Fall from Grace Read online

  “That’s all true, but we’re stuck with the will. He never changed it. Sometimes life works out that way. I’m not happy about it either, but I have to make the best of it. What other choice do I have?”

  Sabrina felt tears of anger sting her eyes as her mother thought of something, left the table, and came back a minute later with Paul Zeller’s card. She had found it in her bag the night before and wanted to show it to them. “I told you about the man I sat next to on the plane. He’s a really nice person, and he seems to have some huge clothing company. I got the impression that he sells low-priced goods. He said to give him a call if I ever want to get back into design. He has factories in China, and he was terrific to me when I was terrified. I was thinking this morning that maybe I should call him. I couldn’t remember the name of his company when you asked the other day.” She handed the business card to Sabrina. “It’s called Lady Louise.” Sabrina closed her eyes when she heard the words, and let out a groan.

  “Oh, please, don’t tell me that’s who you met on your flight. He’s the scourge of the industry. You should have pushed him into the Atlantic while you had the chance. Do you know who he is?”

  Sydney shook her head. Sophie looked disappointed too. She recognized the name of the firm as well. Everyone in the fashion industry knew it.

  “He’s the biggest knockoff mogul in the clothing business,” Sabrina said. “He copies every decent designer there is. He doesn’t even try to disguise it. He hires young designers fresh out of school who don’t know better, pays them ten times what they’re worth, and has a fleet of people running around to photograph every good-looking piece of clothing that’s made. He’s shameless. He changes just enough so he gets away with it, and you can’t copyright most clothing designs anyway. He produces it all in China for pennies with crap fabrics, and gets it into the stores before any of us can get our products shipped. You can buy his copies before you can buy my designs that he knocks off. There’s nothing respectable about him. He’s never sold an original garment. He makes schlock of the worst kind.”

  “He says there’s a market for what he sells, and he’s bringing real fashion to people who could never afford it before,” Sydney said. “The concept is a good one, if that’s true. Not everyone can afford the clothes you produce, Sabrina. In fact, damn few people can. What’s wrong with bringing real fashion to the masses? Don’t be such a purist.”

  Sabrina looked outraged by what her mother said. “Nothing’s wrong with it if his design staff came up with their own creations occasionally, or did ‘inspirations.’ All they do is copy the rest of us as cheaply as they can, and let us do all the work figuring out which way the winds are blowing every season. He’s just a giant copy machine, Mom. I’ve never seen a single thing they produced that was original. He even copies what Sophie makes for teens. You can’t work for an outfit like that. You have a name. People still remember what you did. I find your dresses sometimes in vintage shops when I’m doing research. You made beautiful clothes. You didn’t copy anyone. You had your own style. People still respect the name of Sydney Smith twenty years later. You’ll be a laughingstock, and so will we, if you go to work for him.”

  “You can’t be such a snob, Sabrina. And sooner or later, I’ll need a job to pay my bills. I can’t pick and choose.”

  “Do anything, whatever you want, but don’t go to work for someone like him. He’s the bottom of the barrel.” Sabrina was begging her, and Sophie echoed her sister, although more gently, as usual.

  “Mom, no one respects what they do in the industry. Sabrina’s right. They even knock us off, and our line is young and inexpensive, not up in the stratosphere like Sabrina’s. He copies everyone and everything, without shame. Trust us, he’s a bottom-feeder. It’s all cheesy knockoffs, they don’t respect anyone, and not a single thing they sell is their own design. It’s all someone else’s, but cheaper and worse.”

  Sydney was silently wondering if she should look for herself. The concept of Lady Louise was good. The products they manufactured couldn’t be all bad. She knew how rabid Sabrina was about her designs. But Sabrina worked for a firm that could afford to charge whatever they wanted, based on the name, and the quality of their clothes was top-of-the-line. Sophie was less of an elitist, and even she disapproved of him. But there was room in the market for low-priced products. It had made sense to Sydney when she was talking to Paul Zeller in Nova Scotia. But she decided not to press the point with them. They both looked seriously upset that she would even consider asking him for a job.

  “Anyway, he was incredibly kind when the plane nearly crashed. I was scared to death, and for a while it looked like we were going down in the water. I would have panicked without him.”

  “Thank God you didn’t crash,” Sophie said with fervor. “We’d be lost without you, Mom. Brina and I will help you find a job, won’t we?” She glanced pointedly at her older sister, and Sabrina nodded, unnerved by everything she had heard during lunch. Their mother was being forced out of her home by her stepdaughters. Her late husband hadn’t provided for her and had left her no money, and she had been thinking about going to work for the worst third-rate knockoff outfit in the business. It was fully clear to them that their mother’s situation was critical, even if she appeared to be calm about it. But now they realized that the ravaged look in her eyes was not just grief from losing the husband she loved, but also financial desperation and the shock of losing everything to the twins.

  “We’ll come and help you move, Mom,” Sabrina said quietly. “And tell those two witches to stay out of the house until you do.”

  “I can’t do that,” Sydney said realistically. “They own it now. And I gather Kellie is moving in. She wants to make some changes, but they needed a bigger house and now she has one.” Sydney didn’t sound bitter about it, just matter-of-fact and sad.

  “Yeah, and that jerk she’s married to would like nothing better than showing off with a house like this,” Sabrina said vehemently. They hated Kellie’s husband, Geoff, too, and Sydney wasn’t fond of him either. He was pretentious and arrogant, based on no accomplishment of his own but only his wife’s money, which he flaunted and spent at every opportunity. Andrew hadn’t been crazy about him, but Kellie loved him, and now they had two kids. He had been a stock analyst on Wall Street when she met him, but had quit his job the minute he married her and hadn’t worked since. They had been married for nine years, and now they had hit the jackpot, and he was going to have a field day strutting around. The thought of it made Sabrina sick, even more so than it did her mother. Sydney was still dazed by the wrecking ball that had hit her, and too terrified and shaken up to be angry at anyone. She was overwhelmed with fear of the future.

  All three of them were subdued for the rest of the weekend, and the two girls discussed their mother’s situation all the way back to New York on Sunday night. They worried that she’d be unable to get a job and would run out of money.

  “She can live with me if she wants to,” Sophie said generously, but Sabrina was more sensible.

  “Neither of you is going to want that forever. She’s too young to just live with you like some old dowager. She needs a life, and a job apparently. This is going to be so hard on her,” Sabrina said unhappily. “At least we talked her out of going to work for Paul Zeller. That would have killed me.”

  Sophie smiled at the thought. The idea of it was ridiculous, even to her. “I’m glad he was nice to her on the plane. He must be semi-human after all,” she said, giving him the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that he was the archenemy of all talented, creative designers, and copied every item of clothing they made.

  “I can’t understand how Andrew did that to her,” Sabrina said. “You’d think that sometime during all these years, he’d have written a new will to include her. I can’t believe the twins are getting everything and kicking her out of the house. I hate them more than ever.” But she was angry at Andrew now too. He had disappointed her, and his failure to do what he
should have done had hurt their mother badly.

  “He just didn’t expect to die at his age,” Sophie said, but it didn’t seem like an adequate explanation to either of them. It was a failure of gargantuan proportions from a man who knew better, and had loved their mother.

  “Neither did our father, when he went down on the plane in Zimbabwe. He didn’t have a will either,” Sabrina reminded her.

  “He didn’t need one. He didn’t have anything. Andrew did,” Sophie said, thinking about it again, and wondering what would happen to their mother. Sophie wanted to comfort and protect her. And Sabrina wanted to ride into battle for her. But there was no one to fight. Andrew was dead and had left nothing to their mother. The twins owned everything.

  Sophie and Sabrina knew their mother was going to have to figure out a way to survive somehow. But how? There were no easy answers, and tough times ahead.

  Chapter 3

  For the next ten days, Sydney packed her clothes and personal belongings. She went through Andrew’s books and all the little things that she knew had meant a lot to him, sentimental objects and photographs, the albums of the trips they’d taken. She packed the souvenirs of their years together. Not necessarily objects of value, although a few were, but they were things that she treasured. She had stacks of boxes to take to the New York apartment, along with her clothes. She weeded through her closets and took out things to sell that she wouldn’t wear anymore, and set up several racks for her daughters to go through for themselves, of beautiful, expensive things she thought they’d like. She took a storage unit to put some special clothes away that she didn’t need but wasn’t ready to part with. It was a full-time job, and the housekeeper worked every day to help her. They both cried while they did it.

  She was rolling a rack of things to sell out of her bedroom into the hall when Veronica showed up again unannounced, and looking mournful. She had brought her a sandwich and a Caesar salad in case she was hungry, but Sydney didn’t want to waste time eating. Veronica lingered, trying to chat, and Sydney finally told her she was too busy, so she left. There was something invasive about Veronica’s visits, though Sydney felt guilty for thinking that as she went back to work. The twins dropped by every day now to check on her progress and see if anything they considered valuable had disappeared. Kyra complained when she noticed that a small pink enamel Fabergé clock encrusted with pearls and tiny rubies was no longer on Sydney’s night table, and she asked her stepmother where it was.

  “Your father gave it to me for my birthday when I turned forty,” Sydney replied, and Kyra shrugged. She could afford to buy a dozen new ones, but had always liked it.

  “Dad said I could have it.” Kyra tried but convinced no one, and Sydney didn’t bother to respond. She had enough on her mind. She had postponed her job search until she got to New York. She had too much to do getting ready to move. And on her last night in the home she had loved and shared with Andrew, she was grateful to be alone. She just wanted to be there, with her memories. She had packed up his clothes along with her own, and sent them to storage. She wasn’t ready to dispose of them yet, and didn’t want to leave them for Kyra and Kellie to pick through, sell, or give to Geoff. Putting them in storage made it feel like she was taking Andrew with her, although more and more it was becoming a reality that he was gone. And she admitted it to no one but there were moments now when she was angry at him for what he had allowed to happen to her at his daughters’ hands. She was being stripped of everything, not only art and furniture, but the home that had been her refuge, her status as a married woman, her feeling of safety, and all the remnants and familiar landmarks of her life with him. All she had left was his name. The twins were claiming almost everything else.

  The moving van came the morning she was supposed to leave the house, thirty days after Andrew’s death, to take what she was sending to storage, and the rest to the tiny apartment in New York. She stood in her bedroom for a long moment, and then walked quietly down the stairs with a lump in her throat the size of a fist and kissed the housekeeper goodbye. Sydney could no longer afford her, and Kellie had hired her. She needed the job so she was staying, but she said it broke her heart.

  Sydney didn’t look back as she drove away in her station wagon. She couldn’t. She knew that if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to go any farther. She had to go forward. And she saw Kellie drive in through the gates as soon as she drove out to follow the moving truck to the city.

  It was a hot day and stifling in the apartment without air-conditioning. The elevator was small and slow, so it took forever to unload the truck. Sabrina and Sophie showed up that afternoon as she was stacking boxes at the back of the second bedroom she was using as a closet, and Sophie helped set up racks for her clothes. She had brought all the things she thought she’d wear most in her new city life, or if she got a job. She had brought a few cocktail dresses and evening gowns in case she had a social life, but she couldn’t imagine it now. She’d had notes from friends, promising to call her, but no one had so far. Veronica had warned her that as an attractive single woman, she would be a threat to her married friends, which Sydney hadn’t believed at first, but maybe it was true. And rumors had spread quickly that she was moving out of the house. Whatever the reason, embarrassment, discretion, or cowardice, she had heard from no one in the weeks since the funeral. Only Veronica called and showed up, and it seemed she always had some piece of bad news to share. Sydney had started avoiding her calls. She just didn’t want to hear it anymore. She’d enough bad news of her own, without Veronica making her feel worse.

  Sophie had arrived at the apartment in cutoff white denim shorts and a pink T-shirt from the brand she worked for, with sandals that laced up her slim legs. The clothes she designed were young and fresh. Sophie wore them a lot, they suited her and made her appear even younger than she was, with her mane of curly red hair. She looked like a teenager herself, totally different from her sister. Sabrina was wearing a black cotton dress of her own chic design with high-heeled sandals, and seemed like she was going to a fancy lunch somewhere, with her dark hair pulled severely back. And Sydney was wearing jeans and an old shirt of Andrew’s and feeling disoriented. This didn’t feel real. The tiny, ugly apartment couldn’t be hers. The girls were upset when they saw it, and Sabrina disappeared for a while to buy flowers, while Sophie helped her mother hang her clothes and did all she could to make the agonizing process easier for her. She still wished her mother would move in with her, although Sydney was determined not to impose on either of them.

  It took them all day to get the apartment organized in order to fit everything into the limited space. By eight o’clock that night they finished. There was nothing left to do. They had done all they could, and most of what she’d brought had to stay in boxes. There was no place to put it. The flowers Sabrina had bought and arranged in vases made the place look more cheerful, but Sydney had the feeling that she was camping out. All she could think of was Kellie moving into her home. She was exhausted when she finally sat down on the couch and gazed at her daughters. There was nothing any of them could say to make the moment better. It had been a hard day. The harsh reality of her life now was staring them all in the face.

  “Why don’t we go out to dinner?” Sabrina suggested. There were several restaurants in the neighborhood, but no one leapt at the idea. They were all feeling worn out and no one was hungry, but both girls wanted to bolster their mother’s spirits.

  “I don’t think you can get me off this couch with a crowbar,” Sydney said, drained. “I’m so tired I don’t think I can walk or eat,” she said honestly. It had been a rugged day, leaving one home and trying to turn this place the size of a closet into another. She realized now that there were no window shades and she’d have to buy them, and the towels looked like they’d been stolen from a cheap motel. They were rough and small, gray from too many washings, and she wanted to buy new ones. Kellie had made a point of telling her to leave the linens at the house, and she had. She wasn�
�t going to fight over hand towels and washcloths, although she had brought three sets of her favorite sheets. They had so many, Kellie would never miss them. “I think I forgot to bring soap,” she said vaguely in a wan voice, and Sophie volunteered that she had brought toilet paper with her that morning.

  The two girls left together, with Sydney still sitting on the couch, and they promised to come back the next day and take their mother out somewhere. The two young women agreed as they shared a cab downtown that their mother seemed battered, but it had been grueling for them too. What Sydney had brought with her had seemed like so little on the truck in Connecticut, but once it got to the apartment, everything seemed to have grown in the shrunken surroundings. It made them realize again how hard this was going to be on her and what a huge change.

  She called them both the next day and told them she was too tired to get out of bed. It was raining and she wanted to stay home. They tried to talk her out of it but couldn’t, and finally agreed to leave her on her own. She insisted she’d be fine. She set out her photographs of Andrew and the girls on every surface where she could fit them, and she spent the rest of the day in bed, watching movies on the tiny ancient TV in her bedroom.

  And on Monday, forcing herself, Sydney went down her list of employment agencies and called them all. She had four appointments for that week, and was determined not to lose momentum. She couldn’t look back now, or down, as though she were climbing a cliff and hanging on by her fingernails. She just had to keep going until she reached a place that felt safe to stop, and she hadn’t reached it yet. The abyss was still yawning below her, and she was afraid to fall.