She was wearing a loose flowing top over very tight knit pants and sneakers. She looked like a forty-year-old woman trying to look like she was twenty-two and thirty pounds lighter.
“Hello, Holly. I hope you’re doing all right.”
Holly smiled. “It’s your family, not mine. I will miss the old lady, though, odd as that might sound.”
“It doesn’t sound odd at all.”
“You didn’t have to live here day in and day out as her daughter-in-law, taking orders, not being able to do what I wanted to do, always having to beg, to plead, to get anything I wanted. Your father was her own personal puppy. God, you’re lucky you lived three thousand miles away.”
“You don’t have to stay, Holly. All this was your decision.”
She gave Lindsay a malignant look, then shrugged as she walked into the main drawing room. The heavy brocade drapes were pulled closed. The room was chill and damp.
“Jesus,” Holly said, and went on a rampage, jerking open every curtain in the vast room. “That miserable housekeeper, I’m going to fire her ass on Monday. Yes, on Monday I’ll be the boss here and anyone who doesn’t like it can just get the hell out. And that includes your precious Mrs. Dreyfus. All the old bag can do is snivel and talk about how Mrs. Gates would have done this or that. Jesus.”
Lindsay set her single bag down in the hall, then walked to the vast Carrara marble fireplace. “I’ll light a fire, all right?”
“Yeah, sure. It feels like bloody death in here.”
Lindsay’s hands jerked.
“I need a drink.” Lindsay watched Holly walk to the drink tray and pull the stopper out of a Waterford decanter. It was Glenlivet and Holly poured herself a double shot, neat.
“Drinking more, Holly? Really, dear, you should try to control yourself. People will be coming by to offer their sympathy. The last impression you want to give is that the new lady of the house is a lush.”
Sydney was wearing a slender black wool dress with three-inch black heels. Her stockings were black with seams up the backs of her legs. Her hair was pulled back from her face and held with gold combs. Her makeup was restrained, perfect. She looked pale and fragile and utterly beautiful.
Lindsay said from where she remained in front of the fireplace, “Hello, Sydney. When did you get in?”
“Last night. It was a very long flight from Milan. You’re looking about the same, Lindsay. How was New York when you left?”
“Cold and sunny.”
“And Demos?”
“The same.”
“Really, Holly, dear, not another shot? Surely you’ve had more than enough. You’re much more in the open about your drinking than Lindsay’s mother ever was. You’re also fatter than her mother ever was. And this fixation you seem to have with mirrors—isn’t it a bit painful to look at yourself now?”
“Go fuck yourself, Sydney!”
Sydney laughed. “I doubt I’ll ever have to resort to that, unlike you. Poor Holly. All that fat you’re carrying around turns men off, don’t you know that? Particularly my father.”
“Just stop it, both of you!”
Sydney and Holly both stared at Lindsay. She was on her feet, pale, furious. She’d had enough. “Listen, no more sniping. Sydney, just keep your nasty comments to yourself. For God’s sake, Grandmother and my mother are dead. Just stop it, damn you both.”
“Such passion,” Sydney remarked in Holly’s general direction. “And here I had thought the prince had sucked all of it out of my little sister.”
Lindsay dumped the two fat logs she was holding on the floor. She watched them roll over the beautiful golden oak. One log dented the oak badly when it struck. She said nothing more, merely walked out, shoulders straight, feeling like death herself. Nothing ever changed. Things just seemed to get worse, and now that Grandmother was dead, there was no one to put on the brakes.
She didn’t see Mrs. Dreyfus.
She went to her bedroom, locked the door, and unpacked the few clothes she’d brought, putting them away, paying no heed, really, to what she was doing. Her brain was numb and she was grateful for it.
She wondered what her grandmother had been doing with her mother. There’d really been no love lost between the two women, as far as she knew. But she’d been gone a long time. And sometimes things did change. Just maybe her grandmother preferred the ex-daughter-in-law to the current one. Now Lindsay would never know.
Lindsay closed her eyes. She saw Taylor, laughing, pulling her against him and hugging her tight, nibbling her earlobe, whispering that she had abysmal taste in Persian carpets, that Bokaras were too flimsy and far too red for his taste, which was, of course, superb. Then he went on to her fresh-meadow air freshener. It clogged his sinuses, he said, and got under his fingernails. It smelled like a brothel. It smelled like a cat box in a rich house. God, she missed him, his normalcy, his humor, his balance. She saw Taylor as he’d been last night, worry in his eyes, and helplessness, because he didn’t know what to do, what to say to her.
Dear God, he was so dear to her.
At seven o’clock there was a knock on her door. Lindsay was dressed, sitting in front of her window, staring toward Alcatraz Island. Waiting for someone to fetch her. Knowing she’d have to see Sydney and Holly again. And her father.
She followed Mrs. Dreyfus downstairs to the drawing room. The first person she saw was her father, Judge Royce Foxe, standing in a stark black suit with white linen, looking handsome and elegant as always and laughing at something Sydney was saying to him. He looked up at Lindsay, and his laughter died.
16
“I see you came,” Royce Foxe said, nodding slightly toward her in acknowledgment. Whatever Sydney had said to make him laugh was dried up, gone, now that Lindsay had shown up on the scene. There was no welcoming smile for her, but she hadn’t expected one. She wondered vaguely when a day would come that it wouldn’t hurt her very core, this inevitable and inexplicable dislike he had for her.
“Hello, Father, Sydney,” she said, and turned toward Holly. She was holding a glass tightly in her hand, a whiskey glass. “Good evening, Holly.”
“You want something to drink?”
“A Perrier would be nice, thank you.”
Sydney smiled at her. “Yes, just so, Lindsay. Oh, I forgot to have my secretary send you a thank-you for Melissa’s Christmas gift. Melissa is so spoiled she didn’t pay that adorable bear much attention, but it was a nice thought on your part. The prince thought so as well. He told me to thank you.”
“I’m pleased she liked it for even the brief time she gave it her attention.”
Mrs. Dreyfus, red-eyed, head bowed, appeared in the doorway to announce dinner.
Royce thanked her, then turned to Lindsay. “You’re so thin I can see your pelvic bones, and you’re wearing those ridiculous high heels again. I told you before to take them off but you disobeyed me. You looked absurd then and you do now.” But he didn’t demand that she take them off this time. She’d won again, this time by omission.
Lindsay smiled. It was odd, but this time, somehow, he didn’t seem to touch her so closely. She said simply, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Father.”
Royce took Sydney’s arm, and Holly and Lindsay followed them into the dining room. He didn’t say another word. She felt his anger toward her, but again, it didn’t come quite so close as it would have before. Lindsay felt a spurt of unaccustomed power. It felt good.
Holly said when they reached the dining room, “On Monday a decorator is coming, a friend of mine. I’m cleaning out this bloody officious room, every heavy dark corner of it.”
“Oh, dear, I do trust you won’t go with chintz, Holly,” Sydney said, looking back at her stepmother.
Holly looked equal parts angry and hurt. She looked toward her husband for support, but he wasn’t looking at
