Time After Time (47 page)

The glass entry door was
open, but Cynthia wasn't at her desk. Liz assumed that the
secretary had stepped out; she motioned her daughter to take a seat
while they waited for her to come back.

The next voice she heard
was Cynthia's, high and agitated, at the far end of the aisle of
cubicles. "He'll kill me if he finds out! I know he will! He gets
so jealous—"

And then the one voice
that Liz was not prepared to hear:

"He won't find out, Cyn.
Don't worry."

Instantly Liz went over to
Susy and yanked her out of her chair. "We're going," she said to
her startled daughter.

"But, Mommy! I hear
Cynthia—"

"Liz!''

The word went through Liz
like a long, thin blade. She turned, proud that she wasn't
staggering, and said in a flat tone, "Jack. How're you?"

Jack was clearly
embarrassed and angry; Cynthia, embarrassed and scared. Between
them they looked caught, as the church so delicately liked to put
it, pretty damned
in flagrante.

"Oh, you want your list,"
the young secretary said, rifling red-faced through a stack of
papers on her desk. "I almost forgot."

Jack made himself smile at
Susy and then said to Liz in a voice of pure steel, "How's the
fund-raiser coming?"

"Wonderfully well," Liz
said with a faint smile. "We've sold so many tickets, we may not
even
need
this
mailing list.''

They'd sold eleven, but
who was counting?

Liz was saved from the
impossible task of making chitchat by the arrival of Cornelius
Eastman with his daughter Caroline and the child's lovely Irish
nanny, Deirdre. Cornelius took one look at the assembly and broke
into a wide, engaging grin.

"Well, for goodness'
sake," he said, singling out Liz and Susy, "here's perfect timing.
We were just about to take the
Déjà
Vu
for an evening spin. Won't you join
us?"

Liz said at once, "Thanks
for the offer, but we haven't eat—"

Susy squeezed her hand in
a signal that, roughly translated, meant:
If you say no, I'll pout until I'm eighteen.

Meanwhile, Cornelius was
pooh-poohing Liz's excuse with a hearty, "Oh, come on along.
Netta's packed a cold supper for us — anything to get us out of her
hair. What about it, Susy? Want to go for that boat ride at
last?"

Little blond Caroline was
giving Susy the same kind of look a cat gives a mouse. Susy knew it
and — gutsy kid — said "Yes, please" anyway. Liz was working
herself into a thorough snit over being put on the spot when Jack
decided to put in
his
two cents.

"If Liz doesn't want to
go, Dad, I don't think we should force her."

We?
Since when was he part of the equation? And in any case, what
right had he to disinvite her in his father's name? Liz remembered
the first time she'd turned Jack down, certain she couldn't meet
his standards. Well, to hell with his standards.

"Actually, Susy and I
don't have anything special planned this evening. Thanks for the
offer ... Neal," she said, passing over Jack with a sweet and
vengeful smile.

"Excellent. Let's go,
then. Catch you later, Jack."

Oh. Jack wasn't
coming?

"Maybe I'll tag along with
you, Dad," Jack said with a fairly grim smile of his
own.

He
was
coming.

"Cynthia?" said Cornelius
to Jack's secretary. "The more the merrier!"

Shit.
She
was coming?

"Oh, no, Mr. Eastman,"
Cynthia said, blushing probably down to her toes. "I have to get
home, really. David will be waiting for his supper."

She wasn't coming. So. The
sailing party consisted of a married philanderer, a single
philanderer, a divorced chick, a single chick, and two kids. What
could come of
that
combination, Liz had no idea.

They stopped at
Cornelius's Lexus to take out a wicker basket which probably
contained pâté and smoked salmon and other things Susy wouldn't
eat, and then they boarded the superbly exquisite
Déjà Vu.
Liz had been in
a fair number of mansions — all of them tourist attractions
charging admission — but she'd never sailed aboard a real yacht,
for money or for free.

She liked it. It was
impossible not to feel like a Susy-in-Disney-World when Jack threw
off the heavy nylon dock lines and his father began backing the
boat expertly out of its slip. The low blub-blub of the engine
echoed discreetly through the water, nothing at all like the
ear-piercing high- speed boats she sometimes heard racing up and
down the bay. By the time she had Susy strapped into her life
jacket, the
Déjà Vu
was quietly threading its way past the docked boats heading
down the bay.

Newport, her little City
by the Sea, looked even more charming from the deck of a boat: a
collection of white and stone steeples sprinkled among ancient
trees and gambrel roofs. The scale was surprisingly intimate and
cozy; it was hard to believe that a town so small could have been a
major seaport during the Revolutionary era. It gave Liz great
satisfaction to be living in what was basically the same colonial
town — give or take a few awful condo projects — that had graced
the side of the hill for centuries.

Liz had Susy next to her
on the semicircle of cushioned seating on the afterdeck. "Look for
our house, honey," she said, pointing up the hill. "See the big
square steeple that looks like a castle? Look up behind it. Oops —
too late; it's gone behind a tree."

Susy slipped out of her
mother's reach and sidled up to the rail where Caroline, also in a
life jacket, was standing. The two girls — one as dark as the other
was fair — watched as the piers and condos fell away and the yacht,
bearing right, began to steam out the channel.

Liz had to force herself
not to tuck Susy somewhere safe in the middle of the boat, because
she knew her daughter would never forgive the humiliation of it.
But the
Déjà Vu
wasn't Disney World: there were no seat belts or safety bars
here. Their only protection from all that water was a
hundred-year-old wooden hull and the expertise of two men who were
barely on speaking terms.

She looked for Deirdre and
found the black-haired beauty draped over Cornelius's shoulder,
pointing to various instruments and asking questions in her
enchanting Irish accent.
So much for the
nanny,
thought Liz. She resolved to keep
an eye on Caroline, too. As for Jack — where was Jack?

She peeked around the
starboard — or was it the port? — deck; but he surprised her by
approaching her on the port — or was it the starboard? —
side.

"Can I get you or the kids
anything?" he asked in a depressingly polite tone.

"I think we're all set for
now, thanks," she said, still without taking her eyes off Susy and
Caroline.

Jack followed her gaze.
"Don't worry, they're fine there. As soon as we hit the chop around
Fort Adams and catch a little spray aft, they'll come running for
cover."

He left her to go below
deck. Liz wondered why — since he'd invited himself along — he was
staying so removed from the party.

But in the meantime the
boat was bobbing through the wake of a much-too-fast sport
fisherman that passed them in the opposite direction. The
Déjà Vu
ended up taking
some spray aboard and — Jack was right — the girls got washed with
a fine mist of salt water. They squealed in surprise and ran back
to Liz with hunched shoulders and arms pulled in tight. That lasted
ten seconds. Then Susy went right back to the rail, and Caroline,
not to be outdone, took up a position next to her. Clearly they
were hoping for a hurricane.

The varnish-framed cabin
windows behind Liz were slid open, allowing her to hear some, but
not all, of the exchanges between Deirdre and Cornelius in the
wheelhouse. Their talk was innocent enough, but their flirty tone
made Liz uncomfortable. Deirdre's laugh was just a little too
eager, a little too shrill.

Cornelius began to turn
the yacht north, up the calm water of Narragansett Bay.

Deirdre cried out gaily,
"Beggin' your pardon, sir, not that way! The other way!
Toward
Ireland,
we should be goin'!"

Cornelius laughed and
said, "Ireland it is, then!" and turned the helm sharply to the
left. The
Déjà Vu
began heading out the bay, toward open water.

Almost at once Jack
appeared. "What the hell's going on?" he said, not bothering to
hide his annoyance.

His father, who'd fallen
into the spirit of Deirdre's whimsy, said affably, "We're sailing
to Ireland, that's all. Don't worry, son; we'll have you back at
the yard by the time the whistle blows in the morning."

Ignoring his father's flip
tone, Jack said, "I just monitored the weather. There's an advisory
posted until nine o'clock tonight. A line of thunderstorms is
moving through Connecticut."

"Was it a watch or a
warning?"

"A watch."

"No problem, then," his
father said with a wink at Deirdre. "We'll hold our course for
Ireland."

"We've got a couple of
kids—"

"Hey, we'll take 'em
along," Cornelius said with a laugh.

"For God's sake, Dad! Give
it a rest!"

The look in his father's
eyes turned suddenly cold. "Something bugging you,
Jack?"

Jack turned on his heel
and went back below.

More uncomfortable than
ever now, and nervous to boot, Liz walked up to the rail, expecting
to see a dangerous sky to the west. But what she saw was a benign
and reassuring summer sunset. As long as they didn't actually try
to make Ireland tonight, they should be back before any weather
rolled through.

Meanwhile it was Susy's
suppertime, and Liz didn't dare go rummaging through the wicker
basket, wherever it was, because she was a guest. Who the hell was
the host? She turned her back on the western shore and, gripping
the rail behind her, watched Susy and Caroline carefully ignoring
one another as they stood at the rail opposite. It wasn't the ride
Liz thought it would be: she had the profound sense that nobody
liked anybody on this boat except the two people who had no
business liking one another at all.

"Deirdre, dear," she heard
Cornelius say in the wheelhouse, "why don't you bring up another
bottle of wine? Jack will show you where they are."

Oh, great. Sailing under
the influence.
Liz had declined a glass,
and she hadn't seen Jack take anything; that left the daddy and the
nanny responsible for any empties.

She felt so trapped. How
did you get off a boat? You could walk out of a party, step off at
a train station; even airplane flights could only last so long. But
a
boat!
This
could go on until Ireland.

She almost jumped for joy
when she saw Jack come out from the wheelhouse with the wicker
basket. He put the basket down on the low round table and said
simply, "C'mon, kids, have something to eat."

He began spreading out the
contents. Just as Liz feared: everything was way too fancy to stick
to the stomach. Marinated mushrooms; an assortment of
cheeses;
pâté de foie;
caviar (naturally); thin, thin crackers; and last but not
least, the predictable smoked salmon.

"Whaddya think of
that?"
Jack said proudly
to Susy, who was eyeing it all with intense dismay.

I was right the first
time,
Liz decided.
The man knows nothing about being a parent.

Jack was peering into the
picnic basket. "Oops, how did
that
stuff get in here? Cookies? Peanut butter and
jelly sandwich? Netta must've put that in for the sea
gulls."

Susy's eyes got wider.
"No,
I'll
eat the
sandwich — if no one wants it, I mean."

She looked at Caroline,
who said loftily,
"I'd
rather have the pâté."

Jack glanced at Liz with
easy humor and then handed Susy the sandwich. "Here you go," he
said to her, "if you're sure you don't mind eating something so
boring. Actually, you'd be doing me a big favor."

He tucked a napkin under
each of the girls' chins, and in that simple, nurturing gesture,
Liz was lost completely and forever to the possibility of loving
any other man. She could've watched him with the children all the
way to Ireland.

Caroline spread the
goose-liver pâté on a wafer, which broke in half. She said quickly,
"I did that on purpose."

Liz watched, impressed, as
Caroline popped one of the halves into her mouth, took one chew of
the goose liver, narrowed her eyes, stifled a look of surprise and
disgust, glanced around in a bored fashion, got up, wandered over
to the rail, and spat out the mess when she thought no one was
looking.