Before I Say Good-Bye Read Free Page B

put my cards on the table. Adam is my husband and I love him. You, on the other hand, have never even liked him.”
    “That isn’t true.”
    “Then let’s put it another way. Ever since Adam opened his own firm, you’ve had the shiv out for him. If I run for this office, it will be like the old days. You and I will be spending a lot more day-to-day time together, and if that’s going to work you’ve got to promise me that you’ll treat Adam the way you’d want to be treated if the positions were reversed.”
    “And if I promise to embrace him to my bosom, then you’ll run?”
    When she left Cornelius MacDermott’s office an hour later, Nell had given her word that she would seek the congressional seat being vacated by Bob Gorman.

two
    I T WAS THE THIRD TIME Jed Kaplan had passed the ground-floor architectural offices of Cauliff and Associates on Twenty-seventh Street off Seventh Avenue. The window of the converted brownstone contained a display that arrested him: the model of a modern forty-story apartment-office-shopping complex dominated by a gold-domed tower. The starkly postmodern building with its minimal ornamentation and white limestone façade was a striking contrast to the warmth of the brick tower, which radiated light as the dome slowly revolved.
    Jed jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he slouched forward until his face was almost pressed against the window. To a casual observer there wasnothing either unusual or impressive about his appearance. He was of average height, thin, with short sandy hair.
    His appearance was deceptive, however; under his faded sweatshirt, Jed’s body was hard and muscular, and his thinness belied his remarkable strength. A close look would have revealed that his complexion had coarsened from long exposure to sun and wind. And actual eye contact would have caused most people to experience an instinctively uneasy reaction.
    Thirty-eight years old, Jed had spent most of his life as a loner and a drifter. After five years in Australia, he had returned home for one of his infrequent visits to his widowed mother only to learn that she had sold the small parcel of Manhattan property that had been in the family for four generations, a building which had housed a once-thriving but now barely profitable fur business, with rental apartments above the store.
    His reaction had been immediate, and they had quarreled violently about it.
    “What’d you expect me to do?” his mother had pleaded. “Building falling apart; insurance going up; taxes going up; tenants moving out. The fur business is going down the toilet. In case you haven’t heard, it isn’t good politics to wear fur anymore.”
    “Pop intended for me to have that property,” Jed had shouted. “You had no right to sell it!”
    “Pop also wanted you to be a good son to me; he wanted you to settle down, to get married, have children, have a decent job. But you didn’t even come when I wrote that he was dying.” She’d begun to weep. “When was the last time you saw a picture of QueenElizabeth or Hillary Clinton in a fur? Adam Cauliff paid me a fair price for the property. I have money in the bank. For whatever time I have left, I can sleep at night without worrying about bills.”
    With increasing bitterness, Jed observed the model of the complex. He sneered at the legend below the tower: A BEACON OF BEAUTY, SETTING THE TONE FOR THE NEWEST, MOST EXCITING RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT IN MANHATTAN.
    The tower was going to be erected on the land his mother had sold to Adam Cauliff.
    That land was worth a fortune, he thought. And Cauliff had talked her into believing that you could never do anything to develop it because it was next door to that historical wreck, the old Vandermeer mansion. He knew it never would have occurred to his mother to even try to sell it, though, if Cauliff hadn’t buzzed around her.
    Yes, he’d given her fair market value. But then the mansion had burned, and a big-shot real estate guy,