Last to Know: A Novel(23)

“Oh, please.” Rose pushed a self-conscious hand through her hair. “Rose.”

Harry’s eyes met hers across the table. He said, “Rose, I have a favor to ask of you. Bea has no family at all. She has nowhere to live. In fact one of the most tragic things I’ve ever heard was when I asked the girl where she would go and she said simply to book her into the Ritz-Carlton.” He spread his hands wide, amazed. “There seems to be no one she can turn to, nowhere to go after her home burned to the ground, no woman she knows to offer advice or help. In fact it was then she told me how much she admired you, how she envied your family, merely glimpsed from across the lake. ‘Like real people,’ Bea said.” Harry’s eyes were linked with Rose’s now. “It was,” he added softly, “one of the saddest statements I ever heard.”

Rose sat back in her chair. She stared down at her empty coffee cup. A silence fell. Harry did not break it.

After a few minutes, Rose met his eyes again. “Why do I have the feeling I know what you are going to ask? But before you do, I want to ask you why? Why me?”

“Not just you, Rose. It’s your family. Bea needs a family, if only for a short while. Someplace she can feel safe, maybe for the first time in her life. All she’s ever done is look after her mother, instead of the other way around.”

“Did she ask you to ask me?”

Harry shook his head. “Bea did not ask me to ask you. Not directly anyhow. It was simply the way she talked of you, a woman she scarcely knows, but it’s the image of you as the mother she would liked to have had, of your family, doing what families do. It’s something she never had, and perhaps never will. She’s a damaged young woman, Rose, I won’t pretend otherwise. She needs help and I’ve come to you to ask for it, instead of simply turning her over to therapists and doctors.”

“And the Ritz-Carlton,” Rose added, making him smile. “It sounds as though money is no problem. Ritz-Carltons do not come cheap.”

“I’m sure we could make some financial arrangement…”

“Oh God, really, Harry Jordan!” Rose flounced, irritated, over to the stove where she gave the perennial pot of soup into which all leftovers were tossed another stir. “I’m not asking for money. Of course we’ll take the girl in, but she’ll have to get it straight about how things work in this family.”

Rose was flustered, her cheeks were pink, her eyes flashed, and her gypsyish blouse had slipped from one rounded, lightly golden-tanned shoulder.

“So?” Harry had noticed the blouse. “How do things work around here?”

“Er, well…” Rose was thinking of Roman and of what effect having an attractive, sexy young woman about the house might have. Because there was an aura of sex about Bea, and “vulnerable waifs” could be very appealing. “Everybody’s supposed to do their bit to keep the place running. Wally likes the quiet—for his writing you know.”

Harry nodded. He was remembering Wally Osborne rowing back home across the lake immediately before the explosion. He said, “I’m sure Bea would be happy to help any way she could. What I’m wondering now is about your husband. He already has four kids around the house.”

“So? Another one?” Rose shrugged and the gypsy blouse slipped a little lower. “Actually, I like the idea. Give the twins a role model, that kind of thing. So I’m saying yes, but only for one week. Just to get her over the hump, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” Harry agreed again, relieved. “Right now, I’ve left her in the care of social services, I could not allow her to be alone in a hotel, after what happened.”

Rose nodded, understanding. “She’s upset, heartbroken perhaps.”

Harry did not think Bea was heartbroken. He filled Rose in on Lacey Havnel’s background as told to him by her daughter, and also the fact that Bea was probably now a rich young woman since she stood to inherit everything her supposedly wealthy mother possessed, as well as the insurance, though he had yet to check out that information. “Including,” he added, “the burned-out wreck of a house we can see from here.”

He walked over to the window and Rose went and stood next to him. They looked over the lake. Firemen were still sifting through the wreckage making sure nothing smoldered.

Harry said, “They found her mother, you know. She’s at the morgue now.”

Rose turned and stared at him, stunned. Somehow he had just made it real for her.

“The poor child,” she said quietly, feeling bad because she had not wanted to take her in. “What happens now? There’ll be a funeral I suppose.”

“Not for a while. We have to complete our inquiries first, into the cause of the fire.” Harry shrugged, leaving the exact reason for stalling vague.

“Oh.” Rose looked shocked. “That makes it even worse. Of course we’ll do all we can to help her. I’ll get Wally to go pick her up if you like.” Rose wasn’t sure it would be a task her husband would enjoy, but she could not go herself, she was needed here for her family.

“No need. Not yet. And anyhow we can have social services take care of that.”

“Maybe she’ll need a limo,” Rose said with a hint of a grin, thinking of the Ritz-Carlton.

Harry was looking across at the island, remembering Bea half drowned in the water. “So who owns that island?” he asked.