Blessing in Disguise (17 page)

Things that had hardly seemed worth commenting on at the time suddenly clicked into place. The way Nancy, when talking to Win, would bring her hand to rest against his shoulder. How she always seemed to laugh loudest when it was Win telling a joke. And that dinner party when she’d made such a point of telling Grace not to dress up, and then had greeted them at the door in an amber silk sarong that perfectly matched her eyes, her strawberry-blond hair arranged in a topknot from which ringlets spilled down around her elegant long neck.

But it wasn’t just Nancy. It had to have been Win, too. ...

Grace was jerked from her reverie by the sudden flurry of a chicken as it rose, squawking, into the air while being pursued by a red-wigged clown. She took a deep breath, picturing a balloon being filled with calm, sweet air. She willed herself to remain perfectly civil—lighthearted, even.

“Poor Chris ... He’d probably be happier with a mom who stayed home and baked cookies than one who’s swinging on a trapeze,” she said with a laugh.

“You were wonderful up there,” Win told her. “Reminds me of those gymnastic meets you used to compete in back at Wellesley. You always made it look so easy.”

“What I remember is a lot of twisted ankles and pulled muscles.”

“Don’t tell me you’re not enjoying this,” he said with a laugh. “I know you—you’re not happy unless you’re on the edge.”

But she didn’t want to talk about the old days with Win ... or what would or wouldn’t make her happy.

She glanced at her watch. “Look, Win, I’m in sort of a rush. I was going to throw something on; then Chris and I are meeting Lila.
Is
there something you needed to talk to me about?”

“Actually, there is.” He motioned toward the pair of seats he and Chris had vacated. “Can we sit down? It’ll only take a minute. It’s about your mother.”

“Mother?”

Grace abruptly sank down into the nearest seat, watching as a yellow plastic hoop that had escaped from one of the animal trainers rolled to a stop against the barrier in front of her. An author she recognized as Roger Young, Cadogan’s best-selling techno-thriller writer, darted after the hoop and hooked it deftly with one finger. She remembered Jack telling her how imperiously demanding Young was, and how everyone at Cadogan—with the exception of Ben, his editor—hated dealing with him.

“I talked to her last week.” Win’s voice was soft. “Grace, she’s really upset about this book. I’ve never heard her so ... Well, it was the first time I’ve known her to let her guard down. Has she spoken to you about it?”

“Not exactly.” Grace tried to remember what
had
been said the last time she’d spoken with her mother. “She told me about the drapes she was having the drawing room measured for ... and—oh, yes—something about the hospital. Some new piece of radiology equipment for the children’s wing at Hilldale she was all excited about.”

“Nothing about the book?”

“That was the whole reason I
called
—to tell her what I was doing, and why—but she just cut me off. Said it’d be nice if Daddy’s own
daughter
would keep in mind that people read a book and they believe any sort of nonsense. And in case I needed to be reminded, bad taste was simply bad taste, whether it was in writing or otherwise.”

“I see.” Win looked a bit awkward—embarrassed, even. “Well, I’m afraid it may be more serious than she has let on to you. She asked for my advice ... my
legal
advice. Grace, if you go ahead with this, your mother means to apply for an injunction to stop publication.”

Grace felt suddenly disoriented. What was Win saying? He knew what had really happened with Daddy and Ned Emory. She’d
told
him, years ago, when they were first married. Could it be that Win had never believed her in the first place ... and that Mother, over the years, had somehow convinced herself that the accident never took place?

“She
can’t.”
Grace shot up from her seat.

“This is the United States, Grace.” He took hold of her wrist and drew her back down, his fingers warm and oddly comforting. “Anyone can sue anyone for anything ... and in this day and age, they generally do.”

“Oh, God, I should have known.” She pulled her knees up, slippered heels balanced on the edge of the chair.

“Frankly, I’m a little surprised you didn’t consider your mother’s feelings when you undertook this book.” His words, though brutally direct, were softened by the gentleness of his tone.

“Never mind what I’ve written, she’s never really forgiven me for who I
am.
The one thing I ever did
right
in her eyes was to marry you, and look how it turned out.”

When they were getting divorced, her mother had been relentless.
Win loves you,
she’d reasoned.
He’s assured me it was never serious with this woman.
Finally, Mother berating her, actually
scolding
her, as if she were some two-year-old throwing a tantrum. And Grace at last
had
lost her temper, shouting, saying maybe
she
ought to marry Win, if she thought he was so wonderful.

“I still don’t think she was so wrong about us,” Win said, his smile carrying more than a trace of wistfulness.

“You’re on her side, I suppose.” She searched his face for confirmation. “Win, this is crazy. You
know
I’m telling the truth.”

“I know what you
believe
you saw.” Win’s slate-blue eyes were clear and maddeningly guileless.

“In other words, I imagined the whole thing,” she said flatly.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Win sighed, and suddenly she
felt
nine years old again. “Grace, I didn’t come here to argue with you. Honestly.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, hugging herself to stop the shiver she could feel spiraling up from her tailbone.

“Do? Nothing. I gave her the name of another attorney, of course.”

“Why?”

Now he was looking surprised, and pained. “I’d say it’s pretty obvious, wouldn’t you?”

“Win, if you agreed to represent her, isn’t there a good chance you could head her off at the pass, so to speak?” Grace felt her heartbeat slowing as she grappled her way toward a solution. “As far as she’s concerned,
you
can do no wrong. You could convince her that a red light means go.”

Win shook his head. “I don’t want to see her hurt. I don’t want to see either of you hurt by this.”

If you cared so much about my feelings, wouldn’t you have thought twice before jumping into bed with Nancy?
Not just any woman, but
Nancy.
Her closest friend, to whom she’d once confided, at a party when she’d had a bit too much to drink, that she wasn’t wearing any panties under her dress. Win liked it when she did that, Grace had whispered. It made him hot, thinking of her that way.

Had Nancy been wearing panties that night? Grace wondered.

And for Win ... was it just the sex, or had he actually loved Nancy?

Oh, Win ...

Winston Conover Bishop. She’d met him at a Kappa Alpha mixer when they were both freshmen, she at Wellseley, he at Harvard. Somehow, she hadn’t been all that surprised when she learned he’d grown up in Macon, just over the mountain from Blessing—his was a name you’d expect to stumble across on a tombstone in a Civil War-era graveyard.

They’d had everything in common—they both loved Faulkner, loathed Nixon, and reveled in anything that involved the outdoors. Coincidentally, both their mothers had been Chi Delt sisters at George Washington University. It was almost as if they shared the same family tree, as well as all the same traditions.

She thought of Christmases after they were married, how every December they would drive up to Brewster, to a tree farm where they would comb the aisles of spruces and firs and pines planted in rows like com, searching for the one perfect tree. And the parties, that silly Santa Claus tie she’d given Win that he actually wore; the annual caroling excursion through their building, followed by Win’s famous eggnog spiked with Amaretto. And Christmas Eve, when they would bundle their sleepy son in his snowsuit for midnight mass at St. Patrick’s, kneeling beside Win in that glorious space with the choir’s music soaring about them, the weight of their baby son warm against her chest. ...

Stop this,
she commanded herself. What was the point of dredging up the past?

“Look, I don’t want this blown out of proportion any more than Mother does,” Grace said, pulling herself back into the present. “It’s just that she and I don’t exactly agree on what to do about it.”

“Come on, Grace. What you’re doing may be perfectly ethical as journalism ... but the fallout here won’t be happening on some island out in the middle of the Pacific.” He fixed her with that disconcerting gaze of his. “What I need to know, before I’ll agree even to
consider
getting involved, is if you can honestly say to me this has nothing to do with your wanting to get back at your mother.”

“For
what?
Do the two of you think I’m holding some kind of grudge against her? Win, it’s nothing like that with Mother and me. We’re just not ... We don’t see eye to eye on most things, that’s all. But she’s still my mother. I would never intentionally hurt her.”

“She might need some convincing of that.”

Grace could feel tears coming on. “You
are
on her side!” she cried, swiping at her nose with the heel of her palm.

“Grace, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.” Win was offering her his handkerchief, but she shook her head violently, pushing his hand away.

She blinked, and saw a too-thin, concave-chested boy threading his way toward them through a thicket of chairs. From a distance, she might have been able to fool herself into believing he was someone else’s son—the way he walked so carefully on the balls of his feet, as if he were afraid of making too much of an impact; the way he kept his head lowered so that his silky brown hair covered most of his face. Her heart caught.

“Chris!” she called out.

He ground to a halt a few feet short of her, his gaze flicking from her to Win, giving his normally closed face an odd alertness. He half-lifted his arm in a limp wave. “Hey, sorry if I kept you guys waiting.”

“C’mere, buddy.” Win rose and stepped forward. He looped an arm about Chris’s shoulders, pulling him so close that Chris seemed to fold in on himself. Chris beamed up at him, and Grace felt her heart constrict with envy. Win grinned at him and said, “I hear you and your mom are going shopping.”

Chris’s smile faded. He looked down at his feet and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Too bad. I was hoping you and I could catch a quick bite, then maybe an early movie.”

Chris looked at Grace with mute appeal, and she couldn’t help feeling manipulated, though it may not have been intentional. Now, once again, it had come down to a genteel tug-of-war between Win and her, with Chris in the middle.

“Mom ...” Chris started to say.

“Hey, no problemo, some other time.” Win stepped in quickly to rescue Grace from playing the heavy. “We still on for the weekend?”

“Sure, Dad.”

“Better be. I got a tennis court all lined up for us.” He swung an invisible racket. “Ready to slaughter your old man?”

Chris looked up, once again smiling at his father with an openness and acceptance that made her ache with jealous longing.

Where’s my big guy?
Win used to call out, returning home from work. And there would be five-year-old Chris hurtling at him like a small missile, smashing into him and wrapping both arms about Win’s knees. After Win was assigned to the Pan Am bankruptcy and his hours became interminable, Chris would wait up for the sound of Win’s key in the lock. Even now, it sometimes seemed as if Chris were lying in wait, holding an ear cocked for the snick of a door that wasn’t going to open, the sound of a footfall that was passing through another doorway half a city away.

It wasn’t Win’s fault that Chris worshipped him. And Win was reasonable at least. She knew him well enough to predict that there wouldn’t be a battle over her plans to spend Christmas in the Berkshires with Jack and Hannah.

“You’ll call me?” she said to Win.

Win nodded. “As soon as I’ve spoken to your mother.”

Grace felt herself tense. “What are you going to tell her?”

He paused, then said, “That, as her lawyer, I’d advise her to try and work this out with you before taking any kind of action.”

“Win?” she said softly as he was turning to go. “Thanks.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” His eyes were soft, full of regret ... and something else. Yearning? She wondered briefly if his becoming involved in this thing with her mother would really be such a good idea after all.

Win was halfway toward the exit when she turned to her son. “Go on,” she said, placing a hand between Chris’s jutting shoulder blades and giving him a little push. “You know how Lila and I get, once we start yakking—you’d probably be bored stiff. Just tell your dad not to keep you
too
late.”

She watched Chris run to catch up with his father, and Win delightedly sling an arm about their son’s shoulders. Suddenly she was swept with an aching nostalgia for the days when they’d been a family, complete and untouched by all that had happened.

She was surprised now to find a spark glowing in her chest where a moment ago there had been nothing but ashes, its heat pushing her to run, run fast, in any direction that would take her far away from Win.

In the Juniors Department at Saks, as she and Lila made their way through a maze of acid-washed jeans and oversized sweatshirts and rhinestone-studded denim jackets, Grace thought,
It won’t make any difference what I get Hannah. She’ll hate it, and she’ll hate me for trying to win her over.

What do you get a sixteen-year-old Lizzie Borden for Hanukkah when you don’t even
celebrate
Hanukkah? A set of Ginsu knives? A chain saw? A one-way ticket to Botswana?

“What do you think ... the green or the blue?” Lila held up the same blouse in two colors.

“Honestly?” Grace asked.

“Hey, do I look like the kind of person who wants to be lied to? With the exception, of course, of guys who are terminally terrified of commitment but have to pretend they want to get married so they can sleep with me. If he’s cute enough, I’d believe it if he told me the Pope was Jewish. So?”