The Jewels of Tessa Kent (59 page)

“You know I do.” That oblique remark was as far as she’d ventured, Sam reflected, in discussing her condition, since that first night when she’d told him. She’d never gone for that second opinion and he’d never mentioned
it again, he thought, rubbing the bone he’d broken in his hand that was still not completely healed. Mutely they’d reached an understanding that they had time, plenty of time, for whatever Tessa wanted to talk about, whenever she felt like it. Or if not, not. It was up to her.

All Sam knew was that he was on board for the whole trip, he’d be there for her, unequivocally, every step of the way. He loved her more extravagantly each day and they both knew that. All he could do was to hide, as well as he could, the bleak, blank intuition of a future without her that drilled him through and through by day and by night.

The loud crack of Hamilton Scott’s hammer brought the buzz below to an abrupt halt. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced in his rich, extravagance-inspiring voice. “Welcome to the Scott and Scott Building, and to our historic sale of magnificent jewelry from the collection of Miss Tessa Kent.”

As Tessa and Maggie entered the Café Carlyle, to the sound of Bobby Short singing “A Foggy Day in London Town,” a burst of cheering and applause broke out as Tessa was recognized. The news of the results of the auction had traveled all over the world the instant it finished, and in Manhattan, radio, television, and word of mouth had spread the story in less time than it had taken them to drive back from S & S to the hotel.

One hundred sixty-two million dollars had been attained, more than three times as much as the largest single-owner sale of all time, that of the Duchess of Windsor in 1987. Not a single jewel had gone for less than five or six times its high estimate, and every record ever made for every catagory of gem had been broken.

Tessa waved and smiled to the startled, congratulatory crowd as the headwaiter led them to the secluded table she’d reserved earlier in the day. The champagne she’d ordered was poured immediately and she relaxed
against the banquette, sighing with relief and trying not to hum along.

“Let’s not try that auction caper again,” Tessa said, laughing, after the set was finished, Bobby Short had left the room, and conversation resumed all around them, creating an intimate place in which they could talk.

“Not unless you’ve been holding out on me and that was only some of what you’ve got stashed away.”

“The only things left are the pearls and my ring, and a few cameos I keep upstairs. I don’t care if I never see another jewel again. Enough! It feels as good as cleaning out your closets and getting rid of everything you haven’t worn in two years.”

“I’ve heard that theory,” Maggie said. “But I wear everything I have until it falls apart and if I threw out one of Barney’s four shirts, he’d have a fit. But you know, there actually is one of them he never wears.”

“Don’t touch it, take it from me. He needs it. I know more about men than you ever will, little girl.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, but never mind the gory details,” Maggie replied. “Why do I have the feeling that I’m here for a reason known only to you? Why am I suspicious because Sam insisted that he was too sleepy to join us? He looked deeply thirsty to me, and wide awake.”

“He developed a bad case of auction fever.” Tessa laughed. “I’ve never heard a man get so excited, it was ten times worse than when he watched the Super Bowl. What he needs is to take a tranquilizer and go to bed.”

“Was he surprised that you had so many jewels?”

“He’d seen the catalog, just flipped through it once or twice to admire the Penn photos and whistle at the pictures of me, but he never bothered to read any of the descriptions, so I don’t think it sank in until tonight. Then, when the action began and he actually saw and heard an emerald necklace being sold in a few brisk minutes for eleven million dollars … he was knocked for a loop. Even I was stunned.”

That was the only time during the auction that she’d
had to fight back tears, Tessa thought. The memory of that magical night in Èze with Luke, the perfume of the lavender, the warm wind of Provence, that marvelous white Dior dress she’d worn for the first time … oh, had it really happened a million years ago and was it possible that there’d never be another night like that again for her? Never, ever? No, never. Never. Nevermore. But then would she ever be twenty again or on her honeymoon, even if she were guaranteed to live to be a hundred? What’s more, there wasn’t a woman in the room who didn’t have some similiar memory, she’d told herself, and she’d stopped the silly tears before they spilled from her eyes.

“So was I, and I’m used to auctions,” Maggie admitted. “I’d worked myself into a state where all the publicity we did was a self-sustaining fantasy, publicity for the sake of publicity, but tonight the fantasy turned into a huge, very real sum of money. Those people went crazy! They just had to have a piece of you at any price. You or your legend; I guess they’re indivisible. It’s hard to wrap my mind around it.”

“I bet Liz and Hamilton aren’t having any trouble getting their minds around their ten percent commission.”

“It’s an easier sum to swallow. Almost bite-size. Now, Tessa, tell me why I’m here and you’re not upstairs with Sam.”

“You don’t miss much.”

“I try not to.”

“Actually, darling, I’d like to offer you a job.”

“What?” Maggie exclaimed, almost choking on the Sprite she’d ordered instead of champagne. “I’ve just finished the biggest piece of work in my life and you want to offer me a job? What exquisite timing. Ma, don’t you think I need a vacation? Don’t you think I deserve one?”

“ ‘Ma’?”

“Yes, I’ve decided that suits you. Only when we’re alone, of course.”

“I love it. I feel like a Ma. Now, Maggie, pay attention.
The new foundation will start out funded by the hammer price of everything sold tonight and the profits on a half-million catalogs. That’s a lot of money. I started to make my will today and I left most of Luke’s money to the foundation as well.”

And more than enough to Maggie, Tessa thought, so that she and her children would never be dependent on any man, no matter how much she loved him; but she’d find that out later, when she couldn’t protest. And her Tiffany cultured pearls and earrings, which Maggie would actually wear; as well as the glorious three-strand necklace of perfectly matched natural pearls, which she’d probably only wear when she’d grown into them; and the heart-shaped diamond and any amount of odds and ends, including the farmhouse outside of Èze-Village she’d never been able to bring herself to sell. What’s more, Maggie would even rediscover a large Irish family, all the great aunts and uncles and cousins Agnes Horvath had fled from, for each of them had been tracked down and left bequests. There was time enough for her to know all about that. Later. Much, much later.

“Holy Mother!”

“Exactly. There will be, eventually, a great deal more … several billion dollars for the foundation to work with, with additional funds coming in every year. This foundation needs someone I trust to run it. I don’t want to have to count on strangers. I’d like you to consider becoming the head of the foundation.”

“Billions! My God, Tessa, I don’t know
anything
about running a billion-dollar foundation!”

“Of course you don’t. But you’re a quick study, you’re smart, you’re enormously well organized, Maggie mine, and accustomed to working with all sorts of people, and getting them to work with each other. That’s the uniquely important thing. For the rest, you’d be able to hire professionals to teach you how a foundation works and pay consulting fees to the best oncologists in the world to guide you in the right directions.
It boils down to the basic question of whether you’d rather be doing that or something else.”

“But what about the baby, Ma, your grandchild-to-be?”

“That’s the chief thing on my mind. Were you planning to go back to S and S after the baby was born?”

“No, I don’t want a full-time job and they expect time-and-a-half minimum from their wage slaves. I want to stay home for two or three years and find something I can do part-time. Barney’s doing amazingly well—there’re ten bikers born every minute—we can easily afford a housekeeper and I can take care of the baby and do other work besides.”

“You could run the foundation from home,” Tessa said quietly.

“How could I possibly? A foundation that size?”

“It’s not like running a billion-dollar business. Of course someone could turn it into a full-time job, with a large office at a fancy address, a top-heavy board of bigname directors and staff all over the place. That would be a serious temptation to almost anybody I could hire, and who would fire that person? Foundations tend to dig in and spend a lot of money on themselves. I’m wary of the kind of person who’d want to run it just for the prestige it would necessarily bring.”

“No staff?” Maggie asked with a sniff.

“Of course staff. As much staff as you need. And very good salaries, for you and for them. And an office, to put the staff in, to have a place to meet with the professionals you hire and consult with. But you don’t actually have to
go
to an office to learn and think and ask questions and gradually arrive at the point of making decisions, these days, do you? As far as the money is concerned, it would be administered by the same people who administer Luke’s estate for me now, so you wouldn’t have to worry about that. And it’s not as if you’d have to snap right into it. That money wouldn’t go anywhere until you felt sure of what you were doing. You’d take little steps and then bigger steps, you probably
wouldn’t be ready to take giant steps until the baby was in kindergarten—”

“Would I be pregnant again by then?”

“How would I know?” Tessa asked, astonished.

“You know I’m going to run the foundation, I thought you might know that too.”

“Oh, Maggie!
Really? Truly?
You’ll really do it? You can’t have any idea how marvelously happy that makes me. Oh, darling!”

“How could I resist? The more you talked about it, the more I realized I’d resent having anybody else do it. It’s your foundation, Ma, the Tessa Kent Foundation, and who else has a better right to make sure it’s run on a shipshape basis than your daughter?”

“That’s the other thing …”

“Tessa? What other thing! Do you have more plans for me that I don’t know about?”

“Not plans exactly … a question. Now, when I go back to my lawyer to finish drawing my will, do you want me to say that the foundation is going to be run by my daughter—or my sister?”

“Oh, hell, hell,
hell
. That’s a big one and I never thought of it. Hell!” Maggie sat absolutely still for minutes, chewing her lip. Finally, she started to speak.

“You can’t set up such a huge foundation without making news. It’s literally impossible to keep the details out of the press. If you say your ‘daughter,’ it becomes a major news story and it will never die. Even when the regular press is finished with it, the tabloids will be bringing it up for years … remember, they’re still convinced that Elvis lives. If you say your ‘sister,’ that’s just a truth that’s been around for a long time … every girl who went to school with me knows it, all your Hollywood friends, anyone who goes back to when I was born. It’s not news, it’s normal.”

“I want it to be your decision entirely,” Tessa said. “You’re the one who’ll have to live with it.”

“Oh, God, I don’t know what to say,” Maggie cried. “I want people to know I’m your daughter! But I desperately
don’t
want to spend the rest of my life having to explain—”

“—why I didn’t say so sooner.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want time to think about it? I’ll change my lawyer’s appointment. You can talk to Barney, mull it over …”

“Or talk to Polly …”

“Polly knows!” Tessa exclaimed.

“Oh, she knew first. She’s deep, is Polly.”

“Polly, Barney, Sam, you, and I … we all know,” Tessa said reflectively, “and nobody’s said anything to anyone.” And Mimi, she thought, Mimi could really keep a secret.

“You told Sam?”

“Of course. I couldn’t lie to him, too.”

“Well, outside of the five of us, when you get right down to it, there’s nobody else I care about so much that I feel a burning need to tell them. Since
we
all know, that’s enough for me. Tell the lawyer to write ‘sister’—oh, my God, Doctor Roberto!” Maggie clapped her hand over her mouth.

“He was convinced that I was too young to be your mother,” Tessa said with a wicked laugh. “If he ever reads about it, he’ll think I pretended to be your mother to get his full attention. He thought that anyway.”

“As if you needed to try. That tango … was that all it was?”

“Maggie! You know how I feel about Sam.”

“But it was in Brazil … people make exceptions in Brazil.”

“I don’t know where I ever got a daughter with a mind like yours.”

“Don’t forget my father, whatever his name was.”

“I don’t remember,” Tessa said with dignity.

“Neither do I.”

T
he first week in June 1994, not long before Maggie’s twenty-fourth birthday, her baby was born, a daughter she and Barney named Teresa Marguerite. They called her Daisy from the minute she was placed in Maggie’s arms.