Page 4 of Always

Her portrait still hung in the library, alongside those of her husband and children. Like her daughters she was tall, slender, dark-haired, blue-eyed. Bennet Knight had wooed her by begging her to pose for his first bridal line. It was a choice both romantically and financially rewarding—Eleanor’s lovely figure and melancholy face helped sell an inordinate amount of gowns, and shortly thereafter, she agreed to don one of his dresses for their own wedding ceremony.

Raised in wealth and privilege, she must have been impressed by a man with twenty-eight dollars and holes in his shoes who had come to New York to build himself an empire. She might not have realized at first that Bennet’s greatest gift was choosing partners stronger than himself—first Dominic Moretti, then Eleanor. And of course Anika’s father had then been, and remained now, extremely handsome. Eleanor wouldn’t be the first woman to imagine there was more substance behind a pretty face than could actually be found.

All Bennet’s features seemed so encouraging. The great square jaw that seemed to promise masculine strength and loyalty, the dimples that indicated a roguish sense of humor, the thick waves of hair (then chestnut brown, now an even more striking silver gray) that appeared to denote an adventurous spirit.

Only in his eyes could you see that there was something off. A coldness, a vacantness that didn’t quite match his charming smile. How long did it take Eleanor to realize?

Anika could only guess, because her mother had too much integrity to criticize Bennet to his daughters. She kept her unhappiness to herself. It was only after she was bedridden from the multiple tumors along her spine that she begged Anika not to let Bennet dissuade her from pursuing her education, to always remember that all this—Eleanor had waved a frail hand to encompass everything in her own room, the paintings, the jewelry, the curtains, the carpets—all this was ephemera, that experiences would last longer than objects.

Eleanor might have told Stella the same thing, but Stella said the smell of the ointments and medications in her mother’s room nauseated her, and she couldn’t bear to see her so weak and haggard. Eleanor died shortly after.

Anika fell into a deep sadness for over a year. She was only eighteen. She had never been close to her father, and though she had often wished for a relationship with Stella, their age and temperaments seemed too distant. Stella was six years her senior. They shared no interests. While Anika loved solitary pursuits like reading, ballet, and horseback riding, Stella harkened to the ancient aphorism that if a socialite performed her talents and there was no one there to see it, did it really happen at all? Stella preferred parties, galas, nightclubs, and, in a pinch, awards banquets.

It didn’t help that eighteen-year-old Anika represented something of a threat to her sister. Stella was beautiful, but she didn’t react well the first time she overheard someone whisper that the younger Knight sister was even prettier. She was relieved when Anika largely avoided the nightlife of New York to focus on her university studies.

Anika’s grief over her mother only softened when she met someone at school, a boy unlike anyone she had met before. Two years of blissful infatuation followed until it ended—horribly, painfully—at graduation. She came back home to the Hamptons to take over her mother’s charity. She had worked there ever since.

These days, she was no longer too pretty to be seen with Stella. Quite the opposite. While Stella remained as beautiful at thirty-four as twenty-four, the intervening years had sapped the life and color from her sister.

Anika tended to dress in drab office wear more befitting the daughter of an accountant than a designer. She kept her hair in a perpetual ponytail, and with her long work hours, she looked as exhausted as she felt. Worst of all—in her father and sister’s eyes—Anika stopped dancing, running, and playing tennis, causing her to gain fifteen pounds. It might as well have been fifty. Excess flesh was unbearably plebeian, intolerable to the fashionable Knights. Bennet frequently remarked that it was a good thing Anika had no interest in fashion, as she would never have fit into his sample sizes.

Anika’s job was the only thing that interested her now.

In the initial flush of success of Bennet Knight, in the happier early days of their marriage, Eleanor had convinced Bennet to start the Red Line, a line of casual separates with the proceeds supporting a charity to pay the tuition costs for underprivileged college students. At the time of her death, the Red Line had put over three thousand students through school. That number stagnated in the wake of her passing, as Bennet couldn’t be bothered to hire a new director and Stella wanted nothing to do with, as she put it, “the Gap knock-offs for the indigent.”

Since Anika had taken over, she had more than tripled the number of funded students, passing ten thousand that spring. She had to admit that the upcoming move to the city would make her work hours more efficient—while she had handled things fairly well from the satellite office, it would be better to work out of the main office on Eighth Avenue.

Even the timing was good. In a month they would hold their annual fundraising gala, an event that provided the bulk of the funds for the charity’s administration costs, since Bennet generally neglected the Red Line, only designing a new collection when Anika’s nagging reached intolerable levels.

Last year’s gala hadn’t raised as much money as Anika had hoped. It was crucial that the guest list be full this year. Aunt Molly had promised to help—she was the other board member. While she didn’t leave her house often enough to be a formidable force on the socialite scene, she had at least a dozen close, loyal, and thankfully wealthy friends.

Bennet and Stella went ahead to the penthouse, leaving Anika to oversee the packing. Much was made of the favor they were doing her, giving her more time in the house, while they did all the work of preparing their new home for full-time residence. Anika knew what they would really be up to. Stella had already commented on the hideousness of the dining set (that she herself had selected two years earlier). She would spend her time redecorating. Bennet had a vision for a new club-wear inspired line, so he was planning his evenings out for “research.”

Even if it hadn’t been their preference to leave, Anika would have had to insist. As painful as it was to go through her mother’s belongings once more, she couldn’t have trusted anyone else to pack up what was most precious for storage: Eleanor’s collection of vintage silk scarves, her cabinet of vinyls, her first-edition gothic novels. The furniture, the decor, the pots and pans and other household goods—all that would remain so the estate could be rented furnished.

Before the job was even done, helpful Aunt Molly accomplished what the harried estate agent could not: she found an acceptable tenant.

“She’s found some old man,” Bennet told Anika over the phone. “Some dot com millionaire, made all his money in the nineties and then worked as a professor since—god knows why. Now he wants to retire out here, where his family is. He’s related to the Sullenbergers somehow—you remember them, that have the gray Phantom Rolls Royce. His wife died, but they do have grandchildren. Stella won’t like that if they come to visit. We won’t tell her that part.”

Liam Doyle was sixty-four, five years older than Bennet Knight, though possibly Bennet could be forgiven for applying the moniker of “old man” since Mr. Doyle’s hair was entirely white, and he was rather shockingly thin. Aunt Molly said he ate some kind of juice diet, the sort of nonsense she considered utterly typical for Californians, especially those from Silicon Valley. She had known Mr. Doyle’s wife years before, and she assured Anika that he was an intelligent and respectful person who would treat their house with the greatest care.

“I mostly called him because he loves horses,” Aunt Molly said. “He’ll keep Tom on to care for them.”

Anika wondered if Aunt Molly had more than a friendly interest in Mr. Doyle herself. He might not be a handsome celebrity, but he impressed Anika when they met. He struck her as keenly clever, and full of energy despite looking as if a stiff wind would blow him away. He took both her hands between his and shook them vigorously, complimenting her on the double row of lilac trees at the front of the house, asking her if she had ever found a five-petaled lilac before.

“The English think they’re lucky,” he said, “like the four-leafed clover.”

“I haven’t,” Anika said, “and indeed, I wouldn’t say I’m very lucky.”

“Ah!” he laughed. “Proof!”

Before Anika had shown Mr. Doyle a tenth of the house, he agreed to take it, on generous terms. He was much more interested in the grounds, praising Eleanor’s rose garden, the herb greenhouse, and especially the stables and paddocks.

There was no end date to the lease—that was what hurt Anika’s heart the most. Mr. Doyle obviously intended to make a home here. While conceptually the renting of the estate was meant to be a temporary measure, Anika couldn’t imagine a time when her father and sister’s spending would improve enough to allow them to take possession again. She could not really believe that she would come back as anything but Mr. Doyle’s visitor.

With irrational dread, she finished packing her own few boxes of books and clothes, marking them to be shipped to the apartment in the city.

Patrick offered to drive her, though technically his last day as their chauffeur had been Tuesday.

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