CHAPTER NINETEEN
For the first time in twenty-six years, Thomas Blackburn walked to the end of West Cedar Street and turned up Mt. Vernon. Staying away from the Winston house was the one concession he’d made during his self-imposed exile; he and Annette Reed simply didn’t need to bump into one another. If anyone was going to move off Beacon Hill, it would have to be her. Occasionally he’d spot her on Charles Street, and would do his best to avoid her without ducking behind lampposts or otherwise going out of his way. He assumed she did the same.
Billowing gray clouds had again gathered over the sun, and although it was morning, the temperature was dropping. Thomas could feel the dampness in his chest as he headed up Mt. Vernon Street. All he needed now was to have a heart attack and drop dead in front of Annette’s doorstep. She’d be mortified, and his grandchildren would never forgive him.
He grunted with morbid amusement. What would Rebecca do with the Eliza Blackburn House? He’d left it to her in his will. She was the eldest of the grandchildren, and with her substantial fortune she could afford the taxes and upkeep. Sometimes he’d wished his own stubborn pride had permitted him to take her money and fix up the place, but that wasn’t his way—and it would have spoiled the perverse pleasure he’d taken in thumbing his nose at the Annette Winston Reeds of the city by continuing to take in student boarders and refusing to paint the shutters. Yet Thomas hoped all that would be finished by his death. He hoped his granddaughter could enjoy spending her money to restore the famous house, and that his descendants could understand what he’d done and why, and take pride again in being Blackburns.
That was what he wanted, he thought: a future in which, even if no Blackburn chose to live there, Eliza’s beautiful home was returned to its original gracefulness and charm and put back on the Beacon Hill walking tour. It would be a fitting symbol of the restoration of the Blackburn name.
He suspected it was what Rebecca wanted, as well. Although she hadn’t admitted as much to him, he was convinced it was the chief reason she had come back to Boston. Time, her success, her money, her extraordinary spirit and talent—they were all to erase the stain Thomas Blackburn had put on the family. Two centuries of excellence, high standards and achievement had crumbled with his one terrible mistake.
But Rebecca was being naive, and perhaps so was he. It would take more than his death and her accomplishment to make things right again on Beacon Hill. No matter what the Blackburns did, there would be Annette Winston Reed to remind everyone that her poor husband was dead, along with Thomas’s own son and his Vietnamese friend, and that Thomas Blackburn had killed them.
His heart was thumping along rather erratically when he came to her house on Mt. Vernon, but he was only perspiring lightly and his chest pain had abated. From here on he’d be fine. Damned if he’d give her the satisfaction of dropping dead at her feet.
The front gate was open. Her flowers were in better shape than his. When he was just a little boy, Thomas remembered his mother walking him over to the Winston house. She had pointed to it as an example of high-style Adam architecture and remarked on the elliptical fanlight, the Palladian window in the second story above the elaborate front entrance, the two end chimneys, the roof balustrade, the cornice-line modillions and dentils. An art historian, she had taken up the cause of architectural preservation immediately after the signing of the Armistice; if still alive, she would have gladly signed letters protesting her son’s neglect of the Eliza Blackburn House.
His mother had lived to see her only grandson married and her first great-grandchild born. She had adored Jenny O’Keefe almost as much as Stephen had, even understood her ambivalence about raising a family in the city and leaving her own father alone in Florida, coping with the lofty expectations people had of anyone—including herself—bearing the Blackburn name. “Being married to a Blackburn can be a devilish experience,” she’d said.
Thomas shook off his daydreams and rang the doorbell in Annette’s gleaming, perfect entrance.
Nguyen Kim opened the door. Thomas had heard about him from the neighbors and one of his student boarders from the early 1980s, a Vietnamese refugee studying at M.I.T. who had seen Kim on Mt. Vernon, and he made her nervous. Probably, she said, Kim had saved his own skin in 1975 without even considering the fate of his countrymen.
Thomas inclined his head politely at the straight-backed Kim. “I’d like to speak with Annette.”
“It’s all right,” the lady of the house said from within the large foyer. Kim quietly withdrew, and Annette came into the doorway. “Well, Thomas, it’s been a long time. I was wondering if you’d show up. You might as well come in before the neighbors see you.”
“They wouldn’t give a damn. People don’t care about what you do as much as you’d like to believe they do.”
She feigned amusement. “Already lecturing me?”
“Just stating the facts.”
“Go to hell,” she said mildly.
Leaving the door open, she went into the formal parlor. Thomas assumed he was expected to follow and did. For the first time in more than a quarter-century, he really looked at Annette. Time had had its effect, but she was still a striking woman, more regal perhaps, more withdrawn. She’d been so high-spirited and deliberately unconventional as a girl, so adventurous and irrepressible as a young woman. If only she’d been more comfortable with who she was, if she could have applied her energies to building a company sooner. What if she hadn’t been born to money, influence and rigid expectations? She could have founded a company like Winston & Reed, anyway. But perhaps not. Being born a Winston was just an excuse for the mistakes she’d made. As much fun as she’d been in her youth, Annette was selfish and self-absorbed, and one needn’t be rich to have those faults.
Playing the polite hostess, she offered him sherry, but he shook his head. “You’ve turned into the kind of grande dame you always despised.”
She shrugged. “People change. I’ve grown up, Thomas.”
Opting not to go into the office today, she had put on her gardening clothes and supposed she looked like any other frumpy Beacon Hill housewife. What did she care? Thomas knew her accomplishments; she didn’t need to “dress for success” to prove herself to him. I don’t even need to prove myself to him—who the hell’s he? After a sleepless night, she had hoped a morning in the garden would allow her to think. Those damned pictures in The Score and Jean-Paul’s ultimatum had shattered the fragile status quo that had existed in her life—in all their lives—for the past fourteen years. That Thomas Blackburn had chosen now of all times to invade her life wasn’t unexpected; his timing was notorious.
Annette felt his incisive gaze on her as she sat on the edge of a Queen Anne sofa. Knowing her guard was standing in the hall, she said in a normal voice, “Kim—would you bring coffee, please?”
Thomas remained standing, looking rumpled and old. “Why did you let me in?”
She gave him a cool smile. “Would you believe pity?”
“No.”
“Anyone else would. You’re a broken old man, Thomas. You’re right—I shouldn’t worry if anyone saw you outside. People around here don’t talk about you anymore. Most don’t even realize you’re still alive.” She leaned back, wishing she could look as relaxed and unconcerned as he did. Yesterday had been a harrowing day. “No, Thomas, the only reason I let you into my house without a fight was to spare myself the torture of having to listen to whatever threat or promise you cooked up to get me to agree to have this conversation. So go ahead. What’s this all about?”
“Jean-Paul’s in town.”
“Yes, I know.”
Her answer was too abrupt, her voice too cold. Annette didn’t like that because it indicated Gerard’s reappearance had disturbed her. She preferred to show Thomas Blackburn she was absolutely in control and unafraid, that she had the upper hand. Kim entered the room with an elaborate tray of coffee and warm scones, a pot of wild strawberry jam and whipped butter. He set it down on the antique table in front of her and poured two china cups, offering one to her guest first. Thomas accepted. With Annette served, Kim withdrew. As always, she appreciated his absolute discretion and efficiency.
With deliberate nonchalance, she sipped her coffee, set it down and pulled a needlepoint pillow onto her lap. She’d made it herself, painstakingly needlepointing a trailing arbutus—the Massachusetts state flower—in the center, another of those tiresome proper ladies’ hobbies she’d taken up to fill the lonely hours of her semiretirement, when she wasn’t undoing Quentin’s mistakes at Winston & Reed.
Thomas went on, “He wants the Jupiter Stones, doesn’t he?”
“Presumably. That, however, isn’t my problem. I don’t have them. I don’t care whether or not you believe me, Thomas,” she went on, “but I assure you if I had the damned things I’d have given them back to him years ago. They were a stupid bit of revenge for what he did to me. I had no idea he’d hold the grudge for thirty years.”
“You ruined his life,” Thomas pointed out.
“He ruined his own life.”
“I suppose it depends on one’s point of view. It must have come as an enormous shock to you to discover your twenty-four-year-old French lover was a jewel thief. How did you feel about turning him in?”
She ignored his half-sarcastic, half-critical tone. “I did what I had to do.”
“Don’t you always,” Thomas said. “What went through that keen mind of yours when the police didn’t catch him?”
“What do you think? I was afraid—”
“Afraid he’d come back for the Jupiter Stones? Afraid he’d come back for revenge?” Thomas seemed amused. He took just one sip of his coffee before setting it down. “No, Annette, you didn’t consider the possible consequences of your actions—you were simply relieved. With Jean-Paul a fugitive, you wouldn’t have to testify against him and risk having your affair made public. It’s even possible,” he went on, calm and arrogant, “that you helped him elude the police and get out of the country.”
Annette laughed derisively, stretching one arm across the back of the sofa. “You think you’re the only one, Thomas, honorable enough to risk the exposure of unpleasant personal facts. When I discovered Jean-Paul was Le Chat, I did the right thing. Why can’t you give me any credit for that?”
“When one does something because it’s right,” he said, “one doesn’t expect ‘credit.’”
“You goddamned bastard—”
He smiled. “I thought you didn’t care what I thought?”
Letting her stew, he turned to the beautiful marble fireplace and restored his own composure. Dealing with Annette Reed had never offered him much tranquility; she’d set him on edge since she was a little girl. He’d always prayed she would overcome her selfishness and insecurity—her exaggerated fear of making a mistake—and allow her carefree, daring and fun nature to emerge.
A photograph of Benjamin and Quentin on the mantel caught his eye. They’d been such a pair, that particular father and son. Both sensitive, both daring in their dreams, both tentative in life—not like Annette. She thrived on adventure and risk as a mask to her basic insecurity. In her youth, she’d had her affairs. In middle age, her company and her solitary life. What would she have become if Benjamin had lived?
And Quentin. Would his father have recognized his son’s sensitivity and helped him come to terms with the positive aspects of his dreamy nature?
Thomas abruptly turned away from the photograph. What-ifs were among the worst forms of torture an old man suffered, he’d decided. Benjamin Reed had died when his son was ten and had left his young, self-absorbed widow to raise him alone.
It was done. So be it.
“I believe you,” he told Annette, “when you say you don’t have the Jupiter Stones, if for no other reason than if you did, you’d have stuffed them down Jean-Paul’s throat and let him choke on them.”
Annette leaned forward and spread a scone with jam. “You don’t like me because I’m a powerful woman now and no longer give a damn what you think. You don’t like strong women, do you?”
“My dear, if you’d been a man you’d be a powerful, selfish man instead of a powerful, selfish woman. Don’t flatter yourself. There’s no double standard at work here.”
“Isn’t there? How often are men accused of being selfish? Almost never. They’re single-minded, devoted to their work, determined. It’s women who are considered selfish.”
“I don’t deny what you say, Annette, but I’ve seen selfish men—and none of this excuses your behavior.”
“What behavior? That I wasn’t a gung-ho wife and mother?”
Thomas sighed. “You’re making excuses, Annette, where there are none to make. No, you haven’t been a good mother to Quentin—but you were a rotten parent long before you became chairman of Winston & Reed. Working or not working has nothing to do with your basic selfishness. You’re a good businesswoman, but that doesn’t make you immune from being responsible for your other failings. It wouldn’t if you were a man.”
“Get out of my house, Thomas.” She threw down the scone, but was pleased to see her hands weren’t shaking. “I don’t have to listen to your insults and senile drivel.”
“I don’t want your feud with Jean-Paul harming anyone else. Do you understand that, Annette?” Thomas’s heart was beating erratically again. God help me from giving her the satisfaction of seeing how upset she still can make me. He went on carefully, “As powerful and strong as you think you are, my dear, you don’t respond well to personal pressure.”
“And you do?” She sat back, hating him, but unable to pull her eyes from his aging figure. “Damn you to hell, Thomas, for thinking I want anyone hurt over this business with Jean-Paul. Yes, I’m sure he wants the Jupiter Stones. He must believe that silly woman Gisela’s claim they were real, in which case they must be enormously valuable—a pity I misplaced them. But he knows I’d pay him to stay away from me. So it has to be more than a simple profit motive at work here, don’t you think?”
“It makes no difference—”
“Not to you, I’m sure. I’m the one who turned him in and, as you say, ruined his life. Has it ever occurred to you that his conviction that I have those stones has kept him from coming after me? He doesn’t just want the stones.” She swallowed hard, looking for some way to make herself seem more composed, then gave up. “He wants revenge, Thomas. Don’t you see that? As soon as he get the stones, he’ll come after me.”
I hope he does, Thomas thought, and he walked over to her, moving slowly and stiffly after his long day. Yet he could see from Annette’s expression that she wasn’t looking upon him as a man approaching eighty whose body was beginning to fail him. She was remembering their days together in Saigon, when Annette had wanted nothing more than for him to love her.
He leaned in close, so that she could see the yellow in his eyes, the wrinkles and the liver spots on his hands and face, the sagging skin, so that she could know that time, too, would catch up with her. He didn’t give a damn about being old. He had seen too much death, was too close to it himself, to let it worry him. But aging, dying—they wouldn’t sit well with Annette.
“Understand me, Mrs. Reed,” he said coldly. “I don’t care if Jean-Paul Gerard exposes you for what you are or even if he kills you. I only care that his obsession with the Jupiter Stones and your belief that you’re worth saving at any cost don’t spill over and ruin the lives of any more people I care about.” He straightened up and simply refused to breathe hard. “I’ll do what I can to keep him away from you—but not for your sake.”
She suddenly looked like a petulant adolescent who wanted to stick her tongue out at him. “You’re wrong about me, Thomas. I’ve suffered, as well—”
“You don’t know what suffering is.”
“I lost a husband because of your arrogance!”
“You see, Annette, you phrase everything in terms of yourself—you’ve suffered, you’ve lost. Suffering isn’t just when you yourself are hurt. It’s when someone you love is hurt. What’s unfortunate, but obvious and probably unchangeable, is that you only love yourself.”
She stuck her chin up at him. “Go to hell.”
“Simply do as I ask.” He gave her a nasty smile. “Think, my dear. What if after all these years I decided to talk?”
“Kim!”
The Vietnamese appeared immediately, but Thomas waved him off and walked himself out.
* * *
Annette splashed more coffee into her cup and gulped it down, her hands shaking violently. She should have shot Thomas. She had guns in the house. She’d learned how to use them—would use them. She should have filled him with lead and watched him bleed. Who was he to judge her?
No one would have blamed her for shooting him.
Poor Mrs. Reed, they would say, having to endure being accosted by that vile old loser who’d killed her husband.
Anyone else in her position would have shot him.
She’d loved Benjamin! And she loved her son. Quentin was her baby—
Ignoring Kim, she ran to her study and removed the Browning automatic from her desk drawer.
Thomas had left the front door open. She rushed out to the steps with her gun.
He was already gone.
“I hate you, Thomas Blackburn…I hate you!”
If only she believed it.