The Remedy for Regret (8 page)

I’
m seated in the lobby of the Holiday Inn by ten minutes to nine the next morning. I awoke early, after a restless night of sleep. I’m hesitant to see Blair and yet impatient for Peter Agnew to come for me. I wonder how she spent the night. Did she wake up this morning, like I did, forgetting for just a fraction of a moment that Brad is dead? I wonder if she’ll want me to stay for the memorial service. It occurs to me that I haven’t brought anything appropriate to wear to the funeral of a rich man. Antonia will chide me someday about this. She has told me repeatedly to never go on any trip of any kind without a little black dress.

A few minutes after nine, a bronze Jaguar pulls up into the carport of the hotel’s parking lot. A man with graying hair and wearing an expensive suit of the same color steps out of it. This must be Peter Agnew.

He steps in through the front doors and I rise, offering a tiny smile that lets him know I am the woman he is expecting.

“Miss Longren?”

“Please call me Tess.” I offer my hand.

“And you must call me Peter.” He shakes my hand. “If you don’t mind, Blair would like you to stay with her for the rest of your time here. Is that all right? Do you mind getting your things and bringing them?”

“No, of course not,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

It doesn’t take long to get my suitcase and return to the lobby. Peter tells me he has paid one of the hotel desk clerks to take my rental car back to the airport on her lunch hour. There are plenty of vehicles at Blair’s house if I need to use one, he says. I hand over the car key and my room key and he takes my suitcase.

“Ready?” he says.

I nod and we make our way outside to his car. In less than a minute we are on our way. Peter tells me the drive to Blair’s home in the bedroom community of Ladue will take less than twenty-five minutes.

He looks tired and preoccupied but he makes an attempt to get to know me. He asks me what I do for a living and where I am from, of course, and I answer as best I can. Then he tells me that Blair asked about me right away when he came downstairs to breakfast this morning. She had apparently awakened before anyone else. Peter doesn’t know when she came downstairs but she was already sitting in the breakfast room with a cup of coffee when he joined her.

“So, how is she?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “She was hysterical yesterday and this morning she just seems shell-shocked.”

“Are her parents coming? Will they be able to help her with… with the details?”

“They’re flying in this afternoon from Dallas, but they won’t have to do much on that end,” Peter answers. “Brad’s lawyers will take care of Blair’s interests when it comes to his estate. He has left her a wealthy woman. She won’t have to worry about keeping her home or putting the twins through college. Or anything financially, really.”

“That’s something to be grateful for,” I say. “And Brad’s parents and his brother? They live here in St. Louis, too, right? And his sister, Annette?”

“Yes. They were all at the house for a while last night, too. Except for Annette and the girls. Annette kept the girls at home with her. She was afraid for them to see Blair in the state she was in.”

I think of Chloe and Leah, just three years old, most likely unaware of how much their lives have changed in just one day.

“They won’t remember him,” I say rather absently.

We ride the rest of the way in silence.

Blair had sent me pictures of the house she and Brad had built two years ago. I knew it was spacious and elegant and I knew that it cost more than three million dollars to build. But I’ve never been in a home that boasts more than seven thousand square feet and I certainly never have had a housekeeper take my “things up to a guest suite” upon entering a tiled entryway crafted of Italian marble. It’s more impressive than I expected.

Peter ushers me into a room off the main entry that is nearly wall-to-wall windows with no drapes or blinds of any kind. A set of wrought iron benches and chairs, adorned with black-and-white striped cushions, are placed around a glass table whose center is nearly covered with a huge arrangement of pale pink daylilies. An ebony baby grand piano fills one sunny corner; its black shiny top is up and is glistening in the morning sun. To the left of the piano is another seating area. Two fat white chairs sit on a small Persian rug and another glass-topped table separates them. On this one is a Lladro sculpture and three lead crystal candlesticks. The room looks empty of people. I almost miss Blair sitting on the piano bench. The open piano top nearly hides her.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Peter says softly.

He walks quietly out of the room and I take two steps toward Blair and then stop. I’m afraid to be alone with her. She doesn’t know how to play the piano. I don’t know why she is sitting there.

“I don’t know what to do, Tess,” she says, breaking the silence, inviting me to approach her.

I walk to the piano and sink down beside her on the bench, wrapping an arm around her. She feels light and weightless.

“I don’t either,” I say.

She leans into me and rests her head in the crook of my neck and shoulder. I’m afraid she will start to weep and I don’t know what to say to her if she does, but she doesn’t.

We sit there like that for maybe five minutes, not saying anything.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says again.

I am nervous about what to say in response. I came here to help her. She asked me here for support and encouragement. I can think of nothing wise and wonderful to say. Instead, I think of something wild and wholly inappropriate and before I can stop myself, it is out of my mouth.

“Let’s go paint our toe nails.”

She starts to shake and it is on the tip of my tongue to begin a lengthy apology but then I realize she is laughing. I start to laugh, too. Pretty soon we are laughing so hard, the tears that we had wanted to shed all along are streaming down our faces.

I am so glad Peter shut the door behind him.

The morning passes quietly. Blair and I did not stay long in the sunroom after gaining back our composure. When we emerged, looking puffy-eyed and red-faced, Peter had assumed we had been deep in grief for Brad. It was so much more than that. But I cannot explain it to him or anyone else.

A little before noon, we decide to sip some tea on the patio in Blair’s expansive backyard. Peter’s wife, Shar, joined us for a little while, but she has left to go make lunch arrangements. After Shar goes back into the house, Blair tells me the doctors told her Brad had four blocked arteries, probably a hereditary condition. No one knew anything about it. Not even Brad. The cholesterol levels in his blood were sky high. He would’ve been a good candidate for quadruple by-pass if his condition had been caught earlier, but Brad wasn’t in the habit of seeing a doctor regularly. He was fit and trim and hardly ever got sick so he never saw the need. He attributed recent dizzy spells to a busy schedule and lack of sleep. In the five years they were married, Blair never once took him to a doctor and he never went on his own.

“He always ate and did whatever he wanted,” Blair tells me.

She takes a breath after saying this, like she is going to say something else, but then she stops. She has changed her mind. She looks off in the distance, her thoughts far away.

“Blair, what can I do for you?” I ask. “Are there any arrangements I can make? Do you want me to go get the girls?”

She blinks long and hard.

“Brad’s parents are taking care of all the arrangements. He is their son. Their heir.”

Blair sounds almost aloof as she says this. I am not sure what she is thinking.

“Well, do you want to pick out some flowers for yourself?” I ask.

“Flowers?” she says, turning to me like I am suggesting something foreign.

“Well, maybe you’d like to have a flower arrangement for the funeral that is special to just you and Brad,” I reply. “You know, like maybe the same flowers you had at your wedding.”

“Is that what you would do?”

Blair is looking at me with those big, liquid eyes of hers that all the boys loved when we were in middle school. They look too big today, wide-open and searching.

“Who knows?” I say to her, dropping my eyes. “I am not even married.”

“Yet,” she says, like she still has hope for me.

After a few minutes of silence I ask her again if she would like me to get the girls for her.

“No,” she says and again she sounds aloof. It is a side of grief I have never seen.

After lunch, Peter heads over to the airport to get Blair’s parents and Shar returns to their home. When he leaves, I convince Blair to rest for a while. I head to my guest suite, as the housekeeper called it, and unpack my things. The closest thing I have to a black dress is a purple bolero jacket and gray skirt that Antonio says I look captivating in. I wonder if I will have a free moment to find something more appropriate to wear.

When I am done I make my way back to the main part of the house and tiptoe up the stairs to the family bedrooms. I pass an oak-paneled study, another guest suite and a sitting room on the way. At the top of the stairs I find the twins’ rooms; two large bedrooms that are joined by a common play area. The rooms are splashed with yellow and pale lavender. I feel a stab of envy as I think about how wonderful it would be to have two curly-headed daughters like Chloe and Leah. I walk past these rooms and up a few steps to the master suite. Blair is lying on the king-size bed; its massive four posters seem to guard her like knights.

I stand there for a few minutes. Her back is to me.

“I am awake,” she says. “You can come in.”

I walk in and she turns her head toward me.

“Maybe you could just sit here with me. You don’t have to say anything, Tess.”

“Sure.” I slip into a soft armchair by a window that I think no one has sat in very much. We stay this way, in silence, for quite awhile.

I have dozed off when I hear footsteps on tile and voices. I snap my eyes open. Blair is sitting up on the bed and running a hand through her hair.

“They’re here,” she says to me without emotion.

I follow her downstairs. In the entry, surrounded by brown leather suitcases, are Veronica and Jack Devere. He looks pretty much the same as he did at Blair’s wedding five years ago, a little less hair, a few more inches around his middle. Veronica, not surprisingly, looks younger. She is wearing a taupe-colored rayon suit and a silk scarf around her neck that resembles the tawny hide of a cheetah. Gold glitters on her fingers, wrists, neck and ears. She holds out her arms to Blair and waits for her daughter to come to her.

“There, there,” she says, enclosing Blair in her arms. Jack takes few steps closer to his daughter and rubs Blair’s back. Neither one says anything else. They have absolutely no idea how to comfort their daughter.

I step away toward the sunroom to let the weird display of sympathy run its course. I stand in the doorway between one room and the next, leaning on the frame of the door. I can’t help but think—I am ashamed to admit it—that Veronica is hoping the embrace won’t rumple her suit. I try to tell myself it is not as bad as that, but I am remembering all those afternoons and evenings Blair was left home alone when her dad was flying sorties and Veronica was out shopping, sightseeing, dining and doing who know what else an hour away in Memphis. I am remembering all the times we went into Veronica’s closet and tried on all her clothes while she was out. We didn’t even have to be sneaky. We knew she wouldn’t be home for hours.

I am remembering the pity I used to feel for Blair when we were young. I am remembering that Veronica had a dozen different purses and none of them ever interested me.

Veronica pulls away from Blair and flicks a stray hair from her daughter’s forehead.

“We’ll get through this, you’ll see,” Veronica says. “Won’t we, Jack?

Jack Devere finds his voice and chimes in.

“It’ll be okay, babe,” he says to Blair, still stroking her back.

Veronica suddenly notices me standing at the far end of the room.

“Oh, Tess. How good of you to come!” she says and Jack turns and smiles halfheartedly at me.

“Hello, Veronica, Jack,” I say as politely as I can.

“Now let’s get settled in so we can see where you need help,” Veronica says as she turns back to Blair and Jack. “Grab those hangers off the back of that smaller suitcase, Jack, and I’ll hang those up so they don’t get wrinkled.”

I watch as Veronica takes Blair’s hand and they begin to ascend the staircase. Jack follows holding two matching, navy blue sailor dresses, size three.