We'll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark Read Free Book Online

big attraction to her. Like him, she enjoyed power.
    He enjoyed toying with her too. Now, he smiled down on her benignly and ran his hand over her hair. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “It’s just that I think Molly would have welcomed a visit from you even if she didn’t call. It’s a big change to come home to that empty house, and it’s got to be pretty damn lonely for her there. She had plenty of company in prison, even if it was company she didn’t appreciate.”
    Jenna lifted her husband’s hand from her head. “Stop it. You know that mussing my hair annoys me.” Abruptly she announced, “I have a brief I want to go over for a meeting tomorrow.”
    “Always be prepared. That’s being a good lawyer. You haven’t asked about our meetings today.”
    Cal was chairman of the board of Lasch Hospital and Remington Health Management. With a satisfied smile, he added, “It’s still a little tricky. American National Insurance wants those HMOs as much as we do, but we’ll get them. And when we do, we’ll be the biggest HMO in the East.”
    Jenna looked at her husband with grudging admiration. “You always get what you want, don’t you?”
    He nodded. “I got
you
, didn’t I?”
    Jenna pressed the button under the table to signal the maid to clear. “Yes,” she said quietly, “I guess you
did
.”

10
    The traffic on I-95 is getting into the California freeway class, Fran thought as she craned her neck, looking for a chance to change lanes. Almost immediately she had regretted not taking the Merritt Parkway. The semitrailer ahead of her was rumbling so loudly that it sounded like a bombing attack was underway, but it was traveling ten miles below the speed limit, making the experience of being stuck behind it doubly irritating.
    Overnight, the skies had cleared, and as the noncommittal weatherman on CBS put it, “Today will be partly sunny and partly cloudy, with a chance of rain.”
    That covers just about every possible situation, Fran decided, then realized she was concentrating on the weather and the driving conditions because she was nervous.
    As every rotation of the tires brought her nearer to Greenwich and her meeting with Molly Carpenter Lasch, she felt her thoughts insistently returning to the night her father shot himself. She knew why. On the way to Molly’s house she would be passing Barley Arms, the restaurant to which he’d taken her mother and her for what turned out to be their final family dinner together.
    Details she had not thought of in years came back to her, odd little facts that for some reason stuck in her memory. She thought of the tie her father had been wearing-blue background with a small green check pattern. She remembered that it had been very expensive-her mother had commented on it when the bill came in. “Is it sewn with gold thread, Frank? That’s a crazy price to pay for a tiny strip of cloth.”
    He wore that tie for the first time that last day, Fran thought. At dinner, Mom had teased him about saving it for my graduation. Had there been anything symbolic about his wearing something so extravagantly expensive when he knew he was going to kill himself because of money problems?
    The exit for Greenwich was coming up. Fran left I-95, reminding herself again that the Merritt would be a more direct route; then she began watching for the local streets that after two miles would lead her to the neighborhood where she had spent four years of her life. She found herself shivering, despite the warmth in the car.
    Four formative years, she told herself. And they certainly were.
    When she drove past Barley Arms, she resolutely kept her eyes on the road, not permitting herself even a glance at the partially concealed parking lot where her father had sat in the backseat of the family car and fatally shot himself.
    She deliberately avoided as well the street on which she had lived those four years. There’ll be another time for that, she thought. A few minutes later she