Her Father's House

B
ELVA
P
LAIN

HER
FATHER'S
HOUSE

A Dell Book

Contents

Title Page

Prologue

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part Two

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part Three

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

About the Author

BOOKS BY BELVA PLAIN

Praise for BELVA PLAIN

Preview

Copyright Page

Prologue

O
ne day when I was four years old, a girl in school told me that my mother was not my real mother.

“Your real one's dead,” she said.

Is it not strange that I cannot remember what explanation my father gave me when I ran home? I only remember that it was raining hard. I was all wet, and at the front door the cat was crying to be let in.

PART

ONE

Chapter 1

1968

H
is name was Donald Wolfe, Donald J., for James, and he was twenty-five years old when he joined the stream of eager youth that from every corner of the country, every year, pours into the churning human sea called New York. If it is ever possible, or even makes any sense to say that someone's geographic origin can be visible on his person, then it made sense to say that Donald looked like just the man to have come from healthy small-town or farming people in some cold place like North Dakota—which is exactly where he had come from.

He was tall, brown-haired, and large-boned; his brown eyes were thoughtful and calm. On the streets of New York during those first months, he walked with slow deliberation through the impatient crowd, taking his time to estimate the height of a building or pausing to wonder at the heaped-up splendors in the shop windows. Untempted, he merely wondered.

Once only was he tempted. In a bookstore's window lay the
Writings of Thomas Jefferson,
bound in dark red leather. It was expensive, yet the price did not faze him too much, for he hoped to build a library and he also felt that he owed himself one treat, so he bought it.

Never in his life had he had so much money at his command. Having graduated second in his class at law school, he had been hired as an associate in the New York office of an international law firm. Although others in the firm complained that the city, with its high rents, expensive restaurants and entertainments, left them beggared, he, because he did not go to expensive restaurants and always bought standing room or the cheapest seats at theaters, felt rich. His clean, two-room apartment on the fifth floor of a nineteenth-century walk-up building, with an interesting view of the lively street, was satisfying to him.

   

Sometimes in window glass he would catch a reflection of himself on his way to work, wearing his correct dark suit with his briefcase at his side.

“I can't believe what's happened to me,” he would cry out to himself, and then be amused at his own simplemindedness. Who do you think you are, anyway, Donald Wolfe? Why, there are dozens of young men just like you in any one of these towering buildings along the avenue.

Yet they were not all quite like him. Senior partners were surely known to be sparing of praise; still, before the year had passed, he had already received a good deal of it. One of the seniors, a punctilious, middle-aged man whom a few of the younger people in the office had secretly labeled “typically white shoe,” took a liking to him. But even if Augustus Pratt had not taken that liking, Donald never would have scoffed at “white shoe”; to begin with, he was not exactly sure what it meant, but if it did mean what he thought—a certain old-fashioned, formal courtesy—he would have found no fault with that.

One evening at the conclusion of
Aida,
Donald came upon Mr. Pratt in the lobby of the opera house. He was accompanied by a woman, obviously his wife, with their three half-grown children.

“Why, hello, Donald. I never knew you cared about opera.”

“I do, although I still don't know much about it.”

“It's never too late and seldom too early to learn. If I'd known you were here,” he said as they walked out together, “we could have had some refreshments. Where were you sitting?”

“On top. As high as you can go.”

“Oh. It was worth it, I'm sure, in spite of the seat.”

“Yes, sir, it was.”

“Well, see you in the morning. Good night, Donald.”

More than once when in a later time he reflected on the chain of events that had moved him through the years, Donald wondered how differently things might have turned out if he had not met Augustus Pratt that night at the opera.

Was it the fact that I shared his tastes that impressed him enough to present me with two good seats for the rest of the season? Had that led to those informal conversations which, in their turn, had led to more swift assignments and promotions, and that, in a roundabout way had led in the end to Lillian, to marriage, and the deadly ruin that came after it?

   

Pratt had grown up in a small town in northern Maine. His father, like Donald's late mother, had been a teacher. He, too, had left for law school, borrowed and worked his way through it, and never returned to the small town. It was this familiar background that made Donald feel particularly comfortable in his presence.

“Yes,” Pratt said in one of those conversations, “Dakota sounds much like Maine. A hot July and August, then a long winter. My brothers and I worked all day in the potato fields. We worked so late sometimes that our mother brought our dinner to us in a pail. You, too, I suppose?”

“Except that I had no brothers or sisters, either. Mom had a summer job when school was out. When I got back from the farm where I worked, I'd make supper. If she got home first, she'd make it.”

“You don't mention your father. Or am I intruding with the question?”

“Not at all. He died in France in 1944. I was a year old.”

“To have a son, and never see him grow up,” Pratt murmured, then gave Donald a penetrating look.

“You would have pleased him, Donald. Our profession, despite the abuses of some lawyers, still demands the highest honor and trust. You are going to be an honored name within it.”

   

Donald was to remember another day, two years later.

“How would you like to go with me to Singapore next month? There's a bank matter there that's come to life again. We'd thought it was nicely settled, but it isn't.”

“Like it, Mr. Pratt? Until I came to New York, I'd never been farther than the state capital. Oh yes, I'd like it!”

Pratt had smiled. Donald never forgot that smile, a little pleased, a little amused, and even perhaps a little bit—well, fatherly.

“You'll see a lot more than Singapore in your time, Donald.”

There was so much that he needed to see, and do, and learn! The world was a thousand times larger and fuller than he could have imagined. In the courtroom as part of a team accompanying a senior partner, he saw the human tragedy and the human comedy as he had never seen them. The variety of people! The poverty and the riches! The astonishing evil and the innocence! And above it all was the majestic quest for justice.

At his desk he sat and studied the postmarks on foreign correspondence. The very names on them lured him. London and Paris evoked grand boulevards; Suriname, Bombay, or Malaysia evoked wet heat, dim rubber forests, or red-and-gold bazaars. The firm's clients had profits, losses, and myriad problems all over the world. Here were complicated puzzles with much at stake—not to mention his own job if he were to err in a report to his superiors. . . .

   

The bright years rolled one into the other. In the fifth year, he was approaching the time when a young lawyer either “makes partner” or knows that he never will.

“I can't talk about it yet, but I assume you have a pretty good idea,” said Augustus Pratt, and changed the subject. “Do you ever think of marrying?”

Donald was startled. They were five miles above the Atlantic, flying home. And they had just been talking about the Federal Reserve. Anyway, the question was more personal than one would generally expect from Mr. Pratt.

“No,” he said, stumbling over his reply. “I'm in no hurry.”

“Well, you've been with us going on six years. And you haven't met anyone? I thought maybe that English girl you always see when we're in London. She seemed quite lovely that time I met her.”

“You liked her,” Donald said mischievously, “because she looks like Mrs. Pratt.”

“Ah yes, maybe she does, a little. We'll be married twenty years next month.” A soft expression crossed Pratt's face. It was remarkable to see that softness appear on features usually so firm as to have been carved. “Yes, yes, Donald, a sound, loving marriage is a man's blessing. Someplace right now there's a young woman who is going to give you great joy in life. And let me add that she will be one lucky woman.”

“Well, we'll see,” said Donald, wanting to end the subject. “But up till now, I haven't ever felt about anyone that I'd want to spend the rest of my life with her. Without that, I certainly wouldn't marry her.”

Chapter 2

S
cattered among New York's stone towers are a number of small, green oases, with seats in the shade or in the sun, depending on one's choice. Throughout the day, people come to them to read or eat a sandwich lunch, or simply to sit.

About half-past four on a warm afternoon late in April, Donald sat down in one of these oases and opened the newspaper. He was unusually tired; he had been in the office until midnight the night before and had then spent the greater part of the day in court. Debating within himself whether he ought to go back to the office or whether, it being Friday, he could afford to go straight home, take off his shoes, and stretch out, he put the paper down and shut his eyes against the lowering sun. His mood was mingled; there was the satisfaction that came of having skillfully presented a convincing argument before the court; also there was the pity that he could not help but feel for the poor guilty devil who by now must be sitting in jail, quivering as he awaited the term of his punishment.

A bright, girlish voice woke him from his thoughts. “Your briefcase is about to fall and spill out all your papers.”

So it was. He had placed it carelessly on the very edge of his knees. Now, in haste, he retrieved it and mumbled his thanks.

“Very nice of you. I should have known better.”

Directly in his line of vision sat the owner of the voice, the owner also of two very large and very blue eyes. He smiled appropriately, returned to his newspaper, and read a column. When he looked up as he turned the page, there she was again, a smart young woman wearing black and white; her skin was also very white against her black, upswept hair. About twenty-five, he guessed, and went back to the newspaper.

The next time he looked, she was eating an orange. She had placed it upon a magazine, and with a tiny knife—mother-of-pearl handle, he thought—was cutting it into sections. These she ate with unusual delicacy, and with the same delicacy, having wrapped the peel in a paper napkin, dropped it into the trash can at the rear of the little park.

Elegance.
The word flashed into his head as he watched her. She was small, but not undersized. She was erect and graceful, as if she were dancing. When she sat down, her ankles were crossed so that her pretty shoes hugged each other.

He looked away, but not before he had caught her glance, which then made it necessary to say something.

“I certainly appreciate your noticing my briefcase. The last thing I need is to have any of these papers blow away.”

“Legal documents, oh yes. One of the people in my firm lost some last week in the subway, and it was pretty awful.”

“Your firm? You're a lawyer?”

“Heavens, no. Just a secretary, a legal secretary to Mr. Buzley. Buzley of Anaheim, Roman and Roman.”

“You shouldn't say ‘just' a secretary. We could hardly work without secretaries.”

“Well, true enough. By the way, I'm Lillian Morris.”

“Donald Wolfe. I'm with Orton and Pratt.”

She smiled. “A far cry from Mr. Buzley. Pop singers and movie stars versus international strategies. But Mr. Buzley's very nice to me, and I shouldn't say that, should I?”

“No, you shouldn't. But I won't quote you.”

She laughed. Her laugh was a real one, not the affected giggle he so often heard. There was something about her that delighted him. He suddenly had the feeling that in another minute she would get up and leave. Surely there must be something he could say to detain her.

“It feels like an early spring. I mean, it will be if this keeps up,” he said, and was at once ashamed of his dull remark.

“Yes, it does,” she agreed.

For the life of him, he could think of nothing more to say. But then when she actually did stand up, opening her mouth perhaps to bid good-bye, he thought of something.

“I'm walking east. Is that your way, too?”

When she replied that it was, he berated himself for his stupidity. What if she had said west? How then would he have been able to accompany her?

They crossed Park Avenue. “I always wondered,” said Lillian, “what those apartments are like inside. The doorways with the awnings and the doormen look so impressive. I've heard that some apartments have twelve or fifteen rooms, or even more.”

Augustus Pratt's apartment had fourteen rooms. Donald could have told her about the mahogany library there, or the long dining table under the brilliant chandelier. But the subject did not seem important enough to take his mind from the thought that on Lexington Avenue, only a few steps away, there was a little place with tables on the sidewalk and wonderful pizza, or—

“Are you by any chance hungry?” he inquired.

“Yes, to tell the truth, I've only had breakfast this morning and that orange just now.”

“How about keeping me company? I'm starved.”

“I would love it.”

Having had a large lunch with a group of lawyers between court sessions, he was hardly hungry. But at the table on the sidewalk, he managed to eat a fair-sized piece of an excellent pizza. The ordering of food, the discussion of choices, and the comparisons among various recipes and restaurants, followed by a brief selection of a sorbet, relieved him of the need to make good conversation. He did not remember ever, before now, having struggled to “make” conversation! Words had always come easily to him. Was a lawyer not, after all, a wordsmith?

Lillian was making comments on the passing scene: an unfamiliar foreign car, a woman wearing a fashionable suit, and a man leading a pair of handsome standard poodles. She spoke vivaciously, but not too much so; hearing her, he only half heard; he was observing her instead.

She made small, expressive gestures with her hands. He disliked women of whom he often thought that if their hands were ever tied, they would be unable to talk. But now he watched those hands, the long fingers and the pale, oval nails. Raising his eyes, he saw a necklace of small pearls lying between the rise of round breasts under a fine white blouse. He saw a firm chin and full lips that, for some odd reason, recalled the taste of warm raspberries. The nose was a trifle too short. The cheekbones were perhaps too high, although it was said, was it not, that high cheekbones were to be desired? So then they were not too high! And the eyes, lake blue, lake deep! And the dark, thick hair piled high, the crown on a proud, proud head.

The man with the poodles came walking back. One dog, too close to the table, brushed against Donald and sniffed his plate, for which behavior the owner apologized profusely. But Donald, filled with a sudden and curiously warm happiness, only stroked the dog's head.

“That's all right. He reminds me of the dogs I once had. Not poodles, but setters. The same size, though.”

When the man smiled and went on his way, Lillian smiled, too. “Isn't it interesting how babies and dogs break the ice?”

“Break the ice?”

“Pull people together, I mean. If I hadn't been here, that man would probably have lingered awhile with you, talking about dogs. You looked so happy all of a sudden, when you were stroking his poodle.”

She's keen, he thought. She doesn't miss much. No doubt she was observing the flush on his heated cheeks. She might even know perfectly well that it was she herself and not the dog that had put it there.

But now, having at least one thread to catch on to, he used it to seize hold of the conversation. “I grew up in a country town. I had dogs and a horse. I still get sentimental about them, even about a policeman's horse, when I see one.”

“Tell me about your home.”

She knew instinctively, or perhaps had been taught as she grew up, that the way to please is to let people talk about themselves. It was an innocent trick, after all, and much more considerate than monopolizing the conversation with long accounts of one's own ambitions or grievances.

“It was in North Dakota. Very spare, wide, grand scenery. In many ways, I miss it. I could just as well have been a rancher or a farmer, like my father.”

“So how did you end up as a lawyer in the big city?”

“I don't know. I was only ten or twelve when I made up my mind to go to law school. Maybe it was my schoolteacher mother, encouraging me. She, and all the books in the house. We didn't have any money, but somehow we bought books.”

“How long have you been in New York?”

“Almost six years, all of them with Orton and Pratt.”

“You'll be a partner before long.”

“Who knows? But I hope so. I love the work.”

“It must be wonderful to feel that way about your work. I don't hate mine, but I certainly don't love it, either.”

“What would you rather be doing?”

“Painting. I've taken art lessons, and while I'm not awful, I've learned that I'm not good, either.”

“Maybe you need better training,” said Donald, aware that he knew nothing about the subject.

“I tried that. I even went to Italy for six months, in Florence, going to classes, soaking up the atmosphere. The best thing I got out of it besides the pleasure of being there was learning to squelch all foolish hopes. I came home almost broke. I used up almost all the insurance that came to me after my mother's death. Then I went to work for Mr. Buzley.”

Thinking, but not sure, that he was seeing a glimmer of moisture under her round white eyelids, he said gently, “It isn't easy to lose your mother. I know about it.”

“But you have to accept, don't you? Accept and keep moving.” She looked at her watch. “Excuse me, I don't want to leave, but my housemate is going to have a major extraction at the dentist's, and I promised to go with her. Thank you so much for this treat. I've loved talking to you.”

“Would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow night, Lillian? I have a feeling that we have more to say to each other.”

He had a tentative appointment for the next night, but he was going to break it because he was not going to let go of this woman.

“That would be wonderful, Donald.”

“Give me your address and telephone. Here's my card. It's proof of my identity, so you can check. It's for your safety,” he added when she protested.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Your face is proof enough of my safety. I'm a very good judge of people, Donald.”

They were going in opposite directions. When at the first corner he turned to look back, he saw that she was doing the same. Then they waved to each other and walked on.

   

Perhaps because this was their second meeting, or because of the surroundings, quiet space, comfortable chairs, and the lighting so soft and subtly pink, there was no hesitancy between them.

“So we're both orphans,” Donald said. “And both only children. I think about it sometimes, although not too often. But whenever I do, I'm aware of being alone at the end of a chain. There are some third cousins on my father's side, but they live in Wyoming, and I've only seen them once when they came by our way. But my life is full, and always has been. I had a great childhood. The only pain I have is that neither parent lived to see me graduate from law school. My mother had been talking for years about that day.”

Why was he telling her all this, he a private person not given to revelations about himself? But she had seemed interested and had pressed him to talk about himself.

“Now what about you?” he asked. “You grew up on Long Island, you said. I haven't been on Long Island more than twice, and then only for an hour each time. I've read about it, though.”

“You read about the mansions, and the beaches. An awful lot of it is just rows of little houses side by side, where, they tell me, the potato fields used to be. That's where I grew up. Suburbia. You must have read about suburbia, too.”

“Yes, all kinds of supposedly learned articles. They don't praise it much, and I'm generally suspicious of that nose-in-the-air attitude.”

“They're not altogether wrong, believe me. Suburbia can be dull beyond belief. As soon as I could get away, I did, and went as far as I could.”

Her eyes were sparkling. She had determination. Imagine a young woman, alone in the world, taking her ambition and her little money, all she had, to gamble it on her future in a country where she didn't know man or woman! There she sat, as sure of herself as any well-protected young woman living on Park Avenue. He had learned enough about New York to recognize that her clothes were fashionable. She wore a fine watch, and why not? She had nobody to care for but herself.

Nevertheless, it was a dangerous world. One accident, one illness, one misstep, and a defenseless person all alone is destroyed. Thinking so, he fell silent.

“You're a gentle soul,” Lillian said suddenly.

He was touched, and he laughed. “You've never seen me in a court fight.”

“I don't mean that. I mean that if your heart is touched, you can be terribly hurt, more than most people.”

Yesterday, when he was fondling that dog, she had sensed his mood. “What are you doing, psychoanalyzing me?” he asked.

“No, nor flattering you, either. You're too intelligent not to see right through that. No, it's simply that I like you, and so naturally I'm interested in you.”

“Are you interested enough to prolong this evening, after we've had our coffee?”

“Yes, very. Unfortunately, we can't go back to my place because tonight's Cindy's turn to have a friend.”

“Then we'll go to mine—that is, if you don't mind climbing four flights of stairs.”

Cindy's turn. Was it not ridiculous that having met this woman only yesterday, he should feel a pang of jealousy and wonder whom Lillian brought to those rooms when it was her turn?

They climbed the stairs, and he opened the door and switched on the light. Seldom did he have visitors here, but he was meticulous, and for his own sake, kept his home in order. So here they were, his two little rooms, filled with books and simple mementos of his journeys: a handwoven cotton rug from Turkey, a Chinese screen to hide the closet-sized kitchen, and three engravings of eighteenth-century Paris, bought at a bookstore on the Left Bank.