Just Take My Heart - Mary Higgins Clark [9]
Then Alice thought about the evening a few weeks ago when her sisters had insisted on taking her to dinner for her seventieth birthday and toasted her at the table. They were afraid to mention Nata?lie's name but I insisted we toast her, too, Alice remembered. We even managed to joke about it. “Trust me, Natalie wouldn't have al?lowed a fortieth birthday party,” she'd said. “Remember, she always told us that in show business it's a good idea to be eternally young.”
She is eternally young, Alice thought, sighing, as she got up from the easy chair at seven a.m. and reached down to pull on her slippers. Her arthritic knees were always worse in the morning. Wincing as she got to her feet, she walked across the living room of her small apartment on West Sixty-fifth Street, closed the windows, and pulled up the shades. As always, the sight of the Hudson River in Manhattan lifted her spirits.
Natalie had inherited her love of the water. That was why she had so often driven up to Cape Cod, even for just a few days.
Alice tightened the sash on her soft cotton bathrobe. She loved fresh air, but it had become colder during the night and now the living room was chilly. She adjusted the thermostat upward, went into the galley kitchen, and reached for the coffeepot. It had been set to go on at 6:55. The coffee had brewed and her cup was on the sideboard next to it.
She knew she should eat at least a slice of toast, but she simply didn't want it. What would the prosecutor ask her? she wondered as she carried the cup into the dinette and sat at the table in the chair that gave the best view of the river. And what can I add to what I already told the detectives more than two years ago? That Gregg wanted a reconciliation and that I urged my daughter to go back to him?
That I loved Gregg?
That I now despise him?
That I will never understand how he could have done this to her?
For the interview, Alice decided to wear a black pants suit with a white blouse. Her sister had bought it for her to wear to Natalie's funeral. In these two years, she had lost a little weight and knew the suit hung loosely on her. But what difference does that make? she asked herself. She had stopped touching up her hair and now it was pure white, with a natural wave that saved her many trips to the beauty salon. The weight loss had caused the wrinkles on her face to deepen, and she had no energy to keep up with facials, as Natalie had always reminded her to do.
The meeting was scheduled for ten o'clock. At eight, Alice went downstairs, walked a block past Lincoln Center, went into the subway, and took the train that stopped at the Port Authority Bus Termi?nal. On the brief ride, she found herself thinking about the house in Closter. A real estate agent had urged her not to try to sell it while the newspapers were writing daily about Natalie. “Wait a while,” he'd suggested. “Then paint the whole interior white. That will give it a nice clean and fresh feeling. Then we'll put it on the market.”
Alice knew the man hadn't meant to be rude or insensitive. It was just that the idea of somehow whitewashing Natalie's death hurt so much. When his exclusive on the listing of the house ended, she did not renew it.
When she got to the Port Authority, it was, as usual, teeming with people rushing in and out of the building, hurrying to and from platforms to catch their buses or to flag down a cab. For Alice, like every?where she went, it was a reminder. She could see herself rushing Natalie through here after school for television commercial audi?tions as early as when she was still in kindergarten.
Even then, people stopped to look at her, Alice thought, as she waited on line to buy a round-trip ticket to and from Hackensack, New Jersey, where the courthouse was located. When all the other kids had long hair Natalie had the pageboy cut and bangs. She was a beautiful child and she stood out.
But it was more than that. She had Stardust clinging to her.
After all these years, it would have felt natural to go to Gate