Adam's Daughter by Kristy Daniels Page B

He tried not to give in to such things. But something would inevitably remind him. A silver flash of a window reflecting the sun. The clanking rumble of cable cars, a carved jade cat in a window in Chinatown. Someone laughing. Someone singing. Anyone with red hair.
    At first, it had made him sick, this constant, desperate longing. He saw her face everywhere he went. And at night, when he craved the black relief of sleep, she would appear to torture him in his dreams. Then, slowly, the obsession hardened into a dull ache that occasionally, when he was absorbed in work, subsided but never totally went away.
    It was about a year and a half after he had last seen Elizabeth, while he was routinely reading the Times , when he saw the announcement of her marriage. It was just a small story, buried in the society pages. Elizabeth Ingram, heiress to the Ingram fortune, had married Willis Foster Reed, a millionaire real estate developer and oil entrepreneur. The bride was eighteen. The groom was fifty-one. The story detailed the lavish wedding and told how Reed had given his bride a block of oil stock, a certified check for $1 million, a $10,000 diamond necklace, and had built her an Italianate mansion on a cliff overlooking the Hudson River.
    Adam read the story several times. He hadn't realized until that moment that deep inside him, a heartbeat of his fantasies about Elizabeth had endured. But with the announcement, any dreams he had harbored about her dissipated, like a final sad sigh. Soon after, he had married Lilith.
    He drove on, watching a gull hover over the ocean in the overwhelming empty expanse of blue sky.
    “I saw the new circulation figures yesterday,” Bickford said, interrupting Adam’s thoughts. “The country’s going to hell in a hand basket but we’re doing okay thanks to you.”
    “We’re in this together, Bick.”
    Adam was thankful to focus his thoughts on the newspaper. He thought with satisfaction about how much progress he had been able to make in the last three years. During the flush years just before the crash he had improved the Times ’ finances, and the newspaper had even begun to prosper. Adam convinced Bickford to pour most of the capital right back into the paper for badly needed improvements. Lilith had protested, saying they should be able to enjoy their newfound fortunes. But Bickford, well aware of his daughter’s spendthrift tendencies, backed Adam. Bickford bought new presses for the photographs and rotogravure color Adam planned to use, and he authorized modest salary increases.
    Then, two months ago, the crash had come, and overnight everything changed. The bottom fell out of advertising, with revenue dropping forty-five percent. But circulation remained steady. Even in the worst of times, people still needed newspapers.
    While Bickford and Lilith fretted constantly about the Depression, Adam kept a cool head. His plan was to keep the Times on a steady keel during the financial storm, poised for new growth when recovery began. He worked long hours, often not even returning home. Across the country, weak newspapers watched their small-profit margins evaporate, and some important newspapers perished. But the Times held steady.
    So did Adam’s own finances. His natural frugality had given them a small cushion, and he forced Lilith to pare down. He had never invested in the stock market, so the crash left him almost untouched. For the last four years, he had been pouring every extra dollar into land in Napa Valley. Ten years of Prohibition had killed the wine industry, and the fallow vineyards were ridiculously cheap. Adam knew Prohibition would someday end, so he kept buying, slowly, acre by acre. When opportunity came, he would be ready.
    Adam steered the car around a curve. The sun glinted off the water in silver shards.
    Elizabeth. She was suddenly there again .
    “Adam, are you all right?” Bickford asked.
    Adam glanced at him. “I’m fine, Bick.”
    “Well, pay attention, I