was smart about how to handle Dad. She knew how to tease and jolly
him into a good mood; she knew how to twist him around her fingers. Daisy was one of those females who instinctively ran circles
around men. Which was pretty weird, when you stopped to think about it.

There were a couple of girls in her class like that—well not in Daisy’s league of course. A smart girl— and Kate knew she
was smart—ought to be able to learn something
about it, though. It really made her mad that she hadn’t succeeded in learning it!

Mom would have taught her, she knew.

She punched her pillow, hard.

Everything would have been so different if only Mom hadn’t died.

Christian cursed and saved the file he’d been trying to work on. His concentration was shot. He was worried about how to downsize.
At least his father seemed to have dropped his pigheadedness and come around to a realistic point of view. But now that he’d
admitted the problem, he seemed to expect Christian to be able to solve it, which wasn’t at all assured…

The last thing he could afford to waste his time on was how to deal with a hormonal adolescent. And yet suddenly that was
the only thing on his mind.

He rose and poured himself a brandy from the crystal decanter on the sideboard in the corner. Sipping it slowly, he brooded
about his daughter.

God knows he wasn’t a very good father. Miranda had taken care of most of the heavy-duty parenting stuff.

It had been a helluva lot easier a few years ago when Kate had still loved toys and enjoyed playing rough-house games. He
had many happy memories of rolling around on the living room floor with her, throwing her up into the air, bouncing her on
his knees, listening to her delighted squeals and her laughter. Pleasing her had been easy then. She’d loved it, and so had
he.

He’d noticed both with his own child and with the children of various couples that he and Miranda knew that the fathers seemed
to take care of the activities—the fun stuff like toys and games and excursions to children’s museums
and amusement parks, while the mothers handled the serious stuff like doctor’s appointments and elementary school parent-teacher
conferences. His wife used to complain about having all the responsibility and none of the fun.

And it had been fun. In those days, Kate had loved him unconditionally. She was the only person ever in his life who gave
him her entire heart and asked for nothing in return. And so, of course, he’d given her everything. With her he’d been able
to laugh, to play, to be affectionate and emotional. She was his child, and she had complete faith and trust in him. She never
judged him and she could not reject him.