Pretend You Don't See Her Read Free

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