by that, I mean, dear God, please. I won’t last through all the boring business talk without someone there to chat with.”
“You should come,” Eric said. “Aunt Violet said she’d like to see Olivia anyway.”
“Please, Mama…I want to show you what I learned this summer anyway, and I want to see our horses before I go back to school.”
What could I say? Under normal circumstances, I would have determined whether or not Calvin was out of town before committing my time, particularly for an overnight trip. Only Calvin wasn’t traveling, and undoubtedly, he would want to come. But the idea of sharing a suite with him, right now in particular, seemed unbearable. Dangerous, even. It’s much harder to keep a secret behind just a few walls than behind an entire apartment building.
“We’ll see,” I said. “We have to talk to Daddy and figure out his plans too.”
We exited to the curb, where two large SUVs were waiting, complete with drivers and Eric and Jane’s security detail in front.
“Jane?” I asked. “Would you like a lift uptown if Eric’s going to the office?”
“Actually,” Jane said, “he’ll just drop me in Soho. I’m interning with Lake McHugh this fall so she can recommend me for FIT next year. Can you believe it? Good thing I went to law school so I could become an unpaid intern all over again.”
“Hey, pretty girl. Stop.”
Olivia and I watched in awe as Eric’s quiet phrase immediately shuttered Jane’s self-doubt. She beamed, refilled with sudden pride as Eric slung an arm around her waist and guided her toward their waiting vehicle.
Envy hummed through me. But not just at their closeness, I realized. Also for their direction. Only a few months after they had both come out of one of the darkest episodes of either of their lives, neither Jane nor Eric seemed to be lost at all. Eric had dived even further into his role as chairman of De Vries Shipping, and Jane had embraced her love of fashion in order to create a new career for herself here in New York. It wasn’t that they didn’t have difficult moments or struggle with their trauma. It was that their knowledge of themselves helped them through. Right along with the way they so clearly advocated for each other too.
What would it be like, I wondered as I rode in the back of the Escalade with Moira and Olivia, to have someone like that who would stick up for you in that way? What would it be like to have a partner so intent on protecting you from harm that he wouldn’t even let you do it to yourself?
Just know that you have someone in your corner. That someone out there thinks you’re incredible like no one else. Know that, and remember it when you’re feeling down.
Matthew’s words swept over me like a tidal wave. Where had he said that? On the street? In the hotel?
I found it didn’t matter. Because as soon as the joy of them arrived, it disappeared just as quickly.
Because he wasn’t mine.
He couldn’t be.
I had no direction in this life, and even more, I was so very alone in it still.
And so, I focused on the little girl next to me, who had watched my cousin and his wife with an expression that told me their interaction was as much a mystery to her as it was to me.
The reality dug a pit deep in my stomach.
My darling girl deserved to know what that kind of love felt like. Maybe I could try to do that for her.
For us both.
I gave Moira the rest of the day off, and thirty minutes later, Olivia and I entered the apartment to the sounds of several unfamiliar voices. My darling girl had waited patiently by the lifts while I climbed the twenty flights of stairs. I often wondered why she never went in without me, but I was too charmed to inquire lest she stop.
“What about Kate?” said a brusque male voice from the drawing room.
“What about Kate?” came Calvin’s even brusquer reply. “She doesn’t know anything. It’s a moot point.”
“Then all the better to put her on the stand,” said the other man, whom I now recognized as Merrick Reynolds, the primary attorney representing Calvin against Matthew’s office. “They’re grasping in the dark for evidence, Gardner. They’ll be desperate for anything they can rip apart. But you need some character witnesses, and she’s the best you’ve got.”
Olivia shuffled with me toward the drawing room, where we