The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,36

liked working for the Robertses, they were kind, considerate employers, even though she admitted that Jaime was a handful, and some of Zoe’s theories about child rearing made no sense to her at all. But she followed most of them, and enjoyed her job.

When the guests arrived at Jaime’s birthday party, there was champagne for the adults, and ginger ale or Coke for Austin’s nephews. The boys had agreed to come to humor their parents, on the condition that they didn’t have to stay long. Austin put them in front of the TV to watch sports. He had been passionate about all sports as a boy too, growing up. He had played football, baseball, and ice hockey, and played tennis and squash now as an adult, and still loved watching football and basketball on TV, and shared his love of sports with his brothers and nephews. Zoe didn’t share his love of sports with him. The apartment was too small for five exuberant boys, so watching TV would keep them busy.

Constance and George enjoyed seeing all of their grandchildren in one room, and George joined his grandsons at the TV and teased them about their haircuts and baggy pants, and asked even six-year-old Seth about his girlfriend, which made him laugh.

Brad talked to George for a few minutes when he could tear himself away from the TV after a touchdown. He enjoyed talking to Constance, who was an intelligent, elegant woman, down-to-earth and pleasant. She and Pam had a great deal in common, with Pam’s therapy practice as a marriage, family, and child counselor. She was still in practice with the same partners in Santa Barbara twenty-three years after they’d moved there.

Zoe’s sisters-in-law, and she and Cathy, hovered around Jaime, and brought out the birthday cake that looked like the face of a doll. They took pictures while Jaime blew out her candles, and Constance watched, and almost stepped forward as Jaime’s long dark hair hung near the flames. Connie was afraid her hair would catch fire, which Zoe didn’t seem to notice. But Fiona was standing closer and pulled her hair back for her as she blew the candles out and then laughed happily. She had a big vocabulary for a two-year-old and enjoyed her party. She got pink icing all over her face. There were no children there other than her cousins, because she had no real friends yet, except the children she played with at the park. She had another year before she would start preschool. Zoe was applying to all the best ones, and talking to her sisters-in-law at the party about how hard it was to get in, and how extensive the applications were.

“It was easier to get in to Yale, and medical school at Duke, than applying to preschool,” she said, they all laughed and agreed that it was true.

“I had to prostitute myself for reference letters for us. No one cared about Tommy. They wanted our tax returns and a bank statement. They hit us up for a donation the minute he got into the school, and they haven’t stopped asking us for money ever since,” Amelia said.

After the cake had been served, Zoe’s father came up and put an arm around her. He loved seeing her happy, and Austin had been telling him about the work she was doing at the shelter and how much she had accomplished. And then she and Pam chatted for a while. She was relieved to see Zoe happy too. She had been so dark and depressed as a teenager that Pam had worried about her for years. But she had blossomed into a beautiful, content woman, and it was obvious how happy she was with Austin and their little girl. She was a woman fulfilled after her lonely youth.

After she disappeared for a few minutes, Zoe came back and scolded the men in the group. “Who left the toilet lid open?” She asked as though she expected a full confession, but didn’t get one. “That’s the most dangerous thing you can do with a toddler in the house,” she informed them, and they looked startled. “A two-year-old can fall in the toilet headfirst, since they’re top-heavy, and suffer a ‘near drowning,’ and when they get stuck head down in the water, they drown. I learned that in the Red Cross first-aid class I took last year. So the message is, ‘Next time, gentlemen, put down the lid, so Jaime can’t fall in.’ ” It was