Free Santorini Sunsets by Anita Hughes Page B

Chrysler Building with a view of the East River.” Francis nibbled a canapé. “I enjoyed playing football on Boston Commons and eating clam chowder at Boston Chowda in Faneuil Hall but I could never live in New England. The bars close at midnight and everyone talks as if they have a head cold.”
    â€œI’ve lived in the same Park Avenue town house my whole life,” Sydney said. “My mother thinks the entire world consists of Saks and the Metropolitan Museum and the dining room at the Carlyle. I like Manhattan but I prefer the country. I’m happiest at Summerhill.”
    â€œSummerhill?”
    â€œIt’s my grandparents’ cottage in East Hampton,” Sydney explained. “The house is a hundred years old with a barn and a pond. When you stand on the porch you can see the Long Island Sound.”
    â€œIt sounds wonderful,” Francis murmured.
    Sydney studied his light brown hair and blue eyes and felt her chest tighten.
    â€œMaybe I can show it to you.”
    *   *   *
    Every weekend in the spring Francis drove his brown Jaguar from Boston to New York. Sydney squeezed her classes at Barnard into four days so they could take long weekends in Vermont and Cape Cod. She sat in the passenger seat with her hair wrapped in a Hermès scarf and thought she really was lucky. She was twenty-two and falling in love.
    Francis proposed the day after graduation and they got married on New Year’s Eve in the ballroom where they’d met. Sydney stood at the window of her suite at the Waldorf Astoria in her Givenchy gown and saw the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and the red and green lights on the Empire State Building and thought the whole city was celebrating their marriage.
    *   *   *
    Sydney fiddled with her earrings and remembered the night of her forty-second birthday. Brigit had just graduated from Spence and was spending three weeks at a language school in Paris. Daisy had at the last minute decided to be a counselor at a summer camp in Maine.
    â€œDarling, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” Sydney had said, when the maître d’ led them to the table.
    The gold tablecloth was set with a crystal vase of pink roses and a bottle of vintage Moët & Chandon. A rectangular box was wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with a pink ribbon.
    â€œDo you remember when we met at the International Debutante Ball?” Francis asked. He wore a white dinner jacket and his salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back.
    â€œEverything in the room was gold and pink: the gold centerpieces and pink-and-gold floral arrangements and gold inlaid china. You wore an ivory silk gown with a pink sash and I thought you looked like a princess.”
    Sydney opened her mouth to say something but Francis pressed the gold wrapping paper into her hand.
    â€œBrigit is going to Dartmouth and Daisy will graduate in two years,” he began. “I’ve been thinking about the stockbrokerage and it’s time to turn it over to someone else.”
    â€œYou’re forty-three,” Sydney replied. “You’re hardly going to spend your days at the Carlton Club having two-martini lunches.”
    â€œI know we contribute to the New York Public Library and the Guggenheim. But I want to do something for children who have never owned a book or seen a painting,” Francis said. “I want to start a charitable foundation and travel to Asia and Africa and build schools and libraries.”
    â€œYou want to leave the firm?” Sydney’s eyes were wide and a pit formed in her stomach.
    â€œI’ve thought about this for a long time. The best part is once Daisy graduates we could travel together.” Francis poured two glasses of champagne. “We could see the whole world, not just the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Rome or the dining room in the Connaught in London.”
    Sydney gazed at the baked snapper and