11

The helicopter lifted from the Sikorsky field in Bridgeport as the sun was setting in the west. She and Andrews sat side by side in the narrow cabin, each looking through a different window. He had made sure that she had the southern view looking down toward the Manhattan skyline, now a contrast of crimson sunlight and deepening shadows. Lights were coming on in the windows, giving the gritty streets an aura of fantasy that left her speechless.

“Incredible,” Bill said. Her only answer was a nod and a smile.

They passed the eastern end of the George Washington Bridge and broke out over the Hudson River, putting all of Manhattan into a panorama. She could see the shadow of her helicopter against the buildings until it was well out over the water, and then the Statue of Liberty came into view. The New Jersey waterfront passed beneath them, then an industrial band of smokestacks and refinery towers. Seconds later the harbor was behind them and they were passing over clusters of suburbs in the process of turning on their lights. Ahead, the sun was touching the tops of mountains in Pennsylvania.

They flew over open country, a picturesque landscape of forests, fields, and pastures beginning to show their fall colors, and then over horse country with tidy paddocks marked out by white fences. Gradually the rotor noise changed and they began a turning descent.

“We’re home,” Andrews said, and pointed across to a hilltop mansion surrounded by neatly defined fields.

“It’s beautiful,” Jane said, although she really wanted to shout, “Wow!” The estate got bigger and bigger as the chopper lowered.

They landed softly on a paved square. She noticed the wind sock hanging limp in the stillness and saw the house a few hundred yards away. Even at that distance it looked huge, a white-sided two-story structure that sprawled in several directions under a variety of roof shapes and angles. It seemed the perfect setting for a country squire, a role that seemed completely at odds with the hard-charging executive running away from his past.

Andrews introduced the estate manager, who climbed down from a Land Rover that would have looked more at home on the Serengeti. He was a hands-on type, middle-aged, and well suited to the jeans and sweater he wore. He referred to them as “Mr. Andrews” and “Ms. Warren.” William Andrews called him Burt.

The house had a country-farm look that suited its location perfectly. Many of the surrounding estates, built with instant Wall Street fortunes, fancied themselves English manors or Rhine castles and looked ridiculously out of place. Andrews had built with white clapboard, open porches, and trellises to support colorful flowers. The chimneys—there were four of them—were whitewashed stone. The pathways were gravel. Instead of dressing up for maximum attention, the house dressed down so as not to distract from the land. It promised comfort rather than luxury.

The interior, Jane saw as soon as she stepped through the foyer, delivered on the promise. Soft chairs clustered around woven rugs encouraged conversation and intimacy. The living-room fireplace was huge, suggesting a great outpouring of warmth. Kitchen counters were broad, hung with copper pots and pans to support genuine cooking and baking. She fell in love with it instantly.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “So comfortable and friendly.”

“Kay did most of this with a couple of architects and God knows how many decorators,” Andrews commented idly.

“But you do like it?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, but in a tone that made his answer inconsequential. He apparently didn’t waste much effort on the decor of his surroundings.

Andrews introduced the housekeeper, Agnes, a businesslike woman with a tall, straight physique. “She’s Burt’s better half, and she keeps both Burt and the house running.” She was solicitous of Jane and promised to have dinner on the table in just a few minutes. “I hope you like duck,” she said, turning back to her stove.

“Where are the kids?” he asked.

Agnes hesitated. “In their rooms. I think they’re planning on eating upstairs.”

William’s jaw tightened. “No, they’ll be eating with us.” He started for the stairs.

“Bill,” Jane called after him, and went to the bottom step, where he had paused. “Meeting me is probably very awkward for them. Maybe they should pick the time and place.”

“Don’t be silly! They’re dying to meet you. They probably don’t know that we’ve arrived.”

She looked after him as he ran up the stairs, wondering how his children could have missed the arrival of a helicopter. In truth, she was the one feeling awkward. The thought of making conversation with two unknown teenagers throughout dinner made her ill.

As she predicted, the dinner went badly. Cassie and Craig presented themselves with all the propriety and dignity that boarding schools can instill. But their demeanor was bored and their responses surly.

“Delicious, isn’t it?” Jane said at her first taste of the dinner, giving them an opportunity to comment on something of little importance.

“It’s a duck,” Craig deadpanned.

She tried Cassie. “What lovely pearls,” she complimented, looking at the string that hung around the young woman’s neck.

“They’re fake,” Cassie said. And then she added for her father’s benefit that “all the kids at school can tell they’re not real.”

William tried to ride to the rescue. “How’s the baseball team shaping up?” he asked his son.

“I don’t play baseball,” Craig answered in a bored tone.

Andrews grimaced. “I thought you were hoping to play shortstop?”

Craig tried to pile his string beans like a cord of wood. “That was last year,” he mumbled.

Craig and Cassie went at each other when the dessert was served. Cassie demanded a calorie count before she would even taste the custard. “You know I’m trying to lose weight,” she scolded Agnes. Craig commented that she’d have to try harder because she had the figure of a pear. Cassie responded with the charge that Craig was still bald below the belt, and the family bonding went downhill from there.

After the children left the table, Andrews sat staring into his coffee. Jane stayed at the table, directly across from him but trying desperately to make herself invisible. Agnes removed the dishes without making a sound. The silence was deafening.

“That wasn’t the meeting that I had in mind,” he finally said without looking up.

“They’re … at a tough age,” she answered, trying to assure him that he wasn’t entirely to blame for their behavior. “I have nieces and nephews who—”

“They need a mother,” he interrupted.

Not me, buddy boy, Jane thought. But she said, “They’ve suffered a terrible shock.”

She assented when he asked if she would like to take a walk out to the barn to see the horses. Anything would have been an improvement over the grim mood inside the house. “They’re equestrian mounts,” he said as they walked across an open pasture. “Kay loved the animals, and she was very involved in competitive riding.”

“When did you get into it?” she asked, not remembering anything in her research that would put William Andrews in the saddle.

“Me? I’m not into horses. I’m a city kid.” He laughed. “Horses were something you bet on when I was growing up.” But then he went on to explain that Kay had had grooms and pasturing arrangements and stud deals. He had kept everything in place, counting on the integrity of Kay’s agents and simply paying the bills. “I go riding once in a while,” he admitted. “I figure an hour in the saddle costs me about a million dollars.”

Jane had not been prepared for the beauty of the horses, or the effect they had on her. They went to her immediately and nuzzled her hand to get the sugar that William had provided. They seemed to look directly into her eyes as if taking her measure. And they apparently decided that she was no threat.

“Would you like to go riding in the morning? We ride out to the Delaware River. Burt drives out ahead so that we have breakfast waiting.”

“I don’t ride,” she said more definitively than she intended.

“Not at all?”

“Oh, I’ve been on horses. But just old cart horses that hardly lifted their feet. Nothing as spirited as these.”

“We’re in no hurry,” he assured her. “If you want, Burt can set up breakfast at the corner of the property and we can take all morning getting there.”

She tipped her head toward the animals that were licking her hands in the hunt for more treats. “Won’t they mind? Won’t they know that I’m no horsewoman?”

“Jane, don’t be silly. They don’t even know that they’re horses. And I’ll keep you between me and Cassie so that if the mount tries to get frisky, we’ll be able to quiet him down.”

She weighed her alternatives. Refuse outright and she might break the budding relationship. Agree to ride a horse and she might break her neck. “Sure,” she said. “Maybe it’s something you remember, like riding a bicycle.”

It wasn’t. In the morning the horse kept shifting and turning as she tried to mount it. She made three false tries at the stirrup and then let Bill cup his hands to boost her aboard. Once she was up she sat as gingerly as if she were astride a bomb.

It didn’t help that Cassie and Craig kept exchanging jokes behind the back of their hands. She thought it was her attire—jeans, hiking boots, and a light sweater—topped by a helmet that tipped down over her eyes. But then she decided that it was her posture. She was slouched forward, ready to wrap her arms around the animal’s neck at the first sign of trouble.

Bill slid open the barn door. Craig nudged his horse out, guiding it easily. Cassie seemed only to flex her knees, and her horse stepped out as if it had a written set of instructions. Jane clicked her tongue and dug in her heels. Her horse ignored her completely. Andrews took the bridle and led her out along with his horse. Then he mounted.

“Under the big oak,” he said to his children.

“That’s all,” Craig pouted. “I can get there in two minutes. Then what am I supposed to do?”

“We’ll just walk over,” William answered. “Jane hasn’t been on a horse in years, and she isn’t up for a race.”

Jane laughed. “Sorry,” she told Craig. “I’m just hoping that this horse won’t bounce too much. Galloping, or bounding over fences, is out of the question.”

“My mother won ribbons,” Cassie said, ensuring that Jane knew exactly what they expected in a replacement.

“I may need them as bandages,” she answered. “Did she win anything I could use as a tourniquet?”

Cassie sneered. “Let’s go,” she said to her brother. They both jerked forward and spurred their mounts. They were at a gallop within two strides.

“We’ll just take our time,” Andrews said, noticing the death grip that she had on the reins.

“Lots of time. I have no plans for beating your kids to breakfast.”

She was amazed at how pleasant it was. They rode side by side, the horses perfectly content with the slow pace. Andrews struck a few cowboy poses, looking over his land with a sense of mastery, as if he could make the soil sprout. He pointed out trees and rock outcrop-pings that defined the borders of his land.

“You like this, don’t you?” she said, surprised to see his pastoral side.

“Now and then,” he answered. “It’s a nice break from business. But I sure as hell couldn’t do this every day.”

They chatted easily. He had no difficulty in recounting how Kay had found the land and fenced the pastures. He pointed out the corral where the training jumps were still in place. “She was out here every chance she got, usually with her riding friends. But she had a lot of constituencies that kept her traveling. There were yachting friends and partying friends, South American friends and European friends. She didn’t have as much time out here as she would have liked. But she trained most of the horses she rode.”

The children, he went on, loved to ride with her. “Of course, they weren’t into their hormones yet. They were still pleasant and polite. They loved it when she showed them how to take the low jumps. I think it would have helped if she had had more time with them. I’ve tried every now and then to get them into activities where I might be able to show them something. I’m a fair skier and a damn good sailor. But they’ve never been interested.”

Jane tried to be consoling. Their interests were bound to change. “They’ll meet friends who are into skiing, and then you’ll be the family hero. The first time some stud asks Cassie to go sailing, you’ll be the father she’s always adored.” He seemed to be in a better mood when they reached the campsite, where Agnes was cooking eggs.

They weren’t roughing it. There was a safari table with folding chairs, a brick-walled grill, a plastic jug of water, a Thermos of steaming coffee, plastic plates and tableware. The pickup truck that had carried all the gear out to the campsite, and would take everything back to the house, was parked discreetly behind a stand of trees.

Cassie and Craig had already finished their breakfast and were arguing about their race from the house. As soon as Jane and their father appeared, they pushed back from the table.

“About time,” Cassie said. “We’d have starved to death if we waited for you.”

“I’ll race you back,” Craig challenged.

“Sit down!” Andrews barked.

The children seemed stunned that someone should give them a direct order. “We’re finished,” Cassie snapped back.

“You’re not finished until I’m finished,” he said in a no-nonsense tone. “And I haven’t even started.”

“So we’re just supposed to sit here and watch you eat,” Craig complained.

William forced a smile. “No, we’re supposed to chat over breakfast. I have a whole weekend and I’d like for us to make some plans.” He held a chair for Jane and then settled in beside her. “Why don’t you start, Cassie? What would you like to do today?”

Defeated, the young lady slumped into the chair she had just abandoned. “Jesus …” she mumbled under her breath.

Jane found the next twenty minutes actually painful. William Andrews nearly contorted himself trying to nurture a bit of conversation with his children. Cassie and Craig contributed only mumbles and an occasional “that sucks” or “big deal” in response to a specific suggestion. There was a momentary flash of light in Craig’s eye when Jane suggested that they might try the whitewater rafting in the Delaware River. But Cassie squelched the idea with “The Delaware isn’t even a puddle compared with the Colorado. It dries up in the summer.”

“Well,” Jane persisted, “it’s a lot closer! And I’m new at this. It may be all the river I can handle.”

“Are you better at rafting than you are at riding?” Craig asked.

“No. I haven’t done either in a long time.”

“You’d probably drown,” he decided.

“I suppose,” Jane concluded, and went back to her eggs.

Craig slouched with his chin in his hands. Cassie drummed her fingers. Andrews ate in silence.

“We’re all riding back together,” he announced when the children finally bounded from the table and started for their horses.

Craig wailed in protest, “It will take forever.” Cassie just rolled her eyes. They went over to the fallen tree where all the horses were tethered.

“I’m sorry,” Andrews said to Jane without looking at her. “This wasn’t a very good idea.” Then he hastened to correct himself. “I don’t mean bringing you. I’m thrilled that you’re here. I mean trying to create a family moment. I guess I’m not used to dealing with people that I can’t fire.”

“I’m the problem,” she insisted. “Any woman you bring here is a threat to their memory of their mother. They don’t like to think of you with anyone but her.” She stopped there even though her analysis wasn’t nearly finished. She wanted to add that a few years in a public school might do wonders for their humility. They would be amazed to learn that not all their classmates owned horses and that some of them had never been rafting on the Colorado River. At some future moment, she might even suggest that he cut their allowances.

She did a better job of mounting this time and tried to sit with the casual demeanor of the children. She relaxed her grip on the reins and opened her legs a bit to keep from crushing her horse between her knees. Then she did her best imitation of Bill’s gaze at the far-off reaches of his spread. They moved off slowly, with Jane and Andrews side by side and the sulking children a short distance behind.

“Maybe you should let them ride ahead,” Jane said. “I hate to be the one slowing them down.”

He nodded. “In a minute. I’d like to hear at least one civil, polite word from either of them.”

Jane’s horse suddenly reared up. She had to lean forward and wrap an arm around its neck to keep from falling backwards. Then it bucked, bouncing her into the air so that her feet flew out of the stirrups. She landed hard on the saddle as the animal broke into a gallop. She was moving with frightening speed, struggling to stay on so the thundering hooves wouldn’t slaughter her.