Carla Neggers - Betrayals

“Or pay the price of her wrath?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s good of you to come, you know.”

As if he’d had a choice. Jared was an apprentice architect with his father’s San Francisco firm and had contributed to the design of Winston & Reed’s new headquarters in only the most minor of ways. Wesley Sloan wasn’t a man who easily delegated authority, even to his son. But Jared had no illusions about why he was in Boston: his Aunt Annette was portraying her new project as a family affair, and he was family. She’d gone so far as to summon Quentin from Saigon, where he’d gone in October to work with the branch that had launched Winston & Reed at the beginning of American military involvement in Vietnam more than a decade ago. Naturally Quentin had come. He wasn’t one to defy his mother’s wishes and going to Saigon in the first place had about exhausted his courage. With the Paris Peace Accords, Winston & Reed was scaling back its Southeast Asian operation, and Annette had only just barely tolerated having her twenty-two-year-old son volunteer to help. Jared thought he understood. She’d lost her husband in Vietnam; she didn’t intend to lose her only child.

Jared wouldn’t have thought twice about defying his aunt, but he had his own reasons for wanting to accompany his father to Boston. His parents were seldom in the same city-his mother still lived on Beacon Hill -and he planned to take advantage. They’d agreed to have dinner with him while they were all in town. And then he’d hit them with his own plans to head off to the Far East. Starting June first, he would spend a year working as an architect in Saigon, under a foundation grant. He wasn’t ready to be tied down to a firm, nor did he consider his architectural education complete. Southeast Asia would provide him opportunities for learning that he couldn’t get in San Francisco or Boston. Wesley Sloan would see his only son’s departure from his firm as a betrayal. Maybe in a way it was. But it was something Jared had to do. His student deferments had kept him out of the war, and now he felt he needed to see the country where the lives of so many of his friends had been changed-and lost. Whenever he thought of the young men his own age, of his sensitive Uncle Benjamin, who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and of Stephen Blackburn, good-humored and keenly intelligent, Jared knew he had to go.

“What the devil’s going on over there?” Wesley Sloan grumbled. “Who’s that lunatic?”

Jared followed his father’s gaze down the chain-link fence securing the demolition area, where the wind had kicked up dust and debris. A woman in a bright red sweatshirt and Red Sox cap on backward was perched rooster-like atop a fence post. She had a camera strapped around her neck and was snapping pictures.

“I’ll go see,” Jared volunteered.

Coming closer, he saw the messy chestnut braid trailing halfway down her back and her holey jeans and sneakers. Had to be one of Boston ’s countless students. The woman jumped down from the fence post, landing lightly just inside the demolition area. She had a nice shape under her ratty clothes.

“I wouldn’t stand in there without a hard hat on if I were you,” he said.

She looked around at him, her eyes a lively shade of blue, her face angular and attractive and oddly familiar. “Of all people,” she said under her breath, then climbed as fast as a monkey back up the fence, paused on the post and hopped down beside him. Her Red Sox cap came off, and loose hairs blew in her face. “What’re you doing here?”

“I’m with the press conference,” he said formally, bothered by her face. Did he recognize her? “My name’s Jared Sloan. Look, this area’s posted and-”

“I know who you are.”

“Your face is familiar-”

She swept her cap up off the ground and grinned at him. “I would hope so.”

And suddenly Jared recognized her. He’d probably known, on a gut level, when he’d first spotted her. The face, the eyes, the brazenness-he had never forgotten them. But if there was anyone he didn’t expect to find in Boston, it was Rebecca Blackburn.

“R.J.,” he said.

She was already heading back out across Atlantic Avenue and failed to hear him.

The Winstons had arrived, and the press conference was about to begin. Jared was supposed to line up for the obligatory family photo; he could see his father looking around for him. Quentin, suntanned and wearing a conservative suit that made him look forty, caught his cousin’s eye and waved. Jared pretended not to see him. His Aunt Annette glanced at her watch. She was forty-five and, Jared suspected, relished being chairman of a thriving corporation, but she’d be the last to say so. Jared remembered her as more of a free spirit, not the unapproachable, gray-suited grande dame she was playing these days. He wondered if power did that to people. Or just widowhood and its responsibilities. For certain, she wouldn’t appreciate his cutting out on her.

He didn’t care. They could go on without him.

He ran after Rebecca.

She’d cut down a side street and was at a corner when he caught up with her, impatiently waiting to cross a narrow street clogged with traffic. “I remember,” Jared said, sidling up next to her, “when you couldn’t wait to be old enough to cross a street by yourself.”

She fastened her bright eyes on him. “Hello, Jared.”

He grinned. “Hello, R.J.”

“What jogged your memory?” she asked. “You haven’t seen me since I was eight.”

She was all of nineteen now. “You haven’t changed. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Sure. And I’ll buy an order of French fries. We’ll share.”

They found a Brigham’s and sat opposite each other in a booth with their coffee and fries, and the decade since Jared had held back his tears and watched the Blackburn moving truck trundle down West Cedar Street melted away. They talked about San Francisco and Florida and her five brothers and his two half-sisters. Jared said something that amused Rebecca, and in her laugh he heard the echo of the little kid he’d played with, bugged, tolerated and rescued so long ago, not in terms of years, but in how much their lives had changed since. Especially hers.

“How’s your Blackburn grandfather these days?” he asked.

She didn’t avert her eyes, but he could see she was tempted. “Fine.”

“It took courage for him to stay on Beacon Hill. What your mother did took a different kind of courage. Everyone thought Thomas would sell the house and retire to Maine or someplace. It can’t have been easy for him living around the corner from my aunt.”

Rebecca was squinting her so-blue eyes at him. “Thomas?”

Jared grinned. “He insisted on my calling him by his first name.”

“When?”

“A few years ago. I went to college here, and he had me over every now and then for dinner with him and his boarders. Usually served some dish of the flaming-esophagus variety.”

“Sunday nights?”

“Generally, yeah. R.J., what’s wrong?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m just jealous. I missed so many years with him-by his choice and my mother’s, maybe even a little of mine. You had him when I didn’t.”

“He’s only in his midsixties. He’ll probably outlive us all.” Jared winced at his insensitivity, considering her father’s untimely death. “I’m sorry…”

“No, don’t be. Wounds heal, Jared. I’m not angry with my grandfather for what happened to my father and your uncle. I wish I understood more about it, but-”

“But Thomas won’t tell you.”

“That’s right. And I can’t force him. It must be horrible, having to live with that guilt. No matter what happened, I don’t think Dad would’ve wanted that. Look, you’re missing your press conference.”