HellKat (19 page)

The New York sky opened up and heavy rain slapped against the rooftop and windows. Wiper blades screeched and clawed in complaint under the wave of water. Kat’s tormented eyes darted back and forth from her back seat window to the front windshield. Nothing but headlights and black rain. Her stomach rolled, her teeth clenched, and the dull ache lodged behind her eyes throbbed harder.

“We’ll make it in time, Kat.” Tucker squeezed her hand in reassurance. She nodded without looking at him.

The world had upended this morning when she’d checked her phone messages. Too many missed calls from Kyle to even count. Henry James had suffered a massive heart attack. Kyle had taken care of the travel arrangements and sent the corporate jet to get her back home as quickly as possible and had a driver waiting to bring her directly to Mount Sinai. Even with the unrelenting noise in her head since the call, certain words resounded louder than the rest: “Father is asking for you. He won’t let up. He keeps saying he needs to see you. He needs to see
Katie
.” That word, that name, had sounded so foreign uttered by her brother, given she’d only ever heard her father say it.

From what Kyle knew at the time of their last phone call, their father wasn’t doing well. Weak. Medicated. Hooked up to monitors and IVs. Kyle promised to call if there was any change either way. So far, heavy silence. Kat checked her phone again to make sure it was still getting a signal.

Finally stopped in front of the entrance, Tucker grabbed her hand and pulled her from the car. Too impatient for the revolving door, she yanked open a side door and quickly made her way to the bank of elevators and up to the ICU.

A nurse at the check-in desk guided them back to the room where her family waited. “I’ll let the staff working with your father know you’re here. Someone will come get you and take you back to see him when they feel he’s up to it.”

She walked into a room full of people she should feel closer to than any others in the world, people she should find solace with, especially at a time like this. But they were, for all intents and purposes, strangers. Except Kyle. At least she had him. He stood at a window peering down at the street while others skimmed magazines, watched the wall-mounted television and listened to the chatter on Bloomberg TV, or discussed a stack of fabric swatches for the latest redo at Cecily and Charlie’s Hampton home.

When Kyle’s eyes met hers, his face shaded in obvious relief. He made a beeline for her and hugged her as if his life depended on it. She noticed the stares and discomfort at their unusual public display of affection. She pulled him even closer while she eyed Parker in the corner. The
WSJ
lay open on his lap, his hard focus honed in on her.

“I do not want that man here, Kathryn.” Her mother’s indignant voice ended the stare down. Kyle released her.

“Too bad, Mother. I do. And you’re going to have to deal with it.” Her mother’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Only family should be here.” Charlie stood to take his mother’s side.

She stepped back and grasped Tucker’s hand. “What makes you think he won’t be?” Tucker squeezed her hand. “He’s here for me. And he stays.”

“This isn’t the time or place—”

“I couldn’t agree more, Mother. So drop it. Now.” Sarah James sputtered and fumed at Kat’s ill-mannered interruption and insolent tone. “I’m here to see Father. I understand he’s been asking for me.” She scanned the group; some avoided eye contact while others shot daggers in her direction. The precipitous temperature drop in the room was unmistakable.

The door behind Kat swung open. “I need to take Katie James with me. Her father’s asking for her again.”

Kat zeroed in on Parker. One corner of her mouth turned up slightly, for his eyes only. She caught the glint of hostility that seemed to burn especially hot for her. She would get to the bottom of his issue with her, but priorities had shifted for the moment. Then she glanced to Tucker. The man appeared as unflappable as ever. He nodded for her to go, reaffirmed he could hold his own in this backbiting group.

The nurse escorted her through a maze of automatic doors and wide hallways filled with beeping equipment, the buzz of hospital staff, and the ever-present smell of decay perfumed with sanitizers.

“Your father is very weak right now. We need him to stay calm and rest, but he’s been insistent that he see you. We’re hoping your being here will be just what he needs.” She patted Kat’s arm, pulled a chart from the acrylic wall holder, and scurried away.

Kat stepped quietly into the room only to stop dead in her tracks. Her lungs deflated, and she couldn’t seem to pull air back into them. This man wasn’t her father, looked nothing like him. His normally tanned skin was now a ghostly gray. His thick white hair, always slicked back into masterful submission, now mussed and unruly with a mind of its own. The aura of aristocracy, the rigid posture, the stance announcing his authority over all things big and small, was gone. Vanished. Sucked out of him by an array of tubes and beeping monitors.

She pushed forward, stood over him, scanned the body lying in the bed, and tried to reconcile the image before her.

“Katie. Thank God,” he muttered, his words weak, almost desperate.

Her face lifted to his sunken, shadowed eyes. She tried to smile. “Hello, Father.” She kept her tone level, not certain how to react to the swirl of emotion swelling inside.

“Sit. We need to talk.” The few words spoken were marked by the effort to speak them.

“The doctors want you to rest. I’ll stay, but you need to save your energy. We can talk when you get out of ICU.”

His eyes closed and he shook his head. “I won’t.”

Kat stiffened at the finality of his statement. “Of course you will.” He ignored her and pointed his eyes at the container on the rollaway table. She picked up the plastic pitcher and brought the straw to his parched lips. He kept his eyes on her while he all but emptied the container.

“That’s better.” He licked his lips and pressed his head back into the pillow. “Much better. Pull up a chair, Katie. I need you close.”

Kat stood frozen in place. His voice sounded stronger now, with an urgency behind his tired eyes. She rolled the table out of the way and placed a seat beside the bed.

“No. Closer.” She complied until he seemed satisfied. He gave her a long look. “I’ve been waiting for you.” The inflection of his words unnerved her.

He stared, fascination rife on his worn face as his eyes traveled over her hair, and journeyed, slowly, across her features. And then she saw it.

A smile.

He didn’t even try to hide the curve of his mouth, growing broader and turning wistful. All those years, she’d read him right. He
had
held back those smiles. She hadn’t imagined them after all.

She startled from the unexpected brush of his hand to her cheek.

“You’re so much like her.” His eyes glistened with a wet sheen. “And you look like her too. You always have.”

She frowned. “I’ve never thought I looked or acted anything like Mother.”

He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

“You’re strong, Katie. And you’re going to need to be even stronger. You’re going to need to do exactly what I tell you to do.” He shook his head, his stern expression demanding she save her words for later. “I’ve made mistakes in my life, but you were never one of them.” He paused, a faraway look in his eyes. “I should’ve stood up to my father. I should’ve made different choices.” He expelled a labored breath, then refueled his lungs. “I should’ve been stronger, like you.”

“I really think you need to—”

He raised his hand to silence her.

“Your life is about to change. You need to prepare for that. You need to be ready.” His eyes closed as he drew in slow, deep breaths.

Kat sat speechless. She scanned the monitors filled with colorful staggered lines and flashing numbers. She understood nothing she saw, nothing she’d heard since sitting at her father’s bedside. When his weary eyes reopened, her heart ached from the regret dulling their shine. And in that instant of recognition, they connected in the understanding, the remorse, of what could have been, of what they’d each lost.

Of the loss yet to come.

His sudden grip on her hand pulled her back to the present. Her eyes dropped down to the unfamiliar sight, the foreign feel of their joined hands.

“You need to go to my study, Katie.” Her vision locked back onto his. “I have a book with a key in it. You need to get it.” Her expression of confusion was mixed with worry. “I shouldn’t have avoided this for so long. I know that. I always knew it. I just …” The unfinished words faded away and he released her hand to rest the back of his fingers against her cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head at his cryptic statements. “Why do you have a key in a book? And what are you apologizing for?” Bewilderment lined her face.

He looked lost, as if his thoughts were disorganized, muddled, and fighting to gain exit. Questions with no time left for answers …

“Does he love you? Just as you are.” His expression was now serious.

The out-of-sequence question gave her pause. “You mean Tucker?” Her father nodded. Even given these harsh circumstances, a warm smile lit her face just from the thought of him. “Yes, Father. He loves me just as I am.”

For the second time in as many minutes, his lips turned up at the corners. “Don’t settle for anything less, Katie.”

A soft chuckle bubbled up. “Everybody knows I don’t settle.”

The melancholy returned to his face, dragged it down in its gray grip. “I wish I’d known you.” She gasped at the regret thick in his voice and worked hard to keep a lid on her own.

His hand dropped to her shoulder and squeezed it as his face shaded with anxiety. “You’ll need to be careful. I’m going to help you do that.” His curled finger motioned her forward.

His lips at her ear, he whispered answers wrapped in more riddles, jumbled strings of words he promised she’d understand later. He begged her forgiveness, brushed his cold lips to her cheek, and apologized for the difficult road ahead.

And then he whispered … “Goodbye.”

****

Henry James’s funeral had been a grand spectacle. A pretentious display of pomp and circumstance. Flourishes and finery only Sarah James could have envisioned and implemented with such flare, such cold precision. It had felt like a charade to Kat, a joke without a punch line. Somber photo ops for the media, a lavish dinner at the Ritz, an endless parade of condolences and subdued well wishes. Henry James’s life had streamed across the stage in high-definition, while eloquent speakers had memorialized a tycoon, not her father. Not the man she’d glimpsed in those final hours before the light had extinguished, before the lid had closed. The final moments that would now forever haunt her with what might have been, with the father she’d wished she’d known. In the end, all the fuss, all the blather, had amounted to the relentless scratch of white noise, an unworthy distraction from the empty seat at the table.

The elite of New York and elsewhere had gathered to rub shoulders and pay their respects, to shake hands with the heirs apparent, the brothers who would lead the conglomerate their father, and his father before him, had built.

Or so they had all presumed.

Instead, Henry James shattered the status quo and accomplished in death what he’d failed to achieve in life. He yanked back the reins and revoked privileges. He aggravated discord and deepened hostilities. He upended the charted course and exposed the fallibility of the James family, all with his final act.

The recitation of the Last Will and Testament of Henry James launched chaos.

The disbelief buzzing in Kat’s ears receded, only to be flooded with the irate protests of her family who now crowded around her like hungry vultures in her father’s study. After the reading of Henry James’s will, Lawrence Sapperstein presented copies to each of the heirs before making his hasty exit—probably to prepare for the will contests his firm expected from her mother and brothers.

Tucker’s raised voice pulled her to the present and she rose to stand beside him.

“How long have you two
really
known each other?” Charlie asked Tucker, accusation sharp in his voice.