Where were Addison's colleagues? The only other people who rang the bell and stayed for a while were Addison and Mark's tennis partners, Mel his lawyer, and Dallas his accountant. I should have asked them what was going on with Addison's finances and if there was a will, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. No, that was business for another day. It was remarkable enough that I was still standing.

No one else came, no one from the neighborhood, not Joanne who did my hair or the women who sold me my clothes at Neiman Marcus. Where was my landscaper, my plumber, my electrician, or the guy who ordered all our wine for us? Maybe they didn't get the news. Maybe their bills never got paid? Maybe it was the weather?

It was almost four o'clock in the afternoon, the skies were growing darker by the minute and the weather was deteriorating still further. The wind howled around the house, the trees bending in fury. I was still standing in the dining room and heard the door close again. The house seemed quiet and I thought, well, the last visitor has left.

Patti came and stood by the table, inspecting the food.

"Look at all this stuff," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "What a waste." But then waste was the name of the game in Addison Land.

"I couldn't eat a thing. Not a thing! Well, maybe a bite. You want me to fix you a plate?"

"No thanks. I don't think I can swallow food right now."

"Gotcha. Well, how about a gla.s.s of wine?"

"No. I don't think . . . wait a minute. You know what? I will definitely have a gla.s.s of wine if you'll have one with me."

"You got it, sister!" Patti lifted the bottle from the cooler and wrinkled her nose. "Party wine. This might be the time to crack open some of Addison's Chateau Wawawa, instead of this swill. What do you think?"

"You're right but I don't feel like going down to that musty cellar and digging around."

"Then swill it is. Ice will improve it." She filled about a third of a goblet and handed it to me. Then she poured some for herself and held up the gla.s.s to toast. "What shall we drink to? Old Addison?"

"Sure, why not? The gates of h.e.l.l are open today. Hope you had a nice trip!"

Patti giggled and told me I was horrible. We clinked the bowls of our gla.s.ses and I said, "Oh, fine. Here's to you, Addison Cooper, wherever you are, long may you wave!"

"Yep. Long may you wave-whatever that means. Let's call the kids. All this food is just sitting here. It's a sin. Russ? Sara?"

"Don't forget Alice."

"Like anyone could? Humph. Alice?"

"Don't talk to me about sin today. Shirley Hackett was probably right. It's a good thing he's gone or I might have helped her husband plot Addison's demise myself."

I picked up a small roll and examined its contents-smoked salmon with chive cream cheese. Platters of beautiful sandwiches-lobster salad on croissants, turkey on a combination of pumpernickel and rye bread, Black Forest ham and brie on sourdough, and others I had yet to discover-were placed on one side of the table and platters of bite-size pastries on the other. The coffee samovar stood on the far end with cups, saucers, cream, and sugar, and the tea service was on the other. Almost all of it was untouched.

"And no jury in the world would convict you either. Where are the kids? Russ!"

"I'm right here, Aunt Patti."

"Get something to eat, sweetheart," I said. "This is dinner."

"Yeah, sure," Russ said. "Gotta wonder what my little half-brother is eating tonight, right?"

Although Russ was usually my quiet child, it never meant the wheels of his clock weren't turning. The woman with those baby pictures had clearly upset him.

"You listen to me right now. There's no proof of anything," I said. "That child could be the mailman's for all we know."

"Your mother's right," Alice said and I smiled the incredulous smile of the mother-in-law who would be happy with only the merest crumb, the tiniest bit of support, and then is so very pleasantly surprised when the daughter-in-law throws her a whole baguette. "Won't you ask for DNA tests? I mean, she might be a complete fraud. I've heard of people like that, you know, showing up at weddings and funerals and making claims?"

I almost liked her then.

Mark, who was standing by taking large bites of a lobster salad sandwich, said, "Alice might be right but I think we ought to wait for her to rattle our cage. In the meanwhile, I asked Mel if there was a wills and estate guy in his firm."

Alice beamed with pride, vindicated for a brief moment from her unchallenged position as the family's royal pain in the a.s.s.

"He's with Smythe and Lincoln," Patti said. "They probably have a hundred people who can take care of this."

I knew Smythe and Lincoln. They were an old, white-shoe law firm with a pristine reputation that dated back to the Revolution, one of the few left in the world you might actually trust to represent you with dignity and integrity. However, I also knew their historic dignity and integrity would probably cost four hundred dollars an hour. Or more. Ah, lawyers. Everyone knows the minute lawyers get involved, they turn their meters on like a taxi on a wild goose chase and that having a paralegal merely Xerox a doc.u.ment and send it across the street could cost you an outrageous amount of money. Before you know it, your wallet was hemorrhaging and you could have bought oceanfront property in Costa Rica for what it would cost to probate a will. I always exercised caution when I called a lawyer.

"Yeah, well, that sounds like a good plan to me," I said. "If I hear from her . . . what was her name?"

"I don't even remember," Mark said. "Did she say . . . ?"

"Jezzy LaBelle," Patti said over Mark.

"She never said her name," Sara said. "I was standing right there. All she did was flash the pictures of her bouncing little b.a.s.t.a.r.d and then Mom hit the dirt."

"Nice way to phrase it," Alice said, with her mouth twisted in disapproval.

"Who asked your opinion?" Sara said. "Do you have to have an opinion about everything?"

Alice shrugged her shoulders and looked away.

The doorbell rang and Albertina, who had been picking up gla.s.ses in the living room, hurried across the foyer to answer it. I put my arm around Sara to give her a little maternal support. My tiny Sara, dark-haired and moody, had never found her groove with her blond, lanky sister-in-law. Simply stated, the problems between Sara and Alice were that Alice had a boatload of advanced degrees, had stolen her precious brother, and had doomed him to a lifetime of prescribed boredom. Sara, who had a degree in musical theater from Northwestern and was a glamour puss if I ever saw one, felt inferior to Alice, which was completely ridiculous. I kept telling Sara that one day she would have a leading role in a film or on Broadway and she would show them all. So far, she had been in a television commercial for a feminine hygiene product and another one for garbage bags. But before I could pull her to the side, I looked up to see the county sheriff standing in the vaulted anteroom between the Corinthian columns that led from the entrance hall to my dining room. Something was wrong.

"Can I help you?" I didn't know if I was supposed to call him officer or sheriff or what. I mean, it wasn't like I welcomed the law into my home every day of the week.

"Are you Mrs. Cooper?"

"Why, yes. Is something wrong?" A rhetorical question if ever there was one.

"Ma'am, I understand from your housekeeper here that your husband's funeral was this afternoon and I know this probably seems like terrible timing, but I'm here to serve you with papers. The bank is foreclosing on your house for nonpayment of the mortgage."

"What?"

"Yes, ma'am. You are almost a year in arrears. And there's three big trucks outside from the D&D Building in New York? Your decorator sent them. Nonpayment of bills. Seems they want all your furniture, too. Except your mattresses-the bedbug thing, you know. And basically they're gonna take anything else they might be able to sell at auction to recoup their losses. Except for the chandeliers and the appliances. An electrician's coming tomorrow for that stuff."

"What are you saying?"

"Except your clothes. You can keep your clothes and linens, too. Did I mention that?"

"No."

"I'm real sorry about this. You've got forty-eight hours left to vacate the premises yourself."

"Forty-eight hours? Are you serious? Mark? He can't be serious, right? There must be some mistake! This is a horrible mistake!"

Mark took the papers from the sheriff and started looking them over.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said, "apparently this is your third notice. Addison must have known. He must have known about all of this!"

"He did know," Dallas, Addison's accountant, said. "I've been trying to hold them off for a while. I mean, I told them . . ."

We all stopped and stared at Dallas. I always thought he was a lightweight, now I knew why.

"Which is why he left first," Patti said. "a.s.shole. He might have said something besides I'm sorry."

"Why didn't Addison tell me?"

"Because he was a coward?" Patti said.

Mark said, "Officer, have a heart here. There has to be some way to do this another day, given the circ.u.mstances and the weather . . . ?"

"Believe me, sir, I'm not happy about this, either. I'm really sorry, I mean, the lady here just lost her husband and all. Makes me feel like a monster."

"You sort of are," Alice said.

"Shut up, Alice," Russ said.

"Oh, my G.o.d," I said and sank into a chair. "Oh my G.o.d! I'm broke! I'm ruined!"

"No, you're not," Patti said. "We'll figure this out, Cate."

"Mom!" Sara almost screamed. "What are we gonna do?"

"You might try getting a real job," Alice mumbled, not too quietly.

"Alice!" Russ said and gave her his most fearsome look.

The next few hours were completely unbelievable. After these burly men wrapped my dining-room chairs in plastic wrap and paraded them out, I couldn't stand anymore. I felt sick, physically sick. It was too much. I mean, I had said about a zillion times that I wanted a simpler life, sure, but surely there was an easier and more dignified way to get that, wasn't there? Holy s.h.i.t, holy hopping h.e.l.l, holy h.e.l.l. Be careful what you wish for! And it wasn't like I hated everything in the house. Was this really happening? There were many things-rugs, paintings, lamps-that I completely adored and the thought of losing those things was wrenching. And losing everything and especially like this was so unbelievably shocking, I was reeling, just reeling, still not understanding what was really happening.

Patti said, as she took me by the arm, "Come on, let's get you out of here. We can go in the kitchen or something. You don't need to watch this."

"Okay. I think I might throw up. I'm not kidding."

"You're not going to throw up. Ever since you were five years old, I've seen you twist yourself like a freaking Cirque de Soleil acrobat so you wouldn't throw up."

"True."

"And let me tell you something, sister, if Old Aunt Daisy's string bean ca.s.serole didn't make you puke till you were purple, this won't either."

"I missed her today. She's always been our pillar of strength."

"Look, she sent gorgeous flowers and she's got a broken foot."

"True. Ah, Jesus, wait until she hears this part of the story."

"Yeah, her hair's gonna stand straight up on end."

"I never liked the dining-room table anyway," I said.

"Me either. Too Baroque."

"Baroque is when you're out of Monet," I said and Patti looked at me like I was crazy. "I have a T-shirt that says that."

"If you wear it in public I'm never speaking to you again," Patti said, deadpan.

"It used to be funny. Not so funny now."

"No. Not so funny now. Maybe I need a good shot of vodka."

"Maybe I need a martini."

The door from the butler's pantry whooshed to a close behind us and I suddenly realized that Richard and his team, and most especially Albertina, all of them had to be horrified by what was going on all around them. It had all happened so fast, I hadn't even thought of what to say to them. Repo men in the middle of a storm like this, on a day like this, at Cate Cooper's? No way.

Richard and his team had packed all the food up in aluminum containers and put them in the refrigerator and they were all standing by the back door, already bundled up in their coats and scarves, hats and gloves, ready to leave. I was going to tell him to take the food but he had already gone to the trouble of putting it away.

He came over to me, took both of my hands in his, and said, "I've gotta get them out of here before the roads freeze."

"Richard, thanks. I mean it."

"Listen, this is on the house today. When better days return? I'll charge you double."

That made me smile a little and I just shook my head with grat.i.tude. Then I put my arms around his neck and hugged him.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"Me too," I said. I wanted to add thanks, but the word got caught in my throat and I thought I might begin to cry again.

Albertina was wiping down the counters with a spray bottle of some mixture specifically designated for granite in one hand and a soft cloth in the other.

"It's none of my business," Albertina said to no one in particular. "I'm not asking any questions."

I put my hand over hers to stop her from giving the counters another single motion of polish, and I could see her eyes well up with tears.

"It's okay, Tina," I said, using her nickname. I wanted to show her I was feeling terrible for her unexpected loss, too.

"No, it's not okay," she said, and some pretty big tears bubbled over and rolled down her cheeks. She pulled a tissue from her sleeve with her free hand and wiped them away. "How can they do this to you?"

"I don't know. I guess I'll find out everything sooner or later but I'm sorry, Tina, I mean about your job here. I guess this is the end of the road for us."

"Oh shoot, Ms. Cooper, I can get a job tomorrow. That's no problem. Don't worry about me. But Mr. Cooper left you like this? I can't believe it. It's so wrong."

"Yeah, it's not great, is it? But I have my health. I have good children. I have . . ."