"Molly's my closest friend, and I love her. She doesn't remember a thing about Gary's death."
"That's her story."
"And I believe it. Now that she's home, I intend to be with her whenever she wants me.
And when she doesn't want me, I'll give her space. Okay ?"
"You're very attractive when you're mad and trying not to show it, Jen. Let it out. You'll feel better."
Calvin Whitehall pushed back the chair from the dining room table and crossed to his wife. He was a formidable-looking, broad-shouldered, broad-chested, heavy-featured man in his mid-forties, with thinning light red hair. Thick eyebrows over ice-blue eyes enhanced the aura of authority that emanated from him even in his home.
There was nothing in Cal's presence or bearing to suggest his humble beginnings. He'd put a lot of distance between himself and the two-family frame house in Elmira, New York, in which he'd been raised.
A scholarship to Yale, and the ability to quickly mimic the manners and bearing of this more highborn schoolmates, had led to a spectacular rise in the business world. His private joke was that the only useful thing his parents had ever given him was a name that at least sounded classy.
Now, comfortably settled in an exquisitely furnished twelve-room mansion in Greenwich, Cal was living the life he had dreamed about for himself years ago in the tiny, Spartan bedroom that had been his retreat from his parents, who had spent their evenings drinking cheap wine and quarrelling. When the quarrels got too loud or became violent, the neighbours had called the police. Cal learned to dread the sound of the police siren, the contempt in the eyes of the neighbours, the snickers of his classmates around town about his trashy parents.
He was very smart, certainly smart enough to know what the only road out of him was education, and in fact; his teachers in school soon realized he'd been blessed with near-genius intelligence. In his bedroom with its sagging floor, peeling walls, and