Читать книгу Fireside - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 10

Kim hobbled through the airport to the commuter-plane concourse. The dress, torn to within a few inches of decency, flapped around her chilled, bare legs. She hoped to catch a flight on a private carrier upstate, thus avoiding a trek into the city and a long and lurching train ride. In this, at least, fate was on her side. Pegasus Air had a seat available on a flight to Kingston that was leaving within the hour. She didn’t dare look at the charge slip of her credit card, but scribbled her signature and headed for the waiting area. Within minutes, the flight was called and the small cluster of passengers lined up to board the plane.

The route to the commuter aircraft was a long outdoor walkway with a canvas awning, currently being whipped into a frenzy by an icy, sideways wind. She was beyond exhausted, beyond feeling conspicuous in her evening wear. That didn’t, however, protect her from feeling the pure, freezing torment of the cold, lashing about her ankles and legs. Small rivers of snow eddied underfoot, chasing her to the truck-mounted stairway leading up to the dual-prop Bombardier.

She dozed during the short, bumpy flight north to the snow-clad hills of Ulster County, and jolted awake when the plane slammed down on the foreshortened runway. Blinking at the flat, gray winter scene outside the window, a fresh wave of misgivings nudged at her. Walking out on last night’s party and going straight to the airport, leaving behind a successful career, a crappy boyfriend and all her belongings, might not have been the best idea she’d ever had. Quite possibly, heading directly from the L.A. disaster to the small town where her widowed mother now lived was a bit extreme.

Still. Sometimes a girl simply had to respect her instincts, and every instinct last night had urged her to flee. Quite often, her impulses had proven to be wrong; she’d get a head full of steam over something, only to discover things weren’t so bad, after all. This time, she acknowledged, was different. Because beneath the shock and panic, the humiliation and disappointment, something else emerged—determination.

She would get through this.

Squaring her shoulders, she endured the arctic crossing of the open-air tarmac and headed into the waiting room of the tiny airport. Here was something Kim was good at—appearing calm. To the point where she actually was calm. No one would guess that she was on the verge of screaming.

The waiting room was a drafty, cavernous aluminum building that became a virtual wind tunnel every time the door opened. She set her jeweled clutch on a vacant counter. The evening bag had been a Christmas gift from Lloyd, and was worth thousands of dollars. But when she peered inside, all she could see was how small it was, how empty. It contained her remaining diamond chandelier earring, a gift from the hockey player she’d dated before Lloyd. She wouldn’t miss wearing the earrings, since they were heavy and uncomfortable. There was a lipstick and a tube of concealer, one credit card, a platinum American Express. Her driver’s license and a wad of cash she’d withdrawn from an ATM at the airport, charging it to the American Express. This would likely incur an exorbitant fee but she couldn’t worry about that. Not now. She had more immediate worries.

Gritting her teeth, she took out her phone, balking as she had earlier. Turning on the phone meant acknowledging what had happened last night. Well, ignoring the phone was not going to make her troubles go away. She set her jaw and hit the power button. As expected, there was a full queue of missed calls. She scrolled through them but didn’t listen to the messages. She knew they would be a string of rants from Lloyd and, no doubt, Lloyd’s manager, his various coaches and teammates, his parents. Good lord, the man was thirty years old and didn’t even take a piss without getting input from his parents.

She definitely wouldn’t miss that aspect of him. She wouldn’t miss any aspect of him, not even his money, his status, his looks or reputation. None of those were worth her heart. Or her self-respect.

As she glared at the tiny screen, it gave her a low-battery warning and then went blank. All the better, she thought. Except she really did need to make a call.

She looked around for a pay phone. The only one in range was a phone booth about fifty yards across the frozen tundra of the parking lot. Please, no, she thought, approaching the counter. “Excuse me,” she said to the girl working there. “Is there a pay phone indoors? My cell phone died.”

“Local call?” the girl asked, eyeing Kim’s outfit.

“Yes.”

The counter girl indicated a phone on the wall, surrounded by scribbled-on Post-it notes. “Help yourself.”

Kim watched her own fingers punch the numbers as though they belonged to someone else. To her horror, she was shaking uncontrollably. She could barely connect her fingers with the correct number. After a couple of false starts, she finally got it right.

“Fairfield House.”

Kim frowned, momentarily disoriented. “Mom?”

“Kimberly,” her mother chirped. “Good morning, dear. How are you?”

Trust me, you do not want to know.

“You’re up early,” her mother continued.

“I’m not there,” said Kim. “I mean, I’m not in L.A. I came home on the red-eye.”

“You’re in New York?”

“I’m at the county airport, Mom.”

There was a beat of hesitation, weighted with doubt. “Well, for heaven’s sake. I had no idea you planned to fly out from L.A.”

“Can you come and pick me up?” To her dismay, Kim’s throat burned and her eyes smarted. Fatigue, she told herself. She was tired, that was all.

“I was just cleaning up after breakfast.”

Screw breakfast, Kim wanted to scream. “Mom, please. I’m really tired.”

“Of course. I’ll be there in a jiff.”

Kim wondered how long a “jiff” was. Her mom was always saying things like “in a jiff.” It used to drive Kim’s father crazy. He always thought colloquialisms were so déclassé.

“Wait, can you bring a spare coat and some snow boots?” she asked hurriedly. But it was too late. Her mother had already hung up. She wondered what her father would think of her current getup. No, she didn’t wonder. She knew. The form-fitting gown would earn his skepticism at best, but more likely disapproval, her father’s default mode.

I wish we’d had time to forgive one another, Dad, she thought.

She pulled her thoughts away from him, telling herself not to go there, not in her current state of mind. One day, she would get to work on making peace with the past, but not this morning. This morning, it was all she could do to keep from turning into a sequined Popsicle in the waiting room. She found a bench to sit on in the terminal, and started nodding off like a wino.

She jerked herself awake and glanced at the clock. It would probably take her mother another ten minutes to get here. Ten more minutes. How many things could happen in ten minutes? That was about how long it took to send a flower delivery. Or to write an email.

Or break up with a boyfriend. Or quit a job. These ten minutes, Kim thought, right here, right now, were the start of forever.

The notion made her sit up straighter. Right here, right now, she could pick a new path for her life. Leave the past behind and move ahead. People did it all the time, didn’t they? Why couldn’t she do the same?

Her mother had made a new start in Avalon, Kim reminded herself. It could be done. After the death of her husband, Penelope Fairfield van Dorn had moved to the small mountain town to live in the house where she had grown up. Kim had visited only one other time, two summers ago. Penelope claimed she preferred to meet her daughter in the city, having lunch and strolling the Upper East Side neighborhood where Kim had grown up. Penelope was certain Kim would find Avalon too uneventful and boring.

Penelope was endearingly dazzled by Kim’s work, her friends, her way of life. Just a few weeks ago at Christmas, they’d rendezvoused with Lloyd’s family in Palm Springs. Penelope had adored Lloyd, and vice versa—or so it had seemed to Kim. But after last night, she wasn’t sure she knew Lloyd Johnson at all. She did, however, know enough now to realize she never wanted to see him again. Ever.

The waiting room rang with emptiness. The girl at the counter and a couple of workers stood around, sipping coffee and acting as though they weren’t sneaking glances at Kim. On an ordinary workday, Kim might be having coffee and gossiping, too. In her line of work, gossip was more than just a way to fill the silence. Sometimes it was a mortal enemy, to be fought off like the bubonic plague. Other times, it was a means to an end, a way to get a client attention. Kim had used gossip like a power tool. She wondered what people would be saying back in L.A., at her old firm.

She just lost it, right in the middle of the party.

He always had a mean streak in him.

Then again, who knew she had that kind of fight in her?

And the breakup was so public …

People at the firm had no idea what had happened after the public part of the breakup. Lloyd had followed her to the hotel parking lot and—

Agitation drove Kim to her feet. By now, her toes were numb, so the shoes didn’t bother her so much. She went to the ladies’ room and removed the dark glasses. As a resident of Southern California, she was never without a pair of shades. This was the first time she’d used them for such a purpose, however.

Taking out the concealer, she touched up her makeup. It was a top-of-the-line product, used by professional makeup artists to cover up even the most glaring flaws. And really, this was just an extension of what she did so well in her career. She was a master of the cover-up, though usually on her clients’ behalf, not her own.

Satisfied that she looked perfectly fine, she returned to the waiting room and stood at the window, willing her mother to get here but at the same time, worrying about the road conditions. Upstate New York winters were not for the faint at heart. SUVs and cars lumbered and skidded along the state road in a steady progression. She didn’t know what kind of car her mother was driving these days. Was it a cautious little hybrid? A shiny Volkswagen bug?

It was funny, not knowing, yet oddly diverting to guess.

A safety-conscious Volvo? An economy-minded Chevrolet or a practical import? Perhaps it was the Cadillac that was approaching like a glossy beetle. Kim had no idea. It was startling—and a little disturbing—for her to realize how much she didn’t know about her mother’s life these days.

Since Kim’s father had died, her mom had gone through a radical transformation. Initially, she had been all but destroyed by the devastation and loneliness of her loss. The physical signs of grief had been starkly drawn on Penelope’s face, deepening its lines into creases of hurt and worry.

Yet the old adage about the healing power of time was true. Her mother improved as the weeks and then months passed. Penelope was still quick to say she missed her husband, but her smile was even quicker, and her natural exuberance emerged, evident in her voice and demeanor. How did that happen? Kim wondered. How did you get over a loss like that? How did you say goodbye to someone you’d loved for more than thirty years?

She really wanted to know, because she wasn’t doing so hot herself, and she and Lloyd had only been together two years.

When the daisy-yellow-and-white PT Cruiser turned off the roadway into the terminal parking lot and pulled haphazardly close to the curb, she leaned closer to the chilly window glass. Even before she could see the driver’s face, she somehow knew it would be her mother.

On the side of the car was a magnetic sign that read, Fairfield House—Your Home Away from Home.

Kim could not begin to assimilate the significance of that. At the moment, she was too tired to do anything but step out to the curb and let her mother’s arms enfold her. Grains of salted ice slipped into Kim’s peep-toe shoes. She winced and an involuntary sound came from her, part gasp, part sob. The reality of what had happened last night nearly sent her to her knees.

“Sweetheart, what’s the matter?” Her mother pulled back to look up at her.

Kimberly teetered on the verge of falling apart, right then and there, on the crusty, salt-strewn sidewalk in front of the terminal. At the same time, she gazed at her mother’s soft, kindly, clueless face and made a snap decision. Not now.

“It’s been a long night, that’s all. I’m sorry I didn’t call first,” she said. “I didn’t … This was an unplanned trip.”

“Well. This is simply a marvelous surprise.” Her mother wore an expression that seemed determinedly cheerful, yet concern shone in her eyes. “And look at you, in your evening clothes. You’ll catch your death. Where is your luggage? Did the airline lose your bags?”

“Let’s just go home, Mom.” Weariness swamped Kim like a rogue wave she couldn’t escape. “It’s freezing out here.”

“Say no more,” Penelope announced, bustling around to the driver’s seat. Kim got in, the hem of her dress dragging in the dirty slush. She yanked it into the car after her and slammed the door shut.

The tires spun as the car skated away from the curb, reminding Kim that her mother was not the world’s greatest driver. When Kim’s father was alive, they’d lived in the city and Penelope had hardly driven at all, and never in the snow. Now she had moved upstate and was learning to live her life without a husband, and that included driving. Penelope’s adjustment to it was proof that she had reserves of inner strength Kim had never guessed at. Leaning anxiously forward, Penelope nosed the car out of the airport and headed north and west, into the Catskills Wilderness, where the road narrowed to a two-lane salted track.

“I’ve left Lloyd,” Kim said, her voice calm and flat. “I quit my job. I’m—Watch the road, Mom.” A semi came at them, hogging most of the roadway.

“Yes. Of course.” The car drifted to the right. The semi’s tires spat slush across the windshield, but Penelope appeared unperturbed, simply flipping on the wipers. “Leaving Lloyd? Dear, I don’t understand. I had no idea you were having problems.”

As she settled in and buckled her seat belt, Kim realized the story was too long and complicated and her brain too fried with fatigue and trouble to explain everything, so she went with the digest version.

“We had a huge falling-out at a party last night,” she said. “Double whammy—he both dumped me and fired me. It got … kind of loud and ugly, so I went straight to the airport with only the clothes on my back, and this little evening bag.” She touched her sunglasses, but decided to leave them on.

“It’s a lovely bag,” her mother commented, glancing over.

Kim flashed on the wolf-fur guy in the airport, handing it to her. How had he known it was a Judith Leiber? Was he gay? Judging by the way he’d hit on her, no. “Lloyd gave it to me for Christmas,” she told her mother.

“I bet you could sell it on eBay.” Her mother turned up the car’s heater.

Kim savored the hot air blasting from the vents. “Anyway, sorry I didn’t call first. I wasn’t really thinking clearly.”

“And now? Regrets?” her mother asked gently.

“No. Not yet, anyway. So here I am.”

“For good?”

“For the time being.” Kim knew she was in a state of shock. She had suffered a trauma. She’d been the victim of a very public attack. For all she knew, her breakup could be playing on YouTube right this moment.

People did recover from things like this. She’d lived in L.A. long enough to see people suffer career meltdowns, only to rise again. These things happened. People got over them. She would get over this. But she just couldn’t imagine how.

“This move is permanent, Mom,” she heard herself say, and realized the decision had been made somewhere in the sky over the midwest. Maybe she hadn’t even been fully conscious of making it but now spoken aloud, it sounded like the only good decision she’d made in a long time. “The firm will let me go first thing Monday morning.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been the best publicist on the West Coast, and I’m sure everyone at your firm knows that.”

“Mom. It’s Lloyd Johnson. Of the Lakers. Biggest client who ever walked through the doors of the Will Ketcham Group. It’s their business to give him everything he demands. If he wanted the walls of the office painted plaid, it would be done the next day. Firing me is no bigger deal than changing bottled-water vendors.”

“Wouldn’t they opt to keep you on, just not working with Lloyd?”

“Not a chance. If their most important client wants me gone—and believe me, he does—then I’m gone. I’m a good publicist, but I’m not irreplaceable. Not in their eyes, anyway.” Or Lloyd’s.

“Well. In that case, it’s their loss. They’ve done themselves out of an enormously talented publicist.”

Kim attempted a smile. “Thanks, Mom. I wish everyone in my life was as loyal as you.”

“What about all your things?” her mother asked.

“My stuff’s in storage, remember? I told you about that.” Just before Christmas, she had given up her apartment. “Lloyd and I were staying at the Heritage Arms in Century City while he house hunted. The plan was to move in together. I thought everything would be wonderful. Am I terminally stupid?”

“No. Just a romantic at heart.”

Was she? Romantic? Kim pondered the suggestion. She’d always considered herself a savvy businesswoman. Yet there was some truth in her mother’s statement. Because not quite hidden beneath Kim’s facade was a heart that believed in foolish things, like falling in love and staying that way forever, trusting the secrets of your soul to your best friend and lover. Like planning a future based on faith alone rather than expecting promises and guarantees.

So much for her romantic heart.

“Mom,” she said, “I am so done with athletes.”

“Sweetheart, you’ll never be done with athletes. They’re your passion.”

“Ha,” said Kimberly. “They’re not all alike. But it’s been so long since I’ve had a client who wasn’t a complete ass—er, jerk—”

“You can say asshole, dear.”

For the first time since last night’s debacle, Kim felt the stirrings of a smile. “Mom.”

“Sometimes there’s simply no polite way to put it.”

Kim studied her French manicure. “When I first started out, I loved it. I worked with boys who needed me. Lately all I’ve been doing is concocting lies and spin to cover up for clients who can’t behave. I’ve started to hate what I do. I persuade the media and fans that being good at a sport is a free pass for bad behavior. It wasn’t what I signed up for, and I’m tired of it.”

“Oh, now that’s unfortunate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her mother didn’t answer as she turned onto the street where she lived. King Street was a wide, stately boulevard divided by swaths of tall maple and chestnut trees. Well over a hundred years old, the grand homes had been built by railroad barons, bankers and shipping magnates of a bygone era. Each house was a masterpiece of gilded-age splendor, surrounded by fences of wrought iron or stone. Nowadays, some of them belonged to people who were obsessed with preserving them. Others had fallen into disrepair, and a few—like Fairfield House—had been in the same family for generations.

Penelope navigated down a long, fence-lined lane and steered the car into the driveway, causing the back end to fishtail around the curve.

Kim regarded the house, one of the largest and best-known historic properties in town, with her mouth agape. “Mom?”

“I’ve made some changes around the place,” her mother said.

“I can see that.” It was not the stately house-at-the-end-of-the-lane she remembered from her girlhood.

“Isn’t it wonderful, dear? We finished painting it at the end of summer. I meant to send you pictures, but I haven’t quite figured out how to send them in email.

What do you think?”

There were no words. The actual structure had not changed. The vast grounds, though currently blanketed in record amounts of snow, did not appear much different, either, except that some of the larger shrubberies appeared to have been sculpted into topiary shapes.

The house itself was a different story. The Fairfield House Kim remembered, the one where her grandparents had lived, had been an understated white with neat black trim. Now it was painted with colors not found in nature. With colors not found anywhere except maybe on Barbie’s dream house, or in a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

Kim blinked, but the image didn’t go away. She couldn’t take her eyes off the garishly painted house. The house, with its rotunda, turrets and gables, stood out like a wedding cake frosted in DayGlo colors. The carriage house and garden gazebo also wore shades of lavender and fuchsia, stark against the white snow.

Maybe it was an undercoat. Sometimes the primer coat came in weird colors, didn’t it? “Sorry, Mom, did you say you’d finished painting it?”

“Yes, finally. It took the Hornets all summer.” Her mother parked under the elaborate porte cochère that arched above the driveway at the side entrance. The gleaming coral trim was offset by lime sherbet, with sky blue on the domed roof of the arch.

“The Hornets painted the house,” Kim echoed.

“Indeed, they did. The players are always in need of work, after all. And a fine job they did, too.”

The Hornets were Avalon’s very own baseball team, a professional club affiliated with the Can-Am League. The entire community had embraced the team when it had arrived a few years before, transforming the sleepy lakeside hamlet into a legitimate baseball town. The fact that the league operated on a tight budget meant that local boosters were vital. Families offered jobs, room and board, and sometimes even moral support to the players.

“Mom, isn’t there some neighborhood covenant against bright colors?”

“Certainly not,” Penelope said. “Or if there is, no one’s ever told me about it.”

Kim entered the house. The dizzying kaleidoscope of colors was not limited to the outside. The walls of the entryway, and the curved stairway sweeping up through the center of the house, were all as crayon bright as the outside.

Her mother hung her coat in the hall closet. “The colors are a bit over the top, don’t you think?”

“A bit.”

“I simply thought, if I’m going to go crazy with color, I should go big.”

Kim summoned up a smile. “Words to live by.”

“To be perfectly honest, it was a matter of economics,” her mother said. “These are discontinued colors, so the paint cost me next to nothing. I simply used a little of this, a little of that … and I encouraged the painters to be creative.”

There were probably worse color schemes than those created by baseball players, but at the moment, Kim couldn’t think of any.

“Speaking of going big, are you sure you’re done with Lloyd?” her mother asked.

That, of course, was Kim’s chief function—to make Lloyd and all her clients seem nice. Personable. Worthy of their insanely huge salaries. Sometimes she did her job so well, it became impossible to separate the media-trained persona from the real man. Maybe that was why she hadn’t seen the incident with Lloyd coming. She’d started to believe the hype she herself had created.

“Kimberly?” Her mother’s voice startled her.

“Absolutely,” she said. “This is for good.” In that instant, she felt a dull blow of shock, an echo of last night, and she began to tremble.

“You’re as white as a ghost.” Her mother took her arm, making her sit on the hall bench. “Do you need something?”

The words sounded as though they’d been shouted down a tube. Kim reminded herself that the humiliating, horrifying, confusing incident was behind her now. She often told clients with injuries to move past the pain, focus on the healing. Time to take her own advice.

“I’ll be all right,” she told her mother in a voice that was soft, but firm. Then she gingerly removed her dark glasses, set them aside and used the corner of her shawl to gently wipe off the makeup.

Her mother stared, cycling fast from horror to fury. Penelope van Dorn was not the sort to anger easily, but when she did, it was as swift as a sudden fire. “Dear God. How long has this been going on?”

Kim hung her head. “Mom. I’m an idiot, but not that big an idiot. I had no idea he was capable of hitting anyone. Then last night, we had this terrible fight about something stupid, and it escalated.” She swallowed a wave of nausea, remembering the gawking crowd at the reception, and her walking out, Lloyd following her to the parking lot. His fist didn’t seem like a human appendage at all, but a weapon of blunt trauma. It had come out of nowhere, powered by anger. There was one thing about Kim. She was a quick study. She was gone before he even remembered to straighten his tie.

Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. “Kimberly, I’m so sorry.”

“I know, Mom. Don’t worry. He’s history,” Kim said firmly.

“You must press charges.”

“I thought about that. But I won’t do it. Given who he is, I’d never stand a chance. I’d have to relive the whole thing and for what? Nothing would happen to him.”

“But—”

“Please, Mom, don’t pity me or call the authorities. I want to pretend Lloyd Johnson never happened. This is the best way—coming here. Starting over.”

Then her mother’s arms were around her, at once soft and sturdy, and Kim was engulfed by a faint, ineffable element she hadn’t realized she’d been missing so much. It was the mom smell, and when she shut her eyes and inhaled, an old, sweet sense of security bloomed inside her. Yet it was a piercing sweetness, breaking ever so gently through her pain and shock. Sobs came from deep within her, erupting against the pillowy shoulder of her mother. They sat together, her mother stroking her hair and making soothing sounds until Kim felt empty—and cleansed.

Her mother gave her a wad of Kleenex to wipe her face. Kim blotted at her eyes. “I’ll be all right. I’ve had worse injuries playing sports.”

“But being hurt by someone you love and trust strikes deeper than any injury.” Her mother spoke softly, with a conviction that worried Kim.

“Mom?”

“Let’s get you settled,” her mother said, her manner suddenly brisk.

Kim followed her mother past the front parlor—apple green—to the main vestibule—pumpkin.

“You’ll be in the same room where you used to stay when you visited your grandparents as a little girl. Won’t that be nice? I’ve kept it virtually the same. You’ve even got a few things to wear, in the closet, so you can get comfortable. You don’t look as if you’ve gained a pound since high school.”

Living in L.A., Kim hadn’t dared gain an ounce. And still, as a size six, she had felt like a linebacker next to most other women out there. She liked how comfortable her mother seemed in her own skin here.

In this huge, quiet house filled with so many childhood memories, Kim entered the world of her past. The second-story hallway made a T in the center; to the right lay Kimberly’s domain. As the only grandchild, she’d had the wing all to herself.

“What’s that face?” her mother asked.

“I’m not making a face.”

“Yes, you are. You’re making the defeated face,” her mother insisted.

“Well, look at me. I’m supposed to have a fabulous life. Instead, I’m moving back in with my mother.” She paused. “Assuming that’s all right with you.”

“All right? It’s going to be exactly what we both need. I’m sure of it. Think of this as coming full circle. It’s going to be wonderful, you’ll see.”

What’s going to be wonderful? Kim wanted to know, but she didn’t ask.

“I’ll run you a bath. That’ll be just the thing,” her mother said, bustling into the adjacent bathroom.

“A bath would be heavenly,” Kim agreed.

Hearing the rusty groan of the plumbing, she set down her bag, dropped the silk wrap on the end of the bed and finally—dear heaven, finally—took off her shoes. She spent a few minutes poking around the room, reacquainting herself with things she thought she’d forgotten—the collection of memorabilia from Camp Kioga, a rustic summer camp at the far northern end of Willow Lake. Kim had gone to camp there as a child, and as a teenager she’d worked as a counselor. Her ties to the small town were tenuous, but vivid memories stood out. Each summer she’d spent at Camp Kioga had been a magical string of endless golden days on Willow Lake, a world apart from the Upper Manhattan life she lived the rest of the year. Those ten weeks of summer had loomed large every year, shaping her as definitively as her expensive Manhattan prep school had attempted to do. The painted oar, autographed by all the girls in her cabin, brought back a rush of memories of ghost stories and giggles. The row of trophies on a shelf had belonged to a girl who was good at sports.

She took down a gray hooded sweatshirt with the camp logo, left over from her seventeenth summer, and put it on. The oversize shirt hung down to midthigh. The soft fabric warmed her, evoking secret memories of that distant time. She hadn’t known it back then, but that had been the summer that had defined the direction her life would take. She shut her eyes, thinking about how intense everything had seemed that summer, how everything had mattered so much. She had been filled with idealism, picturing a fabulous life for herself. A life she thought she’d had—until last night.

The gabled window offered a view of the mountains beyond the town. As a little girl visiting her grandparents, she used to curl up in the window seat and gaze outside, imagining that her future life lay somewhere beyond the horizon. As indeed it had, for a while. Now, as her mother pointed out, she’d come full circle.

Her evening gown fell to the floor in an expensive shimmer of sequins and silk. The strapless bra had been engineered for performance, not comfort, and she peeled it off with a sigh of relief. She had nothing on her bottom half. With a gown as clingy as the one she’d worn last night, a girl had to go commando.

“Are the towels in the linen closet?” she called to her mother.

“That’s right, dear.” Her mother said something else, but the drum of running water drowned it out.

Kim walked down the hall toward the linen closet.

A strange man in a trench coat stood there, staring straight at her. He was older, with iron-gray hair and a tough-guy demeanor—and he had absolutely no business being in her mother’s house.

Panic rolled up her spine, culminating in a scream. At the same moment, she clutched the sweatshirt tighter around her and desperately stretched the hem downward.

“Aw, jeez, hey, didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said.

Kim tried not to hyperventilate. “Stay back,” she said in a quiet, she hoped calming voice. Mom, she thought. She had to keep him away from her mother. Kim usually had mace or pepper spray on her, but of course last night, her purse-size aerosol had been confiscated by the TSA. “The valuables are downstairs,” she said. “Take whatever you want. Just … leave.” She gestured at the stairs, keenly aware that every movement gave him a peep show.

The intruder turned out his hands, palms up. “You must be Kimberly,” he said. “Penny talks about you all the time.”

Penny? The housebreaker had a nickname for her mother?

Kim’s heart constricted when her mother came out into the hall, an expectant look on her face. “I thought I heard voices out here—Oh.”

“If you lay a hand on either of us,” Kim warned, “I’ll hurt you, I swear, I will.” She did know self-defense, though she didn’t relish the idea of performing the moves nearly naked.

Her mother gave a laugh. “Dear, this is Mr. Carminucci.”

“Dino,” he said. “Call me Dino.”

He smiled, which made him resemble that Italian crooner, Tony Somebody. Bennett. Tony Bennett. Kim felt so disoriented she could barely say a word. Caught up in the surreal moment, she offered a halfhearted smile while trying to make sense of his presence here, in the second-story hallway of her mother’s house. He really did look a lot like Tony Bennett, right down to the warm brown eyes and iron-gray waves of hair. He was gazing at Kim’s mother as though he might burst into song at any moment. Penny. No one called her mother Penny.

“Dino is one of our guests,” her mother said easily. “You’ll meet everyone else at dinner.”

Guests? Everyone else? Kim didn’t bother hiding her confusion. “Um, it was nice to meet you, but …” She let her voice trail off and gestured vaguely toward her room. She thought about the sign on the car. Suspicion reared up in her.

“Kimberly just arrived for a nice stay,” her mother explained to the stranger. “She came in from L.A. on the red-eye.”

“Then I imagine you must be ready for a rest, Kimberley. See you later, ladies.” Whistling lightly, he headed for the stairs.

Kim grabbed her mother’s hand and pulled her back into the bedroom. “We need to talk.”

Penelope’s smile was tinged with irony. “Indeed, we do. I’ve thought the same thing for the past, oh, fifteen years.”

Ouch. Well, maybe now they would finally get the chance.

“I drew you a nice warm bubble bath,” Penelope continued. “We can have our talk while you bathe.”

Kim was too tired to do anything but surrender. Within minutes, she was in the adjoining bathroom in the deep, claw-footed tub, surrounded by a froth of lavender-scented bubbles. It felt so comforting that her eyes filled with tears. She quickly blinked them away.

Seated on a vanity stool nearby, her mother regarded her fondly. “It’s nice to have you home, Kimberly.”

“If it’s so nice to have me home, why haven’t you invited me to visit since Grandma’s funeral?” That had been two summers ago, Kim realized. It had been a time of terrible loss for Penelope, the loss of her mother coming so soon after her husband’s death.

“I always thought you’d prefer meeting in the city, or having me come out to Los Angeles. I imagined you’d find Avalon terribly boring compared to life in the big city.”

“Mom.”

“And, all right, I didn’t think you’d be supportive of my enterprise.”

“Your enterprise. The ‘guests,’ you mean.”

“Well, yes.”

“How many people are you talking about, Mom?”

“Currently, I have three visitors. Dino owns the pizza parlor in town, and he’s in the process of remodeling his home, so he’s staying temporarily. Mr. Bagwell normally goes south for the winter, but this year, he’s staying in Avalon and needed a place to live. Then there’s Daphne McDaniel—oh, she’s just delightful. I can’t wait for you to meet her. And there’s room for more. We just finished refurbishing the third-floor suite. I hope to find a guest for that one very soon.”

“Mom, what’s going on? Why do you have a bunch of strangers living here? Were you that lonely? I wish you’d said something—”

“They’re not strangers. They’re guests. Paying guests. And believe me, they are no substitute for my daughter.”

“You should’ve said something to me.” She winced with guilt as she thought of the visits with her mother in the aftermath of her father’s death. They had rendezvoused in Southern California, Manhattan, Florida. It had never occurred to Kimberly that her mother wanted her to come here. To come home.

“My life has changed a lot since your father passed away,” her mother explained.

Kim thought of Dino Carminucci. “I’d say so, Mom.”

“I obtained a business license and started this right after Labor Day.”

“This …?”

“My enterprise. Fairfield House.”

Kim’s head felt light. She wasn’t sure if it was from the hot water, exhaustion or sheer confusion. “I had a long night, Mom, so forgive me if I’m a bit slow on the uptake. Are you saying you’ve turned this place into a boardinghouse?”

“Indeed, I have.” She spoke as casually as she might have about getting her nails done. “And actually, it’s in keeping with family tradition. My great-grandfather, Jerome Fairfield, built this place with the fortune he made in textiles. At the time, it was the grandest mansion in town. Then, like so many others, he lost everything in the crash of ’29 and never quite recovered. He and his wife took in boarders. It was the only way to keep the house out of the hands of his creditors.”

Kim had never heard that bit of family history before.

“So truly,” Penelope concluded, “you could say it’s in my blood.”

Kim was speechless, taking in the news the way she would if her mother had said, “I’ve taken up bungee jumping.” Or, “I’ve become a nudist.”

When she found her voice, Kim asked, “And you were going to tell me this … when?”

“To be honest, I’ve been putting it off as long as possible. I knew you wouldn’t be pleased.”

“There’s an understatement. Taking in strangers, Mom? For money? Are you crazy?”

Her mother stood up and placed a stack of fresh towels on the vanity stool. “Say what you will, Kimberly, but I’m not the one wearing an evening gown and spike heels on a cross-country flight.”

“This is not crazy,” Kim said defensively. “This is a crisis, Mom. My own personal crisis.”

Her mother smiled. “Then you came to the right place.”

“So this boardinghouse—it’s a home for people in crisis?”

“Not by designation, no. People in transition, though. They seem to find their way here, to Fairfield House.” She spoke with a curious pride.

Kimberly studied her mother’s mild, sweet face as though regarding a stranger. Did she even know this woman anymore? Had she ever? Penelope Fairfield van Dorn had been born and raised in Avalon, and was a card-carrying member of the town’s old guard—the elite upper class, her roots going back to the days when the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts used to keep summer places in the mountains. Yet while most people grew more stuffy and more pretentious as they aged, widowhood had the opposite effect on Kim’s mother. Kim’s father had never liked this little Catskills village, even though it was his wife’s hometown. Daddy had always preferred the city, pulsing with the noise of commerce. But Mom claimed her heart had never left here, and she seemed happy enough to live in the house where she’d grown up. Even as a child, Kim had observed that her mother used to be happy here in a way that eluded her in the big city. This was the only place she’d seemed truly relaxed and at ease.

And finally, Kim came to understand why the house of her girlhood was so important to Mom and why keeping it meant everything to her.

Kim found jeans, a T-shirt and a pair of thick socks lying on the bed beside the sweatshirt. Her old—ancient—clothes were not too small for her, but the fit was different. Not quite comfortable. The clothes, however, were the least of her problems.

She towel dried her hair, reapplied her makeup and, after checking out the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, headed downstairs to the kitchen, which was blessedly warm. She took a seat and curled her hands around a thick china mug of her mother’s hot chocolate.

The kitchen gleamed with a coat of tomato-red paint, the trim a garish shade of yellow. Kim watched her mother wiping down the stove and sink, and dark thoughts crossed her mind—clinical depression, early-onset Alzheimer’s, a rare form of dementia …

“Mom—”

“It was the only way I could see to keep the house,” her mother said, replying to the question even before it was voiced.

“I thought you owned the house free and clear after Grandma died.”

“I did. I do. But then I needed money, so I agreed to an ill-considered equity loan. I’m afraid it was a rather bad decision on my part.”

It felt strange, talking with her mother about finances. Kim’s father used to handle the money exclusively, and she and Penelope never heard a word about it. “How bad?” Kim asked. “Are you saying you can’t afford to live here without taking in boarders?”

“I’m saying I can’t afford to live at all without doing something,” her mother said, her voice quiet and resigned.

“This is crazy, Mom. What happened? We had everything. Dad earned a ton of money.” Kim studied her mother’s face, wondering why she suddenly felt like a stranger. “Didn’t he?”

Penelope paused, set down her cloth and took a seat at the table. “Kimberly, perhaps I was wrong to keep this from you, but I didn’t want you to fret about it. I knew you’d worry if I explained my new circumstances.”

“Worry?” Kim said. “You think?”

“No need to be sarcastic, dear. We’ve both kept our secrets.”

“I’m sorry. What part of ‘my boyfriend gave me a black eye’ is the secret part?”

“Oh, Kimberly. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

“Just level with me, Mom. I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

“Well, the truth is, your father left behind a great deal of debt.”

That simply didn’t compute. They hadn’t lived like a family in debt.

“I don’t get it,” Kim said.

Her mother smiled, but without amusement. “I had some notion of preserving your memory of your father, but I suppose that was naive of me.”

“I don’t understand. Did he have some secret life you only discovered after he was gone?”

Penelope folded her hands on the table. “In fact, he did, in a way. When he was alive, he never said a word about his debts. I had no idea and to this day, I still don’t quite understand. He invested in a number of hedge funds that were called in, and had to mortgage and remortgage all our property. It’s not that I didn’t love your father,” she said. “I did. Very much. We enjoyed life and I had no idea how much we were living beyond our means. Sometimes I think that’s what killed your father. The stress of it. The strain of pretending.”

“I never knew.” Kim shut her eyes, trying to conjure a picture of her father, always so distinguished and reserved. The two of them had always had a turbulent relationship. This only made him seem more distant, as though she’d never even known him at all.

“In settling his affairs, it all came to light,” said her mother. “I’ve had to take measures in order to cover his liabilities. I had to … liquidate some things.”

The quaver in her voice caused Kim to feel a clutch of apprehension. “What things, Mom?”

“Well … everything.”

Everything. That was inconceivable. They had a home in Manhattan and a weekend place on Long Island and a condo in Boca Raton. There was an extensive stock portfolio. Wasn’t there?

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“That was what I asked the lawyer and the probate judge. There was a subprime second mortgage on the apartment, about to balloon to twelve percent. The house in Montauk and the condo in Largo were in foreclosure. Our equities and savings were nonexistent. I own this house free and clear, because my parents left it to me, but that’s the extent of it.”

“Mom, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She felt betrayed now by two men she’d trusted, two men she thought she knew.

“Nor did I.”

“Are you sure? While Dad was alive, you had no idea?”

Her mother’s smile was tinged with bitterness. “None. I feel so foolish for keeping myself in the dark about our finances.”

“You weren’t foolish, Mom,” Kim said. “You had every reason to trust him. But … are you sure taking in boarders is the answer?”

“Believe me, I left no stone unturned. But, Kim, just think of it. I majored in women’s studies a hundred years ago. I’ve never had a career and I have no marketable skills. I had to do something desperate or I would have fallen in arrears and been forced to sell Fairfield House.”

“I can’t believe Dad left you like this. How could you not have known?”

“Because,” she said, getting up from the table, “I didn’t realize I should have been looking.”

“You should have told me sooner.”

“Yes. It just seemed so cruel, though, to burden you with this. It was bad enough your father died so suddenly. I didn’t want to add this to your grief.”

“What about your grief?”

“I beat it into submission with anger and resentment,” Penelope said simply.

Kim wasn’t quite sure whether or not her mother was joking. After all she’d heard this morning, she wasn’t sure of anything.

“Richard was a master of deception, of making people see what he wanted them to see.”

That was true, Kim reflected. Everyone, across the board, had the same opinion of Richard van Dorn—that he was a refined and monied individual. In Manhattan, they had lived in the “right” area and she had gone to the “right” schools. They’d taken luxurious vacations, and her parents had hosted and attended the sort of parties and events that were written about in the society columns the next day. Her parents belonged to exclusive clubs, took part in charity fundraisers. How had he managed to hide the fact that he’d run them into a world of debt?

How her father would have hated this, she thought. He would have despised the idea of his wife taking in tenants, opening her home to paying strangers. Maybe he should have thought about that before driving himself into debt and then dying and leaving all the humiliation and heartache to his wife, who never did anything but believe in him. Except her mother did not appear to be humiliated. Rather than spiraling into despair like a latter-day Jane Austen character, Penelope van Dorn had embraced the new project.

Racing in a taxi to the airport last night, Kim had hoped to find a sense of peace and security, home with her mother. Instead, she’d found a house filled with strangers and painted all the mad colors of the rainbow. She realized she had a lot to learn about her father. At the moment, however, she could barely think straight.

Now that she understood the financial fiasco that had necessitated her mother’s move, Kim wondered if Penelope was only pretending to like it here. Pretending that turning her home into a boardinghouse was some kind of delightful, quirky adventure.

Finally, in the dead of winter, Kim could fully appreciate how radically her mother’s life had changed two summers ago, when she lost her husband. The contrast between her Manhattan lifestyle and the winter wilderness of upstate was sharply pronounced. Yet it struck Kim that she didn’t know her mother very well. She had never bothered to look beneath the surface of Penelope Fairfield van Dorn. Instead, she’d taken her at face value, the way the rest of the world did.

If she accomplished nothing else here, Kim thought, at least she could remedy that. She would help her mother sort out her finances. Now Kim understood the reason why Penelope had not urged her to visit. Her mother hadn’t wanted to burden her with the knowledge of her true circumstances. Hadn’t wanted to poison a daughter’s memories of her father with something so inconvenient as the truth.

Things happened for a reason. Kim would do whatever it took to help her mother. If this meant moving to a tiny mountain town and rolling up her sleeves, so be it. This was hardly the life Kim had planned for herself, but her own goals and plans and hard work had led to a dead end. She’d been driven by a need to impress her father, burnishing his reputation by making a name for herself. In a way, that was exactly what she did for her clients—made them look good. Clearly there was a flaw in that strategy.

She wasn’t likely to find the answer to her dreams here, but maybe coming here would yield something more precious—the chance to reconnect with her mother. To give back to the one person who had given Kim unconditional love. And maybe, if Kim was very lucky, to figure out a direction that didn’t lead to disaster.