Woman in Black (28 page)

Now she wondered what it was that he saw in
her
, when to Kent she was nothing more than a career-obsessed workaholic and to Phoebe an inattentive mother. At work, she was the boss and, at the most basic level, a brand. Where was Abigail Armstrong the
person
in all this?

As she looked around at the carefully set stage of her dining room, it seemed to Abigail that it was almost
too
perfect. She found herself recalling holiday dinners past: Kent playing the avuncular host to their guests, her rushing to get everything on the table while it was still hot, and Phoebe smiling and happy, the picture of health. Those meals had been spontaneous, full of laughter, everyone talking at once, not carefully staged productions as genuine as a facade on a Hollywood back lot.

“Where would you like me to put these?”

At the sound of Lila's voice, she turned around. Lila had spent the better part of the afternoon polishing every piece of silver in the house, and now she stood in the doorway holding a pair of gleaming candlesticks.

“Those can go over on the buffet.” Abigail gestured toward the sideboard, where an array of serving utensils had been laid out with the precision of surgical instruments. “Thanks,” she remembered to add as Lila set down the candlesticks.

She'd been making more of an effort to be nice lately, though Lila didn't always make it easy for her. Lila saved her smiles for Kent and Phoebe. Kent, in particular. It hadn't escaped Abigail's notice, the way Lila lit up whenever he walked into the room.

“Is there anything else you need me to do?” The expression on Lila's face was pleasant but neutral.

“Why don't you see if Brenda needs any help in the kitchen?” Brenda Allerton, a former neighbor from Greenwich who'd been with Abigail since the beginning and who now ran her catering business, was personally overseeing tonight's production.

“Certainly.” Lila gave a deferential nod.

She was about to walk away when, on impulse, Abigail volunteered, “I saw Vaughn the other day.”

This sparked Lila's interest. “Oh?”

“We went to the zoo.”

Lila arched a brow. “I'm surprised he was feeling up to it.”

“He did get a little tired toward the end,” Abigail admitted.

“Knowing him, he probably refused to let it slow him down.”

“Something like that.”

They exchanged a small, knowing smile, then Lila's expression turned anxious. “I worry about him. Underneath it all, he still thinks he's invincible. I'm afraid he'll push himself too far.”

Abigail worried, too, but she didn't dare let on. “Lucky for Vaughn, he's got the three of us to look after him,” she said. Gillian might not have been her favorite person, but she was heaven-sent as far as Vaughn was concerned. Gillian made certain he didn't stray too far and that he stayed hydrated and got plenty of rest. “He'll be fine,” she assured Lila. “He's also got the world's best doctors. Not to mention a constitution of iron.”

Lila seemed to relax a bit, some of the tightness going out of her face. She seemed on the verge of saying something more, but just then the doorbell rang. In that instant, the spark of easy familiarity between them was extinguished, and Lila's face closed over once more.

“I'll get it,” she said, her tone coolly professional.

Moments later, Lila was ushering in the film crew, a pair of cameramen and the female producer, collectively lugging what had to be about three hundred pounds of equipment. All were seasoned veterans, and they immediately went to work. The younger of the two cameramen, a lanky Irishman named Seamus with reddish hair cropped close to his head, erected standing lights in strategic spots around the living room and dining room while Glenn, his swarthy, mustached partner, shot a B-roll of the exterior and interiors. Meanwhile, the producer, an attractive, light-skinned black woman by the name of Holly Dawson, met with Abigail in the kitchen, where they went over the timeline and mapped out everything in advance.

By the time Abigail was done shooting both her intro and demo, she had just enough time to dash upstairs and change into her evening finery. But when she came back down a short while later, there was still no sign of Kent or Phoebe. She glanced at her watch, frowning. It was half past six. Hadn't she told them to be ready by six o'clock on the dot? What on earth could be keeping them?

She was picking up the phone to call Kent on his cell when he came breezing in through the front door, as if from a round of golf. “Sorry, darling, I got waylaid.” He delivered a cool kiss to her cheek. “Sylvia—you remember Sylvia Shine? We're on the committee together. Well, she called to ask if I'd help her go over the box-office receipts from last night. Do you know, we raised over twenty thousand dollars?”

“That's wonderful, dear,” Abigail said distractedly. “But our guests will be here any minute, so you need to get dressed.”

He groaned. “Am I that late? Well, it'll only take me a minute.”

He'd started up the stairs when Abigail called after him, “You haven't told me what you think of my dress.” She was a little hurt that Kent hadn't commented on it. She'd gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to have the dress made especially for the occasion by a designer friend of hers. Panne velvet, in a shade of deep emerald that complemented her coloring, it fit her like a glove, ending at her knees in a subtle flounce. Setting it off were the pair of emerald earrings Kent had given her for their tenth anniversary.

He stopped to look her up and down before giving a low wolf whistle. “Nice. Though I don't know that anyone's going to be looking at the food with you dressed like that.”

“They'd better, after all the trouble I went to.” She smiled, though she'd have appreciated the compliment more if she hadn't had to solicit it. “Do you know where Phoebe is?” she asked. “I thought she was in her room, but she wasn't there when I checked.”

“The last time I saw her, she was heading out with Neal. They were going to the store to pick up some supplies she said she needed for a school project,” he told her. “She said they wouldn't be long.”

“How long ago was that?”

He frowned, as if trying to recollect. “Oh, I don't know, about an hour or so. Have you tried her cell?”

“Twice. All I got was her voice mail.”

“Well, I'm sure she'll show up soon,” Kent said breezily as he bounded up the stairs.

Watching him go, Abigail felt the tension that had been building in her all day tip over into fury. How could he be so cavalier? And Phoebe … Hadn't Abigail put her own needs on hold, time and again, to be able to give her everything
she
hadn't had growing up? All she asked in return was that her husband and daughter show her a little support now and then, instead of constantly undermining her.

Her fury boiling over, she stalked upstairs. She sailed into their bedroom just as Kent was pulling on a clean shirt. The rest of his outfit, the suit and tie she'd chosen for him, were laid out on the bed. “How could you have let her go off like that?” she demanded. “You
knew
how important this was to me.”

He paused in the midst of buttoning his shirt to give her a coolly dispassionate look. “Since when is it my job to keep track of her? If it was so important to you, you should have kept track of her yourself.” Gone was the animation he'd shown when sharing the good news about the benefit. Abigail might have been looking into the eyes of a stranger.

“As you can see, I've been busy,” she replied frostily.

“Fair enough. Just don't make me the fall guy if you need someone to blame for the fact that our daughter doesn't seem to want to participate in your little dog-and-pony show.”

“Is that what this is to you? Just some vanity production?”

He finished buttoning his shirt and reached for his tie. Really, the man was infuriating. “You're the one who said it, not me.”

“You act like I'm doing this for fun! It's
work
, you know. Do I say anything when you're late getting home from an emergency call?” It wasn't the same thing, she knew; matters of life and death were always going to trump those of commerce, but at the moment, she was too mad to care.

“How would you even know? You're almost never around.”

“Oh, no!” she cried. “You're not going to pin
that
on me again. Why should I feel guilty just because I want my business to succeed? Which, may I remind you, you and Phoebe benefit from as well.”

“I'm not saying you shouldn't care about your business, or that you don't have a right to your success,” he argued with calm, clear-headed reason, peering into the mirror as he knotted his Hermès tie. “But there's a fine line between wanting success and having it never be enough.”

“If I've worked hard, it's because nobody ever handed me anything on a silver platter,” she shot back.

“Unlike Lila, you mean?” He didn't raise his voice, but she caught the flash of disdain in his eyes. Clearly he'd noticed her coldness toward Lila and had come to the wrong conclusion about it. He must have thought she was heartlessly kicking Lila when she was down for no other reason than because Lila had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth.

But how would he know any different?
a voice whispered in her head.

“I can see this discussion is going nowhere,” she said. “I'll be downstairs when you're ready to join me.” She was turning to go when she caught her husband's reflection in the full-length mirror and saw his rainy-day eyes flash with unaccustomed fire.

“Yes, dear,” he replied in a voice thick with sarcasm.

Out in the hallway, she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, taking slow, deep breaths and feeling her anger fade. Why couldn't she learn to just put a lid on it? It had been unfair, taking her frustration out on Kent. He wasn't to blame for Phoebe's failure to show up on time. And hadn't he always gamely risen to the occasion whenever it was required of him?

She found herself recalling the night they'd met. She'd been catering a party for a doctor and his wife, in Greenwich, to which Kent had been invited (she found out later that Dr. Sorensen was chief of surgery at the hospital where Kent had been doing his internship at the time). Toward the end of the evening, Kent wandered into the kitchen as she was cleaning up to thank her—the only one of the guests considerate enough to do so.

“That was the best meal I've had in ages,” he told her, adding with a rueful chuckle, “Though, come to think of it, it's probably the
first
real meal I've had in I don't know how long.” He explained that, as an intern, his hours were such that he usually had to eat on the run.

“I know what you mean,” Abigail commiserated. “Even though I'm around food all day, it seems like I never get to sit down to eat.”

“In that case, if you have a free evening sometime in the next couple of weeks, why don't you let me take you out to dinner? That way we'll both have a chance to sit down.”

She was a little taken aback by his boldness, but intrigued nonetheless. “You sure don't waste any time,” she said with a laugh. “Couldn't you have just asked for my phone number?”

“Already taken care of.” His gray eyes twinkling, he pulled her business card from his pocket. “I told our hostess that I needed a caterer for a party I was throwing. She was only too happy to oblige.”

“Did you just make that up, or is there really going to be a party?” she asked, though from his impish expression she already knew the answer.

Kent shrugged, reaching across the counter to snag one of the crudités she was packing away in a Tupperware container. “A party? No, I don't think I could swing that right now. Now, dinner, on the other hand …”

Abigail had been charmed into accepting. She remembered being struck not only by his clean-cut good looks but by his quick wit and intelligence (both his parents were professors, she later learned). Abigail had thought,
I could fall in love with this guy
. She'd dated her share of men since living on her own, but no one had come close to making her feel what she had with Vaughn. Kent had been the first one with whom she could imagine making a life.

Now, all these years later, she wondered where that life she'd envisioned had gone.

But she didn't have time to wonder for long because just then the doorbell rang downstairs.

It was showtime.

The St. Clairs
were the first to arrive—blond, bearded Ted St. Clair, the curator of medieval armature at the Metropolitan Museum, and his glamorous, Argentinean-born wife, Eva, a much-sought-after opera singer. They were soon followed by Hoppy and Deirdre Covington, the husband-and-wife publishers of
Cook's Companion
(a magazine to which Abigail frequently contributed), looking like a pair of Russian nesting dolls in their festive holiday attire, both plump and round, with Hoppy only an inch or so taller than his wife. Last to arrive was Jay Silverstein, Kent's partner in his medical practice, a distinguished-looking older gentleman who'd been recently widowed after fifty years of marriage.

Jay handed Abigail a bottle of merlot and a bouquet of slightly wilted freesias, saying a bit apologetically, “Coals to Newcastle, I know, but I'm a little out of practice at this sort of thing.” His wife had always taken care of such matters, Abigail knew, and she was uncomfortably reminded by the faintly forlorn look he wore of what a tightly knit union was like.

She thanked him warmly, never mind that the wine she was serving with dinner had been as carefully selected, with the help of her friend Anton, the chief sommelier at Le Bernadin, as if this were a White House affair. “If we don't get around to drinking it tonight, I'm sure we'll enjoy it another time,” she told Jay.

It was her job as hostess to make everyone feel special, pampered, part of the inner circle, and there was no one better at it than Abigail. She didn't have to ask what anyone wanted to drink; that information was stored away in some mental filing cabinet, and as her guests were ushered into the living room, each found the preferred cocktail appearing like magic at his or her elbow: a Grey Goose martini with a twist of lemon for Hoppy; Dewar's on the rocks for Jay; pinot grigio for Eva; Lillet for Deirdre; and a plain club soda with lime for Ted, who was on the wagon.