Out of Night: The Laurelhurst Chronicles, #4

By Kellie Butler

How long can you run from yourself?

1968. In the continuing bestselling Laurelhurst Chronicles family saga series comes a gripping, moving tale of separation, self-discovery, new beginnings, and reconciliation.

Kate. A mainstay on Swinging London's party circuit for years, Kate is plunged into a sordid world when Lord Elliott Cutterworth kicks her out of her home and takes custody of their daughter, Violet after she relapses on her journey to sobriety. Separated from her family, she's determined to get clean and regain custody of her daughter. On the run from Elliott and her old life, she finds assistance in her reluctant brother-in-law, Edward Cavert, who is running away from some secrets of his own. Can she reconcile her past and face down Elliott?

Lydie. When her youngest son, Cole, is institutionalized from intellectual impairments, it sends Lydie into a downward spiral, and her once loving marriage is in jeopardy. After botched treatments leave her memory in tatters, her husband, Henry, sends Lydie to Kansas, and to the one psychiatric hospital that can help her restore her memory and her sanity. There, Lydie meets new friends while reconnecting with a childhood friend, Lord Christopher "Kit" Alderley. As she puts the pieces of her life back together, can she finally leave the haunting memories from her youth in Lancashire behind her and reconcile with her brother and her husband?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kellie Butler
• Release date: May 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201210908

Kellie Butler

Kellie Butler is the international bestselling author of Beneath a Moonless Sky, Before the Flood, The Broken Tree, Out of Night, and The Ties that Bind, all part of the five-star rated The Laurelhurst Chronicles series. Kellie has lived and traveled around the world but now calls the high desert of Arizona home. She loves coffee, walks with her dog, yoga, knitting, reading, classic rock, lofi hiphop, and classic film.  

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ishould have known on that fateful day last year, as they rammed the wrecking ball into the old Astor Hotel where Henry and I had married, it was the omen that life as I knew it would change forever. All pretenses of normality I had tried to keep up for the last seven years would crash to the ground, just like that beautiful building which had provided so many happy memories for us over the years.

To this day, I can’t remember all the events after Henry and I had had dinner at Café Rouge, the restaurant where we had been to on our first date, for a special night out. The doctors say I may get it back, eventually.

All I can picture in my mind was clutching Henry’s arm as we strolled into the restaurant and took our seats at a table close to the band. I had looked over, and there, across the room, sat a woman I thought I would never see again. I could still picture her glinting eyes as she took one look at me and then leaned over to a group of women and started whispering. I took a sip of my wine, and I developed one of my screaming headaches. Everything else faded to black after that.

I woke up that evening on the sofa at home with the kids peering over me in horror. Henry was on the phone with someone, talking in low tones. The next thing I could recall, I was somewhere Upstate.

On a crisp October day in 1968, Lydie paused as she scrawled in a hand that had once been fluid the events for her psychotherapist, Dr. Mary Walker, or Mary, as she preferred to call her. She closed her eyes as she tried to recapture the memories from that night, yet all that had been erased with the shock treatments she had received back in New England. Her body shook uncontrollably as the horror overtook her of those dark months of torment she had experienced under the hands of another physician as a girl. Some things were too hard to recount.

Unlike the ones she had had at that other place, the doctors here were kind. She saw her psychiatrist, Dr. Sletter, once a week to check on her medication, and she saw her psychotherapist every day. After years of being treated by men, she had told the care team she’d like to have a female psychotherapist as her primary doctor. She didn’t hate male doctors—after all, she had married one and her father had been the best doctor she had ever known—but those two men had rarely treated her like an errant child. Not even when she had probably pushed Henry to breaking point over the years—parts of which she could not recall. Likely, the shock therapy had erased it, or she had blocked it. Either way, it was gone from her mind. Henry’s placid face never brought it up on the many occasions he could have yelled at her.

Yes, they had had rows over the years, and she might have thrown some things at him, and shrieked at him, but to his credit, Henry had hardly ever raised his hand in return. At least not that she remembered. He had retreated to his study and had sat in there until she calmed down.

As she glanced at the clock on her desk, Lydie realized she would have to put down her recollections for a while as it was time for arts and crafts. As she surveyed her room which reminded her of her school dormitory back during the war years, she almost felt she should be tugging at the scratchy wool plaid uniform instead of the soft gray flannel of her simple woolen sheath frock.

Lydie stretched in a hard-backed wooden chair at her desk, closed the volume of the diary Henry had bought her, and pulled at the hem of her frock before she rose to join the rest of the residents. This was the time of the day she looked forward to the most. The time where her old friends, the paintbrush and canvas, would smile and greet her.

Sometimes she wondered if the other residents thought she was fibbing when she told them she had studied in Paris near the Ecole de Beaux Arts. Given she was in a hospital for people with sick minds, they probably thought she had created the illusion for herself. Sometimes she had to convince herself they weren’t lying at all. Yet Lydie had proof she had studied in Paris. Henry still had all the sketches she had sent to him twenty years ago.

Lydie would have skipped down the hall to rejoin her friends had it would not have displeased one of the hall nurses. Instead, she made herself walk carefully. She headed down to the lobby and then out the front door, meandering through trees with leaves in the shades of crimson, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and orange, towards the Rosenberry Therapy building, which housed a number of creative therapies over on Seventh and Frazier, just a short walk away from the hospital. She passed the original white two-story farmhouse building Charles F. Menninger and his sons, Karl and Will, founded back in the 1920s. For several hours that afternoon, Lydie would paint and create without having to explain herself, at least she hoped not.

* * *

A short time later, Lydie arrived at the building she called her sanctuary, a modern structure encased in blue and gold panels and stone. Inside, it was bright and airy, and reminded her more of a studio rather than a place of therapy. There were rooms for painting, sculpting, woodwork, ceramics, drawing, horticulture, and textiles. Some of the labor for the interior had been done by patients in 1962.

Lydie headed towards the painting room, where she met several other patients she had come to know over the last few weeks.

There was Imogene, a plump, brown-haired, middle-aged lady perhaps a few years older than herself. They had admitted her shortly after her son had committed suicide from returning from Vietnam, and she hadn’t been the same since.

One day, she had sat next to Lydie while making her pottery bowls, and told her of the time she heard the pop of the gun—like a firecracker, she had said. Moments later, she found her son dead. Since then, she constantly heard that popping sound ringing in her ears. Any loud noise made her a nervous wreck. Making something kept her nervous hands from shaking for a few hours out of the day. Lydie felt so much for Imogene. She couldn’t fathom the grief of losing a child. Just sending Cole away had done her in. How Imogene didn’t cry every day, Lydie didn’t know. She liked Imogene, though. She was forthright, and Lydie always knew where she stood with her.

Beside Imogene was Patty, a petite waif who reminded Lydie of that model her daughter Nora was so obsessed with. Twiggy. Was her name Twiggy? Lydie could tell anyone the models she had remembered from her girlhood and war years, even the models in the early years of her marriage, but ask her for the current fashion, and she couldn’t tell you a thing. It was another malignant side effect of the shock therapies that were supposed to have made her better.

Patty looked to be only a couple of years older than her own two girls. She had started cutting herself at age ten, while her mother had sustained another round of her father’s drunken tirades. After running away several times to escape her father’s abuse, a judge placed her in her grandparents’ custody until she became too much for them to handle.

Patty was fond of art, and Lydie sometimes offered her advice. It reminded her of those brief years where she had taught art. Lately, Patty was painting pictures of members of the Beatles or the Doors. Lydie remembered the Beatles, but she had no idea who the Doors were. Patty rolled her eyes.

Next to Patty was a lady named Nola Faye, who worked on an abstract piece she called ‘The Old Place.’ Nola Faye came from Kentucky and was recently admitted after her husband had died, and his kids didn’t want to look after a lady they thought was ‘defective.’ Lydie hated that word. Defective was a word for a machine, not for a human being. Nola hummed a tune Lydie couldn’t quite place. It had an odd rhythm to it. Not quite childlike, but not anything she had ever heard before. Living with Henry, who listened to almost any form of music, she thought she had heard a lot. Nola Faye had this fragile quality to her, speaking in an almost childlike whisper at times.

To be honest, she, Imogene, and Nola Faye were older than most of the patients she saw in the hospital. For the most part, though, most patients she met were Patty’s age, in late adolescence or young adulthood.

Lydie took her palette and canvas from the supply station in the corner of the room while she waited for someone to dole out brushes and paint. It reminded her of her own classroom back in New York where she would parcel out supplies to her elementary students. The nurse handed Lydie a tube, one by one, and watched as Lydie squeezed Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Cadmium Yellow, Prussian Blue, and Black onto her wooden palette.

Setting the brushes and palette on the table beside her, she uncovered the easel in front of her, revealing a 16×20 blank canvas. Lydie rolled her shoulders as she felt the strain relax from her body. This was the one place where the guilt and the horrors melted away. Lydie picked up a large rounded brush and dipped it into the paints. She mixed Burnt Umber, Prussian Blue, and Black. Lifting the brush, she let her arm form a flowing circle and felt the rush as the brush hit the canvas. For once she felt truly alive.

Lydie worked feverishly as she mixed colors to create purple and green and added it to the sphere before adding a streak of crimson. Everyone in the room faded into the background as she worked, just as it had years ago when she had been free to paint. Lydie had forgotten how long ago that had been. She had always felt time painting was time away from her kids, and her first duty had been to be a mother. Somehow, she had failed at that. Perhaps she wouldn’t fail at painting.

For years, Lydie had placed everything into the lives of her kids and her family. Henry and the kids had been her entire world. Everything she had done had been for them. Yet the events back in Lancashire during that fateful summer of 1959 had caused the beginning of her crumbling mind. She had to do this to get better for her family.

It had been the strangest feeling in the world to not have them near her. Lydie recalled the first night she had been fully aware she was alone. The heavy silence wasn’t quiet or peaceful, but a heavy contrast to the absence of kids or pets that had been with her nearly every waking hour for the last few years. The walls of her small room had compressed around her, like something out of a story from Poe.

As she formed more circles of color, Lydie remembered that dark night in Manhattan, and the piercing, terrified eyes of her kids as they looked at her lying on their modern teal sofa. When she added a final layer of red and yellow, Lydie gazed on the picture of the spheres of black, green, purple, blue, red, and yellow against a snowy background. A picture of her untethered emotions against a blank slate.

Lydie was told her memory would come back to her in waves. Slowly, memories of her childhood and youth trickled in. The next wave had been her college years and the first decade of her marriage: the birth of her children. Only recently had the last few years started to come back. She was fine until they had institutionalized Cole. After that, her memory was spotty at best. If she could describe it, it was as if she was watching an episode of This is Your Life, where she was the surprised guest. She watched everything, but she couldn’t recall any of the events.

Lydie usually hated titling her pieces. It was always difficult for her, but this time she washed her brush into the jar of turpentine next to her. She lowered the brush again, unsure of herself. Finally, she picked up a smaller, finer brush, dipped it into the black paint mixed with turpentine, and signed her name at the bottom of the piece—Lydia Cavert Bainbridge. With a steady hand, she scrawled the title to the painting: Ball of Confusion.

Lydie leaned back in her chair and studied her creation. Somehow, she would come out of it on the other side this time. As she washed her brush, Patty approached from behind her.

I like it. What’s it supposed to be?

Lydie had always hated that question. She shrugged her shoulders. It’s whatever you would like for it to be.

Patty shifted from one side to the other as she studied it for a while. "Ball of Confusion. That’s far out. Like, that’s out of sight."

Thank you, Patty.

It’s a bummer they don’t let us do anything with our stuff. You could fetch some money with that one. I bet it would sell.

Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t exhibited my work in years, but thank you.

Patty picked up one of Lydie’s brushes. You got a fella?

Lydie touched the band of gold on her left ring finger. Yes, I have a husband.

Is he going to come and visit you?

I hope so. He’s got a lot of responsibilities with his job and the kids.

What does he do?

He’s a doctor.

Patty stepped back. He’s a quack? And he put you in here?

Lydie laughed. No, he’s a pathologist. He looks at slides on a microscope most of the day to diagnose diseases in a laboratory.

Here in Topeka?

Lydie shook her head. No, in New York.

Patty whistled. I want to go to New York. I hate it here. It’s such a drag. How could your man put you in here?

It’s much nicer than where I was before. That place was a nightmare.

Patty nodded in approval. I’ve been to seven so far, the first one was when I was ten. How many have you been at?

Two, other than this one, and one was for a short time in the city. The other was Upstate.

At least you’re not like Nola over there. My God, she’s going to die in here, I bet, or get put into one of those homes. You won’t find me doing that. Nah-uh.

I can’t remember much these days. Not since I had therapy at the last one.

They gave you the shocks, didn’t they? I’ll never let them do that to me. One lady I knew got them, and they erased most of her memory. The worst is the cold baths, though. I got those at another place. They’ll give you the cold wraps here, if you mess up. They’re not as bad as the cold baths, though. I lasted three hours in one of those, then they locked me up in a room without as much as a place to squat. I might as well as been in prison.

Yes, I’ve heard those stories.

Hey, can your old man take me too when he springs you out?

Lydie closed her eyes for a moment. She wondered if Nora said things like that. Suzy never would. I doubt he could. The doctors will have to tell you you’re ready to go home.

They’ll just keep you here long enough to get your money. Look at Nola over there. Although, I heard that a girl I knew who moved from my floor got to go outpatient last week. Lives in some home of some sort and works in one of those shops downtown. How old are you now?

I’m forty-one.

Patty whistled. Man, you’re old enough to have grandkids. Do you have kids?

Lydie did everything in her power to hold her tongue. She was not that old. Instead, she plastered a smile on her face and kept her tone nice. Yes, four. Three of them are fourteen, and the other one is nine.

Patty’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. You had triplets? You don’t even look like you’ve had babies, not at least four.

I’ve had three. We adopted one.

That’s still a lot. You won’t see me pushing out babies. No, sir.

You may change your mind.

"Nah. I can’t stand babies. Anyway, that painting is out of sight. Hey, are you going to watch TV tonight? We’re going to watch Laugh-In."

I might.

I think Goldie Hawn is just the cutest thing. Do you think I should cut my hair like hers? She twirled her long mousy brown hair. Do you think it’s real, or does she wear a wig?

I don’t know, Patty.

Yeah, she probably wears a wig. They all do that, you know. Your hair looks real. Do you dye it?

Lydie thought about her hair. She had had it last cut before she came here. Henry had made sure she had a salon visit. No, I don’t, although it is fading. I’m a natural ginger.

I like that word, ginger.

Lydie rose from her chair and washed out her brushes again before drying them on a towel. ’I should be going.

Don’t forget about the TV tonight.

I won’t, Lydie said. Perhaps I’ll see you at dinner.

Nah, it’s succotash and meatloaf. I hate that stuff. I’ll have some candy in my room. Snuck it past the battle-axe on my floor. She grinned. I can get nearly anything I want.

I doubt that. Suit yourself. Lydie shrugged her shoulders and made her way towards the attendant.

Imogene stopped her. Pay no attention to her. She’s trouble, do you hear me? Cuts herself and everything. You’re a nice one, Lydia. Don’t get caught up with her.

Lydie smiled wanly. I have daughters nearly her age. I suppose I want to try to help her.

Just be careful. Word has it she’s a sneaky one and can lash out at you anytime. She gets jealous of people, especially of those she thinks can leave the grounds freely.

Lydie thought about Imogene’s remark. Surely, she couldn’t be that much trouble. A bit mouthy, yes, but probably not that bad. Perhaps I can make a special effort with her. She might need a friend. As she walked through the trees on her way back, Lydie thought about dinner and what Henry and the kids would have tonight. Would he dine in the city, or had JoAnn, their housekeeper, made something? On days like these, she wished that things could be different, and that she could be home with them.

Chapter 2

Aiden, Henry’s old medical school roommate and former colleague, picked up his pipe and lit it shortly after sitting down across the table from him at Keens Steakhouse in New York. The sweet fragrance of tobacco wafted up, and it almost made Henry miss smoking.

Behind Henry was displayed one of the many photographs of famous patrons who had frequented the storied restaurant in the Herald Square Theatre District since 1885. The restaurant had one of the largest churchwarden pipe collections in the world, and to have your name on the roster was an honor. Henry had been tempted over time to get one, but he’d given up smoking a long time ago.

You know, you shouldn’t do that, Henry warned.

We’re all going to die of something, Henry. At least you get to pick your poison. Besides, after the workload I had today, I need it. It’s that or a drink, and I’m trying to cut back on the hard stuff. I promised Amy.

He raised his eyebrow. You’ve promised Amy a lot of things.

Yeah, I know. Listen, we’re not here to discuss my marriage. He wagged his finger.

Fair enough. He shrugged.

Speaking of wives, though, how’s Lydie?

Henry took a sip of his beer. I got a letter from her the other day. She seems to be settling in.

Aiden nodded. Have you told anyone where she is?

Only a few people. For everyone else, she’s on an extended stay in the Midwest.

How long is it going to be this time?

A year, probably. We need time to see if her memory is going to come back. Then they can start working on her underlying issues, he said haggardly. How has Aiden not aged, Henry thought as he absentmindedly brushed his golden-brown hair behind his ear.

You know I won’t tell a soul, and neither will Amy. We both know you and Lydie have been through hell.

Thanks.

I hear there is good news on the horizon for you. I overheard at a conference recently that your name is being passed around as a section chair for surgical pathology for a few schools. After that, who knows, you might even make department head one day. You’ve certainly earned it by now.

Henry masked his surprise by smiling at the waiter as he set down plates of mutton chops on the pristine white tablecloth. Really? I haven’t heard that.

Wouldn’t it be great for you to make it in?

Yeah. Normally I’d be over the moon about that, but gosh, I don’t know if it means anything anymore. Even if I wanted to, and part of me does, how on earth can I return to an academic salary when I have both Lydie and Cole to think about? I can’t take that cut in pay, not unless I dip into Lydie’s money. He picked up his silverware and dug in.

You know what they say about being on faculty at some places: you need to have a rich wife to do it. You could swing it, Henry. Lydie will be out of the hospital, and things will get back to normal.

Henry shook his head vehemently. I will not take money from Lydie. That is set aside as an emergency fund or to help the kids. I thought the last treatment place would help, but look where that got us. Do you even know how much these places cost?

Aiden had just taken a bite of his creamed spinach. Swallowing, he said, Henry, you didn’t know about that place Upstate, and they violated their own policy. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Place the blame where it should be; they gave her too many treatments in a short period of time.

I’m wondering if Lydie will still love me when she finally remembers everything. They’ve wiped away part of her memory. Gosh, I wish I not acted so rashly that night. I should have investigated the place a bit more instead of just taking her doctor’s advice.

You’re a brilliant pathologist, Henry, but you’re not a psychiatrist. That’s why you trusted his opinion. How were you to know? Back to your name being tossed around. If Lydie were well, and had just heard what I told you about the section head position, what do you think she’d say?

He smiled weakly. She’d tell me to do what I think is best, and we’d sort it out. She’s always wanted me to succeed.

Well, there you go. I know you love your work as a hospital pathologist, and goodness knows you make more that way, but teaching is in your blood. Tell me you don’t miss it.

I do. Every day, actually. I miss research as well.

Then if the opportunity comes up, grab it.

We’ll see if I can afford it. Maybe after Lydie comes home, and we figure out what Cole’s cost will be long term. I don’t want her trust fund to just be for Cole’s benefit and the other kids not have anything. I’m not taking any of it for Lydie’s care. He shook his head. If only I had done more due diligence on that other facility. I will go to my grave regretting I ever took her to that place. Henry shook his head and stared down at his plate. He’d lost his appetite.

How does she like this new hospital?

She’s adjusting well. At least she hasn’t said anything otherwise in her letters. She seems to have settled down this time.

Well, it’s the Menninger Clinic, I assume, since you said the Midwest. They can sort things out that no one else can. When will they let you see her?

Christmas, probably. Well, if we’re able to go. I don’t even know if I’ll get the time off. If I can, though, I will, and I’ll try to take the kids. You’ve read the reports and literature on the Hong Kong Flu.

Mhm. You remember that one we had about ten years ago. I expect more of the same. It just arrived last month. It’s spreading, but we’ll be able to battle it like we did last time. At least it’s not that virulent, from what reports say. Probably will hurt like heck, though. How are the kids taking Lydie being away for so long?

Suzy cries, Nora hates it, and Bobby, well, I don’t know what to do about Bobby. He and Nora both have said some things I’d really like to forget.

At least you have a good housekeeper to help you.

Yeah. Henry glumly looked at his plate.

Amy and I will take the kids sometime, if it would help.

I don’t know if it will help that they are mad at me and the world now. Lydie always smoothed everything over. Nora’s so cheeky these days. I worry about her because she and Lydie are so close. She blames me.

She’ll settle down. Nora might need someone to talk to.

Maybe so. I’ve thought about sending her to Ithaca for a break to spend time with Olivia. It’s not just Nora, though. Bobby is changing too. Only Suzy gives me hope.

Is Olivia still with that schmuck Walter?

Yep. Dad said the last time he saw them at the spring concert, they had six kids now. Olivia didn’t look happy.

The good ol’ spring concert, an Ithaca tradition. How are your folks?

They’re fine.

Have you heard from Kate?

Henry bristled. No.

How many years has it been since she married that English guy? Lord somebody.

I don’t know, and I really don’t want to discuss it. I should have put my foot down and stopped it back then.

Aiden glanced at his watch. Would you look at the time. I promised Amy I’d be home by eight tonight. Sorry I have to bail on you, Henry. Call me or Amy if you need us.

Sure.

Don’t worry about anything. You and Lydie will be fine. You’ve weathered everything else.

Thanks, Aiden. Give Amy my love. Henry smiled wanly.

Will do. Aiden flashed a smile, and he was gone.

Henry watched as Aiden walked away and cut up his steak before diving into his creamed spinach. He wondered what Lydie would have for dinner. She mentioned they had a cafeteria, but sometimes she took her meals in her room. It all sounded so pleasant. He hoped it was, because he was busting his tail.

Sometimes he cursed that summer of ’59, and all the troubles that had followed. Cole might be healthy, his marriage might have not drifted, and poor Lydie wouldn’t be alone in a small room writing like she was back in school. She could still remember things, and she’d be around to help him with Nora’s smart mouth and Bobby’s insolence.

Some days he thought of just leaving it all behind when it got to be too much, but then he would look at the picture of Lydie on his desk and chide himself. He had made a promise to her eighteen years ago, and he wasn’t a man to break his word. Even though some colleagues had remarked it was all right to put Lydie away quietly, he couldn’t fathom doing it. He hadn’t grown up like that, and it would break him just as much as it would break Lydie.

Sometimes he missed the tinkling sound of her laughter and the whisper of her gentle breathing as she slept beside him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had held her close. Maybe when they had released her from that Retreat several months ago. Lydie had come out like a lost child. He didn’t know if he’d ever get her back the way she used to be.

As Henry left the restaurant, his shoulders drooped heavily as he prepared himself for another night at home. He didn’t know if silence or chaos awaited him. He wished he could go home to the house he used to know; the one where, even amidst the chaos of having four kids, Lydie would peck him on the temple and give him a warm hug as entered the door. He would kiss her on the lips softly before he made his way to his study to work for a while. That well-needed silence had restored him to where he could wander upstairs to check on the kids and find Lydie tucking them into bed before they retreated to their bedroom, arm-in-arm.

These days, her empty side of the bed chastised him. You did this, her empty pillow seemed to say as it stared back at him.

At times, he reached over towards her side of the bed and felt for her. The first few weeks had been the hardest. Every night he waited for her to shuffle into the bedroom after cleansing her face, only to remind himself she wasn’t there.

The night he had called her psychiatrist, by some stroke of fortune, Lydie hadn’t washed her nightgown. For the next few weeks, he had slept next to it, inhaling her scent. That had lasted until even that smell faded, and he ended up washing it because his housekeeper thought it wasn’t right for him to sleep with it.

Henry sat in silence as he drove back to Rye in his cavernous cherry red 1957 Cadillac de Ville. He meandered home towards pristine lawns and old houses, some dating back to the 1700s. Henry wondered if the interior of their homes was just as chaotic as his. Lydie would know. She kept up with all of that. It amazed him just how smoothly she had run the house. Lydie, the bubbly ginger who never knew a stranger. Lydie, the woman that welcomed you into her house with a smile and the promise of a cup of tea or coffee. She had hidden anguish behind that smile for the longest time, and he hadn’t even stopped to check.

Moments later he pulled into the driveway, stopped the car, and stepped out to lift up the garage door. Lydie’s 1955 powder blue Cadillac sat waiting. It wouldn’t be long before the kids would drive her old car as they took driver’s education. He pulled into his slot, turned off the ignition, and sat there in the dark for a while before he took his briefcase out of the backseat. He sighed haggardly once more, knowing another long night spread out as wide as the Hudson before him. Nights like this made him yearn for a cigarette. Perhaps he should have joined Aiden in smoking a pipe tonight. No, Henry. He shook his head and squared his shoulders as he felt like Atlas lifting the weight of the world on his back.

Heading inside, he checked in on the kids and returned to his study. Collapsing into his soft leather chair behind his desk, he leaned down and caressed Prince, their English Springer Spaniel.

Hey there, buddy. Henry scratched his head. Your mom had some kind of system to keep this house running, didn’t she? Prince tilted his head. You think I can keep it up while she’s gone? If she cracked under the pressure, how am I going to do it?

Prince laid his head on his master’s knee.

You’ll help me, won’t you? He barked. Thanks, buddy. I need that.

Giving the dog another scratch, he opened a medical journal and started to read.

Chapter 3

Come on, Violet, get into the car. Kate pleaded as her six-year-old daughter dawdled by the curb next to a silver Rolls Royce outside of their home in Knightsbridge. We can’t be late. We’ve got to see your father so Mummy can get us some money.

Are we going to the country?

Yes, we are. You know he prefers to live out where the air is nice and fresh.

I hate it out there.

Me too, but we’ve got to go see him. Now, please be on your best behavior, and for goodness sake, don’t tell him what your mummy gets up to. You don’t want me to get into trouble, do you? Violet hesitated. Please, darling. We need money from your father. It’s for both of us.

Okay, Violet said as she clambered into the backseat.

And for goodness sake, please don’t get jam all over you today.

Okay, Mummy. Violet played with the lace trim of her dress. Kate didn’t have money for the nanny, so she had to fight Violet to get dressed this morning, who preferred to wear a mismatched outfit of a polka dot dress and checkered tights. Kate had cajoled her to wear a sweet, cream-colored dress embroidered with rosettes and trimmed in matching lace. She thought Elliott would like it.

Kate slid in beside Violet and stared at her face in her compact. Where had these lines cropped up from? She should have tried to get some cream to blur the dark circles underneath her eyes. She had taken