himself. He was thrilled. And she walked through each room describing it to him, and bringing her ideas to life.
“You’re amazing!” he said happily, and unlike Harry Ebersohl, he wasn’t worried about the cost. He just wanted something that would impress his friends and the women he wanted to date. And better than that, Annie was going to give him a home. She promised him a delivery date of nine months. And they stood on the terrace together looking out at Central Park as it started to snow.
He was forty-five years old, and one of the richest men in New York. He was looking at Annie with interest, as she talked to him about the apartment. She was completely oblivious to the way he was looking at her. Any other single woman her age would have been doing her best to charm him, but she was always professional with her clients. All he was to her was a job. It made no difference to her whatsoever that he had a yacht in St. Barts and his own plane. She was interested in the apartment, not the man. Annie was friendly but totally businesslike in her manner. He suspected that she had a husband or boyfriend, but he didn’t dare ask.
Annie left an hour after she arrived. She promised to send him plans within two weeks and wished him a happy Thanksgiving. She was totally clear on what he wanted and what she was going to do for him. He told her he was leaving for Aspen that night, to spend the holiday with friends. And he stood at the window, watching the snow fall on Central Park after she left.
The apartment was silent and empty when Annie got home, just as it was every night. It was so different now than when the children still lived there. There were none of Kate’s clothes on the floor, strewn around the living room. Ted’s TV wasn’t on. Liz wasn’t dashing in and out, brandishing a curling iron, late for whatever she was doing, with no time to eat. The fridge wasn’t full. Kate’s briefly vegan meals weren’t left all over the sink. The music wasn’t on. Their friends weren’t there. The phone didn’t ring. The house was empty, neat, and clean, and Annie still wasn’t used to it, even three years after Kate had left for college. Annie suspected that it was a void she would never be able to fill. Her sister had given her the greatest gift in life, and time had slowly taken it from her. She knew that it was right for them to grow up and leave, but she hated it anyway, and nothing made her happier than when they came home.
She went out to the kitchen and started organizing things for the next day. She had just stacked the good plates on the kitchen counter, getting ready to set the table, when she heard the front door slam and what sounded like a load of bricks being dumped in her front hall. She gave a start at the wall-shuddering sound and stuck her head out the kitchen door, as Kate dumped her backpack on the floor where her books lay. She had an enormous artist’s portfolio in one hand and stood grinning at Annie in a black miniskirt, a black hooded sweatshirt with a shocking pink skull on it, and silver combat boots that Annie knew she had found at a garage sale somewhere. She was wearing black-and white-striped tights that made her look like a punk Raggedy Ann, and her short jet-black hair stood up all over her head. What saved the whole look was her exquisite face. She came bounding across the living room and threw her arms around Annie’s neck. The two women hugged as Annie beamed. This was what she had lived for, for sixteen years.
“Hi, Annie,” Kate said happily, then planted a kiss on her cheek and bounded toward the fridge. The look of bliss on her aunt’s face said it all.
“Am I happy to see you! Are you vegan this week?” Annie teased her.
“No, I gave it up. I missed meat too much.” She helped herself to a banana, sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, and smiled lovingly at her aunt. “Where’s everyone?” she asked as she peeled the banana and stuffed a chunk of it into her mouth. The way she did it made her look about five years old instead of twenty-one.
“Ted should be here any minute. And Lizzie is coming tomorrow. She’s bringing Jean-Louis.” Katie looked unimpressed, went to get a CD out of her backpack, and put it in the machine that had been silent since the last time she’d been there. It was one by the Killers, which sounded like the rest of her music to Annie.
“I got a new tattoo, wanna see?” she asked proudly as Annie groaned.
“Can I still ground you at twenty-one?” Annie asked as Katie pulled up her sleeve to show off a colored Tweety Bird on her forearm. “You should get one too,” Kate teased her. She knew how much her aunt hated them. “I designed it myself. I did some designs for the tattoo parlor, and they gave me this one for free.”
“I’d have paid you double not to do it. How are you going to feel about having Tweety Bird on your arm when you’re fifty?”
“I’ll worry about it then,” Kate said, looking around the familiar kitchen, and obviously happy to be home. “I’ll set the table,” she volunteered. And when Annie went to get the tablecloth out of a drawer in the dining room, she saw Katie’s belongings spread all over the front hall. It looked good to her. The house was much too pristine without them. She loved the mess, the noise, the music, the funny hair, the silver boots. It was everything that she missed.
They were setting the table together when Ted walked in half an hour later. He was wearing a heavy parka, a gray crew-neck sweater, jeans, and running shoes and had come straight from school. His hair was short, and he was clean shaven, a tall, handsome boy with dark hair and light gray eyes. He looked preppy and wholesome and of no possible relation to Katie, with her wild clothes, row of pierced earrings, and brand-new Tweety Bird tattoo. She showed it to him, and he made a face. The girls Ted went out with were always blond and blue eyed and looked like his mother and aunt. It was hard to believe that he and Katie had grown up in the same house.
He gave his aunt a warm hug and turned the TV on to a hockey game. He didn’t want to miss the end. They ordered pizza for dinner, and the three of them laughed and chatted at the kitchen table when it came. Ted talked about law school, and Annie showed them some of the work she’d brought home in her portfolio, and it was very good. She had real talent. The TV and music were both on. The table was set for Thanksgiving, and as Annie looked at the two young people in her kitchen, all was well in her world. Katie’s things were still in a heap in the front hall at midnight, when Annie finally picked them up and took them to her room. There was a time when she would have complained about it and scolded Kate for the mess she made. Now it warmed her heart to see it, and she was just happy to have them home.
Chapter 3
Annie was up before dawn the next morning, moving silently around the kitchen, as she made the stuffing, put it in the turkey, and then slid the huge bird into the oven. She checked the dining room, and the table she and Katie had set the night before looked lovely. She was back in bed by seven, and decided to get a little more sleep before they all got up. She knew that Ted and Katie would sleep late.
Annie managed to get two more hours’ sleep before her friend Whitney called and woke her at nine.
“Did I wake you? You’re lucky. The boys have been driving me crazy for the past two hours. They’ve already had two breakfasts, the one I made them, and the one they made themselves.” Annie smiled when she heard her and stretched in her bed. She even slept better when the kids were home. She could no longer imagine what her life would have been like without them. Whitney always said that without her two nieces and nephew, Annie probably would have been married and had kids of her own. Annie wasn’t as sure. She might have just concentrated on her career. Since Seth, no Prince Charming had ever come along. At least not so far. Just a few men she had gotten briefly involved with but never fallen in love with. And within a short time the relationships had fallen apart. She had too much else to do to devote herself to a man, and their existence in her life always interfered with her main commitment, to her sister’s children. There had been no room for them and a man too. “Are all three of them home?” Whitney asked her.
“No, just Ted and Katie. Liz is staying with her boyfriend.”
“Is this one serious?” She would have loved to have a daughter and envied Annie the two girls. All her boys wanted to do was play sports. She missed having a daughter to fuss over, but hadn’t dared try again for fear of having a fourth son, and always said that that much testosterone under one roof would have done her in. Three sons and a husband were enough for her.
“He looks like all the others,” Annie said, referring to Jean-Louis. “He commutes between New York and Paris, and Liz works so hard she doesn’t see him much. She’s focused on her career.”
“Guess who she takes after,” Whitney teased her. “You’ve set a lousy example to these kids. It’s about time you gave them a healthy role model and found a guy.”
“I keep writing my name and phone number in public bathrooms, but no one calls.”
“That’s pathetic. Fred has a friend I want you to meet. He’s a really nice guy. A surgeon. Why don’t you come
