25

Sean knew the instant his mother poured tea for him that she was distracted. She intimately knew the tastes of each of the cubs from her den. Like Sarah, Sean hated tea in general and loved coffee, especially the Kopi Luwak he brought home every time he traveled to Indonesia. He only drank tea when he had to, to be polite. I guess this is one of those times, he thought.

“Okay, Mom, what gives? Why the song and dance? Do you want me to represent the family at another fund-raiser? If so, all you have to do is ask.”

Ava got up swiftly from the kitchen table and moved to the stove to stir the oatmeal. He could hear it bubbling. “No,” she said, back turned to him. “That’s not it. But it is important.”

“So . . . ,” he prompted.

She poured a large helping of Irish oatmeal into one of her heirloom bowls. The brown crystal sugar and small pitcher of buttermilk were already on the table. Her hands trembled as she carried the bowl to the table and placed it in front of him.

Now alarmed, he asked, “Mom, are you all right? You’re not sick? Dad’s not sick?”

She lowered herself into the chair next to him and touched his hand. “No, I’m not sick. Your father is fine. He’s golfing and catching up with Wendell Neal at the Eller College of Management at the U of Arizona. He won’t be back until sometime tomorrow or the next day. You know your father. Semiretired of his own volition, but still moving at a faster clip than most 20-year-olds.”

“Then why the rush meeting?”

His mother straightened to a regal height in the kitchen chair. “I needed to talk to you . . . alone.”

So this is it, he thought. She’s going to hammer me about stepping into politics. Tell me it could go south and it could hurt the Worthington family name. Same concern she had about Will, now transferred to me.

He tried to stop the onslaught. “If it’s about me running for governor—”

“No, it’s not,” she countered, lifting her chin. “For once in your life, Sean, stop trying to smooth over situations that might come up. I need you to listen—and eat your breakfast.”

It was her “listen to me, I’m your mother” tone. He knew better than to argue. “Okay, Mom, I’m eating.” Reluctantly he poured a dab of buttermilk on his oatmeal and took a small bite. No reprieve here.

She interlaced her fingers and rested them on the tabletop, almost as if she were praying. “I need to tell you a story—a story that started almost 50 years ago, when your father and I were at Harvard.” Her sea-green eyes seemed to look back over the decades. “It was only a few weeks into my freshman year that I met Bill. He was so handsome, so sure of himself. He knew his path in life, while I was only beginning to figure mine out.”

Where on earth is she going with this? Sean wondered. Is this the “I’m concerned because you haven’t found your life partner yet” talk?

Ava smiled at him. “Most of all, Bill Worthington, a sophomore, paid attention to me. It didn’t take long to figure out that he too came from a long line of wealth and privilege. And if the rumors that abounded at Harvard were even halfway true about what his trust fund would be at age 21, it far exceeded what my parents and their parents and grandparents had achieved. When I mentioned I’d met a Worthington, my mother seemed quite excited.” She waved a hand. “I didn’t marry your father for his money, though. I admired him—his drive, his competitive nature, what he was already accomplishing at Harvard to make his mark on the world. When he invited me to dinner the spring of my freshman year, I was all aflutter—”

“Okay, I get it,” Sean interjected. “Enough said.”

“Anyway, your father graduated the year before I did. He jumped right into Worthington Shares work, so I didn’t see him much my senior year.” Her voice quivered. “I was very lonely. If it wasn’t for Thomas . . .”

“Yours and Dad’s friend—Thomas Rich?”

“Yes. We were like the Three Musketeers, doing things together for three of our Harvard years. It’s amazing, though, how close we were as friends, especially since Bill and Thomas were so different.”

Okay, he’d play along for a while, since this conversation was important to his mother. Better, it distracted her from noticing he wasn’t eating her oatmeal. “How so?”

Her eyes flickered, and she exited from the past. “Bill was a blazing star, gathering people along his trajectory who believed in him—who he was—and what he might accomplish. Thomas was more on the unruly side.” She laughed. “Unpredictable. Stubborn enough to want to go the opposite way his family wanted him to go. Determined to make his own way in life, not coast along on his parents’ wealth and status.”

Like Jon, Sean thought.

She looked at him. “He was restless—not sure what he wanted to do but knowing somehow that when he found his path, he would blaze a trail unlike anyone else’s. We had many discussions about it.”

Why were they talking now about Thomas, his parents’ old friend, the former president of the United States? A man Sean had never met in person and their family hadn’t connected with for years?

“I still miss our conversations,” she added wistfully. “Thomas had a way of drawing you in, making you feel like you were the only one in the room. With Bill, I sometimes felt like one of the stars orbiting his constellation.”

Sean suddenly felt cold. Are Mom and Dad on the rocks? After all these years?

Sarah was running flat-out. “Late to bed and early to rise” had been her mantra even more since her boss had told her she was in line for attorney general. She was determined to nail the American Frontier criminal negligence case before moving on, and her time frame for doing so was closing.

With stakes so high that the president of the United States was making a deal with Jason Carson, she knew that whoever stepped into her job would be paid off, if they could be bribed in some fashion. If not, one of two things would happen. That person or their family would be threatened, or false information that looked like truth would be manufactured and could ruin that person’s reputation, even if the information was later corrected.

She narrowed her eyes. They’d decided to remove her or distract her by trying bribery. She could just hear the unknown person saying, “Offer her a promotion and see if she’ll take it. No, change that. Insist she take it and don’t give her any other path to walk down.”

Sarah really didn’t have a choice, she realized. John Barnhill, her boss, had just announced the president’s intent and then waved her out of his office. Barnhill wasn’t the kind of man you argued with, if you wanted a job anywhere in New York City or Washington. You simply said, “Yes, sir” and “How high do you want me to jump, sir?”

But what if she could find the missing pieces of the puzzle before her move to AG? Sarah hated to leave any stone unturned in her investigation. Somewhere the answer was hiding under one of those stones.

She frowned. All she knew was that she would not be swayed from her purpose of finding the truth, no matter who or what had to be hooked and squirm on the fishing line in the process.

It was like the worms her brothers had hooked for her when they were fishing at Chautauqua. For a long time she didn’t have the heart to watch the worms wriggle on the hook, so her brothers did the dirty deed for their squeamish sister. However, after she’d finally hooked a few, it wasn’t so bad. She kept imagining the plump fish they’d catch and fry for dinner.

Now her career had become hooking the worms, watching them wriggle on the hook, and seeing what catch the bait brought in.