A Soft Place to Fall (18 page)

"Did I hurt you, Annie?" he repeated.

"No, no!" Why did deep emotion always bring
her to tears? "It's just – I mean, it was all so – " She was
stumbling over her words, suddenly more comfortable with the
imperfections of her body than the longing inside her heart. She
glanced down at the gold band on her left hand and felt a dizzying
combination of anger and shame. "Until today there had never been
anyone else."

"Not even before you married him?"

"There was no 'before.'" Kevin Galloway had
always been part of her emotional landscape, from as far back as
she could remember. "I suppose you think it's laughable, marrying
the first boy you ever dated, but there was never any question that
we were meant to be together."

"I don't think it's laughable," Sam said. "I
think he was lucky."

The look she gave him was equal parts sorrow
and anger and gratitude, and he wondered where one emotion ended
and the other began. Marriage was a secret society with only two
members, a society he'd never had time to join. The rest of the
world was on the outside looking in, trying to figure out what was
innately without logic or reason.

"Claudia thinks I should have stayed in the
old house but I couldn't, not any longer. Two years is long enough.
Once I finally –" She caught herself, horrified that the secrets
she had kept locked away for so long had almost come spilling out.
"I'm not really like this," she said, shaking her head in dismay.
"I'm the one people go to when they have problems."

He stroked her hair with those large and
beautiful hands. "And who do you go to when you have a problem,
Annie Galloway?"

"Haven't you heard?" she said. "I don't have
problems. I'm the one who solves them." And she knew how to solve
his problem too.

He started to say something but the phone
rang. They listened to it ring once, twice, four times, and he
finally went in search of the cellular. The room was bathed in
shadows. A cool breeze ruffled the curtains and from the kitchen
Max made mournful sounds for his supper. Scraps of conversation
floated toward her on the night air as he talked to one of his
sisters.

" . . . not a good time, Marie . . . why
don't we talk later . . . yeah, yeah . . . you pay the super . . .
he'll call . . . it's not an emergency, is it . . . ask Jimmy . . .
no, it's nothing to worry about . . . "

She slipped back into her black trousers and
red sweater.

". . . I'm kind of busy right now, Marie . .
. "

She tucked her stockings and bra into her
pocket.

". . . none of your business . . . I don't
ask you questions about . . . "

She retrieved her shoes from under the
sofa.

". . . I'll call you back . . . I don't know
when, Mare . . . Jesus, why don't you . . . "

She slipped out the front door and didn't
look back.

Chapter Seven

Claudia's
doorbell rang at eight o'clock on the dot, same as it had almost
every Saturday night for the last fifteen years.

"I have a bone to pick with you, Warren
Bancroft," she said as she ushered the man into her living
room.

"Keep it to yourself, old woman." He gave her
a hug that she endured with little grace. "You're watching your
blood pressure like you should?"

"My pressure wouldn't be a problem if you
would keep your meddling nose out of my family's business."

"Not that again!" He reached for the tumbler
of scotch she always had waiting for him on the side table. "So I
undersold the market to give Annie a break on the house. How is
that meddling in your family's business?"

Oh, there were a million things she could say
to him about that! Over the years he had developed the annoying
habit of always being there when she needed him, a cigar-smoking
guardian angel who watched over her family as if he actually had
the right.

"I'm talking about that man you installed in
Ellie's old house."

"Watch that viper tongue of yours, Claudia.
You almost drew blood that time."

She ignored him. "I hope you're not trying to
push the two of them together because if you are – "

"Speak English!" he roared. "If you're going
to wrap up your words in riddles, I'll finish my scotch and head
for home."

She drew herself up to her full height –
which wasn't quite as impressive as it used to be in her glory days
– and snapped at him. "Keep a civil tongue in your head, Warren
Bancroft, and tell me you're not up to your old tricks again."

He took a long slow sip of scotch and she all
but flew across the room and pulled an answer out of his throat
with her bare hands. "Sam is an old friend of mine," he said at
last. "He needed a place to stop for a while and that's what I've
given him."

"Why didn't you ask him to stay at the big
house on the Point?"

He took another sip of scotch, savoring it in
the way he knew irritated her almost senseless. "You know I like my
space, Claudia."

"Make an exception. It isn't like your help
has much to do."

He pulled one of those dreadful cigars from
his breast pocket and patted himself down in search of his lighter.
She refused to offer him a match.

"Next thing you'll be telling me how to run
my businesses."

"Business has never been a problem for you,
Warren."

He retrieved his lighter from a back pocket
with a flourish. "And speaking your mind has never been a problem
for you."

The nerve of him, lighting up without even
asking if she minded. "Leave Annie alone," she said in a fiercely
protective tone of voice. "Bad enough you encouraged her to sell
her house. Don't go playing matchmaker."

He touched the flame to the tip of his cigar.
His cheeks sank in as he drew the rich smoke into his lungs. The
old fool.

"Not everyone turns widowhood into a career.
Annie's too young to take the veil."

His words hurt as they were meant to. Even
after all these years, their history still loomed between them but
the days of crying in front of Warren Bancroft were a thing of the
past.

"Anne is a grown woman," she said. "She'll
make her own decisions without any help from either one of us."

"Remember those words," Warren said, "because
one day they'll come back to haunt you."

You don't know her the way I do, Warren. I
know what's best for her.
"Do you want your supper or are you
just here to make my life difficult?"

"I never should have let you go, Claudia," he
said as he followed her into the kitchen at the back of the house.
"If I had my way, I'd marry you all over again."

#

In his senior year of high school, Warren
Bancroft was voted by unanimous proclamation the most popular boy
in the Class of 1950. He was also named the boy Least Likely to
Succeed without a dissenting vote as well. Warren agreed with both
assessments. He was the kind-hearted, fun-loving son of a
lobsterman who was also the son of a lobsterman and it never
occurred to anyone, including Warren, that he would spend his life
doing anything beyond setting lobster traps and grousing about the
weather.

Weather was important to the residents of
Shelter Rock Cove. Weather determined if you could head out to sea
in the morning. Weather determined what kind of catch you came back
with. When you came down to it, weather determined if you came back
at all.

On his third trip out after graduation,
Warren Bancroft found himself in the middle of a nor'easter the
likes of which even the old salts had never seen before. When they
limped back to port four days later, Warren kissed the scarred wood
of the dock and swore there had to be a better way to make a
living. And then he set off to find it.

At the Class of 1950's ten-year reunion,
Warren came home to Shelter Rock Cove, filled with talk of
computers like the Univac on Art Linkletter's television show or
Spencer Tracy's beloved Emerac from the movie
Desk Set
.
Because he still looked and sounded like the Warren they had grown
up with, they all just listened politely then forgot all about his
crazy notions until their twenty-year reunion rolled around and he
drove up from Boston in a big black Lincoln Continental with a
chauffeur behind the wheel.

It seemed that Warren Bancroft, the boy least
likely to succeed, had struck it rich and he didn't mind sharing
what he had with the town where he grew up. But what the good
people of Shelter Rock Cove didn't know was that for six short
months in 1951 he and Claudia Perrine had been husband and wife. It
wasn't that he was ashamed of the fact. Hell, he wanted to shout it
from the rooftops. It was Claudia who was determined to keep her
brief marriage a secret from one and all.

"The marriage was annulled," she told him the
day they said goodbye, "and that means it never happened."

And because he loved her, he kept their
secret.

Claudia had wanted a husband who came home
every night at five-thirty and read the paper in his easy chair
while she finished preparing dinner. She had wanted a family, a
brood of children, who would grow up to be healthy and happy and
have children of their own. She didn't understand adventure. She
didn't believe in taking risks. She couldn't imagine a life that
didn't include all of the things her mother and grandmother had
enjoyed over the years.

Too bad Warren hadn't wanted any of those
things. He wasn't even twenty yet and he wanted to see the world.
Make his mark on it. There would be time enough for picket fences
and babies but not now. Not yet.

He could still see the tears in her eyes the
night she told him she wanted an annulment. "I spoke to the priest
at the parish house," she had said, her voice trembling slightly.
"I told him that you refused to have children with me."

"Someday I will," he said, knowing that the
battle he fought was already lost. "Just not now."

"He said that was grounds enough for us to
end the marriage swiftly."

She went on to marry John Galloway and raise
a half-dozen children plus Annie Lacy while he watched from a
distance and wished they were his.

Because Warren had a kind heart and kind
hearts required an outlet, his name had become synonymous in
Shelter Rock Cove with quiet generosity. He paid off the mortgages
for everyone in his family. He made sure his friends' medical bills
were taken care of. If the town needed a new police car or funds to
shore up the sagging pier, Warren Bancroft was the first in line
with his checkbook. He established a scholarship for the children
of fishermen lost at sea, donated a wing to the local hospital, and
generally kept a sharp eye on who might be in need, even if the one
in need wasn't from Shelter Rock Cove. It seemed somehow to him the
least he could do for all he had been given.

But there had been two among the many who
stood out. Two who had claimed the part of his heart that ached for
children of his own.

Annie Lacy and Sam Butler.

Sam was fifteen years old when he met Warren.
Sam was working at the marina near the World's Fair in Flushing,
Queens, doing whatever small repairs the boat builders threw his
way. He was smart, a hard worker who was good with his hands. He
loved being around boats and his enthusiasm made him a favorite on
the docks. That year Warren was sailing his favorite yacht up from
the Bahamas to Shelter Rock Cove, trying to finish the trip before
hurricane season broke for real. He ran into some trouble near the
Battery and somehow managed to bring the boat into the marina for
repairs. It was a hot July evening. Nobody was around except for a
wiry kid with a thick shock of dark hair and enough energy to power
the city across the river. By the time Sam had the yacht up and
running, he and Warren Bancroft were fast friends.

They saw each other each year at the
beginning of the summer when Warren sailed up the coast to Maine
and again at the end of the season when he made the return trip to
winter the yacht in the Bahamas. The summer before his mother
Rosemary died, sixteen-year-old Sam and a group of inner city kids
crewed for Warren then spent a few weeks learning about the
fisherman's life at the hands of the men who knew it best. It was
Sam's last great summer.

A year later they buried Sam's father Patrick
next to Rosemary.

That was the summer Warren didn't make it
back to Maine. He was living in Japan at the time, overseeing a
huge project with one of the giant electronics firms that would
translate one day into a lot of jobs back home. Warren's first wife
had left him many years ago for a man whose greatest ambition was
to get home from the office in time to see the evening news. Warren
told himself it was a good thing that he and Claudia hadn't stayed
married long enough to have children – a split was never easy on
children -- but in his heart he knew he was lying. He envied his
ex-wife her big noisy family and he often thought that was why he
took so many youngsters under his wing.

When he saw Sam again, he barely recognized
the boy. Sam's natural enthusiasm had been replaced by an intensity
Warren rarely saw in even the most driven businessman. Sam didn't
tell him about his father's passing. Warren had to learn that from
Bill, the owner of the marina.

"The kid's working himself to death trying to
take care of that brood," Bill told him. "I've given him as many
hours as I can but it's not enough." Sam was juggling his job there
with selling sporting equipment at Macy's and working nights as a
maintenance man at one of the office buildings along Queens
Boulevard. He had dropped out of St. John's last semester and
unless a miracle occurred, he wouldn't be going back any time
soon.

Warren wanted to provide the miracle but he
knew the boy's pride wouldn't allow it. Sam was quick and smart and
good with people. He had a natural affinity with facts and figures
that would put most other young men his age to sleep. It was the
beginning of the roaring, good time 1980s when the stockbroker was
king and how better to help Sam than to make him a young prince of
the realm?