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Chapters (49)
  1. From Wikipedia
  2. Other Books by This Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. Chapter Thirty-two
  39. Chapter Thirty-three
  40. Chapter Thirty-four
  41. Chapter Thirty-five
  42. Chapter Thirty-six
  43. Chapter Thirty-seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-one
  48. About the Author
  49. Cover

He frowned at her and then he got out of the LeBaron and got into his limo and drove away. Karen watched him go. “Do you think he can?”

I nodded. “Yes. He’s learned a lot.”

“I hope.” She let out a sigh. “I hate this. I hate it that once you let someone into your life, they’re part of your life forever.”

I said, “Part, maybe, but not all. You’re still you. You’re vice-president of the bank. You’re twice president of the PTA. You’re a Rotarian and a member of the Library Committee. Maybe, without having gone through what you went through with Peter, you wouldn’t be any of those things. Maybe you would be less.”

She turned and looked at me, and then she leaned across and kissed me, and then she turned in the seat and kissed Joe Pike. She said, “I’ll do what’s best for Toby. I’ve always been able to do that. What happens now with the DeLucas?”

I looked out the window at the house and the basketball hoop and Toby’s bike leaning against the garage wall. Then I looked back at her. “I don’t know. Sal and Charlie aren’t running the family anymore. They’ll have a new boss.”

She made her lips into a little rosebud and then she nodded slowly. “Do you think he’ll try to make me keep doing this?”

Pike leaned close to her and patted her arm. “Go live your life. You let us worry about that.”

Karen Lloyd took a deep breath, let it out, and got out of the car.

Chapter Forty

Forty

Pike and I collected our things, said our good-byes, and drove down to the city where we took a fourteenth-floor room at the Park Lane Hotel on East 59th Street. It was a nice room with a view of Central Park.

We took turns in the shower, then dressed and walked to the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd. They call it MoMA for short, which is dumb, but they had Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, which is anything but. Score one for New York. I had always wanted to see it, and now sat for the better part of an hour staring into its depths and textures. Pike said, “I know how he felt.”

“They say he was mad.”

Pike shrugged.

We walked up to West 71st Street and had an early dinner at Victor’s Cafe 52. Cuban food, which rivaled and in some ways surpassed the excellent fare found at the Versailles on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. I had the chicken steak and black beans. Pike had the white bean soup and fried plantains. We both had beer. Score two.