“And did she have that effect?”
The woman nodded. “Slowly. It was happening. We—the staff—were happier. The kids were having more fun and learning better. Susan was the roadblock, and parents like those two that Priss told off.” She started to cry openly. “I’m going to miss her so much.”
If she’d been his patient, he would have hugged her.
He hugged her anyway.
“Are you ready?”
He turned at the sound of Bunny Darnell’s voice and told her he was.
“Who was that cute little thing?”
“She teaches at the preschool where Priscilla worked.”
“Ah.” For the first time, her face and her voice softened. “Priss was a nice child.” Then her expression and tone turned wry again. “How she came out of that family, I’ll never understand.” She gave him a slanted look. “Oh, I could tell you stories.”
“I wish you would.”
“Really? I’ve never heard you gossip about your patients. It’s one of the reasons we all go to you, you know. You keep our secrets. Are you going to change my idolatrous image of you?”
“God forbid.” He smiled. “But I’m not the one who would be telling the stories, and I wouldn’t be passing them along to anyone else.”
“Oh.” She laughed a little. “Good points. In that case, get in our car and prepare to be shocked.”
But he wasn’t shocked. Not by the stories of Priscilla’s father’s shady business practices, and not by the stories of how her mother lavished big salaries on herself and her staff toadies instead of spending all she should on the charitable organization she led. Even when Mrs. Darnell confided that Priscilla had gotten pregnant at sixteen, he didn’t react with surprise.
“You’re not even surprised at that?”
“I was her doctor. Even teenagers get stretch marks.”
“So you could tell.”
He didn’t acknowledge her statement.
“Did she tell you that her parents kicked her out of the house? If you must know, she came to me for help. I took her in and gave her spending money. And then, may God forgive me, I left her with my housekeeper and fled to Europe and didn’t return until it was over. She put it up for adoption, you know. It was a terribly lonely time for her, I’m sure.”
It amused him that she’d said “If you must know,” as if he were pressing her to tell him all these things that flowed out as if she’d kept them locked up a long time and was glad at last to say them aloud.
“Why did she go to you for help?” he asked.
She looked surprised at the question. “Well, because I was her godmother. Didn’t you know?”
He did know. It was why he’d sat down beside her. “I guess I’d forgotten.”
He glanced at her husband, who was driving the Jaguar through Central Park from the west side to the east.
“Then …” Sam left his awkward question unasked.
She laughed. “You’re thinking of the godfather who left her the three million? That was my first husband, George. It wasn’t easy for George to give money away. I nearly had to threaten to kill him if he didn’t put her in his will. She was cut out of her parents’ will. I wanted her to have something, even if it took her a long time to get it. Then, when George got so sick, I had to tell him, please, she isn’t in so much of a hurry for it. But it was too late. He was gone, and she wasn’t broke anymore.”
“But then she gave it all away.”
“I should have realized she might. She didn’t want to be anything her parents are, including rich. And she took to heart that Bible verse that causes so many of us anxious nights.”
“Which one?”
“The one about how it’s harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
Her husband smiled at the traffic ahead of him.
Sam stared out a window. “Do you think she’s in heaven?”
“She’d better be, or what’s a heaven for, if it won’t take angels?”
“Do you want to end up in heaven?”
“Why do you think we take all those trips to Egypt? I’m searching for pygmy camels.”
He laughed. “That’s still going to take a very big needle, isn’t it?”
For the first time, her husband spoke. “You’ve never heard of the Seattle Space Needle?”
Sam laughed again. He liked these people.
After a bit, he said, “I understand why you can’t stand her parents.”
She nodded. “Loathsome people. No mercy. From them to her, or from me to them.”
Bunny Darnell’s husband magically found a parking space near the Frick museum, and then he threaded their trio smoothly past a doorman and into an elevator that opened directly into a penthouse apartment.
“Buffet to starboard,” Mrs. Darnell advised Sam. “Drinks to port, host and hostess receiving guests amidships, in front of the windows. Will you want a ride back with us?”
“I’ll get myself home. Thank you.”