“No. That’d be pretty naive of me,” Beth said.
“And yet that’s what you’re looking for in her. You don’t know her the way she is now. You’re setting out to find your old college roommate. Laura may disappoint you like this other woman did. Just by being different from your memories of her. Then where will you turn, Beth?”
It was a dismal thing to face. She had resolutely ignored the possibility until now.
“You’d better make plans,” Landon continued. “A thing like that could crack you up if you’re not prepared for it. It’s been a while, Beth, quite a while. Nine years?”
She nodded. “She hasn’t forgotten me, has she? Could that be?”
“She hadn’t when I saw her. She remembers a college girl with no real experience of life, the way you do. She remembers an ingenuous romance. She remembers that you jilted her for a boy you knew, and probably married the boy. End of story. You’ll have to take it from there yourself when you find her.”
“If I find her,” she said and emptied her glass again.
“You will, if you still want to as much as you did when you came in here tonight.”
She put the glass down. “I do,” she whispered.
He smiled. “You may get to New York and find her right there in the phone book. Who knows?”
Beth gave a wry little laugh. “Sure,” she said. “I was thinking, on the plane, ‘What if I get to Chicago and there she is, at home with her father.’ It would have been too easy, though. But I did think she’d be living in the city, at least. Now…New York. God. When I get to New York they’ll tell me she’s living in Paris. And if I ever make it to Paris, damned if she isn’t already on her way to Hong Kong.”
“She’s not much of a vagabond,” Landon reassured her. “She’d have stayed here in Chicago if I’d made it tolerable for her. This was her home. She liked it here…. Have you any money?” he asked abruptly, looking directly at her.
“A little,” she said with some pride.
“A little doesn’t last long in New York.”
“I have about three thousand in my bank account.”
“Well, depending on how you live and whether you work or not, that might see you through a half year.”
“I don’t gamble,” she snapped. “I don’t eat at the Stork Club. And I don’t throw the stuff away.”
He laughed. “Okay, my dear. Go to New York with your three thousand dollars and live on it for the rest of your life if you can. I wish you only luck—the best kind. I was just thinking, if you should need a loan…” And seeing her face storm up he added, “I’m not laughing at you, Beth. I think you’re a better girl—a braver girl—than I did at first. Maybe I hoped you’d be a disappointment. You see, I haven’t liked you very well, over the years, since Laura told me she loved you. Simple jealousy. I haven’t liked any of the others she told me about either. But I suppose it’s only fair. I had her all to myself for eighteen years and only made her miserable.” He turned away as he spoke. “When at last I had to share her, it was with her own sex. I was shocked when she told me, but after a while I found I preferred it to sharing her with men.”
There was an awkward silence. Beth stared in surprise at his broad back in its brown tweed lounging jacket, feeling that his admission bound her to him, as hers bound him to her. They had a little something on each other now. They owed each other some small allegiance.
“I’ll send you her address, if I find her,” Beth said.
“Thank you. And your own. I don’t think I’d better write Laura. I’ll have to depend on you for news. Do you mind?”
Beth began to laugh and made him turn around to stare in his turn. “Is that funny?” he asked.
Beth shook her head and when she found her voice she said, “No, life is funny. I can’t write to Charlie either. There’s a friend in Pasadena who’s doing for me what I’m doing for you. Writing to tell me all the news.” They gazed at each other a little guiltily and still with amusement. “Are we a pair of cowards, Mr. Landon?” she said. “Or are we braver than everybody else?”
“Cowards, of course,” he said. “We aren’t really brave at all. But we do have a certain strength. You set out to find yourself, and that takes strength. I found myself long ago and had the strength to live with what I found—not a pleasant task. He grinned at her and suddenly she liked him. She liked him very much and in that instant she saw Laura in his face, his smile, again.
They were a pair of conspirators. If Beth found Laura and won her love again, she would be an ally for Merrill Landon. Through Beth he might come close once again to the daughter he adored; once again before time caught up with him and closed his life. For he was in his late fifties now and he had lived too hard. He was tired. He wanted a few years with her, and the idea had struck him when he interviewed Beth that this might be a last way to achieve the goal. He couldn’t approach Laura himself. She would turn and run before he could speak, and she had a right to. But Beth might speak for him. She liked him. He could see it in her face.
They parted with an understanding—friends.
Chapter Eleven
BETH WITHDREW HER MONEY FROM THE BANK. THERE WAS nearly four thousand dollars. That was plenty. She felt extravagantly rich with the money her parents had left her lined up neatly in traveler’s checks in her wallet. She took the precaution of getting the funds before she broke the news to
