Lily—that was the name she’d given to the baby whom she’d carried for nine months and then had known for only four hours. Three weeks before Reed’s graduation from West Point and hers from Stonecroft, she had realized she was pregnant. They had both been frightened but agreed that they would get married immediately after graduation.
“My parents will love you, Jeannie,” Reed had insisted. But she knew he was worried about their reaction. He admitted that his father had warned him about getting serious with anyone until he was at least twenty-five. He never got to tell them about her. A week before graduation he’d been killed by a hit-and-run driver on the West Point campus who’d been speeding along the narrow road on which he was walking. Instead of watching Reed graduate fifth in his class, General, now retired, and Mrs. Carroll Reed Thornton accepted the diploma and sword of their late son in a special presentation at the graduation ceremony.
They never knew they had a granddaughter.
Even if someone had salvaged the record of her adoption, how would he or she have gotten close enough to Lily to take her hairbrush, with long, golden strands of her hair still caught in its bristles? Jean wondered.
That first terrifying communication had contained the brush and a note telling her to “Check the DNA—it’s your kid.” Stunned, Jean had submitted strands from the lock of hair she had kept from her baby, along with her own DNA sample and strands from the brush to a private DNA laboratory. The report had unequivocally confirmed her worst fears—the hairs on the brush had come from her now nineteen-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Or is it possible that the wonderful, caring couple who adopted her know who I am, and this is a buildup to asking me for money?
There had been a lot of publicity when her book about Abigail Adams became a best-seller and then a very successful film.
Let it be only about money, Jean prayed as she stood up and reached for the suitcase that it was time to unpack.
6
Carter Stewart threw his garment bag on the bed. Besides underwear and socks, it contained a couple of Armani jackets and several pairs of slacks. On impulse he decided to go to the first-night party in the jeans and sweater he was wearing.
In school he’d been a scrawny, untidy kid, the child of a scrawny, untidy mother. When she did remember to throw clothes in the washer, as often as not she was out of detergent. Then she’d toss in bleach, ruining whatever garments were in the machine. Until he started hiding his clothes from her and then laundering them himself, he’d gone to school in slightly soiled or freakish-looking attire.
Being too dressed up when he first met his former classmates might bring on remarks about how he used to look. Now what would they see when they looked at him? Not the shrimp he’d been most of the high school years but now of average height with a disciplined body. Unlike some of the others he’d spotted in the lobby, he had no gray strands in his full head of well-barbered dark brown hair. His ID showed him with shaggy hair and his eyes almost shut. A columnist had recently referred to his “dark brown eyes that suddenly flicker with a hint of yellow flames when he is angry.”
Impatiently he looked around the room. He’d worked in this hotel the summer of his junior year at Stonecroft. He’d probably been in this dumpy room any number of times, carrying room service trays to businessmen, to ladies on a tour of the Hudson Valley, or to parents visiting their kids at West Point—or, he thought, even to trysting couples who were sneaking away from their homes and families. I could always spot those, he thought. He used to smirk and ask those couples, “Would this be a honeymoon?” when he brought up their breakfasts. The guilty expression on their faces had been priceless.
He’d hated this place then and he hated it now, but since he was here, he might as well go downstairs and start the backslapping, “great-to-see-you” ritual.
Making sure he was carrying the piece of plastic that passed for a room key, he left the room and walked down the corridor to the elevator.
The Hudson Valley Suite where the opening cocktail party was being held was on the mezzanine floor. When he stepped off the elevator, he could hear the electronically enhanced music and the voices trying to yell above it. There looked to be about forty or fifty people already gathered there. Two waiters with trays holding glasses of wine were standing at the entrance. He took a glass of the red and sampled it. Lousy merlot. He might have guessed.
He started into the suite, then felt a tap on his shoulder. “Mr. Stewart, I’m Jake Perkins, and I’m covering the reunion for the Stonecroft Gazette. May I ask you a few questions?”
Sourly, Stewart turned and looked at the nervously eager redheaded kid standing inches away from him. The first thing you learn when you want something is not to get in the other guy’s face, he thought irritably as he tried to step back and felt his shoulders brush against the wall. “I would suggest we step outside and find a quiet spot unless you can read lips, Jake.”
“That’s not my talent, I’m afraid, sir. Outside is a good idea. Just follow me.”
After a split second’s consideration, Stewart decided not to abandon the wine. Shrugging, he turned and followed the student down the corridor.
“Before we begin, Mr. Stewart, may I tell you how much I enjoy your plays. I want to be a writer myself. I mean, I guess I am a writer, but I want to be a successful one like you.”
Oh, God, Stewart thought. “Everyone who interviews me says the same thing. Most, if not all of you, won’t make it.”
He waited for the expression of anger or embarrassment that usually followed that statement. Instead, to his disappointment, the baby-faced Jake Perkins smiled cheerfully. “But I will,” he said. “I’m absolutely sure of that. Mr. Stewart, I’ve done a lot of research on you and the others who are being honored. You all have one thing in common. The three women were achievers when they were here, but not one of you four men created much of a stir at Stonecroft. I mean, in your own case, I couldn’t find a single activity listed in your yearbook, and your marks were only mediocre. You didn’t write for the school paper or—”
The nerve of this kid, Stewart thought. “In my day, the school paper was amateurish even for a school paper,” he snapped, “as I’m sure it still is. I was never athletic, and my writing was restricted to a personal journal.”
“Is that journal the basis for any of your plays?”
“Perhaps.”
“They’re all pretty dark.”
“I have no illusions about life, nor did I have any when I was a student here.”
“Then would you say that your years at Stonecroft were not happy?”
Carter Stewart took a sip of the merlot. “They were not happy,” he said evenly.
“Then what brought you back to the reunion?”
Stewart smiled coldly. “The opportunity to be interviewed by you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see Laura Wilcox, the glamour queen of our class, getting out of the elevator. Let’s see if she recognizes me.”
He ignored the sheet of paper that Perkins was trying to hand him.
“If you’d just give me one minute more, Mr. Stewart. I have a list here that I think you’ll find of great interest.”
Perkins studied the back of Carter Stewart’s lean frame as he walked with swift strides to catch up with the glamorous blonde now walking into the Hudson Valley Suite. Nasty to me, Perkins thought, jeans and sweater and sneakers to show his contempt for everyone here who’s all duded-up for the night. He’s not the kind to show up just to collect some crummy, meaningless medal. So what really brings him here anyhow?
It was the question he’d ask in the last sentence of his article. He’d already done plenty of research on Carter Stewart. He’d started writing in college, offbeat one-act plays that were performed by the drama department and that led to a postgraduate stint at Yale. That was when he dropped his first name, Howard—or Howie, as he’d been called at Stonecroft. He had his first Broadway hit before he was thirty. He was reputed to be a loner who escaped to one of
his four homes around the country when he was working on a play. Withdrawn, unpleasant, perfectionist, genius—those were some of the words used to describe him in articles. I have a few others I could add, Jake Perkins thought grimly. And I will.
7
It took Mark Fleischman longer than he had expected to drive from Boston to Cornwall. He had hoped to have a couple of hours in which to walk around the town before having to face his former classmates. He wanted to have a chance to figure out the difference between his perception of himself as it had been when he was growing up there and the reality, as he understood it, of who he was now. Am I hoping to exorcise my own demons? he wondered.
As he drove with maddening slowness down the congested Connecticut Turnpike, he kept thinking of the statement he’d heard that morning from the father of one of his patients: “Doctor, you know as well as I do that kids are cruel. They were cruel in my day, and they haven’t changed. They’re like a pride of lions stalking the wounded prey. That’s what they’re doing to my kid now. That’s what they did to me when I was his age. And you know what, Doctor? I’m a pretty successful guy, but when I go to an occasional reunion at my prep school, in ten seconds I’m not the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I’m back to feeling like the clumsy nerd everyone else had fun picking on. Crazy, isn’t it?”
As the car once again slowed to a crawl, Mark decided that, in hospital terminology, the Connecticut Turnpike was in a constant state of intensive care. There was always a huge construction project going on somewhere along the way, the kind of project that meant cramming three lanes into only one, causing inevitable traffic jams.
He found himself comparing the turnpike problems to problems he saw in patients, such as the boy whose father had come in for the conference. The child had attempted suicide last year. Another kid, ignored and tormented as he had been, might have gotten a gun and turned it on his classmates. Anger and hurt and humiliation were squeezed together and forced into one outlet. Some people tried to destroy themselves when that happened; others tried to destroy their tormentors.
A psychiatrist who specialized in adolescents, Mark had an advice and call-in television program that had recently become syndicated. The response had been gratifying. “Tall, lanky, cheerful, funny, and wise, Dr. Mark Fleischman brings a no-nonsense approach to helping solve the problems of that painful rite-of-passage called adolescence”—that’s what one critic had written about the show.
Maybe I can put it all behind me after this weekend, he thought.
He hadn’t taken time for lunch, so after he finally got to the hotel, he went into the bar and ordered a sandwich and a light beer. When the bar suddenly began to fill up with reunion attendees, he quickly got his check, left half the sandwich uneaten, and made his way up to his room.
It was a quarter of five, and the shadows were heavy and closing in. For a few minutes he stood at the window. The knowledge of what he had to do weighed heavily on him. But after that, I’ll put it all behind me, he thought. The slate will be clean. Then I really will be able to be cheerful and funny—and maybe even wise.
He felt his eyes begin to moisten and abruptly turned from the window.
Gordon Amory went down in the elevator with his ID in his pocket. He would slip it on when he got to the party. For now, it was amusing to stand unrecognized by his former classmates and glance at their names and pictures as, floor by floor, they got into the elevator.
Jenny Adams was the last one to get on. She’d been a bovine kid, and while she had slimmed down some, she was still a big woman. There was something unmistakably small-town suburban in the cheap brocade suit and off-the-pushcart costume jewelry she was wearing. She was accompanied by a burly guy whose beefy arms were straining the seams of his too-tight jacket. Both were smiling broadly and said a general hello to the occupants of the elevator.
Gordon did not reply. The half-dozen others, all wearing their tags, sent out a chorus of greetings. Trish Canon, whom Gordon remembered as being on the track team and who was still beanpole thin, squealed, “Jenny! You look marvelous!”
“Trish Canon!” Jenny’s arms flew around her former classmate. “Herb, Trish and I used to pass each other notes in math. Trish, this is my husband, Herb.”
“And my husband, Barclay,” Trish said. “And—”
The elevator stopped at the mezzanine. As they stepped out, Gordon reluctantly took out his ID and put it on. Expensive plastic surgery had made sure that he no longer looked like the weasel-faced kid in the school picture. His nose was now straight, his formerly heavy-lidded eyes now wide. His chin was sculpted, and his ears lay flat against his head. Implants and the artistry of a top colorist had transformed his formerly thin and drab brown hair into a thick chestnut mane. He knew he was now a handsome man. The only outward manifestation of the tortured kid he had been was that in moments of great stress he could not stop himself from biting his nails.
The Gordie they knew doesn’t exist, he told himself as he started toward the Hudson Valley Suite. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned.
“Mr. Amory.”
A baby-faced, redheaded kid with a notebook was standing next to him.
“I’m Jake Perkins, a reporter for the Stonecroft Gazette. I’m interviewing the honorees. Could I just have a minute of your time?”
Gordon managed a warm smile. “Of course.”
“May I begin by saying that you’ve changed a lot in the twenty years since your senior picture.”
“I guess I have.”
“You already owned the majority share of four cable television channels. Why did you buy into Maximum?”
“Maximum has a reputation for strong family programming. I decided it would round out our ability to reach a segment of the audience I wanted in our entertainment portfolio.”
“There’s been buzz about a new series and a rumor that your former classmate Laura Wilcox may be the star. Is that true?”
“There has been no casting yet on the series you mention.”
“Your crime and punishment channel has been criticized as being too violent. Do you agree?”
“No, I do not. It offers genuine reality, not those made-up ludicrous situations that are the bread and butter of the commercial networks. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
“One more question, please. Would you just glance at this list?”
Impatiently, Gordon Amory took the sheet of paper from Perkins.
“Do you recognize those names?”
“They seem to be some of my former classmates.”
“They are five women, members of this class, who have died or disappeared during these twenty years.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
Perkins pointed. “I was astonished when I began my research. It started with Catherine Kane nineteen years ago. Her car skidded into the Potomac when she was a freshman at George Washington University. Cindy Lang vanished when she was skiing at Snowbird. Gloria Martin was an apparent suicide. Debra Parker piloted her own plane, and six years ago it crashed, killing her. Last month, Alison Kendall drowned in her pool. Wouldn’t you say it would be fair to call this a hard luck class, and maybe do a program on your network about it?”
“I would prefer to call it a ‘tragedy-ridden’ class, and, no, I would not want to do a program about it. Now if you’ll excuse me.”
“Of course. Just one more question. What does receiving this medal from Stonecroft mean to you?”
Gordon Amory smiled. It means I can say a pox on your house. In spite of the misery I endured here, I’ve made it big—that’s what he thought. Instead he said, “It is the fulfillment of my dream to be considered a success in the eyes of my classmates.”
8
Robby Brent had checked into the hotel on Thursday afternoon. He’d just finished a six-day engagement at the Trump Casino in Atlantic City where his famous comedy act had drawn its usual large audience. It made no sense to fly home to San Francisco only to come right back, and he hadn’t felt like staying in
Atlantic City or stopping in New York.
It had been a satisfactory decision, he decided as he dressed for the cocktail party. He reached in the closet for a dark blue jacket. Putting it on, he looked at himself critically in the mirror on the closet door. Lousy lighting, he thought, but he still looked okay. He’d been compared to Don Rickles, not only because of his swift-paced comedy act, but because of his appearance as well. Round face, shiny dome, a bit stocky—he could understand the comparison. Still, his looks hadn’t stopped women from being attracted to him. Post Stonecroft, he added to himself, definitely post Stonecroft.
He still had a couple of minutes before it was time to go down. He walked over to the window and looked out, thinking about how yesterday, after he’d checked in, he’d walked around town, picking out the homes of the kids who, like him, were honorees at the reunion.
He’d passed Jeannie Sheridan’s house. He’d thought about how a couple of times the cops had been called by the neighbors because her parents were scuffling with each other in the driveway. He had heard they divorced years ago. Probably lucky they had. People used to predict that one or the other would end up getting hurt during one of their fights.
Laura Wilcox’s first house was right next to Jeannie’s. Then her father inherited some money, and the family moved to the big house on Concord Avenue when they were sophomores. He remembered walking past Laura’s first house when he was a kid, hoping she’d happen to come out so he could start a conversation with her.
A family named Sommers had bought Laura’s house. Their daughter had been murdered in it. They’d sold it eventually. Most people don’t hang around a place where their kid has been stabbed to death. That had been on Columbus Day weekend, he reflected.
The invitation to the reunion lay on the bed. He glanced at it. The names of the honorees and their bios were included in the packet. Carter Stewart. How long after Stonecroft did it take him to drop being called Howie? Robby wondered. Howie’s mother had called herself an artist and was always seen around town with her sketch pad. Occasionally she’d persuade the art gallery to show some of her stuff. Really bad, Robby remembered. Howie’s father had been a bully, always whacking him around. No wonder his plays were so dark. Howie used to run out of the house and hide from his old man in the neighbors’ backyards. He may be successful, but inside he has to be the same sneak who used to peep in people’s windows. Thought he got away with it, but I caught him a couple of times. He had a crush on Laura so intense it practically oozed from his pores.