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“He couldn’t have stopped it,” Ivy pointed out. “According to Mrs. Armentrout, Mom took the elevator upstairs without telling anyone.”
“Armentrout? The housekeeper?” asked Mason. “Then she should be fired, too.”
“You’re the one who hired her,” Adam pointed out.
“My assistant hired her. With my approval.”
“And she’s terrific. Besides, it’s the caregiver’s job to look after Mom. Not the housekeeper.”
“She needs assistance, not to be under surveillance,” Ivy said.
“Maybe she does, if she’s sneaking upstairs.” Mason spent more time than anyone imagined thinking about their mother. On that day a year ago, their father had suffered the ultimate tragedy. Everyone—himself included—said their mother was lucky to be alive.
She didn’t consider herself lucky, though. From the moment she had been told the spinal injury meant she would never walk again—much less ski, salsa dance, cliff dive, run a triathlon or even drive a car—she had raged against her fate. Anyone who dared to mention to her face that she was lucky to be alive risked a tongue-lashing.
After multiple surgeries, drug therapies and intensive rehab, Alice had agreed to move to Avalon to settle into her new life as a widow and a quadriplegic, determined to find what independence she could. Avalon was the town where Adam lived, on the shores of the prettiest lake in Ulster County, just a couple of hours by train from New York City.
Each of the three Bellamy offspring played their part. Adam, a firefighter with training as an EMT, now lived over the boathouse on the property Mason had bought for their mother after the accident. Adam was hands-on when it came to caring for people, and it was a relief to have a family member on the premises for their mom.
Mason was responsible for making sure their mother had everything she needed to create her new life in Avalon. He had provided her with a sprawling lakeside estate, the house and grounds adapted to her needs and large enough to accommodate a staff. The historic compound, on the sun-drenched shores of Willow Lake, had been remodeled and retrofitted for his mother’s motorized wheelchair, with ramps, wide doorways and an elevator, an intercom system and a network of graded pathways outdoors. There was a private gym equipped for physical therapy, a heated pool, sauna and spa, and a dock and boathouse with ramps and hoists. She had a full staff, including a Balinese chef with Cordon Bleu credentials, a driver, and living quarters for a resident home health aide.
Everybody had a role. Mason thought it was working. But apparently, there was now no resident caregiver.
“What did you mean when you said they all quit?” he asked Adam.
“Like I told you before, you’d understand if you’d go see her. Ivy lives on the West Coast and she manages to visit more often than you do, and you’re just down in the city.”
Ivy’s role was more amorphous, but just as vital. Sometimes it seemed to Mason that she did her part by simply being adorable and loving and supportive. Ten years younger than her brother, she was the kind of person who could walk into a room and fill it with light. During the early days after the accident, Ivy was as vital to their mother as pure oxygen.
“Mom doesn’t need my company,” Mason pointed out. “I set her up in the best house we could find, hired a full staff, had the place retrofitted for her and the chair. I don’t know what the hell else I can do.”
“Sometimes you don’t have to do anything,” said Ivy. “Sometimes just being there is all she needs.”
“Not from me.” He checked the calendar on his phone. “So she’s already had the surgery to fix her collarbone. How long will she have to stay in the hospital?”
“Probably not long,” Adam said. “We’ll know more when we meet with the doctors.” He sat forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees. “Listen, I was going to tell you this over dinner tonight. You’re going to be in charge of Mom for the next few months—maybe longer.”
Mason dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “I can’t even stay a few hours. I’m supposed to go to LA with Regina the day after tomorrow,” he said. “She set up a meeting with a major new client.”
He didn’t deem it prudent to mention at this time that he and Regina—his colleague as well as his girlfriend—had built a few days of surfing in Malibu into their work schedule.
“You’re going to have to cancel it,” Adam said simply. “You need to stay with Mom.”
“What the hell do you mean, stay with her?”
“Live at the lake house. Make the place your base of operations.”
Mason recoiled. “What’s this about?”
“I have to go away for a while,” Adam said. “Special training. For work.”
Mason immediately turned to Ivy.
She put up both hands, palms out. “My fellowship in Paris, remember? The one I’ve been working toward for the past five years? It starts next month.”
“Postpone it.”
“Right. I’ll just tell the director of the Institut de Paume to keep a slot open for me.” Ivy raised her sunglasses and fixed him with an intense glare. “You’re up, bro.”
“Okay, fine, but I’m not moving up to the Catskills. I’ll have my assistant find another live-in aide.”
“Damn it,” Adam said. “Mom needs family. She needs you.”
Mason had provided a lengthy roster of hired help, material things and creature comforts for their mother. He had spared no expense—elevators, adaptive devices—nothing was too good for Alice Bellamy.
Thanks to Mason, she wanted for nothing.
Except the one thing no one could give her, and all of Mason’s millions could never provide.
Some troubles could not be solved by throwing money at them.
Yet he couldn’t imagine anything worse than being trapped in a small town with his bitter, wounded mother with whom—unlike his brother and sister—he’d had a rocky relationship since he was a teenager.
And now he was expected to move in with her.
Oh, hell, no, he thought.
“What kind of special training?” he asked Adam.
“I’m getting certified in arson investigation. I’ll be up in Albany for twelve to sixteen weeks.”
“Seriously?”
“He’s having girl trouble,” Ivy said. “It’s the geographic cure.”
“Shut up, brat. I am not having girl trouble.”
“Okay, let’s call it lack of girl trouble.”
“What? Come on.” To Mason’s surprise, Adam’s face turned red. “It’s complicated. And speaking of complicated, exactly how many frogs have you kissed this year alone?”
Ivy often bemoaned the state of her love life, and Mason had no idea why. She was gorgeous, a total sweetheart, a little bit nutty, and everyone loved her. Just not the right guy, he supposed.
“You shut up,” she retorted, and Mason heard loud echoes of their childhood years seeping into the exchange.
“Both of you shut up,” he said. “Let’s focus on what to do about Mom.”
“Ivy’s going to Paris to get laid—”
“Hey.” She punched him in the arm.
“And I can’t change the dates of the training course to suit your travel schedule. You’re up, Mason.”
“But—”
“But nothing. It’s your turn to step up.”
Mason scowled at his brother and sister. It was hard to believe the three of them shared the same DNA, they were all so different. “Not a chance in hell. There’s nothing my being there can help. No damn way I’m moving to Willow Lake.”
3
“I’d kill the fatted calf for you, but I’m a bit indisposed at the moment,” Alice Bellamy said when Mason arrived at the estate on Willow Lake.
“That’s okay. I’m a vegetarian anyway.” Mason wondered if his mother realized that he had not eaten meat since the age of twelve.
Crossing the elegant room to where she sat near a window, he bent down and brushed his lips against her cheek. Soap and lotion, a freshly laundered blouse, the smells he had always associated with her. Except in the past, she’d been able to offer the briefest of hugs, to reach out with her hand and smooth the hair back from his brow, a gesture that had persisted since his childhood.
Concealing a wrenching sense of sorrow, he took a seat across from her. He studied her face, startled at how little she had changed—from the neck up. Shiny blond hair, lovely skin, cornflower blue eyes. He’d always been proud to have such a youthful, good-looking mom. “You broke your collarbone,” he said.
“So I’m told.”
“I thought you’d be in a cast or a sling or something.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s not as if I need to keep my arm immobilized.”
“Uh, yeah.” Since the accident, he didn’t know how to deal with his mother. Who was he kidding? He’d never known how to deal with her. “Are you in... Does it hurt?”
“Darling boy, I can’t feel anything below my chest. Not pain or pleasure. Nothing.”
He let several seconds tick past while he tried to think of a reply that didn’t sound phony or patronizing or flat-out ignorant. “I’m glad you’re all right. You gave us a scare.”
More silence echoed through the room, an open lounge with a massive river-rock fireplace, fine furnishings and floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books. Everything was spaced and arranged to accommodate his mother’s chair. There was a corner study with a big post office writing desk and another corner with a powerful brass telescope set on a tripod. The baby grand piano, which had occupied every house the family had ever lived in, was now a resting place for a collection of photos.
The ever-present view of Willow Lake was framed by French doors, which could be operated by a switch. “So anyway,” he said, “we’ll get you fixed up with a new helper right away. My assistant is working with a couple of agencies already.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got plenty to keep us busy for the day. The lawyer is coming in half an hour. Are you up for that?”
“Lawyer?” She frowned, then took a sip through a straw from the coffee mug affixed to the tray on her chair.
“My attorney in the city recommended someone local, from here in Ulster County—”
“Whatever for?”
“To deal with the negligence suit against the caregiver who let you fall down the stairs, and the outfit he works for.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. It was just a stupid accident,” she said. “Nobody’s fault.”
“Mom, you fell down a flight of stairs with a three-hundred-pound motorized chair. It’s a miracle you weren’t crushed. Somebody was negligent—”
“That would be me,” she stated. “I leaned on the control and drove myself off the rails.”
“Then the chair manufacturer is at fault.”
“No lawyers,” she said. “What I— What happened was no one’s fault. There will be no lawsuit. End of story.”
“Mom, you’re entitled to a settlement.” If there was one thing Mason couldn’t stand, it was people failing to take responsibility for their actions.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I won’t hear another word about it.”
He sent Brenda a text message to cancel the lawyer. “Whatever you say. That gives us more time to meet with potential new caregivers.”
“Lovely.”
“Adam warned me that you were going to be a sourpuss.”
“I bet he didn’t say sourpuss. He’s a firefighter. I’m sure he has a more colorful term for me, like hell-bitch.”
Adam is a saint, thought Mason. St. Adam. He silently cursed the saint for having left already. Adam and Ivy had stuck around until their mom was discharged, then they both had to leave; Adam to his training and Ivy back to Santa Barbara to prepare for her move to Europe.
“I printed out the résumés of the candidates we’re meeting with,” he said. “You want to go over them now, or—”
“I think I’d like to go out into the garden now.”
He gritted his teeth, looking away so she wouldn’t see his annoyance.
“You’re annoyed,” she said. “You can’t wait to leave. You’ve got one foot out the door.”
Damn. Busted. He schooled his face into a pleasant expression. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad I’m here to spend some time with you.”
“Right.” She nudged a lever on her chair and rolled toward the French doors. “Let’s go inspect the property you bought. You’ve never even seen it in the summer.”
He stood aside, impressed by how nimbly she used her chair to operate the switch plate, which opened the doors. When he stepped out on the deck, the view and the cool clarity of the air stole his breath. “Wow,” he said.
“You did well,” she told him. “I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me—moving me to Avalon, getting this house adapted for my needs, hiring a staff. If I’m going to be a cripple the rest of my life, I might as well do it in style.”
“I thought we weren’t going to say cripple.”
“Not when I’m being polite. I don’t feel terribly polite these days.”
“Let me savor the view for a few minutes, okay?” The last time he’d seen the property, it had been blanketed in snow. The estate had been known as the Webster House, having been built in the 1920s by descendants of Daniel Webster himself. For Mason, the decision to acquire and restore the house had not been based on historical significance, prestige or even investment value. He wanted his mother to have a nice place to live, near Adam—aka her favorite—that could be quickly adapted for her special needs.
During that process, he had come to appreciate the benefit of having a big extended family living in a small town. His cousin Olivia was married to the contractor who had restored the fanciful timber-and-stone mansion to its original gloss as a grand summer residence from days gone by. His cousin Ross was married to a nurse who specialized in adaptive living. Another cousin, Greg, was a landscape architect. Olivia was a talented designer in her own right, so in a matter of months, the place was ready for his mother and Adam, and their staff of live-in help.
Mason had spared no expense. In his position, there was no need to. For the past decade, he had run his own private equities-and-lending firm, and business was good. He had all the money in the world. But of course, wealth had its limits. He couldn’t buy his mother her mobility. He couldn’t buy a way to make her smile again.
He took a deep breath of the morning air. “It’s sweet,” he said.
“I beg your pardon.”
“The air here. It’s sweet.”
“I suppose it is.”
“The landscaping looks great. Are you happy with it?”
“Your cousin Greg sent a crew to take care of the mowing and gardening,” she said, nodding in the direction of a long swath of grass sloping down to the water’s edge. There was a dock and a timber-and-stone boathouse, home to kayaks, a catboat and a 1940s Chris-Craft. When not on duty at the fire station, Adam lived in the upstairs quarters.
A fringe of ancient willow trees dipped their budding branches into the placid, sunlit water. The word that came immediately to mind was unspoiled. Willow Lake was one of the prettiest lakes in a landscape full of pretty lakes. The green-clad hills, with a few puffy clouds riding on their shoulders, rose gently upward from the shore. On the north end of the lake was a grand old summer camp, a hundred years in the making—Camp Kioga.
At the south end was the town called Avalon, as picture-perfect as a storybook setting, with its whistle-stop train station, old-fashioned town square, stone-built Greek revival library and shady shoreline parks. Its outskirts were equally attractive—a mountain road leading to a ski resort, a ball field for the local bush-league baseball team, white-steepled churches, their spires seeming to thrust through the new-leafed trees. The cliffs of the Shawangunks attracted climbers from all over the world. Somewhere not so far away, there was probably suburban blight—shotgun shacks and mobile homes, ramshackle farms and big-box stores. But he couldn’t see any of that from here. And more important, neither could his mother.
The place he’d acquired for her was on the western shore of the lake, so it caught the sunrise every morning, something his real-estate agent had pointed out when he had bought the property. The agent had babbled on about the attributes of the historic mansion, not knowing Mason was already sold on getting the place. He was looking for security for his mother, not for a return on investment.
“Why do they keep quitting?” he asked her, paging through the printouts of the candidates for the job of primary caregiver. “Is it the living quarters?”
“Have you seen the living quarters?”
He’d looked at pictures after the remodel was done. The living quarters, located in a private wing of the house, featured a suite of rooms with a view of the lake, new furnishings and luxurious fixtures. “Okay, good point. So?”
“I haven’t been conducting exit interviews. I’m sure Adam gave you an earful. Nobody wants to live with a miserable old woman who can barely change the channel on The Price Is Right.”
Oh, boy. “You’re not old,” he said. “Your parents would freak out if they heard you say that. And being miserable is optional. So is watching The Price Is Right.”
“Thank you, Sigmund Freud. I’ll remember that next time I’m lying in bed, pissing into a plastic tube—”
“Mom.”
“Oh, sorry. I don’t mean to trouble you with the reality of my body functions.”
Now he understood why they all quit.
* * *
“Where should I put your things, Mr. Bellamy?” asked the housekeeper.
Mason stood glaring out the window at an impossibly serene and beautiful view of Willow Lake. Although he’d arrived late the day before, his luggage had been delayed—some mix-up at an airport between here and New Zealand.
Now Mrs. Armentrout rolled the two large bags into the room. The suitcases wore tags marked Unattended Baggage.
He hadn’t seen the luggage since dashing to the airport in New Zealand after getting the call about his mother’s accident. Now he realized he didn’t need the bags at all, since they were packed with winter clothes.
“Right there is fine, thanks,” he said.
“Would you like some help unpacking?”
“Sure, when you can get to it.”
“I can do that right now.”
The housekeeper worked with brisk efficiency, hanging his bespoke suit in the antique armoire, carefully folding cashmere sweaters away in a cedar-lined drawer. She lifted a dress shirt out of the suitcase and put it on a wooden hanger, her hand moving appreciatively over the fabric.
Philomena Armentrout actually looked more like a supermodel than a housekeeper. A native of South Africa, she was tall and slender, with creamy café au lait skin, wearing chic black slacks and a white blouse, shining dark hair and subtle makeup. Only the closest of inspections would reveal the tiny scars where the jaw wires had been surgically anchored after her husband had assaulted her. Mason had committed himself and all his resources to staffing the household with the best personnel available, and Mrs. Armentrout was definitely the best. That wasn’t the only reason Mason had hired her, though. Broken and battered, she had needed a new start in life, and Mason was taking care of her immigration process. According to Adam, she ran the place like a high-end boutique hotel, supervising every aspect of the household.
His phone in the charging station on the desk murmured insistently, signaling another text message from Regina. She had not taken the news of his change of plans well. She’d peppered him with all the questions he’d already run through with his brother and sister: Why did he need to come here in person? Couldn’t a staffer take care of hiring the new caregiver? Couldn’t Adam or Ivy change their plans and step in?
No, they couldn’t. Both had commitments that couldn’t be broken—Adam’s training in arson investigation, Ivy’s art fellowship at the Institut de Paume. But Mason didn’t feel like getting into a big debate with Regina at the moment, and so he ignored the message.
Last night he’d slept like a corpse in the comfortable guest room. It was so damned quiet here, and the air was sweet and the jet lag had finally caught up with him.
“Is my mother up yet?” he asked.
She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “In a bit. Lena, the morning aide, will bring her to the lounge room for coffee at nine. You can go see her in her room right away if you want.”
He did want to see his mother. Just not...before she was ready for the day.
One of the hardest things Alice Bellamy was having to adjust to was the loss of privacy. Needing another person to look after all her personal needs was a constant source of irritation. “I’ll wait,” he said. “The coffee is great, by the way. Thanks for sending it up.”
“Wayan roasts his own. He gets the green coffee beans from his family in Bali. It’s got a funny name, tupac or leewalk, something like that.”
“Luwak,” said Mason. “No wonder it’s so good. You should look this stuff up sometime. You won’t believe where it comes from.”
“Right. That’s the stuff that comes from a civet cat’s arse or something, yes?”
“It’s organic.”
Like Mrs. Armentrout, the personal chef had been selected for his unique excellence as well as his urgent need to escape his dire circumstances. Wayan had been attending cruise ship school in the Philippines. The Balinese native had abruptly been cut from that program, leaving him stranded and nearly penniless in a foreign land. Mason had found him through a sponsorship program and brought Wayan—along with his wife and son—halfway around the world. The family lived above the old carriage house, now a four-car garage and workshop. His wife, Banni, served as an evening aide and personal assistant, and their son, Donno, was Alice’s driver, mechanic and general fix-it guy. Mason hadn’t met Wayan yet, but Adam sang rhapsodies about his cooking.
Mrs. Armentrout held up a rash guard shirt. “It’s a shame you had to cut your vacation short,” she said. “I’ve heard the surfing in Malibu is the best in the world.”
“It will keep,” he said simply.
“And the skiing was good?” she inquired.
“You bet.” It occurred to him to explain the trip wasn’t strictly a vacation, but a journey to fulfill his father’s last wish, followed by a work trip. He knew the explanation would make him sound less like a selfish prick who was avoiding his wounded mother.
But it didn’t actually bother him to be regarded as a selfish prick. It just made things simpler.
“How is she doing?” he asked Mrs. Armentrout. “She didn’t have much to say about her fall.”
“The doctor said the collarbone will heal nicely. There was a surgery to repair it with plates and screws, and she was able to come home the very next day.”
“I’ve spoken to the surgeon about her collarbone already. That’s not what I’m asking.”
“She’s... It’s terribly hard, Mr. Bellamy. She is bearing up.”
“Were you around when she fell?”
“No one was around. You can look over the report from the EMTs.”
“I’m sure Adam went over that with a fine-tooth comb,” Mason said.
The mantel clock chimed nine. He felt Mrs. Armentrout watching him. He could practically hear her thoughts. She was wondering why he didn’t seem so eager to settle in. “I’ll let you finish here,” he said, wishing he could be a million miles away. “I’m going to see my mother. We’re starting the interviewing process today.”
As he descended the wide, curving staircase, he wondered if this was where his mother had fallen in her chair. Had she called out in terror? Had she felt pain?
He trailed his fingers over the silky walnut handrail. She couldn’t feel the texture of the wood with her fingertips. Physical sensation below the spinal cord injury was gone. Yet when he thought of the expression he’d seen on her face last night, he knew that she still felt the deepest kind of pain.
* * *
“Mrs. Bellamy?” Mrs. Armentrout came out on the veranda. “Your first appointment is here.”
“Lucky him,” she said.
“We’ll meet in there.” Mason gestured at the great room through the French doors.