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FOUR YEARS EARLIER

The security gate parted and Braxton McCrae sped his dark-silver Pagani Zonda up the winding driveway of his parents’ Tudor-style mansion and came to an abrupt stop at the east entrance. Hopping out, he hurried inside.

His mother, Lady Millicent McCrae, was just coming down the eastern staircase when he entered the foyer. In his bomber jacket and gloves, and his jeans and Timberland’s, he looked more like the member of a motorcycle gang than the titan of industry he had become. He didn’t follow in generations of footsteps at McCrae Aeronautics, a company that competed with Boeing, like all of her other sons had done. He charted his own course. Created his own businesses. Made his fortune his own way. But that was her beloved Brax. “You got here fast enough.”

“But not too late I hope.” He hurried toward the staircase.

“Not too late, no.”

“But soon?”

Millicent looked deftly worried. “Very soon.”

“Is Father here?”

“No. Why would he be?”

“Common curtesy. Respect. Love and honor for a woman who’s worked for the McCrae family for fifty years?” Brax could go on. But it was all beside the point. He kissed his mother on both of her cheeks. Even at fifty-six, she was still the most beautiful woman in the world to him. “Has Roni made it yet?”

“Not yet. Poor thing.”

Brax’s face suddenly looked anguished, as if Roni’s wellbeing concerned him most of all. So much so that his mother noticed it. “Don’t worry about Veronica. She can take care of herself.”

Brax felt exposed. “You don’t have to tell me that. I know that.” He quickly changed the subject. “What are the doctors saying?”

Milicent let out an exasperated exhale, and then shook her head.

Brax unzipped his jacket. “Damn.”

Millicent beheld her son’s expressive face with nothing but love and admiration for him. He was her favorite because he just was. Just as she had been the favorite daughter of a Norwegian Duke who did not want her to marry the young, rich and brash American Edward McCrae. But she was spoiled rotten and would not be denied. The young couple married and relocated to America when she was only seventeen (and pregnant with Braxton). She moved in with Edward’s now-deceased parents and never moved out of the family home. And although she was royalty back in her home country, she made it her business to raise her children to be down-to-earth, kind, considerate people. With the help of her children’s nanny Beatrice Ross, she felt she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Especially with Brax.

But changing Edward into a responsible husband and father, as she had also planned to do, didn’t succeed at all.

But you can’t have everything , was the motto of her life.

“She’s asking for you and Veronica,” Millicent said, “so go in there and keep it light and calm. Don’t break down in tears or display any untoward emotion because you know how Bea hates that.” She patted him on his chest. “Just try to . . . Just try to . . .” She shook her head. She was the one who was about to breakdown.

Brax hugged her, he understood, and then he hurried up the stairs.

When he got just outside of the bedroom he touched his forehead and then made the sign of the cross, praying for strength. Then he stiffened his spine, exhaled, and walked on in.

When he saw her lying in that bed looking her elegant self even though it was obvious her time was near, he did his best to put on his best fake smile. But he couldn’t do that to her. Not a fake bone was in that lady’s body and Brax wasn’t about to pretend all was fine and dandy either. The fact that a doctor and nurse walked out of the room when he walked in proved that nothing was fine. Nothing was dandy.

He removed his gloves and tossed them on the dresser as he went over and sat on the side of her big, California-King sized bed. “Hello Miss Bea.”

“Hey.” Her voice was hard to hear and very strained. Then she looked at him. “If you say I look beautiful I’ll bop you one.”

Brax smiled then. That was so her. “Yes ma’am.” Then his look turned serious. He took her hand. “How do you feel?”

“Ready to meet my Maker. But just my luck I’ll be here another fifty years.”

He laughed. Her voice was getting fainter, but he understood every word.

Then she nodded her head, which he knew was not easy for her, and looked him dead in the eyes. “You take care of yourself, Braxton. And take care of your mama.”

“I will. And I’ll look out for Roni too.”

But Beatrice’s expression changed. “You stay away from my daughter,” she said to him in no uncertain terms.

He smiled, thinking she had to be joking. “Very funny.”

“No I mean it.” Somehow her voice was stronger. “You’re a great man, Brax. You have a good heart. But when it comes to women, you’re no good.”

Shocked to hear her say that with a straight face, Brax’s smile left. “I’m no good?”

“With women, you’re no good at all. Just like your daddy. Just like your granddaddy. It’s in your bloodstream. Stay away from her. You’ll only break her heart, and she’s had too many heart breaks already. And here I come dying on her and she’s only twenty-five, when she needs her mama the most.” It was Beatrice who had to fight back tears. “But she’s strong.”

Brax nodded, although he was fighting tears too. But he held on. It wasn’t about him. “She’s very strong.”

“And you keep her that way. Don’t baby her. Don’t you ever baby her or you’ll run her away.”

In any normal circumstance Brax would have mentioned that she had just told him to stay away from her. Now she was telling him not to baby her or he’d run her away. But this was no normal circumstance. “I promise you I will never baby her.”

Beatrice nodded. “Good. That’s good. And don’t try to change her either.”

Stay away from her but never baby her and never try to change her? It made no sense! But Brax knew she was heavily medicated. “I won’t,” he said.

“I told her that if she graduated from college like I wanted her to do then after that she could pursue any career she wished. But college, I told her, was non-negotiable. She was my only child and my child was going to graduate from college if it was the last thing I saw her do on this earth.”

“That was when you first got diagnosed and she wanted to go to school here in town.”

“And I would have none of that,” said Beatrice. “She was going to the best college she could get into and that wasn’t going to be in Victorville. And she did that for me. Got herself in Columbia and graduated with honors. That’s why I never objected when she decided she wanted to stay in New York City and become a police officer. I never wanted that for her no more than you did.”

A frown appeared on her face as if it was still a bitter taste in her mouth. “Being a cop is dangerous. But that’s her choice. And she loves it. Don’t you take that away from her because you know she can do better. She don’t wanna do better. Being a policewoman is better to her. So don’t you interfere, you hear me? She’s as tough as you are. Don’t baby her. She can take care of herself.”

Brax was baffled as to why she would waste her last breaths on earth dictating to him all the things she didn’t want him to do to her daughter as if he was the center of her daughter’s existence when she lived on the other side of the State from him. Nearly seven hours away by car. They rarely saw each other except when she came to visit her mother a few times a year. But he wasn’t about to argue with Miss Bea. She always knew more than he did. “Yes ma’am,” he said.

And she nodded her head, as if his word was as good as gold to her.

Then they both could hear heels clanking up the stairs. Which made them both smile.

“She’s here,” Brax said.

“That’s my daughter,” Beatrice said proudly. “Could have been a supermodel, that one, the way she walks. Nobody high-steps like her,” she added, and Brax laughed. Because he knew it was true too.

But when Veronica “Roni” Ross walked into her mother’s bedroom inside the mansion of her mother’s half-a-century-long employer, she didn’t know if she was going or coming. She was just that flustered.

And the idea of her mother living in the oldest mansion in Victorville astounded her still. Her mother had never been a live-in maid nor live-in nanny for the McCrae family. Until her condition deteriorated and Lady Millicent moved her into the mansion for around-the-clock care. Roni was against it. She was willing to quit her job at the NYPD and move back to upstate New York, to Victorville, where she could provide the care her mother needed.

But her mother would have none of it. She preferred to move in with Lady Millicent, she said, than to ever be a burden on her child. Her mother could never be a burden on her, Roni told her forcefully, but it was settled. And when her mother said it was settled, only God Almighty Himself could unsettle it.

But seeing her there, in that bed, looking so fragile and helpless when her whole life she had been so strong, broke Roni’s heart.

Like Brax, she couldn’t bring herself to fake a smile either. Not with the “realest” woman she’d ever known right in front of her. “Hey Ma.”

Brax and Beatrice were already looking in that direction when she entered the bedroom. And as soon as Brax saw her face again, a face he hadn’t seen in months, his heart lurched into that unfamiliar territory where he felt a burst of happiness and warmth, but an adject sadness, too, because he knew it was only a momentary joy. That she would be gone again soon. That he wouldn’t see her again for another half a year or more. And, he feared, once her mother died, he’d just may never see her again at all.

Beatrice managed to put on a smile and reach out her hand to her daughter. “Hello baby,” she said heartfelt.

With her five-feet-seven slender frame decked down in an ankle-length brown overcoat, brown and red gloves, and a scarf around her neck, Roni quickly shed her coat and her gloves, tossing them into a nearby chair, and sat on the opposite side of the bed from Brax. Wearing a short leather skirt, she crossed her flawless legs and took her mother’s hand happily. “It’s so good to see you again, Ma.”

“How did you get here so fast? New York City is six-and-a-half hours away from Victorville.”

“Brax sent his plane,” Roni said. “It only took an hour on his plane.”

Beatrice stared at Brax with that I mean it: stay away from my daughter look on her face. “That was very kind of him,” she said despite her look.

Roni had been dreading doing it, but she knew she couldn’t just ignore him. She looked over at Brax too. And like him, her heart went into that unfamiliar, highly-charged emotional territory whenever she was near him too. But only her heart didn’t display any competing emotions of joy and sadness the way his heart did. It was all sadness for her.

Mainly because she’d loved him from afar for so many years. She knew he was a good man. She saw him in action with her own two eyes every time she was around his family growing up: which was often. He was a kind, goodhearted man who treated people with respect. All his brothers treated her and her mother well, she couldn’t think of one single time when they didn’t, but Brax always seemed to go that extra mile. Even on her fourteenth birthday, he and his girlfriend took her to the movies. And even when the girlfriend was complaining that she didn’t want to do it, Brax told her to hit the road then. The girlfriend then pretended she was joking and went along with it too. But that was the side of Brax that Roni loved.

But she also knew the other side of him too. A side that had gotten worse as the years went on. And that side made clear that Braxton McCrae was a player of the first order and always would be. She wanted a good husband for herself and a great father for her future children, not just a sperm donor. And that would be Brax. Because he was not, by any stretch of the imagination, marriage material. He just wasn’t. And she was never going to be about wasting her time trying to change a grown-ass man. “Yes,” she said to him, agreeing with her mother. “It was very kind of you to send your plane. Thanks, Brax.”

She and Brax gave each other a polite smile, as if to shield their true emotions, and then Roni turned her attention back to her mother. But she was always abrupt with him that way. And it always made Brax feel as if she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. And rightly so, he thought. Even his beloved nanny just told him he was no good.

Then Beatrice squeezed her daughter’s hand in as much as she could squeeze at all. “I’m ready to go, baby girl. You hear me? I’m ready to be with the Lord. To sing in that heavenly choir. To praise his Holy name.”

Brax could see Roni fighting with all of that considerable strength she had to hold back her tears. And she nodded. “Yes ma’am. I know you’re ready.”

“But are you ready to let me go, baby girl?” her mother asked her. “Can you let me go?”

Roni wanted to scream no. Hell no ! But she wasn’t going to do that to her mother. She nodded her head. “Yes ma’am,” she managed to say.

Brax’s heart dropped when he saw the pain on Roni’s face. He wanted to grab her and hold her and be there for her until the end of time. But he knew that was out of the question.

But despite the pain on her daughter’s face, Beatrice managed to smile. As if she was waiting for her child’s consent.

And then, a few seconds later, she fell asleep. She was still breathing, but barely. She was tired and they knew it.

But Roni wasn’t leaving her side. And neither was Brax. Roni laid down on the bed beside her mother, and Brax laid down on the opposite side of the bed of one of the most important women he’d ever had in his life. And even though he was now a grown man of thirty-nine, he still viewed her as his second mother.

But oddly enough, he was more worried about Roni.

When they both laid on either side of Beatrice, and were staring into each other’s big, expressive eyes, tears appeared in their eyes. They couldn’t fake it. This was devastating for both of them.

But the weight of their emotions opened Beatrice’s eyes again. And without looking at either one of them, she smiled. “All your lives I’ve been squeezed in the middle between you two. Now you’re still trying to squeeze the life out of me. Thanks a lot.”

Her sense of humor was always so out of nowhere that they both couldn’t help but smile. And then they were laughing.

When Lady Millicent came into the room, she found it rather rude and ill-mannered of Veronica and Braxton. What could possibly be funny at a time like this? But when she saw that look on Beatrice’s tired face, she smiled too. Yes. It was good. Surrounded by the two people she loved the most, it was exactly the way Bea would want to go.

Lady Millicent sat down at the bottom of the bed too, and enjoyed the laughter.