David Handler - The shimmering blond sister

“You mean… are you saying you’ve moved here?”

Beth tilted her head at him fetchingly, much like Natalie Wood used to do. “Why, yes. I’ve lived here since the end of May.”

“This is incredible. Why didn’t you call me?”

“You’re a big star now. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“As if. I was just going to get a fruit smoothie. Could I buy you one?”

He could. He did. They sat, Mitch trying his darnedest not to stare at her across the table. Beth wore her hair shorter now, cropped at her chin. But otherwise she’d changed remarkably little in the twenty years since Mitch had last seen her. Same curvy figure. Same plump, inviting lips. Same melting gaze from those big, dark eyes. Beth’s face was remarkably smooth and unlined. No bags, no sags. He wondered if she’d had some high-end cosmetic surgery done. She looked as if she could afford it. She was wearing a lot of gold. Not ostentatiously, but it was there. Several rings on her soft, delicate fingers. A necklace, a bracelet, the Rolex on her wrist.

“My husband, Irwin, died last year,” she informed him, sipping her smoothie. “We had eighteen good years together. And I liked Scarsdale well enough. But there’s nothing worse than rattling around in a big house in suburbia all by yourself. So I sold the place. Just decided to do it and did it.” Beth’s manner, he realized, hadn’t changed either. She somehow managed to convey helpless fragility and steely self-reliance at the same exact time. “I’ve bought myself a small apartment in the city, on East 62nd, and I have the condo here so I can be closer to Kenny. He’s up in the Boston area. This way we get to see each other on weekends. He’ll be coming in tonight after work. Mitch, I can’t wait to tell him I’ve bumped into you.”

“What does Kenny do for a living?”

Beth stuck out her lower lip fretfully. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that.”

“Why, is it a deep, dark secret?”

“No, I just don’t understand a word of it. He’s a computer wiz. And apparently knows more about something called ‘molecular modeling’ than anyone in the country. He was on the faculty at MIT. Now he designs research computer systems for pharmaceutical companies.”

“Sounds pretty impressive.”

“He’s still the same Kenny,” she responded, swelling with motherly pride.

“Beth, I’d love to get together with both of you. Where are you living?”

“In the Captain Chadwick House.”

Mitch’s eyes widened. The Captain Chadwick House was the choicest condo colony in town. The only one situated in the Dorset Street Historic District. Des’s housemate, Bella Tillis, had been trying to grab up one of its precious units for ages. But they changed hands very discreetly and rarely, if ever, came on the open market. “It’s impossible to get in there. How did you manage it?”

“It was no trouble at all,” Beth answered with a shrug. “Your folks must be so proud of you, Mitch. How are they?”

“Oh, fine. They live down in Vero Beach now.” Retired New York City public school teachers, both of them.

“And how do they feel about you and your fiancee?” she asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

“You’ve heard about us, have you?”

“Who hasn’t? You and our resident trooper are the talk of the town.”

“She’s not. My fiancee, I mean. We’re not engaged. We were. But we’re not anymore. Although we’re getting along great.”

“And they’re okay with the… differences?”

“You mean the part about how she carries a fully loaded SIG-Sauer and I don’t?”

“You know what I mean.”

“They just want me to be happy.”

“That’s all that any parent wants, Mitch. Kenny’s engaged, you know. To a girl here in town named Kimberly Farrell.”

“Kimberly? No way!” Although this sort of thing was not unusual in small-town Dorset, Mitch had discovered. It was a world of wheels within wheels. “She’s my yoga teacher.”

“Very sweet girl,” Beth said with a noticeable lack of conviction. “Mind you, there’s baggage. She was married once before-very briefly. A local fellow named J. Z. Cliffe. I don’t suppose you know him, too, do you?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“I can’t help asking myself why it didn’t work out. She and Kenny have discussed it, but Kenny won’t share the details with me. He doesn’t usually keep secrets. I suppose it’s none of my business. It’s just that I’m concerned. Kenny… he isn’t that experienced when it comes to women. And he’s done really well financially.” Beth’s mouth tightened. “There’s also the matter of her father’s notoriety. Dex and Maddee live across the hall from me. That’s how the two kids met. Kimberly has been living with her folks for the past few months. Maddee needs the emotional support, I gather. Kenny ran into her one morning as she was heading off in her yoga gear. They struck up a conversation. Next thing I knew he was coming down every weekend to see her, not me. Please don’t get me wrong, Mitch. He and Kimberly positively glow in each other’s presence. I’m excited for him. For both of us, really. I’m loving my new life. I’m taking sculpture classes at the art academy. And I dash into the city whenever I feel like it. My girlfriends and I go to the theater together, shop til we drop, talk our heads off. I’m having a lot of fun.”

And yet Mitch saw sadness in Beth’s eyes. He saw loss. He knew all about these things. He’d lost his own beloved wife, Maisie, to ovarian cancer after only two years of marriage. Had spent months telling people how great he was doing when he was actually a lonely wreck. Although he figured Beth had to be dating someone by now. A woman who looked like Beth didn’t stay alone for long. “Where are Kenny and Kimberly planning to live?”

“Up in Cambridge. She wants to keep the fitness center running. Her trainer, Hal, will manage it during the week. She’ll come down on weekends to teach a few classes and keep an eye on her folks. The wedding’s next month. Maddee has her heart set on a big fat Dorset wedding at the Yacht Club. Two hundred guests, an orchestra, the works. She’s hoping it will get her back in the good graces of their former friends.” Beth wrinkled her nose slightly. “I must confess, I have problems with her. And Dex I just plain can’t stand.”

“Well, you’re not alone there.”

Indeed, Dex Farrell was a pariah not just in Dorset, but all across America. As the head of Farrell and Co., the venerated credit-rating agency started by his grandfather, Dex Farrell was one of the Wall Street power brokers who’d been at the epicenter of the subprime home-mortgage meltdown. Dex Farrell had misrepresented the rating on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities. His name was synonymous with Wall Street recklessness, dishonesty and greed. The only reason he hadn’t been indicted for fraud was that federal prosecutors had concluded he was off his gourd. When pressed by a committee of the U.S. Congress to justify the high ratings he’d given to so many risky securities, he’d famously testified: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck.” And then proceeded to start quacking. And wouldn’t stop quacking even as he was being led from the chamber. His personal physician attributed Farrell’s unusual behavior to an adverse reaction to a prescription medication for stress. Whatever it was, the disgraced Dex Farrell and his shamed wife, Maddee, had unloaded their shorefront estate in Dorset-where a lot of their blue-blooded, old-money friends had lost a lot of that blue-blooded old money-and fled to Hobe Sound, Florida. Recently, they’d slipped quietly back into town.

“There’s no worthwhile cause that Maddee won’t donate her time to,” Beth said. “She delivers hot lunches to the housebound for Meals on Wheels. Stockpiles canned goods for the Food Pantry. Collects old clothes for the Nearly New shop at St. Anne’s. She’s quite the juggernaut. And so desperate to get back onto Dorset’s A-list that it’s kind of sad. Or it would be if she weren’t always reminding me how many servants she had when she was growing up.”