The Alpine Betrayal by Mary Daheim Page B

location site.
    “Great,” said Curtis Graff. He offered us his diffident smile. “Thanks. I’ll get back to you in a couple of days, Mrs. Lord. Adam gave me a list, but he said he might call you about some other stuff he forgot.”
    I inclined my head. Curtis Graff moved quickly out of the office, giving the impression that he was making an escape. “That’s odd,” I remarked, more to myself than to Ed and Francine. “I wonder why he isn’t staying with Cody.” My ad manager didn’t pay any attention, but Francine’s bright blue eyes fastened on me.
    “If my memory hasn’t failed,” said Francine, “there’s no love lost between the brothers. Their parents retired to the San Juan Islands about the same time Curtis went up to Alaska. I never knew the boys very well, but Hetty Graff was always hanging around the sale rack. She never bought anything unless it was at least forty percent off.”
    Ed’s head shot up. “Forty percent off? Gosh, Francine, don’t tell me you’re having a clearance sale!”
    Francine’s carefully plucked eyebrows lifted slightly. “Not yet, Ed.” She gave him her sweetest smile. “I thought about having a renovation sale after Durwood wiped out my front window, but I’ll wait until September. Do you think I should take out a
full page
ad?”
    Ed reeled against the desk. Trying not to laugh aloud, I crept into my office.

    My walk home was uphill. I arrived at my cozy log house in a weary, wilted state, hoping that the shelter of the evergreen trees had kept the interior cool. Clutching the mail I had retrieved from my box by the road, I went inside and discovered that though there was no breeze, the temperature in the living room seemed at least ten degrees below the heat outdoors.
    I got a Pepsi out of the refrigerator and poured it over a tall glass of ice. Collapsing on the sofa, I scanned the mail. The usual bills, ads, catalogues—and a single letter. The return address put my heart in my mouth: a well-heeled residential street in San Francisco. Hurriedly, I ripped open the plain beige envelope.
    This was the third letter I had received from Tom Cavanaugh since he had visited Alpine the previous autumn. He had come to town to give me advice on running the newspaper. He had also expressed an interest in investing in
The Advocate
, since buying into newspapers was one of the ways he had built up the considerable fortune his wife had inherited. I had not been keen on a partnership, no matter how silent, and Tom had respected my wishes. But he and I were already partners in another far different enterprise: Tom was Adam’s father, and in this letter, he was insisting on playing a bigger role in our son’s life.
    “With my other children virtually raised and on their own, I feel honor-bound to help you with Adam,” Tom wrote on his word processor. “I haven’t pressed you about this because I know how hell-bent you are on being independent. If you don’t want to tell Adam about me, you don’t have to, but in good conscience, I can’t go on ignoring my responsibilities. It’s not fair to Adam, and it’s not fair to me.”
    Bull
, I thought to myself angrily. None of it was ever fair to anybody. It wasn’t fair that Tom had married a wealthy heiress before I met him. It wasn’t fair that we had fallen in love and that his wife and I had gotten pregnant aboutthe same time. And it certainly wasn’t fair that Sandra Cavanaugh had turned out to be a raving loony.
    “I can see you wadding this letter up and throwing it across the room while you swear like a sailor,” Tom went on in his usual wry—and perceptive—manner. “But I’d like you to at least think about this. I may be coming up your way in the early fall again, so maybe we can have dinner. Meanwhile, there are a couple of recent developments that came out of a publishers’ meeting last month in Tampa …”
    He went on to enlighten me about a new way of billing advertisers and how small newspapers