Before I Say Good-Bye Page 4

  He was too busy slamming out of here this morning to remember them, Nell thought. He probably was stopping at a job site; he just had on that light, zip-up jacket. Well, if he needs his jacket and briefcase, let him come back for them, or even better, send someone else to get them. I’m not playing errand girl for him today. She picked up the jacket and hung it in the closet, and she carried the briefcase to his desk in the small third bedroom that had become their study.

  But an hour later, sitting at her desk, showered and dressed in her “uniform”—as she referred to her jeans, oversized shirt and sneakers—it was impossible to ignore the fact that she had done nothing to make this situation easier. Hadn’t she as much as told Adam not to come home tonight?

  Suppose he takes me up on that? she asked herself, but then refused to consider the possibility. We may be having a serious problem at the moment, but it has nothing to do with the way we feel about each other.

  He must be at the office by now, she decided. I’ll call him. She reached for the phone, then quickly pulled back. No, I won’t call. I gave in to him two years ago when he asked me not to run for Mac’s seat, and I’ve regretted it every day since. If I equivocate now, he will see it as a complete surrender—and there’s just no reason why I should have to give it up. There are plenty of women in Congress now—women who have husbands and children they care about. Besides, it’s not fair: I’d never ask Adam to give up his career as an architect, or to forego any part of it.

  Nell resolutely began to go through the notes she had put together for the column she was going to write this morning, but then, unable to concentrate, she put them down.

  Her thoughts went back to last night.

  When Adam slipped into bed, he had fallen asleep almost immediately. Hearing his steady breathing, she had moved closer to him, and in his sleep he had thrown his arm around her and murmured her name.

  Nell thought back to the first time she and Adam met—it was at a cocktail party, and her immediate impression of him was that he was the most attractive man she had ever met. It was his smile—that slow, sweet smile. They’d left the party together and gone out to dinner. He had told her that he was going out of town on business for a couple of days but would call her when he got back. Two weeks had passed before that call came, and for Nell they felt like the longest two weeks of her life.

  Just then the phone rang. Adam, she thought as she grabbed the receiver.

  It was her grandfather. “Nell, I just saw the paper! I hope to God that hotshot Adam hasn’t got anything to worry about with this investigation into Walters and Arsdale. He was there during the time they are looking into, so if there was any hanky-panky going on, he must have known about it. He needs to come clean with us; I don’t want him hurting your chances of winning this election.”

  Nell took a deep breath before she responded. She loved her grandfather dearly, but there were times when he made her want to scream. “Mac, Adam left Walters and Arsdale precisely because he didn’t like some of the things he saw going on there, so you don’t have anything to worry about on that front. And by the way, didn’t I tell you yesterday to please lay off that ‘hotshot Adam’ stuff and all that goes with it?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  Mac ignored her comment. “See you tonight. And speaking of which, I called Gert to wish her a happy birthday, and I’ve got to tell you, I think the woman is nuts. She told me she is spending the day at some damn channeling event. Fortunately, though, she hadn’t forgotten about tonight, and she says she is looking forward to the dinner. She also remarked on how much she was looking forward to seeing your husband; said she hadn’t seen him in a long time. For some reason, she seems to think the sun rises and sets on him.”

  “Yes, I know she does.”

  “She asked me if she could bring along a couple of those mediums she hangs out with, but I told her to forget it.”

  “But Mac, it is her birthday,” Nell protested.

  “That may be, but at my age I don’t want any of those nuts studying me—even from a distance—to see if my aura is changing, or worse yet, fading away. I’ve got to go. See you tonight, Nell.”

  Nell replaced the receiver in its cradle and leaned back in her chair. She agreed with her grandfather that Gert was a true eccentric, but she wasn’t “nuts,” as he had said. After Nell’s parents died, it was Gert who had provided her with a great deal of support, becoming a kind of combination surrogate mother and grandmother. And, Nell reminded herself, it was precisely because of her belief in the paranormal that Gert was able to understand what I meant when I said that I felt that Mom and Dad had been there with me, both on the day they died and when I was caught in the riptide in Hawaii. Gert understands because she gets those feelings too.

  Of course, for Gert they are more than “feelings,” Nell thought with a smile. She is actively involved in psychic research and has been for a long time. No, it wasn’t Gert’s mind that Nell was concerned about, but her physical health, because her great-aunt had not been well lately. But she’s made it to her seventy-fifth birthday with most of her faculties intact, and the least Adam should do is put in an appearance tonight, Nell reflected. His refusal will disappoint her terribly.

  That final realization erased any thought Nell might have had of calling Adam to try to put things right between them. It would happen eventually, she was confident of that. But she wasn’t going to be the one to take the initiative—at least not right now.

  eight

  DAN MINOR HAD INHERITED his father’s height and rangy shoulders, but not his face. The sharply sophisticated and handsome features of Preston Minor had been softened and warmed by their genetic blending with the gentle beauty of Kathryn Quinn.

  Preston’s ice-blue eyes were darker and warmer in his son’s face. The mouth and jawline were rounder and more relaxed. The Quinn genes gave Dan the full head of somewhat unruly sandy hair.

  A colleague had observed that even in khakis, sneakers and a T-shirt, Dan Minor looked like a doctor. It was an accurate appraisal. Dan had a way of greeting people with genuine interest in his expression—interest that was followed by a second searching glance, as though he were checking to make sure everything was all right with them. Perhaps it was fated that Dan would grow up to be a doctor; certainly it was what he always had wanted. In fact, Dan had not only always known that he would be a doctor, he also had always known that he wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. It was a choice based on very personal reasons, and only a handful of people understood why he had made that decision.

  Raised in Chevy Chase, Maryland, by his maternal grandparents, as a young boy he had learned to treat his occasional and infrequent visits from his father with increasing lack of interest, and eventually lack of interest grew into contempt. He hadn’t laid eyes on his mother since he was six, although a snapshot of her—smiling, hair windblown, her arms wrapped around him—was always kept in a hidden compartment in his wallet. The photo, taken on his second birthday, was his only tangible memory of her.

  Dan had graduated from Johns Hopkins and then done his residency at St. Gregory’s Hospital in Manhattan, so when they asked him to come back and head up their new burn unit, he accepted. By nature somewhat restless at heart, and with the sobering knowledge that a new millennium had begun, he decided it was time for a change in his life. He had established a solid reputation at a Washington hospital as a surgeon, specializing in burn victims. By then he was thirty-six, and his elderly grandparents were moving to a retirement community in Florida. And while he was as devoted to them as ever, he no longer felt the need to be in such close proximity. As for his father, nothing had improved between them. About the same time his grandparents moved to Florida, his father remarried. But Dan had skipped his father’s fourth wedding, just as he had skipped his third.

  The new assignment in Manhattan began on March 1. Dan wound up his private practice and spent a few days in New York looking for a place to live. In Feb
ruary he bought a condo in the SoHo district of lower Manhattan and shipped to it those few items he wanted to keep from his minimally furnished Washington apartment. Fortunately, he also had his choice of the handsome furnishings from his grandparents’ home, so he was able to put together a space with a bit of flair.

  Sociable by nature, Dan enjoyed the farewell dinners and gatherings his friends threw for him, including the ones he had with the three or four women he had dated over the years. One of his friends presented him with a handsome new wallet, and when he switched his license and credit cards and money to it, he hesitated, then deliberately removed the old picture and slipped it into the family album that his grandparents were taking to Florida. He knew it was time to put it and all it represented behind him. An hour later he changed his mind and retrieved it.

  Then, feeling both nostalgic and unburdened, he saw his grandparents to the Florida-bound train, got in his Jeep and drove north. It was a four-hour drive from the railroad station in D.C. to his new home. Arriving at his place in Manhattan, he dropped his suitcases, made several more trips to unload the car, then parked it in the nearby garage. Anxious to see more of the new neighborhood, he set out to look for a place to have dinner. One of the things he had liked best about the SoHo area was that it was alive with restaurants. He found one he hadn’t tried on his previous forays, bought a paper and settled at a table near the window.

  Over a drink he began to study the front page, but then raised his eyes and began to watch the people passing in the street. With a conscious effort he focused again on the article he had been reading. One of his millennium resolutions had been to try to stop the random search for what he knew would never be found. There were just too many places to look, and the chances of ever finding her were so very dim.

  But even as he reminded himself of that resolution, a persistent voice whispered inside his head, reminding him that one of the reasons he had moved to New York was his hope of finding her. It was the last place she was spotted.

  Hours later, as he lay in bed listening to the faint sounds of the traffic on the street below, Dan decided to give it one last shot. If by the end of June he had found nothing, then he would give up his search.

  Adjusting to a new position and a new environment took up much of his time. Then on June 9th he was delayed with an emergency operation at the hospital and had to wait until the next day to make what he swore would be one of his final attempts to find his mother. This time his destination was the South Bronx, a still-desolate area of New York City, although somewhat improved from what it had been twenty years before. Without any real hope or expectations, he began asking the usual questions, showing the picture that he still carried with him.

  And then it happened. A shabbily dressed woman who looked to be in her fifties, her face careworn, her eyes listless, suddenly smiled. “I think you’re looking for my pal Quinny,” she said.

  nine

  FIFTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD Winifred Johnson never entered the lobby of her employer’s apartment building on Park Avenue without feeling intimidated. She had worked with Adam Cauliff for three years, first at Walters and Arsdale, and then she had left with him last fall, when he started his own company. He relied on her from the beginning.

  Even so, whenever she stopped by his apartment, she couldn’t help feeling that one day the doorman would instruct her to use the delivery entrance around the corner.

  She knew that her attitude was the result of her parents’ lifelong resentment over imagined slights. Ever since she could remember, Winifred’s ears had been filled with their plaintive tales of people who had been rude to them: They use their little bit of authority on people like us who can’t fight back. Expect it, Winifred. That’s the kind of world it is. Her father had gone to his grave railing against all the indignities he had suffered at the hands of his employer of forty years, and her mother was now in a nursing home, where complaints of supposed slights and deliberate neglect continued unabated.

  Winifred thought about her mother as the doorman smilingly opened the door for her. A few years ago it had been possible for her to move her mother to a fancy, new nursing facility, but even that hadn’t stopped the endless flow of complaints. Happiness—even satisfaction—did not seem to be possible for her. Winifred had recognized this same trait in herself and felt helpless. Until I smartened up, she told herself with a secret smile.

  A thin woman, almost frail in appearance, Winifred typically dressed in conservative business suits and limited her jewelry to button earrings and a strand of pearls. Quiet to the point that people often forgot she was even around, she absorbed everything, noticed everything and remembered everything. She had worked for Robert Walters and Len Arsdale from the time she graduated from secretarial school, but in all those years neither man had ever appreciated or even seemed to notice the fact that she had come to know everything there was to know about the construction business. Adam Cauliff, however, had picked up on it immediately. He appreciated her; he understood her true worth. He used to joke with her, saying, “Winifred, a lot of people had better hope you never write your autobiography.”

  Robert Walters overheard him and became both upset and unpleasant. But then Walters had always bullied her unmercifully; he never had been nice to her. Let him pay for that, Winifred thought. And he will.

  Nell never appreciated him. Adam didn’t need a wife with a career of her own and a famous grandfather who made so many demands on her that she didn’t have enough time for her husband. Sometimes Adam would say, “Winifred, Nell’s busy with the old man again. I don’t want to eat alone. Let’s grab a bite.”

  He deserved better. Sometimes Adam would tell her about being a kid on a North Dakota farm and going to the library to get books with pictures of beautiful buildings. “The taller the better, Winifred,” he’d joke. “When someone built a three-story house in our town, folks drove twenty miles just to get a look at it.”

  Other times he would encourage her to talk, and she found herself gossiping with him about people in the construction industry. Then the next morning she would wonder if perhaps she had said too much, her loquaciousness enhanced by the wine Adam kept pouring. But she never really worried; she trusted Adam—they trusted each other—and Adam enjoyed her “insider” stories about the building world, tales from her earlier days with Walters and Arsdale.

  “You mean that sanctimonious old bird was on the take when those bids went out?” he’d exclaim, then reassure her when she became flustered about talking so much. And then he’d promise never, ever to say a word to anyone about what she had told him. She also remembered the night he had said accusingly, “Winifred, you can’t fool me. There’s someone in your life.” And she had told him, yes, even giving the name. And that was when she really began to trust him. She confided that she was taking care of herself.

  The uniformed clerk at the lobby desk put down the intercom telephone. “You can go right up, Ms. Johnson. Mrs. Cauliff is expecting you.”

  Adam had asked her to pick up his briefcase and his navy jacket on the way to the meeting today. Being Adam, he had been apologetic about the request. “I left in a hell of a rush this morning and forgot them,” he explained. “I left them on the bed in the guest room. The notes for the meeting are in my briefcase, and I’ll need the jacket if I change my mind and decide to meet Nell at the Four Seasons.” Winifred could sense from his tone that he and Nell must have had a serious misunderstanding, and hearing it only bolstered her certainty that their marriage was heading for the rocks.

  As she rode up in the elevator, she thought about the meeting scheduled for later in the day. She was happy that the location for the meeting had been moved to the boat. She loved going out on the water. It seemed romantic, even when the purpose was strictly business.

  There would be just five of them. In addition to herself, the three associates in the Vandermeer Tower venture—Adam, Sam Krause and Peter Lang—would be attending. The fifth was Jimmy Ryan, one of Sam’s site foremen. Wini
fred wasn’t sure why he’d been invited except that Jimmy had been pretty moody lately. Maybe they wanted to get to the heart of the problem and sort it out.

  She knew they all would be concerned about the story that broke in today’s newspapers, although she didn’t feel any concern herself. In fact, she was rather impatient about the whole thing. The worst thing that ever happens in these situations, even if they get the goods on you, is you pay a fine, she told herself. You reach into your back pocket, and the problem goes away.

  The elevator opened right onto the apartment foyer, where Nell was waiting for her.

  Winifred saw the cordial smile of welcome on Nell’s face fade as soon as she stepped forward. “Is something wrong?” she asked anxiously.

  Dear God, Nell thought with sudden alarm, why is this happening? But as she looked at Winifred, she could almost hear the knowledge filtering through her being: Winifred’s journey on this plane is completed.

  ten

  ADAM REACHED the boat fifteen minutes before the others were due to arrive. Entering the cabin, he saw that the caterer had been there and left a selection of cheeses and a plate of crackers on the sideboard. The liquor cabinet and the refrigerator would have been checked and stocked at the same time, so he didn’t even bother to look.

  He had found that the casual atmosphere of the boat, combined with the social tone drinks gave a meeting, served to loosen tongues—those of his associates as well as of potential clients. On these occasions, Adam’s favorite drink, vodka on the rocks, was often plain water instead, a fact he skillfully hid.