Child's Play Read online

  “Reed Bailey.” Her mother was silent for a moment. She knew the name. Everyone did. He was one of the most successful young venture capitalists in New York. He had worked for an important firm in Silicon Valley, and came back to New York to start a firm of his own, which was a booming success. She wondered if he was just toying with Claire. It seemed unlikely that at somewhere close to forty, he would be as smitten as she was, although she was a beautiful girl. Kate knew nothing about his personal reputation, only his success in business. On paper certainly, he was an impressive guy. But Reed Bailey being “the one” in Claire’s life seemed unlikely to her. He could have any woman he wanted, not just a young associate he picked up at a law firm.

  “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-nine. He’s never been married. He’s dying to settle down and have kids. He just hasn’t had time or found the right woman.” Kate knew that was the oldest excuse in the world for men who hadn’t married.

  “And you’re not ready to have kids.” Claire was still a kid herself, in many ways. “You’re playing in the big leagues with him. He’s way down the road from where you are now at your age.”

  “I know that, Mom. But we’re crazy about each other. I know this is it. He says he can see me as the mother of his children, someday. He’s never said that to anyone before.” She was off and running at full speed.

  “Can you calm this down for a while? If it’s real, it’ll hold until you know each other better. Neither of you should be making these statements or decisions right now. It’s all chemistry. You’re a beautiful young woman. You’re intelligent, and fun to be with. You need to take your time. You both do. Forever is a long time, Claire. If it’s right, it will wait.”

  “We don’t want to wait, Mom. He asked me to move in with him.” Kate’s heart sank at the words. It was all much too soon. Nothing good ever came from rushing.

  “Be smart about this. Stay with him, go out with him, get to know him. Don’t give up your apartment or move in with him. You’ve felt this way before,” she reminded her, and Claire looked offended.

  “No, I haven’t. This is different. You don’t understand.”

  “Yes, I do. But you have to be sensible. It feels perfect right now, but you really don’t know him. Give it a little time.”

  “He’s the one, Mom. I know.” Kate wanted to shake her, but she couldn’t. All she could do was pray that Claire would slow down. But she was playing with a grown-up this time, and Kate had no way of knowing if this was a game to Reed Bailey, or real. The only thing she did know was that Claire had fallen for him, head over heels, and she did not want advice from her mother. She never did. Kate just didn’t want her to get hurt in the process. And what he was saying to her was heady stuff. She was drunk on his words, and in love with love.

  “Let’s talk about it again, soon. Try to slow it down and get to know him better. I have a three o’clock meeting and I can’t be late.” They left the table after Kate paid, and the lobster she had eaten was tied in a knot in her stomach. It was so hard to reason with Claire when she got like this. She was the most stubborn of all of her children. Kate just had to count on fate intervening as it had before, and stay in close touch with Claire on it. She was eager to talk to her own mother about it now. They were having dinner that night.

  She kissed Claire goodbye and went back to her office. She almost collided with two pedestrians, she was so distracted thinking about Claire’s confessions. She’d never gotten in any trouble or badly hurt with her romances before, but Reed Bailey was a powerful man, and Kate had no idea what his motives were. She found it unlikely that after two months, he thought Claire was “the one” too. She was scowling by the time she got back to her office. One of her partners walked in before their meeting in the conference room.

  “Bad news on the case?” He looked worried and Kate shook her head.

  “No. Sorry. Something else. I just had lunch with my daughter.”

  “That’ll do it every time.” Adam Berrigan laughed. “Mine just dropped out of college. She wants to move to Florence to become an artist.” None of Kate’s children had ever done anything like that. They’d always been sensible, and in the end, Claire always was too.

  She picked up the file from her desk, and followed Adam to the meeting with their client, a hostile adversary and his attorney. It was going to be a long afternoon. Her worries about Claire and Reed Bailey would have to wait. Their romance was probably just a shooting star in the sky, and would disappear just as quickly. She might think he was “the one” for now, but Kate was sure he would last no longer than the others. All her romances till now had been short, and sometimes not so sweet.

  Chapter 2

  The weather was still so warm when Kate left the office at seven that she walked the twenty blocks to her mother’s apartment on Park Avenue and got there right on time at seven-thirty. Margaret was waiting for her in the large room she used as a studio for the oil painting she had been doing as a hobby for fifty years, and now could spend more time on. She put serious effort and work into it, and still took classes at the Art Students League to perfect her technique. She had talent and had won awards in some of the shows she had entered. Her work was very powerful, and she loved doing it. If she hadn’t discovered her passion and ability for psychology, she probably would have been a professional artist, and a good one. She was standing with a glass of white wine in her hand studying her latest canvas, when Kate let herself in with her key, found her mother, and gave her a hug.

  “That’s a nice one, Mom,” Kate said. Her mother’s work had a haunting quality to it, and an interesting tension. She painted every day now. And when she was willing to part with her paintings, a gallery downtown sold her work. Margaret painted for the love of it, not the money. She had worked hard, invested her money sensibly, and her late husband had left her more than comfortable. She could enjoy the fruits of their work now.

  “Thank you. I’ve had a strange urge to do something more contemporary. I’ve never done that before, but I think I’m ready for something different.” Margaret smiled at her daughter. Their looks were very similar, except that Margaret had had red hair instead of blond. It had faded to a pale strawberry blond now. Like Kate, she had youthful looks and a well-toned athletic body. She went to yoga twice a week. She didn’t look her age, and her thoughts were often more modern and flexible than her daughter’s. She read voraciously, and was always open to new ideas.

  Kate had definite ideas about how things should be done. She was a hard taskmaster with herself, and sometimes with others. A perfectionist. Her mother was comfortable letting things flow more gently. Margaret’s willingness to consider other options and explore different concepts kept her especially close and in tune with her grandchildren. She had been there as a sounding board and a safety net as they were growing up without a father. Margaret brought balance to all their lives, and her training as a psychologist and therapist had been helpful to them all after Tom’s death. Kate had leaned on her heavily then too, not sure how she would survive it in the first extremely painful months. It was Margaret who had encouraged her to go to law school. She had always wanted to, and with Tom gone, and some help with the kids, Kate had the chance. It had been the best advice anyone had ever given her.

  “How are things at the office?” Margaret asked, smiling at her daughter, as she perched on a high stool in paint splattered jeans and an old shirt that Kate could tell from the initials had been her father’s. It was battered and well-worn now, unlike the pristine state it must have been in when her father wore it. Her father had been a banker, the head of one of New York’s oldest banks. In contrast to his wife’s modern outlook on life, he had been very old school, an old-fashioned gentleman, in love with his wife until his last breath. Theirs had been a happy, stable home, an example Kate had tried to follow with her own kids.

  Margaret had saved a stack of his elegant shirt
s when her husband died. She loved wearing them when she painted. Kate’s father had passed away ten years before, nine years after Tom had. They were both widows now, which was another common bond.

  Kate’s parents had had a remarkable marriage, and her mother’s love for her husband had continued long after he was gone. It was he who had encouraged her to get her PhD in psychology after Kate started school, and later to establish her own practice, which had been a rewarding career for her for more than forty years.

  Margaret had never looked at another man and always said she didn’t want to, although she was still very attractive. Kate had had her share of romances after Tom died, though none of them were ever serious. She kept the men she dated separate from her children. None of the men had ever tempted Kate enough to want to marry them. She had never given her heart since Tom, and didn’t want to be married again. She enjoyed male companionship, but she had learned how painful it was when it ended, and the acute agony of losing someone she loved. She had no desire to get too deeply involved. She and her mother had discussed it at length. Margaret understood why she felt the way she did, but was sorry Kate had chosen not to risk her heart again.

  For the past six years, Kate had dated a senator from Massachusetts. He was fifty-nine years old, divorced, with a bitter ex-wife and four grown children. He wasn’t interested in marriage either. He would have liked to see more of Kate, but they were both busy. He came up from Washington to see her once or twice a month, which she said was enough for her. They went out to dinner, to the theater or ballet, and spent quiet evenings together at her apartment. He was a familiar figure in her building now, the other tenants recognized him and smiled at him discreetly in the elevator, but no one made a fuss about it. Her mother felt sorry for her. She would have liked to see Kate fall in love again, or have real passion in her life, but Kate liked the arrangement she and Bart had, even though her mother thought it inadequate. Kate was satisfied with it just as it was. They were currently planning to spend two weeks at Shelter Island that summer, in a house he rented every year. Margaret thought they should go to Italy or Spain or somewhere more romantic. Kate didn’t want passion at this point. She’d been burned by it before. The men she went out with were always less exciting than Tom had been. He’d been thrilling for her but she didn’t want that again. A nice tame relationship based on companionship, like the one with Bart, suited her perfectly. Kate always stayed at a safe distance from the men she went out with.

  “We’re crazy busy with mergers and acquisitions, and a couple of big lawsuits.” Kate filled her in about work. “We’ve got a nasty one heating up right now.” Her eyes lit up as she described it, and took a sip of the wine she had poured for herself. “It looks like I’ll finally get back to court again. I don’t think my client is going to settle. We’re ready for a good fight. I suspect we’ll win, so I’m not pushing him to settle.” Margaret smiled.

  “Who knew you’d turn out to be a killer in the courtroom,” Margaret said, looking amused, as they wandered into the kitchen. The housekeeper had left them a roast chicken, vegetables, and a salad, and had set the table for them.

  “I had lunch with Claire today,” Kate said with a sigh, as they helped themselves to the simple meal, which was all either of them wanted. “She’s in love again, this time with a client. I told her that’s not a smart thing to do. She seems to have caught a big fish with this one. He’s a well-known venture capitalist and a huge deal on Wall Street. She says he’s ‘the one,’ and he wants her to be the mother of his children.” She glanced at Margaret. Kate trusted her mother’s instincts and reactions, most of the time anyway. “Should I be worried?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She dropped by on Sunday, and told me all about it. She always sounds like that in the beginning, and then she loses interest, although I’m not sure she will this time. He sounds very seductive and very exciting. And he’s way more sophisticated than any of the boys she’s gone out with.” They both knew that was a double-edged sword, and fraught with risk.

  “Now I am worried.” Kate put down her fork and looked at her mother.

  “I don’t think she’s interested in marriage and won’t be for a long time. She says she doesn’t believe in it. She’ll change her mind about that, of course. At least I hope so. Maybe she’ll get her heart broken this time, if he gets tired of her first, and if she does, she’ll survive it. It doesn’t sound like it’s heading in that direction, for now anyway. He sees her every night. He sounds infatuated.”

  “She wants to move in with him. She’s only known him for two months. That’s not reasonable. I don’t care if she sleeps with him every night, I don’t want her to give up her apartment. She needs her own place in case this falls apart like all the others. And two months is nothing. She needs a year, at least, to get to know him.” Everything Kate said made sense.

  “I told her that too. She won’t listen to either of us, and that’s not such a bad thing. You can’t expect her to do the right thing all the time. You know what I think? You set the bar too high for your children. They never screw up, no one ever got in trouble in school, they all have great jobs. They’re as driven as you are, and you expect them to be perfect. That’s not healthy. One of them is going to do something you don’t like one of these days. You’d better brace yourself for it, and better now than when they’re forty, and married with two kids. Maybe Claire needs to throw her heart over the wall for this guy, and take some risks, instead of ending it in three months and moving on to the next one.”

  “I just don’t want my children to get hurt,” Kate said, looking unhappy. It was an old refrain between them, and a subject she and her mother disagreed on. There weren’t many. As an only child, her parents had had high hopes for her too, especially her father. Her mother had been more lenient and expected less of her. But her childhood had been a happy one.

  “No, you don’t want them to make mistakes. That’s different. They have to. They can’t be perfect all the time. If they don’t make mistakes now, when they’re young, when are they going to make them? I worry about Tammy. She works too hard to even date, let alone have a serious relationship. At least Claire is trying to figure out what she wants, by process of elimination. And I agree with Claire about Amanda, by the way. She is a mistake for Anthony. I think you like her for all the wrong reasons. She’s going to shrink Anthony’s world to nothing. All she cares about is getting married and having babies. Anthony deserves more than that. I’ve never known you to be a snob before. I think you’re more in love with her than he is. He doesn’t give a damn about her parents’ social connections, or her having been a debutante. How can you want so little for him? She bores me to extinction. Just listening to her describe her job or talk about the wedding puts me to sleep,” Margaret said and Kate looked unhappy.

  “You and Claire are so mean about her. She’ll be a good wife and a good mother,” Kate said stubbornly.

  “Is that all you want for him? He went to MIT for Heaven’s sake. Have you watched his videogames? They’re brilliant.” Margaret was proud of her grandson, and all her grandchildren.

  “Not lately. I haven’t had time. If he marries a nerd like he is, he’ll never be able to function in the real world. He’d rather create games than talk to people. That’s not good for him either.”

  “Why does he have to get married? He’s twenty-nine years old. What’s the hurry?”

  “I didn’t propose to her,” Kate said, looking irritated. She’d already had the same conversation with Claire about Amanda over lunch, and several other times since they got engaged. “He did. He obviously thinks she suits him too.”

  “She forced him into it with an ultimatum. She wasn’t going to keep dating him unless he made a commitment, so he got engaged.”

  “Why is that my fault?” Kate asked her.

  “Because he knows how much you approve of her, and he wants to please you. He’d never
have thought of marrying her on his own, and he’s looked bored and miserable ever since he proposed. Don’t let your social ambitions for your kids run away with you, Kate. I don’t think he should marry her. He’ll be miserable in six months.”

  “It’s too late. She’s already bought her wedding dress.”

  “So what? She can return it, I broke two engagements before I married your father. Practice rounds. And in all honesty, I don’t know if he’d have the guts to call it off. He’s such a sweet kid. He never wants to hurt anybody. He’d rather sacrifice himself and marry the wrong girl than disappoint her, or you.”

  “She’s not the wrong girl,” Kate insisted vehemently. “She may be wrong for you and Claire, but she’s not wrong for him. Trust me on this one.” But so far, no one was convinced.

  Tammy said that whatever made her brother happy was fine with her, and had stayed out of the heated arguments. She never liked getting in the middle of family disagreements, and preferred keeping her opinions to herself, unlike Claire and her mother and grandmother who never hesitated to share their views on any subject. It made for some very lively family dinners. Anthony was more like his older sister, hated confrontation, and preferred disappearing into his virtual world.

  “I just think there’s going to be trouble if he goes through with it,” Margaret insisted. “Maybe not immediately, but later. It’s not up to me to interfere, but I think you ought to give it some serious thought, and maybe have a talk with him. This isn’t just about now, it’s about his future happiness. Young people forget that.”

  “Who would you rather have him marry? Some bimbo, or a computer geek like him? Why would that be an improvement?”

  “It might be a lot more fun for him. A computer nerd like him would speak the same language, and a bimbo would be a hell of a lot more exciting than Amanda.”

  “Beware of what you wish for. He’s never gone out with bimbos. He wouldn’t know what to do with some jazzy girl. And he can’t marry a girl like that.”