Double Standards Read online

  "And then one day, about two months before Christmas, Nicky stopped waiting at the window and suddenly became a whirlwind of activity. By then his father had been dead for nearly a year. His mother had remarried, and she'd just had a baby boy, though none of us knew about the baby. Anyway, Nicky became a bundle of energy; he did every chore he could think of that would earn him a nickel for doing it. He saved up all his money, and about two weeks before the holidays talked me into taking him shopping for 'an extraspecial present.'

  "I thought he was searching for a gift for his grandmother, because he dragged me in and out of a dozen stores looking for something that was 'just perfect for a lady.' Not until late in the afternoon did I discover that he wanted to buy a Christmas present for his mother.

  "In the bargain section of a huge downtown department store, Nicky finally found his 'extra-special present'—a lovely little enameled pillbox marked down to a fraction of what it should have cost. Nicky was ecstatic, and his enthusiasm was contagious. In five minutes he'd charmed the salesclerk into gift wrapping it, and me into taking him over to his mother's house so that he could present her with the gift."

  Mary glanced at Lauren with tear-brightened eyes. "He… he intended to bribe his mother into coming back to him, only I didn't realize it." She swallowed and then continued, "Nicky and I took the bus to Grosse Pointe, and he was so nervous he could hardly sit still. He kept making me check to see if his hair and clothes were tidy. 'Do I look all right, Mary?' he kept asking me again and again.

  "We found the house without any trouble—a palatial estate that was beautifully decorated for the holidays. I started to ring the doorbell, but Nicky put his hand on my arm. I looked down at him, and I have never seen a child look so desperate. 'Mary,' he said, 'are you sure I look okay to see her?' "

  Mary turned her face toward the restaurant window and her voice shook. "He looked so vulnerable, and he was such a handsome little boy. I honestly believed that if his mother saw him, she'd realize that he needed her, and she'd at least visit him from time to time. Anyway, a butler let us in, and Nicky and I were shown into a beautiful drawing room with an enormous Christmas tree that looked as if it had been decorated for the window of a department store. But Nicky didn't notice that. All he saw was the shiny red bicycle with the big bow on it that was beside the tree, and his face positively lit up. 'See,' he said to me, 'I knew she didn't forget me. She's just been waiting until I came to see her.' He reached out to touch the bicycle, and the maid who was dusting the room almost snapped his head off. The bicycle, she told him, was for the baby. Nicky pulled his hand away from it as if he'd been burned.

  "When his mother finally came downstairs, her first words to her own son were, 'What do you want, Nicholas?' Nicky gave her the present and explained that he'd chosen it for her himself. When she started to put it under the tree, he insisted that she open it right then…"

  Mary had to wipe her eyes as she finished, "His mother opened the package, glanced at the dainty little pillbox and said, 'I don't take pills, Nicholas— you know that.' She handed it to the maid who was dusting the room, and said, 'Mrs. Edwards takes pills, however. I'm sure she'll put it to good use.' Nicky watched his gift go into the maid's pocket, and then he said very politely, 'Merry Christmas, Mrs. Edwards.' He looked at his mother and said, 'Mary and I have to go now.'

  "He didn't say anything else until we got to our bus stop. I was fighting back tears the whole way, but Nicky's face was… expressionless. At the bus stop, he turned to me and pulled his hand out of mine. In a solemn little voice he said, 'I don't need her anymore, Mary. I'm all grown up now. I don't need anybody anymore.'" Mary's voice quavered. "It was the last time he ever let me hold his hand."

  After a moment of painful silence, Mary went on, "From that day forward, to the best of my knowledge, Nick has never bought a gift for a woman— other than his grandmother and me. According to what Ericka has heard from Nick's girlfriends, he is extravagantly generous with his money, but he never gives them gifts, no matter what the occasion is. He gives them money instead and tells them to pick out something they'll like; he doesn't care whether it's jewelry or furs or anything else. But he doesn't pick it out himself."

  Lauren remembered the beautiful earrings he'd given her, and the way she'd contemptuously informed him that she didn't want them. Her heart turned over. "Why would his mother want to forget about him, to pretend he didn't exist?"

  "I can only guess. She was from one of the most prominent families in Grosse Pointe. She was an acclaimed beauty, the queen of the debutante ball. To people like that, bloodlines mean everything. They all have money, so their social status is based on the prestige of their family connections. When she married Nick's father, she became a social outcast from her own class. These days, that's changed—money is its own prestige. Nick moves in her social circles now and completely eclipses her and her husband. Of course, being handsome in addition to being outrageously rich doesn't hurt him a bit.

  "At any rate, in the early days Nick must have been a living reminder of her fall from social grace. She didn't want him around, and neither did his stepfather. You would have to know the woman in order to comprehend such coldhearted, utter selfishness. The only person who matters to her, other than herself, is Nick's half brother—she positively dotes on him."

  "It must be painful for Nick to see her."

  "I don't think it is. The day she gave his present to the maid, his love for her died. He killed it himself, carefully and completely. He was only five years old, but he had the strength and determination that enabled him to do it, even then."

  Lauren had a simultaneous urge to strangle Nick's mother and to find Nick and lavish on him her own love, whether he wanted it or not.

  Just then Tony materialized at the table and handed Mary a small piece of paper with a name on it. "You've had a phone call from this man. He says he needs some papers that are locked in your office."

  Mary glanced at the note. "I guess I'll have to go back. Lauren, you stay and finish your lunch."

  "Why did you not eat your pasta?" Tony frowned accusingly at both women. "Does it not taste good?"

  "It isn't that, Tony," Mary said, putting her napkin on the table and reaching for her purse. "I was telling Lauren about Carol Whitworth, and it ruined our appetites."

  The name roared in Lauren's ears and pounded in her brain. A silent scream of denial rose up in her throat, cutting off her breath when she tried to speak.

  "Laurie?" Tony worriedly squeezed her shoulder as she continued to stare in paralyzed horror at Mary's retreating back.

  "Who?" she whispered frantically. "Who did Mary say?"

  "Carol Whitworth. Nick's mama."

  Lauren raised her stricken blue eyes to his. "Oh God," she breathed hoarsely. "Oh God, no!"

  Lauren took a cab back to the building. The shock had faded slightly, leaving in its place a cold numbness. She walked into the marble lobby and went over to the reception desk, where she asked to use the phone. "Mary?" she said when the other woman answered. "I'm not feeling well—I'm going home."

  Wrapped in her robe that night, she sat staring into the empty fireplace in her apartment. She pulled the afghan she had knitted the previous year closer around her shoulders, trying to ward off the chill, but it was inside her. It shuddered through her every time she thought of her last visit to the Whitworths: Carol Whitworth serenely presiding over an intimate little gathering where three people were plotting against her own son. Her son. Her beautiful, magnificent son. Oh God, how could she do that to him!

  Lauren shivered with impotent fury and clutched at the afghan with fingers that longed to scratch and claw at Carol Whitworth's regal face—that vain, unlined, haughty, lovely face.

  If there was any spying being done, Lauren felt sure it was Philip, not Nick, who was doing it. But if it was Nick, if he really was paying someone to leak information on the Whitworth Enterprises bids, she wouldn't blame him. If it had been within her power at that moment