I Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online

had entered Peter’s life. The son of someone who worked for Peter’s father? I wondered. After all, I’m the daughter of someone who worked for Peter’s father. Or perhaps he was a college friend invited to join the family business? Nelson Rockefeller invited his roommate at Dartmouth, a scholarship student from the Midwest, to work for the family. That man ended up a multimillionaire.
    When the brief program began, I introduced Peter. There was nothing in his demeanor to suggest the pressure he was under when he welcomed the guests and talked about the importance of our literacy program. “It’s fine to give money to help,” he said, “but it’s equally important to have people—people like all of you—to volunteer a little time, on a one-to-one basis, in helping others learn to read. As you all probably know, I travel a lot, but I’d like to be a literacy volunteer in a different way. So let’s make this an annual event at my home.” Then, as the crowd applauded, he turned to me. “Is that all right with you, Kathryn?”
    Was that the moment I fell in love with him, or was I already there? “That would be wonderful,” I said, as my heart melted. Just that day there’d been another item in the business section of the New York Times that asked the question. “Is it time for Peter Carrington to go?”
    Peter gave me a thumbs-up, and then, smiling at people and shaking hands with a few of them, he walked down the corridor toward his library. I noticed he didn’t go into it, though. I thought he either escaped up the back staircase or even left the house completely.
    I had been in and out of the house all day to oversee the caterer and the florist, and to make sure that the people who were rearranging furniture didn’t break or scratch anything. The Barrs became my friends that day. At lunchtime, over a cup of tea and a quick sandwich in the kitchen, they made me see the Peter Carrington they knew: the twelve-year-old boy who was sent to Choate after his mother died, the twenty-year-old Princeton senior who was relentlessly questioned about Susan Althorp’s death, the thirty-eight-year-old husband whose pregnant wife was found dead in a pool.
    Thanks in no small part to the couple’s help, everything went perfectly. I waited to be sure the last of the guests were on their way, the cleanup complete, and the furniture put back in place before I left. Though I kept hoping he would, Peter didn’t reappear, and in my head I was already trying to frame a way to see him again soon. I didn’t want to wait until it was time to plan a reception next year.
    But then, inadvertently, and certainly unwillingly, Maggie brought us together. I had driven her to the reception, so of course she waited for me to drive her home. Then, as Gary Barr opened the front door for us, Maggie caught the tip of her shoe in the slightly elevated rim of the door frame and fell hard, almost bouncing off the marble floor of the entrance hall.
    I screamed. Maggie is my mother and father and grandmother and friend and mentor, all in one. She is all I have. And she’s eighty-three years old. As the years pass, I worry more and more, facing the inevitable fact that she is not immortal, even though I know that she will put up a fight before she goes gentle into that good night.
    Then, from the floor, Maggie snapped, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kay, be quiet. I didn’t do any damage except maybe to my dignity.” She raised herself on one elbow and began to struggle up, then she fainted.
    The events of the next hour are a blur. The Barrs called an ambulance, and I guess they let Peter Carrington know what had happened because suddenly he was there, kneeling beside Maggie, his fingers feeling for the pulse in her throat, his voice reassuring. “Kathryn, her heart seems strong. I think her forehead took the impact. It’s swelling.”
    He followed the ambulance to the hospital, and waited with me in the emergency room until I was reassured by