In the morning at breakfast he said, “Claire?” his voice casual. He’d had a good night’s sleep, he was feeling fine, and when Claire looked up, he said, “Tell me, why did you leave that other school in the middle of your senior year?”
“Because my father was transferred to London,” Claire answered, her expression blank.
But he wasn’t watching Claire’s face. He was watching his daughter watching Claire. It was obvious by her expression he hadn’t been dreaming. He had his ammunition now.
There were lots of ways of finding out things people would prefer to keep secret, and he was good at all of them. All he needed to find out whether Claire had told the truth or had made up the story to impress his daughter was to get his hands on the faculty list of Central Park Academy at the beginning of the previous year, and the revised one that would have been distributed after Christmas vacation.
How hard could that be for a man with his connections?
FIVE
On the same Friday that Mitch Michaels started to host his daughter and Claire Nelson in Madison, Connecticut, Rachel Bickham drove from the campus of Miss Oliver’s School for Girls to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and joined her father, brother and sister on the ferry dock for Martha’s Vineyard. There, just as he always did, her father sighed as if he’d just heard news rescuing him from some unbearable fate, and announced, “This is where vacation begins.” As usual, he spoke for all of them. It was always the same: after the rush to get everything done so they could leave their work, after the packing, after the turning around and driving for miles to be sure all the burners on the stove were out, after fighting through the monstrous Cape Cod weekend traffic, they’d stand on the dock in the salty air clutching their tickets while the tension rose out of them, released to the sky where the gulls called and floated. That Labor Day weekend Friday, each coming from a different place, they arrived almost simultaneously a half an hour before the five-o’clock evening boat. First they exchanged the usual hugs; then they told each other how great each looked, and then they gushed over Rachel’s brother’s bouncy almost-spaniel puppy he’d just rescued from the pound, and then, surreptitiously, they began looking at the oncoming crowd and beyond it to the parking lot for Rachel’s husband.
It wasn’t as if her brother and sister didn’t understand that Bob might have felt he couldn’t leave his work to get there on time, or even not at all. Everybody in her family also worked very hard, each a high achiever like their dad, like leftist versions of Condoleezza Rice. Rachel’s brother, DuBois Bickham, was by day a public defender, by night the author under a pen name of money-making detective novels; her sister, Marian Anderson Bickham, was a community organizer in Detroit, a protégé of a prodigy of Saul Alinsky. She was tone deaf, believe it or not, a condition she confessed only half in jest that she assumed on purpose to claim her own identity.
Rachel didn’t carry the burden of a provocative name because she was the youngest and her mother had insisted this last child would have a neutral one. Her father used to remind her, though, that Rachel was a biblical name, heavy with implication. Her mother had been a stay-at-home mom until Rachel entered New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, where, before he became a famous author, Frank McCourt was everybody’s favorite teacher. From then until her death, her mother was a kindergarten teacher.
Ten minutes after they had greeted each other, and after DuBois’s puppy had lifted his leg all over Marian’s suitcases and she had forgiven both the dog and her brother and claimed that from now on the puppy’s name was Bags, Bob still had not arrived. The boat coming from the Vineyard was now at least two-thirds of the way across the Sound. They watched it move the rest of the way and tie up, and he still wasn’t there. The passengers trooped off, looking jealous of the people waiting to board, whose time on the Island was all still before them, and who now surged forward. Rachel and her family hung back, risking their favorite seats topside along the rail. She put up her hands and pushed them forward and her father, resisting, frowned. He was about to ask, “Shouldn’t you wait for him?” But Marian put her hand on his elbow, sent him a warning look, and tugged him toward the gangplank.
Martha’s Vineyard was special to Bob and Rachel also because it was where they had first met, seven years before, at a five-kilometer race to raise funds for a cause neither of them could remember. The woman Bob was dating then had invited him to spend the weekend with her and her family at their summer place—a sign that the romance had progressed to a critical point—and she had talked him into running with her in the race. Though the only thing Bob claimed to hate more than running was dieting, he agreed—another sign the romance was at a critical point. Bob played good tennis when he had the time, which was hardly ever, and he admitted to having been a fullback in high school, but a runner he was definitely not. He and his date showed up at the starting point at the same time as Rachel did. Bob’s date was as tall as Rachel, and blond like him. Though also as tall as Rachel, Bob would be willing to describe himself as a little tubby in the middle and with thick legs. Even his face was round.
They started out together, running side by side, his date in the middle between them. Rachel was still sleepy that morning from staying up late, so she ran at their easy pace. Besides, Bob kept glancing at her. Clearly he liked her looks, and she didn’t think his were too bad either. They chatted as they ran along for a while, and then Rachel quickened the pace. After all, they were warmed up by then, and when your legs were as long as Rachel’s it was uncomfortable to run as slowly as Bob and his date. Pretty soon the date wasn’t quite keeping up, and Rachel was telling Bob about the places they were passing through, like a tour guide, including her family’s cottage as they passed by it, and with his date no longer between them, they ran closer to each other. About halfway through she said, “By the way, my name’s Rachel Bickham.”
He was sufficiently winded now to have difficulty saying, “Mine’s Bob Perrine.”
“That’s a nice name,” she said, and for the next mile or so, she did all the talking. She tried to fool herself that she was just being nice, but she knew she was really showing off, and by practically killing himself to keep up with her, so was he. In Edgartown, they crossed the finish line at last and she turned to give him a high five, but he was bent way over, his hands on his hips, gasping. His date wasn’t even in sight. “Oh dear!” she said, managing not to laugh. “Did I run too fast?” He shook his head, still bent over. She wanted to say something funny about white guys being just as bad at running as jumping, but she decided she didn’t know him well enough yet. So instead, she said, “I don’t think I should be here when your date shows up.” He nodded his head up and down this time, but she didn’t budge.
Finally, he was able to stand up straight. He looked down the road. His date was staggering around the corner. “Yes, you better go,” he said. “But I know where you live.”
She giggled and said, “I know, I made sure,” then she turned away and ran up a side street toward home at a much faster pace than they’d run together. The next day, he called her from the public phone at the ferry dock.
Their first date was the next weekend in Boston where she was finishing her doctorate, and where he was raising the funds to start Best Sports. In the restaurant, which was all brown walls and red carpets and smelled like the ocean, his blue eyes never left her face, and he kept his hands very still when he talked, while she, as, usual, waved hers through the air. The next night they went to the movies. They started to hold hands the minute the lights went down.
Now, seven years later, Rachel’s father and brother and sister got their favorite seats on the ferry after all, overlooking the stern where she could keep watching the dock and the parking lot. Bob still wasn’t there. A minute later the long whistle blew, the thrum of the propellers increased, the boat vibrated, the water boiled at the stern, and then she saw him sprint out of the building where they sold the tickets. He ran awkwardly, leaning to one side carrying his suitcase. The boat started to move. A deckhand put up his hand to tell him stop, but he threw his suitcase onto the boat over the gap that was getting bigger and bigger, and leaped after it, landing clumsily on his feet like third-string basketball player