The Last to Know (5 page)

Rachel is hesitant, frowning. “A male sitter? I don’t know . . .”

“He’s a good kid from what I can tell, Rachel,” says Karen, who lives next door to the Gallaghers and should know. “He seems like a real studious type—”

“I know who he is,” Rachel cuts in. “His mother died in that awful house fire in July.”

“August, actually, and that was his stepmother, Melissa Gallagher.”

“No wonder,” Rachel says.

“No wonder what?” Karen asks.

“No wonder the kid is so homely. Melissa Gallagher was an attractive woman. A blonde with a great figure, remember? No way could she produce a kid who looks like that.”

Tasha rolls her eyes. “Rach, that’s cruel. He’s just a kid.”

“I know, but . . . never mind. Go on, Karen.”

“
Anyway
,” Karen says, getting back to the point, “Sharon and Fletch have taken in Jeremiah and his two stepsisters until his father gets back to town. He’s overseas on a military assignment.”

Tasha toys with her coffee cup while Rachel and Karen discuss the Gallaghers’ nephew. She’s grateful when Victoria spills her apple juice all over herself, effectively curtailing the conversation.

Fletch Gallagher isn’t someone she feels comfortable discussing, even now.

Even if not another living soul knows what happened.

“I’ve got to get her home and change her into dry clothes,” Tasha tells Rachel and Karen, wiping the juice spatters from her daughter’s pink overalls with napkins.

“She’s not that wet,” Rachel points out. “It’ll dry fast.”

“I know, but . . . I’ve got a lot to do at home,” Tasha tells her, standing. “I was about to tackle a mountain of laundry when you called.”

“Oh, laundry,” Rachel says, wrinkling her nose. “Wouldn’t you rather stay here and gossip with us?”

Not about Fletch Gallagher,
Tasha thinks grimly as she reaches for her jacket.

M
argaret Armstrong sets a steaming cup of tea on the desk in front of her brother-in-law, taking care to make sure the saucer is carefully positioned on the blotter so as not to mar the antique cherry finish.

Owen barely looks up at her and doesn’t even glance at the tea, mumbling only, “Thanks.”

His head rests heavily in his hand; his gaze is fixed bleakly on a framed photograph on the desk.

Margaret can see only its easel back but she knows the picture must be of Jane. Owen’s large study is filled with photos of her sister, some formal studio shots, others candid snapshots, and a few of her with Schuyler.

On the wall over the fireplace behind the desk is an oil painting in an ornate gilt frame: Jane and Owen together on their wedding day. Jane, elegantly simple in Mother’s silk gown that has faded to a mellow ivory. Owen, dashing in his morning coat, beaming at his bride. She’s looking up at him, too, but, Margaret notices for the first time, she doesn’t radiate bliss the way her new husband does.

That’s Jane
, she thinks to herself with a familiar flicker of anger, averting her eyes from the painting.
Oblivious to the fact that she’s landed one of the most eligible men on the East Coast—and that he’s wildly in love with her.

Her sister has always taken Owen’s devotion for granted, from the moment she first met him at the country club pool on that long ago Fourth of July weekend.

Jane was only thirteen then. Margaret, at eighteen, had been assigned to keep an eye on her younger sister while Mother was on the golf course and Daddy was in the bar.

Keeping an eye on Jane meant watching her frolic in a skimpy turquoise bikini that she filled out so remarkably that every teenaged boy—and most of the men—at the pool that day were in awe of her.

While her sister flirted—shyly at first, and then with maddening aplomb—Margaret sat in the shade at a poolside umbrella table, her own modest black one-piece concealed under a terry cover-up that hid her pale skin and knobby, angular figure. She pretended to be engrossed in the novel she’d brought along: Dostoevsky.

But she was mostly watching Jane, wondering how it was that her kid sister was able to attain so effortlessly everything that had always eluded Margaret’s grasp.

Then, as if to punctuate Margaret’s covetous thoughts,
he
showed up, a gloriously masculine, broad-shouldered young blond man silhouetted against the bright blue summer sky as he bounced lightly on the edge of the high board.

Margaret found herself staring up at him, wondering why he was lingering, why it was taking him so long to leap over the edge. Was he leery? She didn’t sense apprehension in his sanguine bouncing. No, she realized . . . he was waiting for something. He was gazing pointedly down into the water below, where Jane, surrounded by a crowd of male admirers, was treading water, her wet golden hair streaming back to reveal that flawless sun-kissed face.

He was waiting for Jane.

Finally, as though sensing the eyes intently focused on her from above, she glanced up at the man on the diving board.

And he, realizing he had her attention, executed a perfect somersault dive into the water below.

When he surfaced, he swam directly over to Jane.

Margaret watched as he chatted with her sister, who seemed coyly uninterested yet didn’t seem to mind when her other admirers drifted away gradually, leaving her alone with him. Finally the two of them climbed out of the pool and headed over to the snack bar, passing Margaret on the way. Her sister waved casually, and the boy with her glanced in her direction. It was then that Margaret recognized him.

It was Owen Kendall, the eighteen-year-old heir to a vast Westchester fortune. Like her, he had graduated from high school weeks earlier. He had gone to Somerset Prep while she had attended its all-girls sister school, Dover Academy. All the Dover girls knew about handsome, affable, gentlemanly Owen Kendall, the consummate great catch.

It figured that he would land in Jane’s lap before she even began her freshman year at Dover. Owen was patient, dating her the whole time he was away at Yale, proposing marriage on her eighteenth birthday.

Jane never had to work for anything in her life. She didn’t know what it was like to yearn. To envy . . .

No
, Margaret chastises herself.
Not now. Don’t hate Jane now. Not when you should be focusing your energy on Owen. He needs you.

That’s why she’s here, having so willingly left behind her life in Scarsdale—the idle days she struggles to fill with gardening, reading, television.

She has nothing to rush back to. She can stay here with Owen and Schuyler as long as she is needed.

And she is needed. Or so she has been struggling to convince herself.

She clears her throat.

He looks up. His light blue eyes are tormented.

“Do you . . . need anything?” Margaret asks, feeling herself flush under his gaze.

She is suddenly aware of the overwhelming silence in the study, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel.

He seems to ponder the question too long before shaking his head. “Nothing you can give me,” he says with quiet bitterness.

Margaret knows he means no animosity toward her. That he can’t possibly sense the secret, forbidden urges that torment her. Yet she can’t help feeling a prickle of trepidation at his words.

Is he angry with her?

Is there the slightest chance that he somehow
knows?

She forces her voice to remain level as she tells him, “I checked on Schuyler. She’s asleep in the nursery.”

“Are my parents still here?”

“Your mother is lying down upstairs. She has a headache. Your father is still on the phone in the library.”

“With our lawyers, no doubt,” Owen says dully.

Margaret doesn’t have an answer for him. The Kendalls have pretty much ignored her since she arrived. Though they adore Jane—who doesn’t?—they have never had much use for her family.

The Armstrongs were never quite as socially esteemed as the Kendalls, but they were certainly on par with the majority of Westchester’s country club set—until Daddy blew his brains out one midnight on the golf course, later that same summer when Margaret was eighteen and Owen was following Jane around at the pool.

In the wake of that tragedy, the Armstrongs were tainted. But not Jane. Never Jane. She survived the scandal with her dignity intact, traded the tarnished Armstrong name for one that was pure gold. Jane became a Kendall, welcomed into their ranks and thus protected from further unpleasant fallout from her father’s scandalous suicide.

Mother, too, eventually remarried. Her second husband was Teddy Wright-Douglas, a British financier who was distantly related to the royal family.

Only Margaret still bears the Kendall name. Only Margaret has been left to slink in the shadows of her father’s shameful legacy.

Yet perhaps now things will be different. Now that Jane is gone . . .

“Owen,” Margaret says abruptly, to curtail the direction in which her thoughts are drifting, “won’t you let me fix you some toast? Or maybe some soup. You should eat. You haven’t eaten all day.”

“I have absolutely no appetite,” he tells her heavily, bowing his head and rubbing his temples with his fingers.

“But Owen, if you don’t eat—”

“I’m fine,” he cuts in sharply, silencing her.

As her thoughts race for something else to say, for something else to offer, he adds, “All I want right now, Margaret, is to be left alone.”

Stung, yet willing herself not to show it, she nods and retreats from the study.

In the hallway outside she pulls the door quietly closed, then pauses with her hand still on the knob, uncertain where to go next.

Schuyler is asleep in her crib in the yellow-and-white second-floor nursery. Mother’s flight from Heathrow doesn’t get in until this evening, and Margaret has already arranged a car service for her rather than drive to the airport to meet the flight herself. She’s not particularly anxious to see her mother under the best of circumstances. Today, she dreads it.

The house is large enough so that she doesn’t have to share space with Owen’s parents, the housekeeper, or the detectives working on the case. She, too, wants to be alone.

After a moment, she turns and heads to the kitchen and up the back staircase that leads to the second floor. From here she can go through a large walk-in dressing room and into the master bedroom.

She shouldn’t be here. On some level, she knows that as she slips through the door into the sprawling room with its crown molding, fireplace, and cozy, gabled nooks.

She takes in the brocade wallpaper, the rich cranberry-colored draperies that frame floor-to-ceiling windows, the thick carpet with its floral Victorian pattern beneath her feet.

This is the private quarters her sister shares with Owen, a room Margaret has been in only once before, when Jane first gave her a grand tour of the entire house years ago. Back then this section was empty, awaiting not just delivery of the newly ordered furniture, but also the skills of the professional decorator who would transform it into the sumptuous suite it has become.

“Don’t you love it?” Jane had asked. “This room—isn’t it beautiful?”

Margaret nodded. “The whole house is beautiful, Jane.”

“I’m glad you agree with me,” Jane said in a tone that hinted to Margaret that Owen did not.

“What does Owen think?”

“He wanted a new house. He doesn’t like old houses. He grew up in one. He calls it the mausoleum. But he gave in and bought this place for me because I fell in love with it. I adore all the quirks. Old houses are so interesting . . . and they have secrets.”

She proceeded to show Margaret a few of them and described several others.

Now, remembering that day, Margaret stands in the middle of the master bedroom. Her gaze falls on the ornately carved king-size bed, the vast built-in armoire along one wall, and the sitting area with its period fainting couch and cheval mirror. She catches her reflection in it, and as always, it takes her by surprise.

Somehow, in her own mind, in her optimistic heart, she is younger, more attractive than the plain, nearly middle-aged woman in the glass. In her imagination, she belongs in a room like this.

In reality . . .

She takes in her own close-set, sparsely lashed black eyes, her lifeless dark hair parted in the middle and drawn severely back from her pale, angular face.

She has tried on occasion to do something with her appearance. To bring out her eyes with makeup, to give her hair a lift with a different style and some spray.

But the attempts have been futile. Nothing can transform her. . . .

Into Jane.

Isn’t that what you want?
she demands of the homely woman in the mirror.
You want to be Jane
.

You want to claim what belongs to Jane.

All of it.

Slowly she turns away from the mirror to gaze thoughtfully at the bed.

F
letch Gallagher opens the lid of the new red state-of-the-art blender he recently ordered from a Williams-Sonoma catalogue.

He peers inside, then taps on the glass container. Sturdy. Outrageously expensive, too . . . but worth it. He’ll use this thing every day, especially now that baseball season’s over and he’ll be hanging around the house more—Unless the Mets go into post-season play, which means his sportscasting duties can extend well into October. With any luck, he usually heads up to his cabin in the Catskills to unwind with a fishing pole, then south to spend some time golfing and lying in the sun. But this year, when the Mets narrowly missed getting into the playoffs and Fletch found himself free, Aidan begged him to stay put in Townsend Heights for a while. Keep an eye on his nephew and step-nieces. Make sure they’re adjusting okay.

What could he do? The last thing he wants is to stick around here, but he can’t refuse his brother. Not when the guy has just been widowed for the second time in his life.

He has to admit that Sharon’s pitching in more than he expected her to, where the kids are concerned. After all, they’re not her blood relations, and it’s not like she’s prone to bending over backward to do favors for Fletch these days. But she’s spent more time at home lately, helping the twins with their homework and taking them shopping for new school clothes. Maybe it’s because she misses Randi, their own daughter, who is away for her first semester at William and Mary. Sharon seems to enjoy having their two young nieces around the house.