couldn't do that, all he could give her was the present and what he was.
“I'll be happy, Uncle Teddy.” She looked at him with a big smile, and for the first time in months she looked like a nine-year-old child. There was no trace of the tragedy or the trauma or the anguish of all that she had been through. She threw herself on the couch, giggled loudly, threw her hat in the air, and looked like a mischievous little elf as she lay there and kicked off her shoes.
The headline that night read SOCIALITE SURGEON BECOMES BACHELOR FATHER, and it went on to reiterate for the thousandth time about his month in jail, the kidnapping charges Pattie had tried to make stick that had become contempt of court, and again all the details about the custody case. The papers had been strictly kept from Vanessa all along, and Teddy hoped that they would all get lost somewhere over the years. He didn't want any of that coming back to haunt Vanessa. She still remembered nothing of Vasili, or the baby, or her mother's murder, but she seemed much more herself now. It was just a matter of time.
50
“Vanessa? Vanessa? Are you home?” Teddy walked sedately through the front door, put his hat on the hall table, took off his coat, and peeked into the study. She wasn't there, but as he wandered through the house he suspected that she was in the darkroom. For the past four years she had spent most of her time there. He had had to give up the guest bedroom on her behalf when she discovered photography in her freshman year at Vassar, but she was so good at what she did that it was actually a pleasure.
During the thirteen years she had lived with him almost everything had been a pleasure. They had grown up together, hand in hand, learning and growing, and occasionally fighting like cats and dogs, but there was an enormous respect between them. His mother had died when Vanessa had been twelve, but that was no particular loss to Vanessa. Her grandmother had never accepted the child, and that never changed right up until her death. She left Vanessa none of her vast fortune. She left it all, equally divided, between her two sons. Two years later Greg had died, predictably of cirrhosis, and Pattie had eventually moved to London and married “someone terribly important.” From the rumors he occasionally heard, Teddy assumed she was happy, but he didn't really care if he never saw her again. Once she lost custody of Vanessa, she had entirely lost interest in the girl, and they never saw her. So over the years Teddy and Vanessa had been alone. He had never married, and he had devoted himself wholeheartedly to the task of being a bachelor father. It had its moments of absolute despair, there were moments that were hysterical beyond words, and moments that were worth an entire lifetime. When she had graduated from Vassar the previous spring, it had been a moment that he knew he would always cherish. In some ways she was as lovely as her mother had been, but it was more a similarity of spirit. She had grown up to look exactly like Brad, and sometimes it amused Teddy to see how much she was like him. She had his same long lanky blond good looks, her sense of humor was much the same, her eyes were the same gray-blue, and when she laughed, it was as though he had come back for another life, as a woman. It was extraordinary to watch her, and be with her, she was so dynamic and so alive. It was her energy and her drive that she got from her mother. And she wanted to be not a model but a photographer. She had studied fine arts at Vassar and done very nicely, but all she cared about was what she saw in her camera lens, and after that what she did with it.
Teddy knocked softly on the door, and Vanessa answered.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
“The big bad wolf.”
“Don't come in, I'm developing.”
“Will you be through soon?”
“In a few minutes. Why?” It seemed to him that most of then-conversations were through that door.
“Want to go to dinner?”
“Wouldn't you rather play with kids your own age?” She was always teasing him that he should get married.
“Mind your own business, smartass.”
“You'd better be nice to me, I could sell that picture I