Almost instantly the chardonnay was placed on the table before her. She picked up the glass and looked around the room as she sipped.
All of the diners were dressed in designer casual clothes. The Breakers was an expensive hotel, a retreat for the well-heeled. It was the Easter holiday week, and, nationwide, schools were closed. At breakfast in the dining room she had observed that families with children were usually accompanied by a nanny who skillfully removed a restless toddler so that the parents could enjoy the lavish buffet in peace.
The lunchtime crowd in the bar was composed almost totally of adults. In walking around she had noticed that the younger families gravitated to the restaurants by the pool, where the choice of casual fare was greater.
What would it have been like to vacation here every year from childhood? Claire wondered. Then she tried to brush away the memories of falling asleep each night in a half-empty theatre where her mother was working as an usher. That was before they met Robert Powell, of course. But by then Claire’s childhood was almost over.
As those thoughts went through her head, two couples, still in travel clothes, took the table next to hers. She heard one of the women sigh happily, “It’s so good to be back.”
I’ll pretend I’m coming back, she thought. I’ll pretend that every year I have the same oceanfront room and look forward to long walks on the beach before breakfast.
The waiter arrived with the chowder. “Really hot, the way you like it, Ms. Bonner,” he said.
The first day, she had asked for the chowder to be very hot and the crabs to be served as the second course. The waiter had also committed that request to memory.
The first sip of the chowder almost burned the roof of her mouth and she stirred the rest of it inside the soup bowl that was a scooped-out loaf of bread to cool it a bit. Then she reached for her glass and took a long sip of the chardonnay. As she had expected, it was crisp and dry, exactly as it had tasted for the last few days.
Outside an even stronger wind was churning the breaking waves into clouds of cascading foam.
Claire realized that she felt like one of those surges of water, trying to reach shore but at the mercy of the powerful wind. It was still her decision. She could always say no. She’d said no to returning to her stepfather’s house for years. And she passionately didn’t want to go now. No one could force her to go on a national cable television show and take part in reenacting the party and sleepover twenty years ago when the four of them, best friends, had celebrated their graduation from college.
But if she did take part in the show, the production company would give her fifty thousand dollars, and Rob would give her two hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Three hundred thousand dollars. It would mean that she could take a leave of absence from her job in Chicago’s youth and family services. The bout of pneumonia she had survived in January had come close to killing her, and she knew her body was still weak and tired. She had never accepted Powell’s offer of money. Not a single cent. She had torn up his letters and returned them to him. After what he did.
They wanted to call it the “Graduation Gala.” It had been a beautiful party, a wonderful party, Claire thought. Then Alison and Regina and Nina had stayed overnight. And sometime during that night, my mother had been murdered. Betsy Bonner Powell, beautiful, vivacious, generous, funny, beloved Betsy.
I thoroughly despised her, Claire thought quietly.
I absolutely hated my mother, and I loathed her beloved husband, even though he kept trying to send me money.
5
Regina Callari was sorry she had gone to the post office and picked up the registered letter from Laurie Moran, a producer at Fisher Blake Studios. Take part in a reality program that would reenact the night of the Graduation Gala! she thought, dismayed-and, frankly, shocked.
The letter upset her so much that she knew she had lost a sale. She had to fumble for the features of the house she was showing, and in the middle of the walk-through the prospective client said, abruptly, “I think I’ve seen enough; this is not the house I’m looking for.”
Then, after she got back to the office, she had to phone the owner, seventy-six-year-old Bridget Whiting, and tell her that she had been wrong. “I was sure we had a good prospect but it just didn’t happen,” she apologized.
Bridget’s disappointment was palpably evident in her voice. “I don’t know how long they’ll keep that apartment for me in the assisted-living home, and it’s exactly what I want. Oh dear! Regina, maybe I built up my hopes too much. It’s not your fault.”
But it is my fault, Regina thought, trying to keep raw anger out of her voice as she swore to Bridget that she was going to find her a buyer and fast, and then, knowing how difficult that would be in this market, said good-bye.
Her office, a one-room former garage, had once been part of a private residence on the main street in St. Augustine, Florida. The bleak housing market had improved, but not sufficiently for Regina to do more than eke out a living. Now she put her elbows on her desk and pressed her fingers to the sides of her forehead. Wisps of curly hair reminded her that her midnight-black hair was growing with its usual annoying rapidity. She knew she would have to make an appointment for a trim. The fact that the hairdresser always insisted on talking a blue streak was what had kept her from making the appointment-that, and the cost.
That silly fact made Regina annoyed at herself and her own always present impatience. So what, she told herself, if for twenty minutes Lena yak-yak-yakked away? She’s the only one who knows how to make this unruly mop look decent.
Regina’s dark brown eyes traveled to the picture on her desk. Zach, her nineteen-year-old son, smiled back at her from it. He was just completing his sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania, an education fully paid for by his father, her ex-husband. Zach had phoned last night. Hesitantly, he had asked if she would mind if he went backpacking through Europe and the Middle East this summer. He had planned to come home and get a job in St. Augustine, but jobs were hard to find there. It wouldn’t cost all that much, and his father would finance him.
“I’ll be back in time to spend ten days with you before the term starts, Mom,” he had assured her, his tone pleading.
Regina had told him that it was a wonderful opportunity and that he should jump at it. She hadn’t let the keen disappointment she felt sound in her voice. She missed Zach. She missed the sweet little boy who used to come bounding into the office from the school bus, eager to share every single moment of his day with her. She missed the tall, shy adolescent who would have dinner waiting if she was out late with a client.
Since the divorce, Earl had been skillfully carving out ways to separate her from Zach. It had begun when, at age ten, Zach went to sailing camp in Cape Cod for the summer. The camp was followed by the shared holidays when Earl and his new wife took Zach skiing in Switzerland or to the South of France.
She knew Zach loved her, but a small house and a tight budget could hardly compete with life with his wildly rich father. Now he’d be gone for most of the summer.
Slowly, Regina reached for the letter from Moran and reread it. “She’ll pay fifty thousand, and the mighty Robert Nicholas Powell will pay each of us two hundred fifty thousand,” she murmured aloud. “Mr. Benevolence himself.”
She thought of her friends and former co-hosts of the Graduation Gala. Claire Bonner. She was beautiful, but always so quiet, like a faded shadow next to her mother. Alison Schaefer, so smart she put the rest of us to shame. I thought she’d end up the next Madame Curie. She got married the October after Betsy died, and then Rod, her husband, was in an accident. From what I understand, he’s been on crutches all these years. Nina Craig. We called her “the flaming redhead.” I remember even as a freshman if she got mad at you, watch out. She would even tell a teacher off if she thought she didn’t get a good enough mark on an essay.