Woman in Black (8 page)

Some years after they'd stopped corresponding regularly, Vaughn had sent her a newspaper clipping with an account of Lila's wedding, which looked to have been the social event of the season in Greenhaven: a lavish three-day affair attended by everyone of any importance, including the governor of the state. Looking at the photo of Lila, radiant in her beaded silk gown and veil, posing beside her new husband, a dark-haired, intense-looking man, Abigail had experienced a resurgence of the old bitterness. Bitterness that might have faded with time if Lila and her husband hadn't relocated to New York City shortly after they were married. In the years since, it had seemed that Abigail couldn't open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing a photo or mention of her former friend in some society column. That is, until Lila and Gordon had become tabloid fodder.

“Still, maybe a condolence note—” Kent started to say.

“Damn.” Abigail frowned down at her watch. “Where
is
that man?” Of all the mornings for her driver to be late! She had a nine o'clock meeting, and if she didn't leave soon, she wouldn't make it into the city in time.

She looked up to find Kent eyeing her in a way that she didn't much care for. “Will you be home in time for supper?” The casualness with which he spoke didn't match the look on his face: that of a husband who'd been left to his own devices once too often.

She felt a pang, remembering how different it had been in the early days of their marriage. They'd been living in a converted artist's studio in Bronxville that was so small one couldn't move without bumping into the other, and still they hadn't been able to get enough of each other. Back then, they'd both been working long hours and money had been tight—Kent had been in his fourth year of residency at the time, so their main source of income had been the money Abigail had been earning from her then fledgling catering business—but none of that had mattered. On the rare occasions when his days off coincided with hers, they usually wound up in bed. The rest of the time they took long walks, went to movies, and wandered around the Village or Chinatown in search of cheap eats. And although they couldn't afford big-ticket items, Kent often surprised her with little gifts: an antique carriage clock he'd picked up at a flea market, a box of her favorite French-milled soaps, a photo he'd taken of her that he'd had framed. Occasionally, when she was short-staffed on a night that he had off, he even pitched in, donning a jacket and tie to play bartender or pass out canapés. (Which led to several amusing incidents of his being recognized by people he'd treated in the ER, who eyed him curiously, no doubt wondering what the young doctor who'd stitched them up or set their broken bones was doing serving them drinks.)

Kent was still that man. But if his caring nature occasionally crossed over into fanaticism when it came to causes he was passionate about, and if he'd embraced his country-doctor persona to the point where he could be downright judgmental at times of those, like her, with less noble aspirations, at least he wasn't one of those husbands who cheated on their wives or, like the late Gordon DeVries, allowed greed to get the better of them.

She took in his long, lean face and gray eyes the color of a rainy day, which when they lit up were like the sun coming out from behind the clouds. She remembered how she used to love running her fingers through his thick brown hair, cropped short now and flecked with gray. That was back when they would linger in bed, making love or talking over future plans on mornings like this, instead of her rushing from pillar to post. How long had it been since they'd done that? She couldn't recall. Nowadays, their time together was as fractured as it was filled with promises, from her, that never seemed to materialize.
It won't always be this way
, she would tell him. As soon as she got a little bit ahead at work they would take that trip to Europe … go on that cruise … look into summer rentals on Fire Island. Promises that Kent had heard so many times, he no longer believed them. And why should he?

Next time, she wouldn't say anything. She'd simply spring a couple of airline tickets on him. He had a birthday coming up. What better way to surprise him than with a long weekend in Paris? As soon as she got to the office, she'd see about arranging it.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the discreet honk of a horn in the driveway.

She leaped to her feet. “I have that cocktail reception at Gracie Mansion, an hour tops. I promise to come straight home after that,” she told him, dropping a kiss on his cheek on her way out.

“What about the community board meeting?”

“Oh, that. I completely forgot.” She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. Though how was she supposed to remember every one of Kent's causes? There were so many, he ought to be anointed the patron saint of Stone Harbor. This latest had to do with a proposed halfway house for the mentally ill, to which there was a fair amount of local opposition. The community board was voting on it tonight. “Why don't you go ahead without me?” she said. “I'll join you if I make it back in time.”

Kent cast her a veiled look that left Abigail feeling momentarily unsettled. But, with the day looming before her like a mountain to be climbed, she couldn't allow herself to be sidetracked.

She was retrieving her coat from the hall closet when she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. She turned around to find Veronique eyeing her anxiously. “I'm sorry to bother you, Mrs. Whittaker, I know you're in a hurry …” she began in her precise, accented English. Veronique was the only person who addressed Abigail by her married name.

Abigail was eager to be on her way, but she put on a smile nonetheless. She might scream at her office staff, but she always treated her domestic help with the utmost respect. She hadn't forgotten what it had felt like when the shoe was on the other foot. “Can it wait until I get back?” she asked, as pleasantly as she could with her internal motor racing a hundred miles a minute.

“No, I'm afraid not.” Veronique regarded her dolefully. “It's my sister in Haiti. She's very ill.”

Abigail couldn't recall Veronique ever before mentioning a sister. Maybe it had just slipped her mind. “I'm sorry to hear that,” she murmured in sympathy.

“She has no one to take care of her or her children,” Veronique went on, visibly distressed. “I must go to her. I'm sorry to give you such short notice, but it was all very sudden.”

Abigail felt her impatience flare once more. Why did she have to deal with this
now
, when she was running late? But she reined in her annoyance. It wasn't Veronique's fault. These things happened. “Of course. Take as much time off as you need,” she said. “Do you have enough money for the plane fare? I can have Dr. Whittaker write you a check.”

This only served to heighten Veronique's distress. “Thank you, that's very kind. But you've been too good to me as it is.” Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I will never forget you or your family.”

Abigail was getting a bad feeling about all this. “You talk as though you're never coming back,” she said.

“I'm sorry.” Veronique lowered her head.

It took a moment to register that their housekeeper of ten years was actually leaving them for good. Immediately Abigail slipped into damage-control mode. “There's no need for drastic measures.” She spoke firmly but reassuringly. “We'll just find someone to fill in for you while you're away. Don't worry; your job will be waiting for you when you get back.”

Veronique shook her head again. The tiny gold hoops in her ears flashed in the morning light filtering in through the fanlight over the door. “I can't say when that will be.” Her eyes pleaded with Abigail for understanding. “It would be best if you made other arrangements.”

Abigail was momentarily at a loss. Veronique had been with them since Phoebe was a little girl. How would they manage without her? She made one last attempt to salvage the situation. “Can it wait until tonight, at least? We'll sort it all out then, I promise.”

“I'm afraid not. My flight leaves at one o'clock,” Veronique informed her with regret. “Dr. Whittaker has very kindly offered to drive me to the airport.”

“Dr. Whittaker knows about this?” Abigail asked in surprise. It made sense now, his taking the day off from work and how evasive he'd been when she'd asked about it. But that didn't explain why she was only just now hearing about this. “Why didn't you come to me sooner?”

Veronique hesitated before replying, “You were busy. I didn't wish to disturb you.”

Abigail felt a fresh surge of guilt. Once again, she'd been too self-absorbed to know what was going on in her own household. She stood there a moment with her coat half on, the other sleeve dangling limply at her side, until a glance out the window at the Town Car idling in the driveway reminded her that she had other, more pressing commitments at hand.

As she hugged Veronique good-bye, she worried about how Phoebe would take it. This would affect her most of all. Veronique had been like a second mother to her. Or was it the other way around—that Abigail was the second mother?

Her throat was tight when she drew back. “If you change your mind, the offer is still open. You can have your job back anytime.”

Moments later she was sinking into the backseat of the Town Car, sparing but a single backward glance at the house now receding in the rear window—a house that had once been the center of her universe but which had lately come to seem like a satellite distantly orbiting around the planet that was her career. Six years ago, when she and Kent had purchased the estate, with its twenty-two overgrown acres and nineteenth-century manor house that had been in such disrepair it was practically falling down, what might have seemed a money pit to some had been, for them, a dream come true. A dream they'd shared. They'd spent nearly every spare moment working to restore it to its former glory, doing much of the labor themselves. Backbreaking work, to be sure, but looking back, she realized that those had been among the happiest days of her life. And now that Rose Hill was a showcase regularly featured in magazines, it was her family life that was falling into disrepair. But where were the tools to fix a faulty marriage? An unhappy child? Where did you begin when you had no blueprint to guide you? Her own childhood, riddled as it was with lies and delusions, had left her ill-equipped to deal with such matters.

It was easier to cope with crises at work.
That
she could handle because it didn't require any soul-searching; it was simply a matter of figuring out the best way, or finding the right person, to get the job done.

Cruising along the Henry Hudson Parkway, Abigail reflected on the long, twisting road that had brought her to this point. Eight years ago, her big break had come when a holiday gift basket of hers had been featured in that year's December issue of
Country Living
. Overnight, orders had begun pouring in, and she'd landed several high-profile accounts, including Ralph Lauren. Her catering business went from pulling in a modest five figures to netting a quarter of a million annually. A cookbook deal soon followed, and before she knew it she was on the circuit, traveling around the country, appearing at food festivals and trade shows and on local TV. The cookbook had sold out its modest first printing, but it wasn't until she began making regular appearances on
A.M. America
, where her relaxed-seeming approach made even the most elaborate cake or tart, or intimate dinner for ten, seem a cinch, that it began flying off the shelves.
Abigail Armstrong's Secrets of Successful Entertaining
had ended up selling nearly two hundred thousand copies.

Suddenly she was a celebrity, in demand by companies wanting to sign her as their spokesperson and besieged with requests for speaking engagements. The press couldn't get enough of her. She was featured in the
New York Times
and
People
magazine,
Ladies Home Journal
and
House Beautiful
. Her inspiring story about having grown up poor, raised by a single mother who'd died when Abigail was in her teens, became the stuff of legend. She never mentioned the Meriwhethers by name, referring to them only in passing as “the family my mother worked for.” She talked instead about how, in high school, she'd peddled her homemade cakes from door to door to earn money, and how in later years, after moving up North, she'd worked as the personal chef of a wealthy family in Greenwich, Connecticut, before starting her own business selling quiches and tarts at farmers' markets. Fare that had proved so popular, she'd soon been making items to order, and before long catering dinner parties.

Just as she rarely mentioned the Meriwhethers in interviews, there were whole chunks of her years in Pine Bluff with her aunt and uncle that she either left out or glossed over. She didn't talk about the trips her uncle Ray had forced her to go on and what she'd had to endure while on those trips. She'd blocked out that period of her life as surely as if she'd taken an editor's red pencil and drawn a line through it, replacing it with a Horatio Alger tale that was the American Dream with whipped cream on top. The public gobbled it up.

Now there was one more goal to achieve: the branding of Abigail Armstrong. Once she was a household name, she'd be in a position to start her own magazine and, down the line, her own production company. She warmed at the prospect. Her husband and daughter, Veronique and her ailing sister, were far from her mind just then.

Her thoughts returned to Lila. All these years, what had spurred her on was the desire to prove she was the equal of Lila and her kind. Not just equal but
better than
. Now, with the death of Lila's husband following his very public disgrace, Abigail was struck by the irony of their situations being reversed: she the successful, secure one … and Lila alone and financially ruined. She wouldn't have wished such a ghastly fate on anyone, not even Lila—she wasn't heartless. But she wouldn't cry any tears, either.