“They all have their own ideas at that age. Hell, look at mine.” Billy was seventeen, and had been picked up on drunk driving charges twice that year, and Ann had just gotten kicked out of her sophomore year at Wellesley, at nineteen. She wanted to go to Europe with her friends, while Arthur wanted her to spend some time at home. Jean had even tried to take her to lunch to reason with her, but she had brushed Jean off, and told her that she'd get what she wanted out of Daddy by the end of the year.

And true to her word, she did. She spent the following summer in the South of France, and picked up a thirty-seven-year-old French playboy, whom she married in Rome. She got pregnant, lost the child, and returned to New York with dark circles under her eyes and a penchant for pills. Her marriage had made the international press, of course, and Arthur had been sick about it when he met the “young man.” It had cost him a fortune to buy him off, but he had, and he left Ann in Palm Beach to “recuperate” as he said to her, but she seemed to get into plenty of trouble there, carousing all night with boys her own age, or their fathers if she had the chance. She was a racy one, in ways of which Jean did not approve, but she was twenty-one now, and there was little Arthur could do. She had gotten an enormous trust from her mother's estate, and she had the funds she needed now to run wild. She was back in Europe, raising hell, before she was twenty-two. And the only thing that cheered Arthur a little bit was that Billy had managed to stay in Princeton that year in spite of several near fatal scrapes he'd been in.

“I must say, they don't give one much peace of mind, do they, love?” They had quiet evenings together in Greenwich now, but most nights she insisted on driving home, no matter how late she got in. His children were no longer there, but she still had Tana at home, and Jean wouldn't dream of staying out for the night unless Tana was at a friend's, or skiing for a weekend somewhere. There were certain standards she expected to maintain, and it touched him about her. “You know, in the end they do what they want anyway, Jean. No matter how good an example you set.” It was true in a way, but he didn't fight her very hard. He was used to spending his nights alone now, and it made it more of a treat when they awoke side by side. There was very little passion left in what they shared. But it was comfortable for them both, particularly for him. She didn't ask him for more than he was willing to give, and he knew how grateful she was for all that he had done for her over the years. He had given her a security she might never have had without him, a wonderful job, a good school for her child, and little extras whenever he could, trips, jewels, furs. They were minor extravagances to him, and though Jean Roberts was still a wizard with a needle and thread, she no longer had to upholster her own furniture or make their own clothes, thanks to him. There was a cleaning woman who came twice a week, a comfortable roof over their heads, and Arthur knew that she loved him. He loved her too, but he was set in his ways, and neither of them had mentioned marriage in years. There was no reason to now. Their children were almost grown, he was fifty-four years old, his empire was doing well, and Jean was still attractive and fairly young, although there had been a matronly look to her now for the past several years. He liked her that way, though, and it seemed hard to believe that it had been twelve years. She had just turned forty that spring. And he had taken her to Paris for the week. It was almost like a dream. She brought back dozens of tiny treasures for Tana, and enchanted her with endless tales, including that of her birthday dinner at Maxim's. It was always sad coming home after trips like that, waking up in bed alone again, reaching out to him in the night and finding no one there, but she had lived that way for so long that it no longer bothered her, or at least she pretended that to herself, and after her outbreak three years before, Tana had never accused her again. She had been ashamed of herself afterwards. Her mother had always been so good to her. “I just want the best for you … that's all … I want you to be happy … not to be alone all the time.…”

“I'm not, sweetheart,” tears had filled Jean's eyes, “I have you.”

“That's not the same.” She had clung to her mother then, and the forbidden subject had not come up again. But there was no warmth lost between Arthur and Tana when they met, which always upset Jean. Actually, it would have been harder on her if he'd insisted on marrying her after all, because of the way Tana felt about him. She felt that he had used her mother for the past dozen years, and given nothing in exchange.

“How can you say that? We owe him so much!” She remembered the apartment beneath the elevated train, which Tana did not, the meager checks, the nights she couldn't even afford to feed the child meat, or when she bought lamb chops or a little steak for her and ate macaroni herself for three or four days.

“What do we owe him? A deal on this apartment? So what? You work, you could get us an apartment like this, Mom. You could do a whole lot of things for us without him.” But Jean was never as sure. She would have been frightened to leave him now, frightened not to work for Durning International, not to be at his right hand, not to have the apartment, the job, the security that she always knew was there … the car he replaced every two years so that she could go back and forth to Greenwich with ease. Originally, it had been a station wagon so that she could car pool his kids. The last two had been smaller though, pretty little Mercedes sedans he bought and replaced for her. And it wasn't as though she cared about the expensive gifts, there was more to it than that, much, much more. There was something about knowing that Arthur was there for her, if she needed him. It would have terrified her not to have that, and they had been together for so long now. No matter what Tana thought, she couldn't have given that up.

“And what happens when he dies?” Tana had been blunt with her once. “You're all alone with no job, nothing. If he loves you, why doesn't he marry you, Mom?”

“I suppose we're comfortable like this.”

Tana's eyes were big and green and hard, as Andy's had been when he disagreed with her. “That's not good enough. He owes you more than that, Mom. It's so damn easy for him.”

“It's easy for me, too, Tan.” She hadn't been able to argue with her that night. “I don't have to get used to anyone's quirks. I live the way I please. I make my own rules. And when I want, he takes me to Paris or London, or L.A. It's not such a bad life.” They both knew it wasn't entirely true, but there was no changing it now. They were set in their ways, both of them. And as she tidied the papers on her desk, she suddenly sensed him in the room. Somehow, she always knew when he was there, as though years ago, someone had planted a radar in her heart, designed to locate only him. He had walked silently into her office, not far from his own, and was looking at her, as she glanced up and saw him standing there.

“Hello,” she smiled the smile that only they had been sharing for more than twelve years, and it felt like sunshine in his heart as he looked at her. “How was your day?”

“Better now.” He hadn't seen her since noon, which was unusual for them. They seemed to touch base half a dozen times during the afternoons, met for coffee each morning, and often he took her to lunch with him. There had been gossip on and off over the years, particularly right after Marie Durning died, but eventually it had died down, and people just assumed they were friends, or if they were lovers, it was both discreet and dead-end, so no one bothered to talk about them anymore. He sat in his favorite comfortable chair across from her desk and lit his pipe. It was a smell she had come to love as part of him for more than a decade, and it pervaded all the rooms in which he lived, including her own bedroom with the East River view. “How about spending the day in Greenwich with me tomorrow, Jean? Why don't we both play hookie for a change?” It was rare for him to do that, but he'd been pushing very hard on a merger for the past seven weeks, and she thought the day off would do him good, and wished he would do things like that more frequently. But now she smiled at him regretfully.

“I wish I could. Tomorrow's our big day.” He often forgot things like that. But she didn't really expect him to remember Tana's graduation day. He looked blankly at her and she smiled as she said the single word. “Tana.”

“Oh, of course,” he waved the pipe and frowned as he laughed at her, “how stupid of me. It's a good thing you haven't depended on me the way I have on you, or you'd be in trouble most of the time.”

“I doubt that.” She smiled lovingly at him, and something very comfortable passed between them again. It was almost as though they no longer needed words. And in spite of the things Tana had said over the years, Jean Roberts needed nothing more than she had. As she sat there with the man she had loved for so long, she felt totally fulfilled.

“Is she all excited about graduation day?” He smiled at Jean, she was a very attractive woman in her own way. Her hair was peppered with gray, and she had big, beautiful dark eyes, and there was something delicate and graceful about her. Tana was longer, taller, almost coltlike, with a beauty that would surely stop men in the street in the next few years. She was going to Green Hill College in the heart of the South, and had gotten in under her own steam. Arthur had thought it a damn odd choice for a girl from the North, since it was filled mostly with Southern belles, but they had one of the finest language programs in the States, excellent laboratories, and a strong fine arts program. Tana had made up her own mind, the full scholarship had come through, based on her grades, and she was all set to go. She had a job in New England at a summer camp, and she would be going to Green Hill in the fall. And tomorrow was going to be her big day—graduation.

“If the volume of her record player is any indication of how she feels,” Jean smiled, “then she's been hysterical for the last month.”

“Oh, God, don't remind me of that … please … Billy and four of his friends are coming home next week. I forgot to tell you about that. They want to stay in the pool house, and they'll probably burn the damn thing down. He called last night. Thank God they'll only be here for two weeks before moving on.” Billy Durning was twenty now, and wilder than ever, from the correspondence Jean saw from school. But she knew that he was probably still reacting to his mother's death. It had been hard on all of them. Billy most of all, he had been only sixteen when she died, a difficult age at best, and things were a little smoother now. “He's giving a party next week, by the way. Saturday night, apparently. I was ‘informed,’ and he asked me to tell you.”

She smiled. “I shall make due note. Any special requests?”

Arthur grinned. She knew them all well. “A band, and he said to be ready for two or three hundred guests. And by the way, tell Tana about that. She might enjoy it. He can have one of his friends pick her up here in town.”

“I'll tell her. I'm sure she'll be pleased.” But only Jean knew how big a lie that was. Tana had hated Billy Durning all her life, but Jean had forced her to be courteous whenever they met, and she would make the point to her again now. She owed it to Billy to be polite, and to go to his party if he invited her, after all his father had done for them. Jean never let her forget that.

“… I will not.” Tana looked stubbornly at Jean, as the stereo blared deafeningly from her room. Paul Anka was crooning “Put Your Head on My Shoulder” and she had already played it at least seven times, to Jean's dismay.

“If he's nice enough to invite you, you could at least go for a while.” It was an argument they had had before, but Jean was determined to win this time. She didn't want Tana to be rude.

“How can I go for a while? It takes at least an hour to drive out there, and another hour back … so what do I do, stay for ten minutes?” She tossed the long shaft of golden wheat colored hair over her shoulder with a look of despair. She knew how insistent her mother always was about anything that emanated from the Durnings. “Come on, Mom, we're not little kids anymore. Why do I have to go if I don't want to? Why is it rude just to say no? Couldn't I have other plans? I'm leaving in two weeks anyway, and I want to see my friends. We'll never see each other again, anyway.…” She looked forlorn and her mother smiled at her.