William Vandermeer wasn’t running around the house waving a gun, mainly because the gun had vanished with Megan, but he was far from the numb creature he had been through much of the wait. There was a wildness in his eyes, a combination of desperation and sheer terror that was chilling in its own right.
Surrounded by Susan, Sam, and Hank, Savannah sat with him and talked. She ran through one argument after another, trying to convince him to stay cool, and when she’d gone through them all, Sam thought up more. Between them, they seemed to calm him.
With the insurance company set to deliver the money at four that afternoon and nothing to do until then, Savannah managed to convince him to rest for a while. Soon after he went upstairs, she and Susan went into the living room to talk.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly. She sat sideways facing Susan, who wasn’t drinking but looked as though she badly wanted to.
Susan leaned back against the sofa’s brocade cushions and closed her eyes. “Ask me that in a week when I’m back home with all this forgotten.”
“I’m really grateful to you. You know that, don’t you? I couldn’t be here and at work at the same time, and Will needed one of us.”
Resting her head against the sofa, Susan opened one eye toward Savannah. “It’s sad, Will needing us. The Vandermeers were always such a well-known family. He should have dozens of people rallying ’round.”
“This is a kidnapping, not a party. He wanted to keep things quiet.”
“What he wanted,” Susan corrected, “was to keep the shortage of money quiet. You should see this place, Savvy. It’s looking pretty dumpy.”
“Not dumpy. Just tired. And only at spots.”
“Whathappened?What did Will do to the business?”
Savannah shrugged. “By his own admission, he’s a lousy money manager.”
“But he could have hired people to manage the money for him. When you come right down to it, how many people in his position do you know of who don’t have armies of financial advisers and accountants?”
“The Vandermeers were always different that way. They were self-contained. Will’s father and uncle built the business from scratch. Each had a strength. Apparently, Will’s uncle was the whiz with figures, not Will’s dad, and certainly not Will.”
“I still can’t believe he’s blown it all. Meggie deserves better.”
“She does, but only because things were so tough for her growing up. Will adores her. Maybe that compensates for whatever financial problems they have.”
Susan wasn’t buying that. “I can’t imagine a love that strong. I mean, if you’re talking a decrease of income from eighty thousand a year to sixty-five, that may be true. There’s no abrupt change of lifestyle then. But from a million down to three hundred thousand, with most of that being poured back into the business—when a woman assumes she’s marrying onto easy street and suddenly finds that she has to budget money for a weekend at the spa, that love would have to be phenomenal.” She shook her head. “No love’s that strong.” Stretched out in her yellow sweat suit, with her ankles crossed over leg warmers and aerobic sneakers, she looked and sounded surprisingly authoritative.
“Sad to feel that way,” Savannah mused.
“Realistic.”
“But sad. Don’t you ever dream that you’ll love a man that way? Or that a man will love you that way?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never. Do you?”
Savannah hesitated before saying tentatively, “I have.”
“Because you’re a romantic. You dream through rose-colored glasses.”
“Isn’t a dream, by definition, something rosy?”
“Not necessarily. A dream can be practical. It doesn’t have to be so overblown as to be unattainable. That’s your problem, Savvy. You shoot too high.”
“There’s nothing unrealistic about hoping for love.”
“Not when it’s a realistic kind of love.”
“How would you define a ‘realistic’ kind of love?”
