He had no desire to draw attention to himself.
After dinner, he spent half an hour on the phone. He knew who he was looking for, and he was surprised how easy it was to find him. He decided to take a bus to Modesto in the morning. And before he did, he bought a cell phone. One of the conditions of his parole was not having a cell phone. It was a standard condition for parolees who had gone to prison for dealing drugs. Addison had told him to buy one. And now, without question, Addison was the boss. Peter knew there was no way his parole agent would know he'd bought the phone. He had notified him of his job and change of address that morning and his P.A. sounded pleased.
Peter called Addison in the office, and left him the cell phone number on his voice mail, and also the phone number at his hotel.
Fernanda was cooking dinner for the children that night. They were getting more and more excited about getting out of school for the summer. Will was particularly excited about playing lacrosse at camp for three weeks. And the others were excited about their plans too. And when they left for school the next day, she drove downtown, to meet with Jack Waterman. They had a lot to talk about. They always did. She liked him, she always had, although these days he was the voice of doom. He was the attorney who was handling Allan's estate, and before that they had been friends for years. He had been stunned by the mess Allan's affairs were in, the catastrophic decisions he had made, and how they impacted Fernanda and the kids.
His secretary poured her a cup of coffee when she walked in, and Jack sat across the desk from her with a grim expression. He hated Allan for what he'd done sometimes. She was such a nice woman, she didn't deserve this. No one did.
“Have you told the kids yet?” he asked, as she set the coffee down and shook her head.
“About the house? No, I haven't. They don't need to know yet. We're not putting it on the market till August. It'll be soon enough then. They don't need to worry about it for three months. Besides, it may take a while to sell.”
It was a huge house, and an expensive one to keep up. And the real estate market hadn't been doing well. Jack had already told her that she absolutely had to sell it and have the money in her hands by the end of the year. He had also told her to strip the place and sell as much as she could separately. The furniture certainly. They had spent nearly five million dollars furnishing the house, some of which couldn't be recouped, like the marble they'd put in all the bathrooms, and the state-of-the-art kitchen. But the Viennese chandelier they had paid four hundred thousand dollars for could be sold at auction in New York, and might even bring a profit. And there were other things she could remove and sell throughout the house. She also knew that once they started stripping the place, it would be upsetting for the children, and she was dreading it. She tried not to think of it as she smiled at him, and he smiled back. She had been a hell of a good sport for the past four months, and he admired her for it. Fernanda said she wondered if Allan had ever considered what this would do to her. Knowing him, Jack suspected it had been the farthest thing from his mind. All he thought about was business, and money. There were times when Allan only thought of himself, both during his meteoric rise to dotcom celebrity, and as he plummeted at record speed on his way down. He was a handsome, charming, brilliant guy, but there had also been something very narcissistic about him. Even his suicide had been all about his own despair, without even thinking about her, or the kids. Jack wished he could do more for her, but for the moment he was doing all he could.
“Are you going anywhere this summer?” he asked, as he leaned back in his chair. He was a nice-looking man. He'd gone to business school with Allan, and then law school after that. The three of them had known each other for a long time. He had had his own griefs over the years. He had been married to an attorney, and she died of a brain tumor at thirty-five. He had never married again, and they hadn't had time to have kids. His own loss made him sympathetic to Fernanda's grief, and he envied her the kids. He was particularly worried about what she was going to live on after they paid Allan's debts. He knew she was thinking about getting a job in a museum, or teaching school. She had figured out that if she taught at Ashley and Sam's school, or even Will's, they might give her a break on their tuitions. But they needed a lot more than that to live on. They had gone from rags to riches to rags again. A lot of people had, in the wake of the dot-com blaze, but their story was more extreme than most, thanks to Allan.
“Will is going to camp, and Ash is going to Tahoe,” she explained. “Sam and I are staying here. We can always go to the beach.”
Listening to her made him feel guilty that he was going to Italy in August, and he almost wanted to invite her and the kids to join him, but he was traveling with friends. There was no current woman in his life, and he had had a soft spot for Fernanda over the years, but he also knew from his own experience that it was far too soon to approach anything of the kind with her. Allan had been gone for four months. And when his own wife died, he hadn't dated anyone for a year. But the thought of it had crossed his mind several times in the past few months. She needed someone to take care of her, and so did her children, and he was very fond of all of them. Fernanda knew nothing of his feelings for them.
“Maybe we can go to Napa for the day or something when the kids get out of school,” he suggested cautiously, and she smiled at him. They had known each other for so long that she thought of him as a brother. It never even occurred to her that he wanted to ask her out and was biding his time. She had been off the dating market for seventeen years, and hadn't even thought of reentering it. She had more important things to think of first. Like their survival, and how she was going to feed her kids.
“They'd like that,” Fernanda said in answer to his invitation to Napa.
“I have a friend who has a boat too. It's a beautiful sailboat.” He was trying to think of ways to cheer her up, and entertain her children, without being pushy or offensive. And she looked at him sheepishly as she finished her coffee.
“The kids would love it. Allan took them out on boats a number of times. I get seasick.” She had hated Allan's yacht, although he loved it. She got sick just standing on the dock. And now the mere mention of boats reminded her of how Allan had died. She never wanted to see a boat again.
“We'll think of something else,” he said kindly. They spent the next two hours going over business matters, and finished the last of their paperwork shortly before noon. She had a good understanding of all of it, and she was being responsible about the decisions she made. There was nothing frivolous about her. He just wished that there was more he could do.
He invited her out to lunch, but she said she had some errands to do, and a dentist appointment that afternoon. In truth, the time she spent with him was so stressful, talking about how dire her situation was, that after seeing him, she felt as though she needed a breather and some time to herself. Inevitably, if they went to lunch, they would talk about her problems and Allan's debts. She knew Jack felt sorry for her, which was kind of him. But it made her feel waiflike and pathetic. She was relieved when she said good-bye to him, and drove back to Pacific Heights on her own. She heaved an enormous sigh, and tried to get rid of the sensation of panic in her stomach. She had a knot in it the size of a fist whenever she left his office, which was why she had declined his invitation to lunch. Instead, he had volunteered to come to dinner the following week, and promised to call her. At least seeing him with the children would buffer the horror of facing the grim realities with him. He was a very pragmatic person, and he spelled things out much too clearly. She would have been shocked to realize he had romantic intentions toward her. It had never even occurred to her in the course of their many meetings. She had always thought Jack was wonderful, and as solid as a rock, and she had been sorry for him that he had never remarried. He always claimed to her and Allan that he hadn't met the right person. She knew how much he had loved his wife, and Allan had warned her several times not to bug him about fixing him up with friends, so she hadn't. It never even dawned on her that she might wind up with him one day. She had been deeply in love with Allan, and still was. And for all his failings, and the mess he'd made of things in the end, she thought he was a great husband. She had no desire to replace him, in fact the reverse. She could imagine herself feeling married to him for the rest of her life, and never dating anyone else. And she had said as much to her children, which in some ways comforted them, particularly Sam, but it also made them sad for her.