And he fully intended to ensure that such remained the case. And that Ryan and Chelsea, too, lived to ripe old ages.
Ripe, wealthy old ages.
“Mr. Young?”
He lifted an eye. Melissa was standing beside him.
“Mrs. Young is on the telephone. She’s decided to stay in the city to have dinner with Gloria Vanderbilt. She wants to know if you have any objection.”
Philip crooked a little smile at Melissa. “No objection from me,” he said. Melissa returned his smile. She placed the phone to her ear and spoke into it. “Mrs. Young? He says to stay and have a wonderful evening.”
Philip laughed. Oh, yes, he enjoyed his life.
So what if he’d had to resort to extraordinary means to do so? He remembered the terror he’d felt as a young man, watching Aunt Margaret prepare all their names and place them in that box. His life-reduced to a slip of paper! He was just eighteen at the time of his first lottery. His whole future might have ended that night. He had felt the sweat bead on his forehead as Uncle Howard took the box from Aunt Margaret. Just hours earlier the old man had told him the secret of that room. At first Philip had scoffed, but he had seen the look in his father’s eyes. His father believed it, so it must be true. Sheer panic had gripped Philip then. He wanted to bolt. But his brother Martin, four years older, was brave, even stoic. Philip had never possessed the steel of his brother. Martin could dive from the cliffs into the water below, but Philip had never had the guts. But he couldn’t indulge in such terror now. It would forever mark him as a coward. So he trooped into the parlor following Martin and his father, fully expecting it would be his name that would be drawn, his life that would end that night.
When his father’s name had been drawn, Philip’s first reaction was relief. He didn’t like admitting that to himself, but it was true. He loved his father, but better his father than him. When his father was found dead the next morning, Philip wailed like a banshee over his body. But a little voice inside him was also saying, “Thank God it isn’t me.”
Ten years later it was his sister Jeanette’s turn. His baby sister. He saw the fear in her eyes. Martin, of course, volunteered to go in her place. Philip was silent. Only after Uncle Howard had insisted that the lottery forbade anyone from taking the place of the one chosen did Philip speak up, offering great protests that his sister should have to face such a fate, that if only it were possible he would be glad to go in her place.
He took another sip of his drink. There were parts of his past he did not like remembering. But how could he avoid them, with another family reunion looming? With the possibility that Chelsea and Ryan might have to face that room?
Aunt Margaret died two years before the lottery of 1980. She passed away peacefully in her sleep, something for which the entire family envied her. Aunt Margaret had been part of the lottery since the beginning, and each time she had escaped being chosen.
Was it significant that she had prepared the names each time, and burned them afterward in the fireplace?
Philip began to wonder if Aunt Margaret had contrived to keep herself out of that room. Of course, there were always the same number of slips of paper as there were candidates for the lottery. Aunt Margaret wrote all their names out, then folded the papers in half. But what if, Philip had wondered, she had written someone’s name twice and left out her own? Whether she had or not, no one would ever know.
In 1980, Philip volunteered to take over for Aunt Margaret in writing down the names.
That year there were six of them in the lottery. Philip and Martin. Their cousin Douglas and his two children, Douglas and Therese. And of course, Uncle Howard himself. Philip wrote everyone’s name but his own. Then he wrote Douglas Senior’s name again. When he handed the box to Uncle Howard, he was giddy-ecstatic-that his plan had worked. Douglas was chosen to enter the room.
Was there guilt? Maybe a flash, when he saw Therese call out, “Daddy! I love you!” But then it was gone. The instinct for survival was a far more potent emotion than guilt. By then, Philip was a hotshot on Wall Street. He was set to marry Vanessa McMaster, heiress to the textile fortune and one of the most chased-after socialites in New York. He had feared they’d never be able to have a family, but now he had found the answer. So long as he kept preparing the names, he could keep himself-and any children he would have-out of that room.
He smiled to himself. And Uncle Howard can only leave his billions to those who are left alive.
The next lottery, there was some regret. Tradition meant something in the Young family, particularly in matters of the lottery, so no one questioned Philip once again preparing the names. He toyed briefly with the idea of leaving out Martin’s name this time. But then he’d have to leave out Martin’s two children, Paula and Dean, brought into the lottery for the first time that year. And that would cut down the number of available names to the extreme: every name would have to be either that of Uncle Howard or their cousin Douglas, the sole surviving member of that branch of the family. So Philip did what he’d done ten years previously. He left only himself out, and wrote Douglas twice. Hell, the world didn’t need another bleeding-heart public defender.
But this time, Martin was chosen. His brother. The fellow who had taught him to ride a bike and to play football. The one who, after their father died, had stepped in and been adviser and supporter as Philip made his way in the world. It had been Martin who’d given him money in the very beginning to make his first investments in the stock market. And now Martin was going to die.
Who’s to say his name wouldn’t have been chosen even if Philip’s name had been in there? That’s how Philip rationalized it. How he still rationalized it.
Ten years later, it was easier. This time the lottery got the public defender. They found him in the morning with a plastic bag over his head. This time, Philip had felt no grief at all, not even a flash, not even when Douglas’s teenaged son, also named Douglas, had broken down in tears at the news. By now it was clear that he had found the escape hatch from the family curse. His children need never worry. That was all that mattered.
He watched now as Chelsea and her friends stood from their chaises, chattering among themselves, talking on their cell phones, getting ready for their shopping spree. He knew his son Ryan was at the brokerage, working even on a weekend, making millions for himself. If a member of the Young family had to die every decade as a result of some old curse, then it was far, far better that it be someone from a branch that didn’t matter as much, that couldn’t claim the power and success that Philip’s family did.
After Chelsea had blown him a kiss and sped off in his Bentley, Philip stood. He benevolently gave Carlos the rest of the afternoon off. Then he hurried inside the house to find Melissa.
She was in the office, waiting for him in the lacy black teddy he had bought her.
He took her in his arms roughly and began kissing her neck. Melissa ran her hands, with their bright red fingernails, all over his fleshy chest and stomach, playing with the tufts of white hair that grew between his sagging pectorals. Melissa excited him more than any woman had in a long, long time. Yes, indeed, she was trailer trash from Bridgeport. But that only made her more appealing. Philip knew it was his money, his status, that aroused her, and he liked the charge that it gave him. The power. He pulled her tightly into him and bit her neck. She moaned.
Then, another sound.
“What was that?” Melissa asked.
“Nothing,” Philip said, but he had heard it too.