“Don't hesitate to tell us what you really think,” he teased. “Okay, so she's pretending to be a nobody. So fucking what? That can't be an easy name to wear with the kind of work she does. Neither is yours. Maybe she doesn't want to play Lady Bountiful coming down to the masses from on high. She wants to be one of them and not have to deal with all that shit. Can you blame her, Charlie?”

“Yes, I can. It's fine to lie to the people where she works, if that's what she wants. But it wasn't okay to lie to me. She told me she lived in a one-room studio. Hell, she lives in a ten-million-dollar brownstone on the Upper East Side.”

“Really, how disgusting of her,” Gray said scathingly. “I'm shocked! And what do you think your apartment on Fifth Avenue with the breathtaking view of Central Park is worth these days? Five million? Ten? And let's see, what did you pay for Blue Moon? I can't remember. Fifty million?… Sixty?”

“That's not the point.” Charlie glowered at him. “The point is that if she lied to me about her name and who she is and how she grew up, she'd lie to me about something else, and probably already has.”

“Maybe not,” Gray said bluntly. It sounded like the proverbial tempest in a teapot to him. At Carole's expense. Charlie had poured the tea right over her head, and stormed out. It didn't sound like a fair fight to Gray. With Charlie, it never was. And in the end, although he didn't see it that way, Charlie lost. That much was very clear to Gray, especially now. His whole perspective on life had changed in the past few months. “Maybe all she wanted was to be like everyone else. Don't you want that sometimes? Do you always want to be Charles Sumner Harrington? I'll bet you don't. Shit, Charlie, give her a chance. Okay, so you felt stupid when you found out who she was. But is that so terrible? You really can't forgive her something like that? How perfect are you, for chrissake?”

“I don't lie to people I love. I don't even lie to my friends. I've never lied to you.”

“Okay, that's why we love each other. But I'll tell you one thing right now, I'm not leaving Sylvia to marry you.”

“Damn,” Charlie said with a laugh, “I was hoping you would.” He glanced at Sylvia. “Sorry, Sylvia, I saw him first.”

“I'm happy to share him with you,” she said honestly, and then decided to put in her two cents, for whatever it was worth. “I don't mean to butt in, and I see your point. It always worries me too when people do something I don't like. I figure there's more hidden somewhere that I don't know about yet, kind of the tip-of-the-iceberg theory. But I suspect in her case, her heart was in the right place, or it could have been. For people like you, and her, you never really know what people want, or who they see. I think Gray may be right in this case, she may have just wanted a clean slate. She should have told you at some point, and maybe sooner than she did. It's unfortunate you had to discover it for yourself. But she sounds like a terrific woman, from everything you said, and you have a lot in common. Maybe you should give her another chance. We all need a break sometimes. And you can always walk if you get another whiff of something you don't like. You're not committing for life. There are compromises in every relationship, as we all know. Unfortunately, none of us are perfect. You may need a bit of indulgence from her at some point. It's a trade-off in the end, a lot of things you love about someone, for a few things you don't. As long as the scale stays weighted on the positive side, it's worth putting up with a little shit. And it sounded to me, before this happened, that there's a lot about her you do like.” She fell silent as Charlie looked at her. She saw two deep pools of sadness in his eyes. There was a lot of pain in his soul that he never shared. There were tears in his eyes when he looked away.

“I just don't want to get hurt. Life is hard enough as it is.”

Sylvia reached out and touched his hand, as they sat next to each other at the beautiful table she had set. “It's harder alone. I know,” she said, with a lump in her throat. He looked back at her and nodded, but he wasn't sure he agreed. It was hard alone, but it was harder still losing someone you loved. He knew she had been there too. Her last lover's suicide had nearly taken her down with it.

“I don't know,” he said sadly, “maybe you're right. I was just so furious. I felt so ripped off. And I felt like such a fool when I found out. She has an absolute aversion to her own world and her own kind. She hates everything it represents. How healthy and normal is that?”

“Maybe her life wasn't so easy either as a kid,” Gray added. “We all think everyone has it so great. We don't know who was dumped on, who was abused, who was kicked around, who was neglected, who was molested by their uncle. You just don't know. We all have tough stuff to live with. No one gets off scot-free. Maybe hers wasn't such a cakewalk either. I've read a lot about her father, he's a pretty important guy, but he doesn't sound like a sweetheart to me. I don't know, Charlie. Maybe you're right, maybe she's just a lying piece of shit, and she'll break your heart, and your balls. But what if she isn't? What if she's just a decent human being who got sick and tired of being who she is, and growing up as the kid of one of the richest guys who ever lived? It's hard to imagine for someone like me, but you of all people should know that the responsibilities that come with who you are aren't a lot of fun sometimes. To tell you the truth, I love the things you have, and I have a hell of a good time on the boat with you, but honestly, when I take a good look, I'm not sure I'd want to be you every day. Sometimes it looks like a lot of hard work and goddamn lonely to me.” It was as honest as Gray had ever been with him, and Charlie was touched. More than his friend knew.

“You're right, it is hard work, and lonely at times. But you don't get a choice in the matter. They pass you the baton at some point, sometimes sooner than later, as happened to me, and off you go. You don't get to sit on the sidelines and whine, and say you don't want to play. You do the best you can.”

“It sounds like she is. Maybe she just needed a break from being her.”

Charlie looked pensive as he pushed some crumbs around the tablecloth, thinking of what Gray and Sylvia had said. There was a possibility that it was true. “The woman who told me who she is said that she'd nearly had a nervous breakdown when her marriage fell apart. She pretty much told me that herself early on. Her ex-husband sounds like an abusive bastard, and a sociopath. I've met him, and he's not a nice guy. He made plenty of money on his own, but I think he's a real shit. I have a feeling he may have married her because she's a Van Horn.” Gray had made a good point. Maybe she needed to take a break from all that. She had been living her life in hiding for nearly four years. She felt safer on the streets of Harlem than she did in her own world. It was a sad statement about her life, and all that had happened to her, some of which he knew she hadn't told him yet. It was just too hard for her. “I'll think about it,” he said, and then they all breathed a sigh of relief as the subject of conversation moved on to other things. It had been heavy for all of them talking about his feelings about Carole. They all had issues of their own, scars and pain and fears. Life was about how you managed to get around the shoals and reefs of life without running aground and sinking the ship.

Charlie stayed with them until ten o'clock that night, talking and chatting about what they were all doing. They told funny stories about themselves and each other, about living together. He talked about the foundation, and the subject of Carole never came up again. He felt nostalgic and hugged them both when he left. It touched his heart to see them so happy together, but increased the sharp focus on his own loneliness too. He couldn't even imagine what it felt like to be like that, two people slowly weaving their lives together after so many years on their own. He would have liked to try it, he thought, but at the same time so much about it frightened him. What if they got tired of each other, or betrayed each other? What if one of them died, or got sick? What if they simply disappointed each other and the erosion of time and the ordinary agonies of life just wore them down? What if tragedy struck one or both of them? It all seemed so high-risk.

And then as he lay in bed and thought about them later that night, as though possessed by a force stronger than he was, he leaned over and picked up the phone. His fingers dialed her number before he could stop himself, and the next thing he knew he heard Carole's voice on the phone. It was almost as though someone else had called her, and he had no choice after that but to say hello.

“Carole?” He sounded almost as surprised to hear her as she did to hear him.

“Charlie?”

“I…I…I just wanted to wish you a happy Thanksgiving,” he said, nearly choking on his own tongue. She sounded stunned.

“I never thought I would hear from you again.” It had been nearly four weeks. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he said, lying in bed with his eyes closed, savoring her voice. She sounded as though she was shaking, and in her own bed, hearing the sound of his voice again. She was. “I had Thanksgiving dinner tonight with Sylvia and Gray.” Something they had said to him must have gotten into his soul somehow, or he knew he never would have called. For the first time ever, he had put on the brakes, stopped and looked around, and slowly doubled back. He was on the final turn, and land was in sight again. “It was nice. How was yours?”

She sighed, and smiled at the sound of him. It was so wonderful to be speaking of mundane things. “The way it always is. About all the wrong things. No one in my family is ever thankful. They're just embarrassingly overconfident about how wonderful they are. It never even occurs to them that other people don't have what they do, and maybe even wouldn't want to. It's not about family for us. It's about how wonderful we are for being Van Horns. It makes me sick. Next year, I'm just going to have Thanksgiving at the center with the kids. I'd rather eat turkey sandwiches, or peanut butter and jelly if that's all we've got after your money runs out, than drink champagne and eat pheasant with my family. It just sticks in my throat. Besides, I hate pheasant. I always have.” He smiled at what she said. Sylvia and Gray were right. Maybe he'd been wrong. It was hard work for her being a Van Horn. She wanted to be like everyone else. Sometimes he felt that way too.

“I have a better idea,” Charlie said quietly.

“What's that?” she asked, holding her breath. She had no idea what he was about to say, she just loved the sound of his voice. And everything else about him. She had right from the first.

“Maybe next year you and I can have Thanksgiving with Sylvia and Gray. The turkey was pretty good.” He smiled at the memory of the cozy evening he had shared with them. It would have been better yet if she'd been there.

“I'd love that,” Carole said with tears in her eyes, and then decided to tackle her perfidy again. She had thought about nothing but that for the past four weeks. Her motives had been good, but she knew what she'd done had been wrong. If she was going to be with him, and love him, she had to tell him the truth, even if he didn't like what he heard, or it scared her to say it. She had to trust him enough to let him see who she was, whatever the risk or cost. “I'm sorry I lied to you,” she said sadly. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“I know. I do stupid things sometimes too. We all do. I was afraid to tell you about the boat.” It had been a sin of omission rather than commission, but he had done it for the same reasons. Sometimes it was just hard being out there, visible to all. It gave people a tremendous target to focus on and take aim at. Sometimes even he felt like he had a bull's-eye painted on his back, and apparently she did too. It wasn't an easy way to live.

“I'd love to see your boat sometime,” she said cautiously. She didn't want to push, she was just grateful he had called. More grateful than he knew, as quiet tears of gratitude slid out of the corners of her eyes onto her pillow. She had even prayed about his coming back, and for once her prayers had been answered. The last time she had done that, they hadn't, when her marriage failed. In the end, God knew better.

“You will,” Charlie promised her. One day he wanted to spend time with her on the Blue Moon. He couldn't think of anything better. “What are you doing tomorrow?”