New England White by Stephen L. Carter Page A

are you going to do?”
    “Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now, trust me.” In his run-along-now tone, when he wanted to get back to work. Often she felt like a supplicant in this palatial room. Often she was. “Wait. Jules, wait. One thing.”
    “Hmmm?”
    “Do you have any idea why this Tice wanted to see your office? What he was looking for?”
    “No.”
    “The Vanessa File?” He meant the collection of clippings and memos about their daughter’s troubles, which she kept at Kepler in the arbitrary belief that it was safer there than at home.
    “I don’t know. I don’t think Claire is aware of its existence.”
    “Maybe Tony is.” He stroked his graying goatee. “Well, all right. Never mind. I’m sorry you had to go through this, Jules. I’ll take care of it.”
    Julia hesitated. Through two decades of marriage, Lemaster had always promised to take care of whatever problem might arise, and had generally kept his word. She wondered when she had crossed the line from reliance to dependence.
    “Thanks, sweetie,” she said. Already back at his laptop, he only smiled.
    Julia stepped across the breezeway into the house. Maybe Tice had indeed been after the Vanessa File. Perhaps he represented someone planning to sue them for some offense, yet unknown, that the teenager had committed. But Julia had another explanation, even if she was not prepared to share it with her husband.
    Mary Mallard had assumed, erroneously, that Kellen had entrusted his surplus to Julia before he died. There was no reason in the world to suppose Mary was the only one who thought so.

CHAPTER 8
    MAIN STREET
    (I)
    T HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON , two days before Thanksgiving, Julia snuck out of Cookie’s like a thief, carrying candy for gifts to various friends and colleagues. Snuggling at the bottom of the bag was a diet-busting box of cappuccino truffles for herself. Standing in Vera’s shop, she often identified friends according to their tastes: Tonya Montez from Ladybugs was peanut brittle, Iris Feynman from across the hall at Kepler was vanilla fudge, and budget-conscious Boris Gibbs, who spent his own money on less expensive sweets from the CVS but would never turn down a freebie—Boris was smeary, messy chocolate-covered cherries.
    Out on Main Street, the day was clear but glowering. Icicles garlanded stores and trees and parking meters. Julia recognized few passing faces, but she was not really looking. She was worrying. Jeannie walked contentedly beside her mother, features swallowed by the fur-lined hood of her pricey parka as, delicately, she popped Jelly Bellys into her mouth. Of course Jeannie was content. She was always content. Unlike her brothers, Jeannie seemed to view her older sister’s weaknesses as an opportunity to showcase her own strengths. The mantle of Clan princess, once draped around Julia’s shoulders—as, back in Harlem of the fifties, it had been draped around Mona’s—had started to slip from Vanessa’s even before the fire. Jeannie seemed to think the mantle her due.
    In her dreariest moments, Julia gazed in wonder at her four children, and felt maternal failure staring back at her.
    “Hurry up, honey.”
    “Why?” Another Jelly Belly.
    “Because it’s almost five.”
    “So?”
    “So, we have to go see Mr. Carrington before he closes.”
    “Why?”
    Classic Jeannie. In her leisurely way, she was never quite disobedient, but she always wanted reasons. Still, Julia was not about to explain to her youngest that Vera Brightwood, in the midst of one of her poisonous monologues, had let slip that she had seen Mommy’s ex-lover, three days before he died, going into Old Landing, the antiques shop across the street.
    Or that he stayed for an hour.
    (II)
    F RANK C ARRINGTON WAS , to Julia’s way of thinking, a typical Landinger: white and sturdy and in town forever. In his day he had been everything from deputy constable to school-bus driver to bartender, before discovering that he had an eye for