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Mike was walking out on him? That shook him up more than he let on. “You helped get her here, don’t forget. You played along.”
“For which I am now very ashamed. In any case, let this serve as notice that my participation is over.”
“Fine. Go. Have a nice trip.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Not your problem anymore, is it?”
He spun his chair around and faced his blank computer screen. A few moments later, he heard Mike leaving through the back door. And he was truly alone.
Chapter 31
Afterward, Maris could barely remember her return trip to New York. She had operated in a dreamlike state, except without the subconscious surety that it was unreal and that she would wake up soon. Parker’s inexplicable behavior and her father’s death had been a double-barreled assault. To protect itself, her mind had put conscious thought and reasoning powers on autopilot and allowed her to function only by rote.
Discreetly Mike Strother had alerted the flight attendant to her bereavement, so she had been treated deferentially, basically left alone. She passed the flight staring vacantly out the window, unaware and uncaring of what was going on around her.
Noah was at LaGuardia to meet her. She wasn’t happy to see him, but he relieved her of the arrival hassle at a major airport. Her baggage was reclaimed with dispatch. He had a car and driver waiting.
As the limo wended its way through heavy traffic into Manhattan, he somberly filled in the details that he hadn’t told her over the telephone. Daniel’s body was still in Massachusetts, where the autopsy would be conducted. There could have been a contributing health factor that caused him to fall, Noah explained. Pulmonary embolism. Cardiac arrest. An aneurysm that hadn’t shown up during his last physical.
“Most probably,” he told her, “Daniel simply lost his balance on the dark staircase.”
Daniel’s cane had been found in his bedroom. It was believed that he was ascending the stairs. Without his cane for additional support, he had tripped.
“He’d also had more than a few drinks,” Noah added reluctantly. “You know, Maris, we had feared something like this would happen.”
He informed her that following the autopsy the body would be transferred to New York. He’d made preliminary funeral arrangements but was awaiting her approval before finalizing them. Knowing she would be particular about the casket, he had held off making a selection until her return.
She commented on how expeditiously he had handled everything.
“I wanted to spare you as much unpleasantness as possible.”
He was solicitous, soft-spoken, obsequious.
She couldn’t bear to be near him.
She deplored even having to breathe the same air as he and instructed the chauffeur to take her to her father’s house. Accepting a friend’s offer to help in any way she could, Maris sent her to her apartment with a list of clothing and articles she wanted brought to her. If she could help it, she would never return to the residence she had shared with Noah.
She moved back into her old bedroom in Daniel’s house. For the next three days, when she and Maxine weren’t receiving people who came to pay their respects and offer condolences, they comforted one another. The housekeeper was disconsolate. She blamed herself for letting Daniel go to the country house without her, as though her presence could have prevented the accident. Maris tried to assuage her feelings of partial responsibility, all the while empathizing with them. She suffered similarly.
Her father had died while she’d been making love to Parker.
Each time her thoughts drifted in that direction, which was frequently, she halted them abruptly. She refused to wear a mantle of guilt for that. Daniel had urged her to return to Georgia. She had been there with his blessing. The last thing he had said to her was that she deserved her happiness and that he loved her. His death had nothing to do with her sharing Parker’s bed.
Nevertheless, the connection between the two had been made, and she would never think of one without recalling the other.
She learned that a death in the family was a time-consuming event, especially if the deceased was a person of Daniel Matherly’s standing. He was the last patriarch of the publishing dynasty; he was one of New York’s own. His obituary made the front page of the New York Times. Local media covered his funeral.
Maris endured the day-long affair with a steely determination not to crack under pressure. Dressed head to toe in black, she was photographed entering the cathedral, exiting the cathedral, standing at the grave site with her head bowed in prayer, receiving the mayor’s condolences.
The silent expressions of grief were the ones she appreciated most—a small squeeze of her hand, eye contact that conveyed sympathy and understanding. Most people said too much. Well-meaning folk told her to take comfort in the fact that Daniel had lived a long and productive life. That he hadn’t suffered before he died. That we should all be so lucky to go that quickly. That at least he hadn’t withered and died slowly. That a sudden death is a blessing.
Statements to that effect sorely tested her composure.
However, no one surprised or offended her more than Nadia Schuller. Noah was speaking to a group of publishing colleagues when Nadia sidled up to Maris immediately following the grave-site observance and gripped her hand. “I’m sorry, Maris. Terribly, terribly sorry.”
Maris was struck not only by Nadia’s audacity in attending the service, but also by her convincing portrayal of shocked bereavement. Maris pulled back her hand, thanked Nadia coldly, and tried to turn away. But Nadia wouldn’t be shaken off. “We need to talk. Soon.”
