3

“Why doesn’t Daddy love us anymore?”

The question startled Gia. Vicky had asked her countless times why Daddy didn’t live with them anymore. But this was the first time she had mentioned love.

Answer a question with another question: “Why do you say that?”

But Vicky was not to be sidetracked.

“He doesn’t love us, does he, Mommy.” It was not a question.

No. He doesn’t. I don’t think he ever did.

That was the truth. Richard had never been a father. As far as he was concerned, Vicky had been an accident, a terrible inconvenience to him. He had never shown affection to her, had never been a presence in their home when they had lived together. He might as well have phoned in his paternal duties.

Gia sighed and hugged Vicky tighter. What an awful time that had been… the worst years of her life. Gia had been brought up a strict Catholic, and although the days had become one long siege of Gia and Vicky alone against the world, and the nights—those nights when her husband bothered to come home—had been Richard and Gia against each other, she had never considered divorce. Not until the night when Richard, in a particularly vicious mood, had told her why he’d married her. She was as good as anyone else for rutting when he was randy, he had said, but the real reason was taxes. Immediately after the death of his father, Richard had gone to work transferring his assets out of Britain and into either American or international holdings, all the while looking for an American to marry. He’d found such an American in Gia, fresh in from the Midwest looking to sell her commercial art talents to Madison Avenue. The urbane Richard Westphalen, with his refined British manners and accent, had swept her off her feet. They were married; he became an American citizen. There were other ways he could have acquired citizenship, but they were lengthy and this was more in keeping with his character. The taxes on the earnings of his portion of the Westphalen fortune would from then on be taxed at a maximum of seventy percent—which would drop to fifty percent starting in October 1981—rather than the British government’s ninety-plus percent. After that, he quickly lost interest in her.

“We might have had some fun for a while, but you had to go and become a mother.”

Those words seared themselves onto her brain. She started divorce proceedings the following day, ignoring her lawyer’s increasingly strident pleas for a whopping property settlement.

Perhaps she should have listened. She often would wonder about that later. But at the time all she wanted was out. She wanted nothing that came from his precious family fortune. She allowed her lawyer to ask for child support only because she knew she would need it until she revived her art career.

Was Richard contrite? Did the smallest mote of guilt come to rest on the featureless, diamond-hard surface of his conscience? No. Did he do anything to secure a future for the child he had fathered? No. In fact, he instructed his lawyer to fight for minimal child support.

“No, Vicky,” Gia said, “I don’t think he does.”

Gia expected tears, but Vicky fooled her by smiling up at her.

“Jack loves us.”

Not this again!

“I know he does, honey, but—”

“Then why can’t he be my daddy?”

“Because…” How was she going to say this? “… because sometimes love just isn’t enough. There have to be other things. You have to trust each other, have the same values—”

“What are values?”

“Ohhh… you have to believe in the same things, want to live the same way.”

“I like Jack.”

“I know you do, honey. But that doesn’t mean Jack is the right man to be your new father.” Vicky’s blind devotion to Jack undermined Gia’s confidence in the child’s character judgment. She was usually so astute.

She lifted Vicky off her lap and rose to a hands-on-knees crouch. The heat in the playhouse was suffocating.

“Let’s go inside and get some lemonade.”

“Not right now,” Vicky said. “I want to play with Ms. Jelliroll. She’s got to hide before Mr. Grape-grabber finds her.”

“Okay. But come in soon. It’s getting too hot.”

Vicky didn’t answer. She was already lost in a fantasy with her dolls. Gia stood outside the playhouse and wondered if Vicky might be spending too much time alone here. There were no children around Sutton Square for her to play with, just her mother, an elderly aunt, and her books and dolls. Gia wanted to get Vicky back home and into a normal routine as soon as possible.

“Miss Gia?” It was Eunice calling from the back door. “Mrs. Paton says lunch will be early today because of your trip to the dress shop.”

Gia bit down on the middle knuckle of her right index finger, a gesture of frustration she had picked up from her grandmother many years ago.

The dress shop… the reception tonight… two places she most definitely did not want to go, but would have to because she had promised. She had to get out of here!