“Will you help me out with that?”

“No, I’m new in your life, but you have a close relationship with your mother. I’ll sit silently and listen, if moral support will help.”

“I’ll figure it out when she gets here,” Peter said. “One other thing: I’m not comfortable with either Pop or Pater, so it will have to be Dad.”

Stone laughed. “I can live with that.”

Stone walked Peter up to his room, and they hugged briefly, then parted for the night.

Stone lay in bed feeling, suddenly, like a different person.

7

Stone was still in bed, having breakfast and reading the Times, when Peter knocked and came into his room.

“Good morning,” Stone said. “I thought you’d be sleeping late.”

“I rarely sleep late,” Peter said. “I’ve already edited a scene of my film on my laptop.”

“That’s industrious. Would you like some breakfast?”

“I found the kitchen, and Helene made me some scrambled eggs.” Peter looked at the four paintings of New York scenes on Stone’s bedroom wall. “I like these pictures,” he said.

“They were painted by your grandmother,” Stone replied. “She has work in the Metropolitan Museum, too, in the American Collection.”

“I’m impressed,” Peter said, looking at them more closely.

“What would you like to do today?”

“I just talked to Ben. There’s a heist-film festival at some place called the Film Forum—The Killers, The Asphalt Jungle, like that. I thought we’d get in two or three this afternoon. Ben has never seen anything older than Finding Nemo.”

Stone laughed. “You can educate him.”

“Don’t worry,” Peter said, “he’ll love it. He’ll end up watching them on his cell phone. Mom won’t let me have a cell phone; she says I’d be talking on it all the time, instead of working or studying.”

“Mothers are like that,” Stone said.

“I’d better get back to work,” the boy said, then left.

Stone picked up the phone and buzzed Joan.

“Yes, boss?”

“Will you go up to the Apple Store on Fifth at Fifty-ninth Street and buy an iPhone and an iPad, the high-end models?”

“But you already have those things,” Joan said.

“Yeah, but Peter doesn’t, and it’s his birthday soon.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Sign him up in the name of Peter Barrington, and make his age eighteen on the application, so there won’t be any problem. Use this house for his address and put it all on my Amex card.”

“Will do.”

“And get him some accessories, too; you know the sort of thing, and get it all gift wrapped.”

“I’m on it. Hang on, the phone’s ringing.” She put him on hold and then came back. “It’s Seth Keener, Stephanie Fisher’s attorney.”

“Got it,” Stone said. (He picked up the other line.) “Mr. Keener? Stone Barrington. I’m attorney to Herbert Fisher.”

“Oh, good,” Keener said. “Has he signed the papers?”

“No, and he’s not going to.”

“He wants to stay married to Stephanie?”

“He doesn’t want that, either, but he’s not going on record as an adulterer.”