Riverside Park. Laura Wormer Van
each month. It was not fun travel, either, or even sequential. It was “go to Sacramento to pitch a bond issue to the California state pension fund, then get back in time for the meeting with the partners and then get down to Knoxville to scout that company before anyone else gets there and don’t forget next Monday is the public hearing on the Nova Scotia wind project, and Thursday is the Westminster Bank summit in London, and the following week you must get in to see that nutcase in Venezuela” kind of travel.
The Wyatts were also particularly proud of Althea’s personal agenda in her work, to generate jobs, products and energy options in places where there were few. Why not use the earth’s earliest and most bountiful foods like corn and sugar to stretch our oil reserves? Why not harness desert winds to make electricity? Or turn the endless summer sunshine of Alaska into the electricity needed to run air conditioners in the continental United States?
Now as for Samantha, the Wyatts’ nineteen-year-old, she was a very different matter. Frankly speaking she was a little spoiled and being that much farther away from them for six months of the year made both Harriet and Sam a little nervous.
“How much longer do we have to wait for Sammy?” Althea wanted to know, reaching for a piece of celery. She crunched down on it, showing the beautiful teeth from childhood orthodontics. Althea was a good-looking woman, tall, slim, with great cheekbones Sam recognized as his own. But it was Samantha who was the beauty of the family. Samantha looked like her mother.
“We’ll give her another ten minutes,” Harriet said.
Althea sighed, grabbed a piece of cheese and sank back into the cushions.
“So what exactly do you do on Seventh Avenue?” Sam asked the guy. (He wished Harriet would go into the kitchen to check on something so he could eat some cheese, too.)
“I’m a textile designer.”
“Samantha will be so interested,” Harriet said. “She’s in a theater group at school and loves making costumes.”
What the hell kind of job was it for a man to be a textile designer? Sam wondered. “I guess you have to be, uh,” Sam said, “inclined toward that kind of work?”
Althea rolled her eyes.
“I’m afraid my husband gets slightly deranged when he’s not fed,” Harriet explained.
The white-haired guy was laughing. “It’s okay. My dad had the same reaction.”
“Your father’s still alive?” Sam blurted.
Althea picked up a carrot from the tray and gently threw it at her father. It bounced off Sam’s barrel chest to the carpet.
“It must be my hair,” the guy said to Althea. He looked at Sam. “It’s a family trait, Mr. Wyatt. A lot of us go silver before thirty-five.” He smiled, looking hopeful. “I’m only thirty-four, sir.”
“Don’t bother explaining anything to him,” Althea told her boyfriend, “because I won’t be speaking to him again as long as I live.” She glared at her father. “You got it now, Dad? Cliff is not gay, he is gainfully employed and he’s thirty-four, okay?”
Sam mumbled an apology and then looked at his watch. “Where is that girl?”
“I vote we go ahead and eat,” Althea said.
“Five more minutes,” Harriet said, “and if she isn’t here…”
“So, Cliff,” Sam said, sitting back in his chair, “why don’t you explain to me exactly what a textile designer does.”
“Well, I’m a chemical engineer by training, Mr. Wyatt.”
“Oh, a chemical engineer,” Harriet repeated approvingly, raising her eyebrows.
“He went to MIT,” Althea added.
“I work in a lab to create new fibers. For different manufacturers.”
“He just created something for Ralph Lauren,” Althea said.
“Good for you,” Sam said, although it still sounded a little poofy to him. He turned at the sound of the tumblers in the front door.
“That will be Samantha,” Harriet said, jumping up and going to the foyer.
“Hooray, food,” Althea said, standing up.
“Oh, hi, Rosanne,” Sam heard Harriet say in the hall.
“Rosanne?” Sam said, glancing at Althea. “What’s Rosanne doing here?”
“I think Mom invited her to dinner.” Althea balanced her empty glass on the hors d’oeuvres tray and picked it up. “But she was going with Jason and Mrs. Goldblum over to the Stewarts’.” Cliff stood to pick up the other glasses and soiled cocktail napkins. “Rosanne was my babysitter way back when, Cliff, so be warned, if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s at the dinner table she might pinch you.”
Harriet reappeared in the living room and by her expression Sam knew something was wrong. “What’s wrong? Where’s Samantha?”
“She went to her room. She’s not feeling very well.” She turned to Cliff. “I hate to do this to you,” she began.
“But it would be better if I left. Of course, I understand.”
“Fix Cliff a plate to take with him,” Harriet said.
“No way, I’m taking him to Captain Cook’s,” Althea said. “After making him sit here half the night the least I can do is give him dinner.”
“No, Althea.” The tone of Harriet’s voice got everyone’s attention. She added, in a quieter voice, “I wish you would stay. I think your sister would want you here.”
A feeling of foreboding flooded through Sam and wordlessly he headed for Samantha’s bedroom.
“Sam, wait—”
Rosanne was standing next to three suitcases outside Samantha’s room.
“A lot of baggage for three days,” Sam observed.
“Mr. W,” Rosanne said, “we need to talk for a sec.”
Sam went to the door and found it locked. He knocked. “Samantha? This is your father. Open this door.”
“If I could just talk to you for one minute,” Rosanne pleaded.
“Oh, Rosanne!” Sam heard his daughter wail from behind the door. “What’s the use?” The handle turned and the door swung open.
“Samantha, what is it?” Sam asked, wincing as he looked at his daughter’s tearstained face. And then he looked down, between the parted sides of her coat. When he brought his eyes back up his daughter’s expression confirmed it. Samantha was pregnant.
7
Howard Stewart
HE KEPT PUTTING off telling Amanda about it and now he was running out of time. Christmas would just about finish him financially.
The deals he thought would set things right at the agency had never materialized. Instead, his number one associate announced she was moving to another agency and was taking two of Hillings & Stewart’s biggest writers with her. To be fair, Howard had assigned these two midlist authors (writers who sold consistently well but never quite seemed to make a bestseller list) to her because they were taking up so much of his time. The associate placed them at new publishing houses where first one and then the other popped onto the bestseller lists. Now the income from huge new contracts for these two writers was gone with his former associate.
And then there was the death of Gertrude Bristol, the international bestselling romance-suspense writer Howard had edited at Gardiner & Grayson who had become his founding client. Year in and year out for eight years Howard had received a Bristol novel to sell to publishers in twenty-one countries, to Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club, to audio