“I can never forgive you. You made a fool of me. But you were the best thing that ever happened to me. I guess I owe you something for that. I didn’t tell them anything in there, Lara.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Paul. I don’t know how to…”
“Call it my birthday present to you. Happy birthday, baby.”
She watched him walk away, and his words suddenly hit her. It was her birthday! So many events had been piling on top of one another that she had completely forgotten about it. And the party. Two hundred guests were going to be waiting for her at the Manhattan Cameron Plaza!
Lara turned to Terry Hill. “I’ve got to get back to New York tonight. There’s a big party for me. Will they let me go?”
“Just a minute,” Terry Hill said. He disappeared inside the hearing room, and when he came out five minutes later, he said, “You can go to New York. The grand jury will give its verdict in the morning, but it’s just a formality now. You can return here tonight. By the way, your friend told you the truth. He didn’t talk in there.”
Thirty minutes later Lara was headed for New York.
“Are you going to be all right?” Terry Hill asked.
She looked at him and said, “Of course I am.” There would be hundreds of important people at the party to honor her that night. She would hold her head high. She was Lara Cameron…
She stood in the center of the deserted Grand Ballroom and looked around. I created this. I created monuments that towered into the sky, that changed the lives of thousands of people all over America. And now it’s all going to belong to the faceless bankers. She could hear her father’s voice so clearly. “The Fates. They’ve always been agin me.” She thought of Glace Bay and the little boardinghouse where she had grown up. She remembered how terrified she had been on her first day at school: “Can anyone think of a word beginning with f?” She remembered the boarders. Bill Rogers…“The first rule in real estate is OPM. Never forget that.” And Charles Cohn: “I eat only kosher food, and I’m afraid Glace Bay doesn’t have any.”…
“If I could acquire this land…would you give me a five-year lease?”…
“No, Lara. It would have to be a ten-year lease.”…
And Sean MacAllister…“I would need a very special reason to make this loan to you!…have you ever had a lover?”…
And Howard Keller: “…you’re going about this all wrong.”…
“I want you to come to work for me.”…
And then the successes. The wonderful, brilliant successes. And Philip. Her Lochinvar. The man she adored. That was the greatest loss of all.
A voice called, “Lara…”
She turned.
It was Jerry Townsend. “Carlos told me you were here.” He walked up to her. “I’m sorry about the birthday party.”
She looked at him. “What…what happened?”
He was staring at her. “Didn’t Howard tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“There were so many cancellations because of the bad publicity that we decided it would be best to call it off. I asked Howard to tell you.”
“To tell you the truth, I’ve been having some problems with my memory.”
Lara said softly, “It doesn’t matter.” She took one last look at the beautiful room. “I had my fifteen minutes, didn’t I?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” She started to walk toward the door.
“Lara, let’s go up to the office. There are some things that have to be wound up.”
“All right.” I’ll probably never be in this building again, Lara thought.
In the elevator on the way up to the executive offices, Jerry said, “I heard about Keller. It’s hard to believe he was responsible for what happened.”
Lara shook her head. “I was responsible, Jerry. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“It’s not your fault.”
She felt a sudden wave of loneliness. “Jerry, if you haven’t had your dinner yet…”
“I’m sorry, Lara. I’m busy tonight.”
“Oh. That’s all right.”
The elevator door opened, and the two of them stepped out.
“The papers that you have to sign are on the conference room table,” Jerry said.