Pretend You Don't See Her (2 page)

 
          
“Mrs.
Waring can’t believe Heather’s death was an accident,” Tim said.

 
          
When
she finally got off the phone, Lacey sat for a long moment, remembering that
she had seen Heather Landi last year in a very successful off-Broadway musical.
In fact, she remembered her in particular.

 
          
She
had it all, Lacey thought—beauty, stage presence, and that marvelous soprano
voice. A “Ten,” as Dad would have said. No wonder her mother is in denial.

 
          
Lacey
shivered,
then
rose to turn down the air conditioner.

 
          
O
n Tuesday morning, Isabelle Waring walked through her daughter’s apartment,
studying it as if with the critical eye of a realtor. She was glad that she had
kept Lacey Farrell’s business card. Jimmy, her ex-husband, Heather’s father,
had demanded she put the apartment on the market, and in fairness to him, he
had given her plenty of time.

 
          
The
day she met Lacey Farrell in the elevator, she had taken an instant liking to
the young woman, who had reminded her of Heather.

 
          
Admittedly,
Lacey didn’t look like Heather. Heather had had short, curly, light brown hair
with golden highlights, and hazel eyes. She had been small, barely five feet
four, with a soft, curving body. She called herself the house midget. Lacey, on
the other hand, was taller, slimmer, had blue-green eyes, and darker, longer,
straighter hair, swinging down to her shoulders, but there was something in her
smile and manner that brought back a very positive memory of Heather.

 
          
Isabelle
looked around her. She realized that not everyone would care for the birch
paneling and splashy marble foyer tiles Heather had loved, but those could
easily be changed; the renovated kitchen and baths, however, were strong
selling points.

 
          
After
months of brief trips to New York from Cleveland, and making stabs at going
through the apartment’s five huge closets and the many drawers, and after
repeatedly meeting with Heather’s friends, Isabelle knew it had to be over. She
had to put an end to this searching for reasons and get on with her life.

 
          
The
fact remained, however, that she just didn’t believe Heather’s death had been
an accident. She knew her daughter; she simply would not have been foolish
enough to start driving home from Stowe in a snowstorm, especially so late at
night. The medical examiner had been satisfied, however. And Jimmy was
satisfied, because Isabelle knew that if he hadn’t been, he’d have torn up all
of Manhattan looking for answers.

 
          
At
the last of their infrequent lunches, he had again tried to persuade Isabelle
to let it rest, and to get on with her own life. He reasoned that Heather
probably couldn’t sleep that night, had been worried because there was a heavy
snow warning, and knew she had to be back in time for a rehearsal the next day.
He simply refused to see anything suspicious or sinister in her death.

 
          
Isabelle,
though, just couldn’t accept it. She had told him about a troubling phone
conversation she had had with their daughter just before her death. “Jimmy,
Heather wasn’t herself when I spoke to her on the phone. She was worried about
something.
Terribly worried.
I could hear it in her
voice.”

 
          
The
lunch had ended when Jimmy, in complete exasperation, had burst out, “Isabelle,
get off it! Stop, please! This whole thing is tough enough without you going on
like this, constantly rehashing everything, putting all her friends through the
third degree. Please, let our daughter rest in peace.”

 
          
Remembering
his words, Isabelle shook her head. Jimmy Landi had loved Heather more than
anything in the world. And next to her, he loved power, she thought
bitterly—it’s what had ended their marriage.
His famous
restaurant, his investments, now his Atlantic City hotel and casino.
No
room for me ever, Isabelle thought. Maybe if he had taken on
a
partner years
ago, the way he has Steve Abbott now, our marriage
wouldn’t have failed. She realized she had been walking through rooms she
wasn’t really seeing, so she stopped at a window overlooking Fifth Avenue.

 
          
New
York is especially beautiful in September, she mused, observing the joggers on
the paths that threaded through Central Park, the nannies pushing strollers,
the elderly sunning themselves on park benches. I used to take Heather’s baby
carriage over to the park on days like this, she remembered. It took ten years
and three miscarriages before I had her, but she was worth all the heartbreak.
She was such a special baby. People were always stopping to look at her and
admire her. And she knew it, of course. She loved to sit up and take everything
in. She was so smart, so observant,
so
talented. So
trusting …

 
          
Why
did you throw it away, Heather? Isabelle asked herself once more the questions
that she had agonized over since her daughter’s death. After that accident when
you were a child—when you saw that car skid off the road and crash—you were
always terrified of icy roads. You even talked of moving to California just to
avoid winter weather. Why then would you have driven over a snowy mountain at
two in the morning? You were only twenty-four years old; you had so much to
live for. What happened that night? What made you take that drive? Or who made
you?

 
          
The
buzzing of the intercom jolted Isabelle back from the smothering pangs of
hopeless regret. It was the doorman announcing that Miss Farrell was here for
her ten o’clock appointment.

 
          
*

 
          
Lacey
was not prepared for Isabelle Waring’s effusive, if nervous, greeting. “Good
heavens, you look younger than I remembered,” she said. “How old are you?
Thirty?
My daughter would have been twenty-five next week,
you know. She lived in this apartment. It was hers. Her father bought it for
her. Terrible reversal, don’t you think? The natural order of life is that I’d
go first and someday she’d sort through my things.”

 
          
“I
have two nephews and a niece,” Lacey told her. “I can’t imagine anything
happening to any of them, so I think I understand something of what you are
going through.”

 
          
Isabelle
followed her, as with a practiced eye Lacey made notes on the dimensions of the
rooms. The first floor consisted of a foyer, large living and dining rooms, a
small library, a kitchen, and a powder room. The second floor, reached by a
winding staircase, had a master suite—a sitting room, dressing room, bedroom
and bath.

 
          
“It
was a lot of space for a young woman,” Isabelle explained. “Heather’s father
bought it for her, you see. He couldn’t do enough for her. But it never spoiled
her. In fact, when she came to New York to live after college, she wanted to
rent a little apartment on the West Side. Jimmy hit the ceiling. He wanted her
in a building with a doorman. He wanted her to be safe. Now he wants me to sell
the apartment and keep the money. He says Heather would have wanted me to have
it. He says I have to stop grieving and go on. It’s just that it’s still so
hard to let it go, though … I’m trying, but I’m not sure I can …” Her eyes
filled with tears.

 
          
Lacey
asked the question she needed to have answered: “Are you sure you want to
sell?”

 
          
She
watched helplessly as the stoic expression on Isabelle Waring’s face crumbled
and her eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to find out why my daughter died. Why
she rushed out of the ski lodge that night. Why she didn’t wait and come back
with friends the next morning, as she had planned. What changed her mind? I’m
sure that somebody knows. I need a reason. I know she was terribly worried
about something but wouldn’t tell me what it was. I thought I might find an
answer here, either in the apartment or from one of her friends. But her father
wants me to stop pestering people, and I suppose he’s right, that we have to go
on, so yes, Lacey, I guess I want to sell.”

 
          
Lacey
covered the woman’s hand with her own. “I think Heather would want you to,” she
said quietly.

 
          
That
night Lacey made the twenty-five-mile drive to Wyckoff, New Jersey, where her
sister Kit and her mother both lived. She hadn’t seen them since early August
when she had left the city for her month away in the Hamptons. Kit and her
husband, Jay, had a summer home on Nantucket, and always urged Lacey to spend
her vacation with them instead.

 
          
As
she crossed the George Washington Bridge, Lacey braced herself for the
reproaches she knew would be part of their greeting. “You only spent three days
with us,” her brother-in-law would be sure to remind her. “What’s East Hampton
got that Nantucket doesn’t?”

 
          
For
one thing it doesn’t have you, Lacey thought, with a slight grin. Her
brother-in-law, Jay Taylor, the highly successful owner of a large restaurant
supply business, had never been one of Lacey’s favorite people, but, as she
reminded herself, Kit clearly is crazy about him, and between them they’ve
produced three great kids, so who am I to criticize? If only he wasn’t so damn
pompous, she thought. Some of his pronouncements sounded like papal bulls.

 
          
As
she turned onto Route 4, she realized how anxious she was to see the others in
her family: her mother, Kit and the kids—Todd, twelve, Andy, ten, and her
special pet, shy four-year-old Bonnie. Thinking about her niece, she realized that
all day she hadn’t been able to shake thoughts about poor Isabelle Waring, and
the things she had said. The woman’s pain was so palpable. She had insisted
that Lacey stay for coffee and over it had continued to talk about her
daughter. “I moved to Cleveland after the divorce. That’s where I was raised.
Heather was five at that time. Growing up, she was always back and forth
between me and her dad. It worked out fine. I remarried. Bill Waring was much
older but a very nice man. He’s been gone three years now. I was so in hopes
Heather would meet the right man, have children, but she was determined to have
a career first. Although just before she died I had gotten the sense that maybe
she had met someone. I could be wrong, but I thought I could hear it in her
voice.” Then she had
asked,
her tone one of motherly
concern, “What about you, Lacey? Is there someone special in your life?”

 
          
Thinking
about that question, Lacey smiled wryly. Not so you’d notice it, she thought.
And ever since I hit the magic number thirty, I’m very aware that my biological
clock is ticking. Oh well. I love my job, I love my apartment,
I
love my family and friends. I have a lot of fun. So I have
no right to complain. It will happen when it happens.

 
          
Her
mother answered the door. “Kit’s in the kitchen. Jay went to pick up the
children,” she explained after a warm hug. “And there’s someone inside I want
you to meet.”

 
          
Lacey
was surprised and somewhat shocked to see that a man she didn’t recognize was
standing near the massive fireplace in the family room, sipping a drink. Her
mother blushingly introduced him as Alex Carbine, explaining that they had
known each other years ago and had just met again, through Jay, who had sold
him much of the equipment for a new restaurant he’d just opened in the city on
West Forty-Sixth Street.

 
          
Shaking
his hand, Lacey assessed the man. About sixty, she thought—Mom’s age. Good,
solid-looking guy. And Mom looks all atwitter. What’s up? As soon as she could
excuse herself she went into the state-of-the-art kitchen where Kit was tossing
the salad. “How long has this been going on?” she asked her sister.

 
          
Kit,
her blond hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, looking, Lacey thought, for
all the
world like a Martha Stewart ad, grinned.
“About a month.
He’s nice. Jay brought him by for dinner,
and Mom was here. Alex is a widower. He’s always been in the restaurant
business, but this is the first place he’s had on his own, I gather. We’ve been
there. He’s got a nice setup.”

 
          
They
both jumped at the sound of a door slamming at the front of the house. “Brace
yourself
,” Kit warned. “Jay and the kids are home.”