“Lily,” O’Connor said, in a far more gentle tone than the one he had been using with Warren, “I can see why you would want it to be true, but that doesn’t mean it is.”

“I’m enjoying being present while you refer to me as if I’m not,” Kyle said. “But I should point out to Mr. O’Connor that I haven’t said I’d accept Mr. Ducane’s offer.”

“He said no to us,” Auburn said.

“How coy,” O’Connor said.

“Lily, if you don’t mind,” Helen said, “I’ll ask Irene to take me home now. I’m-I’m not feeling well.”

“Oh, Helen, I’m so sorry,” Lily said. “I never meant for you to be upset by this, or to-”

“I know, dear. I know. Irene? Do you mind terribly if I cut this evening short?”

“Not at all-”

“I’ll take you, Helen,” O’Connor said. “I wouldn’t want Miss Kelly to miss any opportunities.”

“What are you saying?” I said.

“ ‘Substantial financial incentive’-isn’t that the way you put it, Mr. Yeager? Or is it now Mr. Ducane?”

I stood up, grabbed my bowl of strawberries and whipped cream, and pitched it at his face. He managed to get an arm up, which deflected the bowl enough to keep it from hitting him, but its contents kept sailing and reached the target. The bowl broke.

O’Connor didn’t say a word. He just stood up and left the table. I was horrified, but tried to keep my voice steady as I said, “Let me know how much that bowl cost,” to Lily, which for some reason made Warren and Kyle laugh and applaud.

“Ms. Kelly, I’d be pleased to replace that bowl,” Auburn said.

“No, really-I-and his suit. Oh God. His suit.”

“You leave these small problems to me,” he said. “It will give me pleasure to be of service to you. Just worry about getting Helen home, all right?”

Before I fled, Kyle asked for my number. I gave him my number at work.

As I drove Helen home, I began feeling worse and worse. She didn’t say anything until I pulled up in her driveway.

“It’s Jack, you know,” she said then.

For a moment, I thought she was hallucinating, seeing the ghost of her dead husband.

She looked at me and said, “Conn’s problem is Jack.”

“I don’t understand…”

“He’s not angry with you, Irene. He’s just angry and upset because Jack died. They were… oh, theirs was some wild combination of relationships. Father and son, older and younger brother, mentor and protégé, friends, coworkers, drinking partners… and a real pair of hell-raisers. They used to back each other up in brawls-Jack would start the fight and Conn would finish it. Barbarian, some would say, but uncivilized or no, it was just one more part of the bond between them. Jack did a lot for Conn, but it’s just as true- perhaps truer-that Conn looked after Jack. Conn was one of the people with us when Jack had the stroke. I don’t think Conn has known what to do with himself since that moment. It has made him surly as hell. I’ve never seen him behave in the way he’s behaved lately. I’m worried about him.”

We sat in silence.

“What can I do, Helen?”

“Try to be patient with him. He’ll probably make that as hard as possible. But, Irene-oh, what he can teach you if you’ll let him! More than Jack or I could ever teach you. He’s got the gift. Lately, though… his writing is never poor, mind you, but his writing hasn’t been at its best since Jack died-except once.”

“The art story.”

“Yes. When he worked with you.”

“Not exactly with me…”

“Don’t quibble.”

“I keep insulting him. I…I don’t think he brings out the best in me.”

“Why are your stories better lately?”

I laughed. “Okay, you’ve made your point.”

We fell silent again, then I said, “Helen, what about Warren Ducane’s claim?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Lily is right, but a few facial features and expressions hardly prove he’s Max. Still, there’s something…something about him that truly does remind me of Katy. Wishful thinking, probably. If Lily and Warren both accept him as their heir, he’ll be the richest young man who ever asked you for your phone number.”

“Aren’t there blood tests or something that can be done?”

“If Katy or Todd were alive, they might be able to show something- although I believe those tests can only exclude people who aren’t parents, not prove that a person is the parent. In any case, it doesn’t matter-Katy and Todd are dead.”

“Kyle said their bodies were never found.”

“No, they weren’t. But believe me, the world would have heard from Katy by now if she were alive.”

Early the next morning, a press release was issued by the office of an attorney named Zeke Brennan. Kyle Yeager was legally changing his name to Maxwell Ducane, and would instantly become the wealthiest young man in Las Piernas. The release stated that he would not be available for interviews.

O’Connor tried calling his hotel. He had checked out.

Lillian Vanderveer Linworth would only say that she looked forward to getting to know the young man better, but had no plans at present to change her will. Mitch Yeager refused to comment.

Kyle-or Max-didn’t call me.

Twenty-four hours after the announcement, O’Connor filed a story noting the disappearance of Warren Ducane.

24

“W HAT ARE YOU DOING?” SONYA YEAGER ASKED HER HUSBAND. “ARE you cooking?”

Mitch Yeager looked at her with disfavor. “No, I’m standing here in my robe and slippers at the stove, holding onto a pan, because I lost my way to the bathroom.”

“Mitch, I really get that you’re angry.”

He clenched his teeth. She had gone to one of those est seminars a year or so ago and hadn’t been able to talk right since. I get. I get. Werner Erhard was the only one who got-he got a lot of money for telling people that they couldn’t leave the room to take a leak while he insulted them. Now, there was a racket. A fucking cult. Mitch had let Sonya go to get her out of his hair for the weekend. When she wanted to keep enrolling in other courses, though, he refused-he didn’t want his kids talking like she did now.

“A man gets up to make a glass of warm milk for himself,” he said. “What’s it to you?”

“We have a cook. It doesn’t look right for you to do stuff like this yourself.”

“Who the hell is looking? And who the hell cares if they do?”

“I get that,” she said, nodding her pretty blond head. “But I could have done that for you. All you had to do was ask.”

“I didn’t want to trouble you,” he lied. He suppressed an impulse to tell her that she’d be better off spending her time with the peroxide bottle, because her dark roots were showing. She took comments about her hair to heart, and he didn’t want to have to deal with one of her crying jags.

“It wouldn’t have been any trouble, Mitch. I like doing things for you.”

Problem is, you only do one thing well, he thought to himself. Aloud he said, “Go to bed, Sonya. I’m fine.”

“Okay, I get that you want to be alone.”

“Right.” Well, if Werner could teach the bimbo that much, maybe the money hadn’t been wasted after all.

He poured the milk from the pan into a glass and took it into the larger of his two studies. He flipped a control on the Lionel train set that occupied most of the center of the room and idly sipped his milk as he watched the black steam locomotive make its way around the elaborate circuit laid out for it.

He had bought this train for that little shit who was now calling himself Max Ducane.

He tightened his fist in anger, thinking of the boy giving up the name he had given him. He had bestowed his brother Adam’s middle name on him, and now he rejected it. Rejected the Yeager name, too.

Mitch sat down in an overstuffed chair, took another sip of milk.

Some of his earliest memories were of Adam, warming a pan of milk in the small, sloping kitchen of the tiny ramshackle house downwind of the San Pedro canneries, a rented home in an area that reeked of fish processing (to this day, Mitch could not eat a tuna fish sandwich), a few blocks from the wharves where fishing boats were anchored. His father worked on boats if matters grew desperate, but mostly made a few dollars playing cards with sailors and longshoremen.