Chapter One
Outlook Farm
Kansas City, Missouri
Summer 1988
It was Saturday. Dory Lambert's favorite day of the week.
On Saturday, Chase McKay, the chauffeur's son, washed the
cars.
One by one he'd drive them out of the garage, fan them on
the tarmac and take off his shirt. It was the high point
of fourteen-year-old Dory's dumb, boring, stupid,
pointless week.
The Rolls, the Bentley and Daddy's grand old Packard
touring car. The Town Car that Daddy occasionally drove
himself. Mother's Volvo, her sister Jilly's 1957
Thunderbird hardtop convertible, the Chevy station wagon
and the van that Wallace the butler used for errands.
It was a lot of hosing, sponging, wiping and polishing so
Chase started early. No later than seven a.m., Dory would
plunk herself with a book on the round bench under the
massive old elm tree that grew by the garage. Close enough
that she could see Chase and he could pretend she wasn't
there. He was awfully good at that.
She'd lie on the bench reading till Chase started to get
tired, till the scowl that made her heart twist curled the
corner of his mouth. When he upended the red plastic milk
crate that held the sponges and chamois cloths, sat down
on it and lit a cigarette, Dory would put her book aside,
sidle up to him and say, "I'll give you a hand, Chase."
"Are you trying to get me in trouble?" He'd squint at her
through a curl of smoke. "Go away, squirt."
"You won't get in trouble," she'd say. "Nobody cares what
I do."
Dory didn't say because she wasn't beautiful like Jilly,
but it was true. Chase would flip his cigarette away,
throw a sponge at her and go back to work. Dory would
chase thesponge down, pick it up and start scrubbing.
Chase would scowl for a while, then he'd smile. He'd flip
soapsuds at her when they met at the bucket. Next thing
Dory knew, she'd have a bucket of her own. Chase would go
to the spigot and fill one for her, drop down on his heels
beside her and show her how to get the road gunk off the
chrome fenders. The brush of his arm against hers made her
stomach flutter.
At some point in the morning Jilly would walk by with her
friends. In boots and jodhpurs on their way to the
stables, in white pleated skirts swinging tennis rackets,
or pastel shorts and matching sun visors on their way to
the nine-hole golf course. Dory could feel the spring that
would tighten in Chase and turn him around half a second
before Jilly appeared with her friends.
Jilly was blond, leggy—"coltish," Mother called her in
those days before her figure filled out—and gorgeous. She
and her friends never stopped, but their eyes would slide
toward Chase. He'd turn around and stand there, let them
look at him as they walked past, his naked, blond-haired
chest sweaty with soap. The blue eyes that met and held
his longest were Jilly's. When they were gone, Chase would
turn back to Dory and pick up where he'd left off showing
her how to get just the right buff on the bumper of the
Rolls.
When they finished the cars they'd drink a Coke on the
bench under the elm tree and Dory would tell Chase about
her stupid, dumb, boring, pointless week. How did French
people learn French? Her ballet teacher said she danced
like a cow. The new uniform she had to wear to school in
the fall made her look like a penguin. She did not want to
go to London with Mother and Jilly. She wanted to stay
home with Daddy and Aunt Ping but Mother said she had to
go to London.
"You got a rough life, squirt." Chase would give her a
look that was part scowl, part amused smile. "I don't know
how you stand it."
I look forward to Saturdays, Dory wanted to tell him.
Doing something that has a point, a purpose, achieves a
goal. I look forward to being with you. Dory wondered
later what would've happened if she'd said that to Chase,
if it would've changed anything. Nope, she concluded.
Chase was nineteen, Jilly was seventeen and she was a
fourteen-year-old squirt.
Chase lived over the garage with his father, Charles
McKay, Daddy's chauffeur. It was a really big garage,
climate controlled to protect Daddy's cars, especially his
treasured old Pack. The apartment above it was more like a
penthouse than a garret.
"Awfully nice digs for the chauffeur," one of Jilly's
friends said on a Saturday night when they were all
staying over.
They were on the balcony outside Jilly's bedroom. In their
peignoirs and painted toenails, with Daddy's binoculars so
they could spy on Chase. Dory had wormed her way in. She
always did and Jilly always let her. When one of her
friends said, "Do we always have to have the brat with
us?" Jilly's eyes would flash. "She's not a brat," she'd
say. "She's my baby sister." Dory worshipped Jilly.
When her snippy friend made that comment about the garage,
Jilly said, "Daddy's very good to our servants. Mother
tells him he's an idiot but he tells Mother if you want
people to take care of you, you'd better take care of
them. Daddy treats our servants like family."
One Saturday night that summer it was just Dory and Jilly
and Jilly's best friend Marilyn on the balcony. They
caught Chase in the binoculars as he slid outside onto the
flat part of the garage roof in jeans and nothing else,
leaned his elbows on the parapet and lit a cigarette. Dory
saw the red flare in the darkness as he inhaled.
"God he is sooo gorgeous," Marilyn said and all three of
them sighed. Then Marilyn swung around on the chaise
they'd drawn up to the brick balustrade and tipped her
head to one side. "Sooo," she said to Jilly. "Have you let
him kiss you yet?"
"Mar-i-lyn." Jilly flicked her eyes at Dory.
Kissing? Dory's heart seized. When was this going on?
The next night when Jill snuck out of the house Dory
followed her. She bumped into a stone bench and knocked
over a birdbath, but Jilly zipped through the ornamental
garden like a bat with radar. Chase waited for her by the
stables. Dory saw the flash of his white T-shirt when he
stepped out of the darkness. Jilly flew to him, threw her
arms around him. Chase lifted her off her feet.
Dory clung to the corner of the garage. When Chase took
Jilly's hand and drew her into the long, low horse barn
where Mother kept her Arabs and her saddlebreds, Dory
followed. Chase had left the cross-planked doors ajar. If
Eddie the head groom walked the stable yard, and he did
sometimes at night, he'd investigate. Because she loved
Chase, Dory eased the doors shut behind her and sank into
a ball of misery against the wall near the tack room door.
Moonlight glowed through the skylights. Chase had his
shirt off. Jilly's blouse was unbuttoned. Chase had her
backed against the wall between two stalls. He was kissing
Jilly and squeezing her breasts through the white lace
cups of her bra. Jilly was making noises like it hurt.
Dory's heart tore down the middle. She didn't know which
one of them to yell at first—Stop hurting my sister! Stop
kissing Chase!
"No." Jilly lifted Chase's hand from her breast and
slipped it between her legs. "There. Oh yes. There."
Dory's mouth fell open. Where had Jilly learned that?
The barn doors swung open, the lights blazed on and there
stood Daddy and Charles McKay in their pajamas and
bathrobes. Chase jumped away from Jilly, but Daddy and
Charles had seen his hand on Jilly's breast, the other
between her legs. Both men looked like they'd been punched
in the stomach.
"Chase," Charles said. "How could you do such a thing?"
"It wasn't Chase," Dory said. "Jill put his hand between
her legs."
"Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph!" Daddy shouted, first at
Dory, then at Jilly. "In front of your sister!"
Jilly yanked her blouse over her breasts and burst into
tears.
Daddy snatched off his leather slipper. He'd never hit
Dory or Jilly with it. He'd pitch it at Aunt Ping's cat,
Tobias, when he jumped into his leather chair in the
library, but when he took off his slipper and started
waving it around you knew you were in trouble.
Daddy flung out his hand, pointed his slipper at the house
and thundered "Go!" at Jilly. She went, clutching her
blouse and sobbing.
"We'll discuss this is the morning, Charles," Daddy said
to his chauffeur, then swung a glare and his slipper on
Dory. "You too. Go!"
Dory wanted to look at Chase but didn't dare. She ran out
of the barn, one jump ahead of Daddy's slipper.
Mother and Aunt Ping were awake. Aunt Ping slept like
Tobias, like a cat. The birdbath Dory knocked over was
right outside her window on the ground floor of the south
wing. She'd seen Dory hopping one-footed through the
garden and went upstairs to waken Mother and Daddy.
Daddy yelled. Mother lectured them on appropriate behavior
for young ladies named Lambert, which did not include
making out with the chauffeur's son or snooping on your
sister. Daddy yelled some more. Aunt Ping sat in a pink-
gilt Louis XIV armchair in the front parlor with Tobias in
her lap, her head bowed as she stroked his gray fur.
Dory's head hurt by the time Daddy and Mother finished.
She stumbled upstairs, fell face-first on her bed and
slept until eleven o'clock the next morning, when she
yawned downstairs to the breakfast room. Aunt Ping came in
and sat beside her while she drank her milk-laced coffee.
She told her Chase was gone, did her best to make Dory
believe this had been planned all along. That Daddy would
pay for Chase to go to college.
"It's June, Aunt Ping," Dory said. "School starts in
September."
"There was an opening for summer semester. Chase had to
leave right away to take advantage of it."
"Is Charles gone? Did Daddy get rid of him, too?"
"Dory." Aunt Ping looked shocked. "What a thing to say."
"This is because of Jilly, because of what happened last
night."
"Really, Dory, it isn't. It only looks that way."
"If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then
it's a duck, Aunt Ping," Dory said and stomped out of the
breakfast room.
When Daddy came home from the bank that evening, Dory let
herself into the library without knocking. He blinked at
her, surprised, from his leather chair, a cigar in one
hand, a whiskey sour in the other.
"How can you say you treat our servants like family and
then send Chase away because he kissed Jilly?" she
demanded.
"It wasn't my idea," Daddy replied. "Charles thought it
was best."
"Are you going to pay for Chase to go to college?"
"Yes. It was part of the arrangement Charles and I made
when he came to work for us."
Almost twenty years ago, Dory knew, when Chase was just a
baby. After Charles' wife died and Daddy and Mother were
first married. Dory left the library and the house and
climbed the stairs to the garage apartment.
"Why did you think it was best to send Chase away?" she
asked when Charles McKay opened the door.
"Go back to the house, Miss Dory. That's where you
belong."