Riverside Park. Laura Wormer Van

on the airplane during the ride home.”

      “Okay, guys, we gotta move,”Jack called to the group, tapping his watch.

      “Mrs. Darenbrook?” The caterer appeared from the doorway. “We’re almost finished in the kitchen. I want to make sure everything is the way you want it before we leave.”

      “Bye, darlin’!” Jack shouted over the crowd, waving to her.

      “Safe journey, everyone!” Cassy called before closing the front door.

      The kitchen looked better than it had when the caterer arrived and Cassy told him so. She gave everybody a small envelope (containing tips), and thanked them for such a lovely dinner.

      “You made almost all of the food, Mrs. Darenbrook,” the caterer pointed out.

      “I hope you young people are taking the leftovers home,” she said, addressing the group.

      The workers held up bags of disposable food containers and thanked her.

      Cassy saw the crew out the service entrance and walked down the long back hall toward the master suite, peering in at the state of the guest bedrooms, but not worrying about them since housekeeping would be back in full force in the morning. There was no trick to running any of the Darenbrook households, really. All it took was money.

      The burden of Thanksgiving had been lifted and she felt her energy and spirits rising already. She vigorously brushed out her hair and then put it back up. She went into the bathroom to wash up a little and brush her teeth, then came back out to sit at the vanity to put on a little fresh makeup. She also exchanged the pearl earrings she had been wearing for two large diamond ones and took off her wedding rings. She threw a couple of things into a shoulder bag and hastily ran a lint brush over her dress. She went out to the front hall closet to retrieve a coat and suitcase and took the elevator down to the subterranean garage.

      “I could have brought those down for you, Mrs. Darenbrook,” the attendant said, rushing over to take the shoulder bag and suitcase.

      “No worry,” she said. She watched him put the suitcase in the trunk of her silver Jaguar. “I’m sorry you have to work today.”

      “I’m not. I get double time.” He closed the trunk and hurried around to open the driver’s-side door for her. “I’m through here at eight and then we’ll have our big family dinner.”

      “Oh, I’m glad.” She slipped down behind the wheel.

      “So your house is finally quiet again, huh? That was a lot of people staying with you and Mr. Darenbrook.”

      “Indeed,” she said, smiling.

      “Mr. Darenbrook said he’s racing his boat in the Caribbean this weekend.”

      “Yes, he is. With his son.”

      “Think he’ll win? Oh, why do I even ask? Even when Mr. Darenbrook loses he still always seems to win somehow. Do you know what I mean?”

      Cassy nodded, starting the engine. “Oh, yes, I know what you mean,” she assured him.

      2

      What Happened to the Darenbrook Marriage

      AFTER THE HUMILIATING defeat of her first marriage, falling in love with Jackson Darenbrook had seemed close to a miracle. Cassy remembered the day Jack realized he was in love with her very well. They’d been arguing (they had always been arguing in the early days of the fledgling network), and suddenly Jackson stopped talking and stared at Cassy with a sense of dawning revelation. Cassy knew then how he felt about her. And in that moment she knew that she had been falling for him, as well.

      She was forty-four when they married and Jackson forty-nine. His family and friends were astounded by the changes in him by the time he stood at the altar. “He’s a happy man, again,” Cordelia told her. “Thank God he’s a happy man again.”

      Cassy took her vows as sacred. She felt blessed and reborn to have such a commitment come to her at that point in her life, and she was determined to appreciate every nuance of it. With the exception of ongoing problems with Lydia, those first couple of years were blissful. When not traveling on business—which both did rather extensively—they were together at West End (the corporate headquarters of Darenbrook Communications on the Hudson River at Sixty-fifth Street), here at home on Riverside Drive, or at the house in Litchfield. They sailed and skied and traveled continents; they worked out together and often spent downtime just lazying around, reading newspapers, watching TV or movies, eating good food and making love.

      Cassy felt loved, respected and redeemed.

      She never tried to compete with the memory of Barbara, Jackson’s first wife, because she knew she could never win in comparison to a saint who had died in her thirties.

      Henry came home for brief periods while in college and he got on very well with Jackson. Kevin appeared erratically. They were married about two and a half years when Lydia tried to kill herself. Jack was away so Cassy hurried downtown to the emergency room of St.Vincent’s where the police told her Lydia had slit her wrists and then had been walking around Sheridan Square. The doctor said Lydia was on a combination of alcohol, painkillers and cocaine.

      Lydia was crying for her dead mother when Cassy saw her. Cassy tried to soothe her, explaining her father was rushing back to New York and would be here as soon as he could, that her father loved her so much—

      Something akin to The Exorcist then occurred. Lydia’s tears vanished and her eyes took on an eerie glitter while she told Cassy what a fool she was, what a stupid idiot she was. Didn’t she know that Jackson was incapable of caring for anyone except himself? That he had conned her like he conned everyone? And the only reason he had married Cassy was that Aunt Cordie Lou had thrown in the towel?

      “Don’t you get it? He married you so you’d deal with me and Kev! You are so fucking stupid! You’re a glorified housekeeper, taking care of things while he runs around getting his rocks off!”

      Cassy gratefully agreed with the doctor that Lydia be held in psychiatric for observation for the three days they could legally keep her. Or at least until her father arrived.

      Jackson ended up not flying straight home but continued on his trip because, he said, Cassy seemed to have matters so well in hand.

      In retrospect those two and a half years of marital bliss had been a gift from the heavens above. If Cassy’s world had exploded any sooner, she wasn’t sure what would have happened to her.

      “I came to say goodbye,” the outgoing publisher of the Darenbrook newspaper in Charleston told Cassy, coming into her office at West End not long after Lydia’s suicide attempt. “I handed in my resignation. I’m going to be the publisher of a new magazine in D.C.”

      “Well, I’m happy for you and miserable for us,” Cassy said, coming around from behind her desk, holding out her hand. “Congratulations, Sheila.”

      “Thank you.” Sheila glanced back over her shoulder at the door. She was an attractive woman, in her early forties, with dark hair and green eyes. “Do you think we can talk a minute?”

      “Sure,” Cassy said, going to close her office door, hoping Sheila was not going to try to pick her brain about how to effectively compete with the D.C. magazine Darenbrook Communications published.

      They had scarcely sat down when Sheila burst into tears. Cassy didn’t know her very well and felt a little embarrassed for her. She got up to get Sheila some Kleenex and thought, I hope nothing’s happened to her child. Sheila had brought her little girl to West End on bring-your-child-to-work day the year before.

      “I’m sorry,” Sheila said, trying to pull herself together. “It’s just been so stressful.”

      “I understand. It was hard when I left my old job at WST.”

      “You are such a wonderful person, Cassy,” Sheila said then, sounding miserable.

      “I