Chapter Three
Jack
Central Park was closed to traffic at this time and runners were out in force. Jack pounded the road beneath his feet as he ran, hoping this exercise would be a tonic to cope with the rest of the day that lay ahead. Tonight was the annual Thanksgiving Party and for his father’s benefit. He’d be there, as he was every year, honouring his mother’s memory by working his ass off and schmoozing with people he didn’t really like, all in the name of running a successful family business.
Somewhere along the way since his mother’s death, Jack, his sister Cameron, and Kent had lost sight of family. It was as though Cynthia was the thread that wound deeply through each of them and when she was no longer there, they unravelled with no idea how to put themselves back together again. With every Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and birthday, Jack had gone through the motions but it hadn’t been until Nicole started working as their housekeeper that he’d begun to enjoy those occasions again. She’d come to work for his father a few days after his fifteenth birthday, and rather than resenting a woman stepping into their domain after losing his mother when he was eleven, Jack had welcomed the change and celebrations had returned with a sense of happiness, reflection, laughter. There’d been a sense of fun, a feeling of future despite their fragility.
Jack rounded a corner, dodged another runner, and continued on his way. The sun hovered in the sky like a golden coin, but the wind chill was the constant reminder of an impending New York winter. The bare branches of trees with a lingering frost on their bark crept upwards towards a sky bluer than it had been earlier that morning, when bruised clouds had clustered above the city and the road beneath his feet twinkled with ground frost as it reflected the sun.
As Jack ran, he thought more about his mother. She would’ve been fifty-seven on her next birthday. She was loving, kind, and had an air of sophistication that didn’t come from smart clothes or expensive handbags and jewellery. She’d worn a subtle fragrance with floral notes that lingered subtly in the air long after she left a room, and she’d doted on her children who loved her unequivocally in return. When she died it had left their world with a gap so wide and so deep none of them had ever been able to quite climb out. And the key moments in Jack’s life made him miss her all the more—the day he graduated from business school, the successful business that had turned into a fully-fledged, multi-million dollar company, each birthday another he hadn’t been able to share with her.
Ever since Jack could remember, Cynthia had been creative, sketching pictures in the park, photographing, entertaining him at home as they made origami frogs, a boat, a car. And when Jack was still in diapers, she’d signed up to a jewellery-making course, more out of boredom as a stay-at-home momthan anything else, and her enthusiasm soared. She made beautiful pieces Jack could still remember now—a brass ring she’d made in one of her earliest classes, the silver horseshoe pendant with cubic zirconia edges, gold and silver leaf drop earrings. Somewhere in the house was a box full of her jewellery, but like the family photographs, his father seemed to have buried it away and Jack wondered whether the pieces would ever see the light of day again. Unlike his father, Jack had a few photos in his condo. His favourite was a picture of his mom, with Jack on one knee and Cameron on the other, laughing away as the camera snapped the shot, their faces rosy and high on family life. They were sitting on a bench in Central Park, just like the benches Jack ran past now, except the trees weren’t bare; they had brassy gold fall leaves, which produced the warm backdrop.
Jack turned a corner and upped the pace, pounding his way through the park and all the way back to his condo in the East Village where he paced outside the main entrance to cool down. Despite doing the full loop of 6.1 miles and the excellent scenery in Central Park—every runner’s dream—the fog still hadn’t lifted from his mind.
Once inside the condo, he stretched, took a long shower, had a power nap and then psyched himself up for the night ahead. When he woke, he ironed his evening shirt, shined his shoes, and pulled on his tux, finishing it off with a semi-butterfly bow tie before heading outside to flag down a yellow cab after it disgorged a businessman and before it had time to pull away from the kerb.
‘Come in, son.’ Kent appeared behind the housekeeper, Maggie, when the door to the townhouse opened. ‘You’re prompt.’
‘I hate being late,’ he said, stepping into the hallway.
‘Hard to believe it’s Thanksgiving already.’ Kent fastened his second cufflink. He was wearing the rose gold set Jack’s mother had made, another popular product in the shop. Jack liked to think his father was wearing them for sentimental reasons rather than because he wanted to push sales, but with Kent Churchill you could never be sure. He watched his father look into the mirror in the hallway and adjust his bow tie.
‘Yeah, the years go quick.’ Conversation was stilted, as though they barely knew one another. Since the worst Thanksgiving in history, the night he’d last seen Nicole, their relationship had grown more tense and Jack wondered how many more times he could don the clothes and adopt the pretence that he enjoyed networking with the people who’d be here tonight.
‘How many have we got coming tonight?’ Jack mustered up some enthusiasm.
‘Twenty at last count, as long as the Dexters don’t cancel again.’
The Dexters were notorious late cancellers, but they had five young kids and Jack assumed a lack of willing babysitters, given they were both from overseas. ‘Not a bad number. Anything I can do?’
‘No, everything’s all set. Maggie has the food and beverages ready, so there’s nothing for us to worry about except to enjoy the evening.’
Or at least get through the evening, Jack decided. Maggie was a stern housekeeper who seldom smiled on duty, but he knew not one guest would go hungry and they would be lubricated to within an inch of their sanity with an ongoing supply of champagne, wine and spirits.
‘Is Braydon bringing Fern along tonight?’ Jack winced, praying the answer might be ‘no’ for once. He’d had enough of her constant habit of brushing past him too many times, or giving him the eye.
‘Of course.’ Kent shrugged on his dinner jacket. ‘She likes you.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Be flattered, enjoy it. When you get to my age—’
‘What a load of bull. You get your fair share of attention. How’s Linda?’ Jack relaxed a bit. He and his father may not do in-depth chats, but they could manage small talk just fine.
Kent raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘I suppose I do. And Linda’s fine. She can’t make tonight unfortunately.’
Jack had always wondered why his father had never settled down with anyone since his mom died. He’d been thirty-nine when he lost his wife. He was good looking, rich, not a bad conversationalist when he wanted to be. But it had never happened. He’d had a succession of women, more discreetly at first and then out in the open once Jack and his sister were older, but none of them had stuck around for more than a few months, never been more than casual flings. At first Jack had thought it was because his father was being responsible, putting the kids first, but he’d started to doubt that reasoning. There had to be something else holding him back.
Kent crouched down in front of the mahogany cabinet that ran along the dining room wall and was probably worth more than most people’s entire furniture collection. ‘Now where did I put the cigars?’
‘Bit early, isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to have them after a meal?’
He found them in the bottom drawer and then, with one in his hand, sat down at one end of the deep burgundy Chesterfield couch. ‘Oh, come on, relax a little. You’d enjoy these things if you did.’ Kent snipped the end and inhaled the aroma. ‘You can’t beat a good cigar.’
‘Mom never thought so.’ It was a cheap shot to mention his mother, but when his father went all high and mighty and really sounded like a jumped-up dick, he hated it.
‘Your mother didn’t tolerate smoking, no.’ Kent burnt the end of the cigar ready for lighting. ‘Things change.’ Finally, he stuck the thing in his mouth.
