"Let Me Call You Sweetheart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clark Mary Higgins)

4

While they waited for Kerry and Robin to arrive for inner, Jonathan and Grace Hoover were sharing their customary late-afternoon martini in the living room of their home in Old Tappan overlooking Lake Tappan. The setting sun was sending long shadows across the tranquil water. The trees, carefully trimmed to avoid obstructing the lake view, were glowing with the brilliant leaves they would soon relinquish.

Jonathan had built the first fire of the season, and Grace had just commented that the first frost of the season was predicted for that evening.

A handsome couple in their early sixties, they had been married nearly forty years, tied by bonds and needs that went beyond affection and habit. Over that time, they seemed almost to have grown to resemble each other: both had patrician features, framed by luxuriant heads of hair, his pure white with natural waves, hers short and curly, still peppered with traces of brown.

There was, however, a distinctive difference in their bodies. Jonathan sat tall and erect in a high-backed wing chair, while Grace reclined on a sofa opposite him, an afghan over her useless legs, her bent fingers inert in her lap, a wheelchair nearby. For years a victim of rheumatoid arthritis, she had become increasingly more disabled.

Jonathan had remained devoted to her during the whole ordeal. The senior partner of a major New Jersey law firm specializing in high-profile civil suits, he had also held the position of state senator for some twenty years but had several times turned down the opportunity to run for governor. “I can do enough good or harm in the senate,” was his often-quoted remark, “and anyhow, I don’t think I’d win.”

Anyone who knew him well didn’t believe his protests. They knew Grace was the reason he had chosen to avoid the demands of gubernatorial life, and secretly they wondered if he didn’t harbor some vague resentment that her condition had held him back. If he did, however, he certainly never showed it.

Now as Grace sipped her martini, she sighed. “I honestly believe this is my favorite time of year,” she said, “it’s so beautiful, isn’t it? This kind of day makes me remember taking the train to Princeton from Bryn Mawr for the football games, watching them with you, going to the Nassau Inn for dinner…”

“And staying at your aunt’s house and her waiting up to be sure you were safely in before she went to bed,” Jonathan chuckled. “I used to pray that just once the old bat would fall asleep early, but she kept a perfect record.”

Grace smiled. “The minute we would pull up in front of the house, the porch light started blinking.” Then she glanced anxiously at the clock on the mantel. “Aren’t they running late? I hate to think of Kerry and Robin in the thick of the commuter traffic. Especially after what happened last week.”

“Kerry’s a good driver,” Jonathan reassured her. “Don’t worry.

They’ll be here any minute.”

“I know. It’s just…” The sentence did not have to be completed; Jonathan understood fully. Ever since twenty-one-year-old Kerry, about to start law school, had answered their ad for a house-sitter, they’d come to think of her as a surrogate daughter. That had been fifteen years ago, and during that time Jonathan had been of frequent help to Kerry in guiding and shaping her career, most recently using his influence to have her name included on the governor’s shortlist of candidates for a judgeship.

Ten minutes later the welcome sound of door chimes heralded Kerry and Robin’s arrival. As Robin had predicted, there was a gift waiting for her, a book and a quiz game for her computer. After dinner she took the book into the library and curled up in a chair while the adults lingered over coffee.

With Robin out of earshot, Grace quietly asked, “Kerry, those marks on Robin’s face will fade, won’t they?”

“I asked Dr. Smith the same thing when I saw them. He not only practically guaranteed their disappearance, he made me feel as though I’d insulted him by expressing any concern about them. I have to tell you I have a hunch the good doctor has one big ego. Still, last week at the hospital, the emergency room doctor absolutely assured me that Smith is a fine plastic surgeon. In fact, he called him a miracle worker.”

As she sipped the last of her coffee, Kerry thought about the woman she had seen earlier in Dr. Smith’s office. She looked across the table at Jonathan and Grace. “An odd thing happened while I was waiting for Robin. There was someone in Dr. Smith’s office who looked so familiar,” she said. “I even asked the receptionist what her name was. I’m sure I don’t know her, but I just couldn’t shake the sensation that we had met before. She gave me a creepy feeling. Isn’t that odd?”

“What did she look like?” Grace asked.

“A knockout in a kind of come-hither, sensually provocative way,” Kerry reflected. “I think the lips gave her that look. They were kind of full and pouty. I know: Maybe she was one of Bob’s old girlfriends, and I had just repressed that memory.” She shrugged. “Oh well, it’s going to bug me till I figure it out.”