Carey shook his head.
“Why not?”
His hands dropped away from her shoulders, and, slipping his fingers through hers, he resumed their journey toward his mother's house. They walked several steps before he responded to her blunt inquiry. “After Vietnam and all the Agent Orange problems,” he said very quietly, “I didn't think it was wise. We were drenched in that stuff up in the jungle. They were spraying round the clock. No one mentioned side effects, but several of my buddies had children with severe problems. You want to cry when you see those babies struggling to do simple things every child takes for granted. I couldn't deal with that.”
“How terrible!” Sarah exclaimed. Regardless of her ambivalent feelings toward Edward, her children were her greatest joy. “Oh, Carey,” she said, sympathy reaching out in her voice, “I'm sorry. How awful for you.”
“Hey.” He pulled her to a stop. “It's not that big a tragedy. The world will get along just fine without any more Ferstens. Now,” he went on, tugging on her hand like an insistent child, “if this conversation doesn't lighten up, I'm taking back my offer of a daffodil shower.”
“I won't let you!” Sarah cried. “A promise is a promise, Carey Fersten! You have to!”
“Make me,” he teased.
“With pleasure,” she cheerfully replied.
And it was.
Juliana's driver took Sarah home the next morning after a late breakfast poolside. Carey took a second breakfast with his mother before leaving for Minnesota. She only mentioned the daffodils once in passing, a casual remark about how “boys will be boys.” Carey apologized. “It must have been the spring moon. I'm sorry, Mother.”
“Sarah's a sweet girl,” was all she said. “Will we be seeing you again soon?” she asked with a motherly inquisitiveness.
“
“As if I'm inclined to be a movie star at my age. I can't even remember a telephone number, let alone pages of dialogue.”
“Just so you don't forget mine. Call me.”
After saying his good-byes, Carey boarded his plane at a small local airstrip and slept the few hours it took to reach his father's.
The next day, production began on the film Carey had been wanting to make for eleven years. It was a personal indulgence he hadn't been able to afford until now. But his last two films had grossed so much money, his accountants were scouring the tax laws for hidden loopholes.
He'd always wanted to do an immigrant story.
He'd always wanted to explore the beginnings of the union movement in the iron mines.
He'd always wanted to bring the diverse ethnic mixture of the Iron Range to the screen.
It was an ambitious project. Some of his advisors had warned him that it was
“Not commercial enough,” they'd said, now that he was considered “commercial.”
“Not my first priority,” he'd replied. “Nor my forty-ninth, either,” he'd added.
“Too esoteric,” they'd cautioned.
“Bull,” he'd retorted. “Give the audience some credit, guys.”
“Immigrant sagas don't sell,” they'd protested.
“Good stories do, though,” he'd pleasantly responded.
“Carey, fella, you're going to lose a bundle on this concept.”
“But it's my money, isn't it? We start May first. Everyone be ready.”
“There's not even a decent restaurant in that outland,” one assistant director in a foul mood and a stylish leather jacket had muttered.
Carey gave a thin smile. “I just want to remind everyone this is not a corporate decision. And to those uncertain of the structure of Golden Bear Productions, Allen will fill you in.
CHAPTER 15
T he decibel level had been rising steadily since the cocktail hour at the class reunion began. Molly was smiling at one of Marge's facetious remarks about girls' field hockey. Years ago they had all agreed that field hockey was the pits, and their opinions were unaltered by time.
It was comfortable, genial, like old home week, back with the group that had shared every bit of whispered high school gossip. The five friends had kept in touch with the usual Christmas cards, birthday cards, and birth announcements, but this was the first time in ten years they'd all been together again.
In the course of the last two hours, all the pertinent information had been exchanged: who was married, divorced, remarried, moved, working, happy, unhappy, bored, ecstatic. Husbands and ex-husbands had been thoroughly dissected. With a relaxed sigh, Molly leaned back in an antiquated leather chair in the Moose Club's old- fashioned, blatantly masculine interior. Immune to the decorating fads of the last sixty years, the board had resisted change with a stalwart stubbornness that was somehow comforting, Molly decided, gazing at a room untroubled by the passage of time.
“Molly, do I have a piece of gossip for you,” Linda, whose tennis body had remained unchanged, said with a knowing lift of her brows.
“Don't keep me in suspense, then. You know how I adore gossip,” Molly said, resting her head against the timeworn leather that had seen three generations come and go.
“Carey Fersten came into town yesterday with his film crew.”
For a stark moment the noise, the people, the reunion, and her sense of reality were all suspended. Molly was in a vacuum of arrested motion, and she saw him as she had the last time almost ten years ago, two weeks before her wedding to Bart.
Carey was leaning against the carved column of Mrs. Larsen's front porch, the night was hot like tonight, Sweet William and phlox were in bloom, their fragrance as beautiful as his dark, accusing eyes. His pale hair, rough like a dog's coat, shimmered in the moonlight, and his tall, broad-shouldered form in an old polo shirt and worn riding pants was silhouetted against the moon's glow. He'd been detached, withdrawn, his face careful to show no emotion. When she'd asked him why he still had his riding boots on, had he been riding at night, he'd enigmatically said, “Riding clears my head. It's a distraction. And,” he'd added, “Tarrytown's wild at night. I love it.” Tarrytown had been a partially trained two-year-old then, untamed and unbridled like his master.
She remembered touching him on the shoulder, feeling his sweat-damp shirt and wondering how reckless the ride had been; but a moment later he'd pulled away and stood upright, no longer casually leaning against the pillar. “What are you going to do now?” she asked, wanting to say something so their time together wouldn't end, wanting to reach the cool, remote man who stood only a foot away from her but seemed to be a world away.
“Do?” he said in a mildly astonished way, as though she'd asked him to explain the theory of relativity.
“I mean… for the rest of the summer.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Ride, I guess. Finish my film, and-” He stopped abruptly, his black eyes burning through her like a flame.
She felt the scorching heat as she always did with Carey, but he seemed so far away. This was their last night together and, other than his heated glance, he was as distant as the moon shining down on them.
“And…” she prompted, not wanting him to stop talking because then it might be over.
“And,” he said so softly the words were almost lost in the tinseled night air, “I thought I'd give you what you came for.” Putting his hand out, he touched the creamy whiteness of her cheek, his thumb sliding slowly between her quivering lips. He gently massaged the lush softness of her mouth, then the pad of his thumb probed deeper, exerting a slight pressure on her teeth, slipping past them to the wet interior of her mouth.
