John Prentice Robinson was his full name, but no one ever seemed able to call him that with a straight face. He was too playful, too spontaneous, too reckless, to be a John Prentice Robinson. He was the family prankster, the practical joke master, the puncturer of pretense, the outrageous smart ass that everyone loved. He would always, in everyone’s perception, be a Jack. And she adored him.
Handsome, rugged, a born athlete … He had captained the soccer team and track team in private school, then gone onto the Virginia Military Institute, where he was soon captain of the varsity shooting team. He came home that summer as a prime candidate for the Olympics.
Her brother, Jack, on the U.S. Olympic Shooting Team.
He was home for just a week, only a week, before heading out to Colorado Springs to spend the rest of the summer training. The days had been buoyant, happy. Her father-
one of Greenwich, Connecticut’s most prominent cardiolo-gists-had even taken time off from his rounds. They played tennis at the country club, hosted a grand summer party, danced and swam and sang and drank.
Taylor felt as if it would go on forever. That they would always be young and energetic and happy, that life would always be a banquet.
That day, that day it all ended, her father woke early, left in his Mercedes to make his hospital rounds. Her mother slept late, as did Taylor and Jack, and then went out for a tennis date at the club.
Jack climbed into his Jeep and drove off to meet friends for lunch.
Taylor relaxed, hanging around the house, debating what to do with the rest of the day. She had chores to do, had promised her mother to do some laundry and clean up her room. Her senior year would begin in a few weeks as well.
So maybe it was time she started going through the stack of college catalogs that had been coming in the mail for months.
Then the phone rang. Her best friend, Dori, invited her over to spend the afternoon swimming, sunbathing, listening to music, talking about boys. The usual …
Just guilty enough at neglecting her chores to feel it, but not guilty enough to say no to Dori, Taylor rushed into her bedroom and changed into her bikini, then threw on a T- shirt and a pair of cutoffs just as Dori pulled up in her convert-ible Mustang. Taylor grabbed her purse and bag, then ran for the back door. Dori honked the horn and yelled to her.
As Taylor went out the back door, she slapped her hand across the burglar alarm panel.
And hit the wrong button. The burglar alarm system her father had installed a few years earlier had a silent mode.
No one ever used it.
She didn’t mean to do it.
God, she didn’t mean to do it.
They would later stitch together from bits and pieces how it all happened.
At two-twelve that afternoon, an automated call came into the Greenwich Police Department reporting a breakin at the Robinson home. Dispatch sent a prowl car to investigate. Riding alone that shift was a young, rookie patrolman barely older than Jack. In fact, he had just a week earlier finished his probationary period, which required him to ride along with an older, more experienced officer.
When the officer arrives, a Jeep is in the driveway behind the house.
The officer exits the squad car carefully. There’s no sign of a breakin. The officer stands there a moment.
Suddenly, the sliding glass door to the patio courtyard opens up and a young blond man in a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and running shoes steps out.
With his hands in his pockets …
The officer unsnaps his weapon.
Jack, smiling, gregarious as always, never met a fellow he didn’t like, walks toward the officer.
With his hands in his pockets …
“Stop right there,” the officer commands, holding his left palm out, his right hand on the butt of his pistol.
Jack grins, keeps walking: “What’s up, Barney Fife?”
“Stop,” the officer yells.
Jack suddenly pulls his hand out, cocked, his index finger pointing like the barrel of a gun, his thumb like the hammer, like a seven-year-old boy playing cowboys and Indians. He points it at the officer.
Who draws his weapon and fires.
John Prentice Robinson, star athlete, captain of the varsity shooting team, prankster and naively stupid young man, came home that afternoon and didn’t realize he’d set off the burglar alarm when he came in. And as a result, he died that afternoon on the warm clay tiles of the courtyard patio of his parents’ two-million-dollar home, of a single gunshot wound to the chest.
They buried him three days later next to his grandparents.
Devastation is too tepid a word, too mild a description, for what happened to Taylor, her parents, her family.
The city settles for one-point-five million. Taylor refuses any part of it.
Her father shuts down, buries himself in his work.
Her mother begins drinking heavily, becomes a recluse, goes on about a dozen different medications for anxiety, depression, insomnia.
Her parents begin fighting, worse than ever. Her father spends more and more time at the hospital.
Taylor spends her last year at home in a haze, retreats into her schoolwork, graduates with honors and goes on to Smith College. At the time she chose Smith, she had no idea why she chose it, other than it was away from home.
Her parents sell the house, divorce. Her father relocates to Miami and eventually marries a woman Taylor cannot stand. Her mother goes into rehab, comes out clean and sober, but depressed and miserable. The sound of her voice gives Taylor a headache.
The weight never completely goes away. That corner of her heart is locked away, leaden.
And filled with hatred for macho cowboy cops and their guns. Their stupid, goddamn fucking guns.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the voice said. “Are you okay?”
The voice was young, feminine. A woman’s voice. Taylor looked up. It was a young woman in a dark blue ski parka and jeans.
Taylor looked around. She was sitting on a concrete bench, so cold she couldn’t feel her hips, the backs of her legs. The bench was on a walk overlooking the East River. To her left and above, the Queensboro Bridge towered over it like the drawbridge to a castle.
Sutton Place. She’d walked up to Sutton Place. But when?
How long had she been there?
“Ma’am?” the voice asked again.
“What?” Taylor said, finally.
