The Second Time Around Read Free Page A

thought he was a terrific guy.”
    â€œWhat do you think now?”
    â€œYou mean, whether he’s dead or somehow arranged the crash? I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat about the wife, your stepsister?”
    I know I winced. “Sam, my mother is genuinely happy with Lynn’s father, or else she’s putting on one hell of a performance. God help us, the two of them are even taking piano lessons together. You should have heard the concert I got treated to when I went down to Boca for a weekend last month. I admit I didn’t like Lynn when I met her. I think she kisses themirror every morning. But then, I only saw her the night before the wedding, at the wedding, and one other time when I arrived in Boca last year just as she was leaving. So do me a favor and don’t refer to her as my stepsister.”
    â€œNoted.”
    The waitress came with our drinks. Sam sipped appreciatively and then cleared his throat. “Carley, I just heard that you applied for the job that’s opening up at the magazine.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œI want to write for a serious financial magazine, not just have a column that is essentially a financial filler in a general interest Sunday supplement. Reporting for Wall Street Weekly is my goal. How do you know I applied?”
    â€œThe big boss, Will Kirby, asked about you.”
    â€œWhat did you tell him?”
    â€œI said you had brains and you’d be a big step up from the guy who’s leaving.”
    Half an hour later Sam dropped me off in front of my place. I live in the second-floor apartment of a converted brownstone on East 37th Street in Manhattan. I ignored the elevator, which deserves to be ignored, and walked up the single flight. It was a relief to unlock my door and go inside. I was down in the dumps for very good reasons. The financial situation of those investors had gotten to me, but it was more than that. Many of them had made the investment for the same reason I had, because they wanted to stop the progressof an illness in someone they loved. It was too late for me, but I know that buying that stock as a tribute to Patrick was also my way of trying to cure the hole in my heart that was even bigger than the one that had killed my little son.
    My apartment is furnished with chattels my parents had in the house in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where I was raised. Because I’m an only child, I had my choice of everything when they moved to Boca Raton. I reupholstered the couch in a sturdy blue fabric to pick up the blue in the antique Persian I’d found at a garage sale. The tables and lamps and easy chair were around when I was the smallest but fastest kid on the varsity basketball team at Immaculate Heart Academy.
    I keep a picture of the team on the wall in the bedroom, and in it I hold the basketball. I look at the picture and see that in many ways I haven’t changed. The short dark hair and the blue eyes I inherited from my father are still the same. I never did have that spurt of growth my mother assured me I’d experience. I was just over five feet four inches then, and I’m five feet four inches now. Alas, the victorious smile isn’t around anymore, not the way it was in that picture, when I thought the world was my oyster. Writing the column may have something to do with that. I’m always in touch with real people with real financial problems.
    But I knew there was another reason for feeling drained and down tonight.
    Nick. Nicholas Spencer. No matter how overwhelming the apparent evidence, I simply could not accept what they were saying about him.
    Was there another answer for the failure of the vaccine, the disappearance of the money, the plane crash? Or was it something in me that let me be conned by smooth-talking phonies who don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves? Like I was by Greg, the Mr. Wrong I married nearly eleven years ago.
    When Patrick died after living only