Chapter 1

Allegra Dixon could remember perfectly the day her mother left. She was six years old. Anna, the housekeeper, was off. Allegra's mother, Isabelle, usually slept late, and her father, Bradley, was home from one of his long trips. She had learned early on not to bother them and to make as little noise as possible. She was tiptoeing down the stairs to get something to eat for breakfast, and she heard her parents talking in the kitchen. They were speaking loud enough for her to hear them before she entered the room. She wasn't sure whether to go in or not, so she stopped to listen.

Her parents didn't shout. They were polite to each other. When Allegra's father wasn't home, her mother laughed a lot. Allegra thought her laughter sounded like bells. Isabelle was exquisite. She had long red hair, green eyes, and a beautiful face. She wore fancy dresses and jewelry, and perfume that smelled delicious. When Allegra's father was away, her mother went out almost every evening, and the housekeeper would stay with her until her mother came home. They lived in Washington, D.C., in a house in Georgetown. Isabelle often went to New York to see her friends, and Anna would stay then too. Isabelle's parents, Allegra's grandparents, the VanderHolts, lived in New York.

Her father was in the army. He wore a uniform and was very handsome. He went to faraway places and stayed a long time, sometimes even a year. He went to places like Libya and Liberia in Africa, and South America. He only came home from time to time. When he was home he worked at a place called the Pentagon. He hardly spoke to Allegra, and when he did, he never seemed to know what to say. He would ask her about school, or tell her how much she had grown since he'd last seen her, which had always been a long time.

Their voices in the kitchen sounded serious that day. Her mother wasn't laughing. Allegra heard her say that she was going back to New York. Her father asked her what she expected him to do with "the child." He usually referred to her as the child and seldom used her name when he spoke about her, so she assumed the question was about her. He said he would be leaving again in two weeks. Isabelle said that Allegra could stay at the house in Washington with Anna. She couldn't take a child with her. She was planning to stay with friends. Allegra's father said that was impossible. The child needed at least one parent with her, and Isabelle said she wasn't going to be it.

Allegra tiptoed away quietly, deciding it wasn't the right time to enter the kitchen. She was frightened and confused. Her heart was beating fast. If her mother was leaving and couldn't take her, and her father was going away again, and she couldn't stay alone in Washington with Anna unless she had a parent with her—what was going to happen to her? What did it mean for her? She hardly ever saw her paternal grandparents, and they were very old. Her mother had said her parents weren't an option either. Allegra went back upstairs to her room and sat on her bed with her teddy bear in her arms. His name was George. She had to wait for them to tell her where she was going.

When she walked back to her room, Allegra saw her mother's suitcases lined up outside her bedroom. She'd seen her packing the day before. Her pretty dresses had been laid out on her bed. Allegra guessed that she was going to a party in New York. She always took a lot of clothes with her, but this time she was taking even more.

Allegra sat quietly on her bed for a long time, waiting for them to come to see her. She wasn't hungry anymore. She heard a car come then, and voices downstairs. She heard footsteps on the landing. They came and went for a little while, and then the front door closed. The car drove away, and no one came to her room to see her.

Her father didn't come up for a long time. She waited all day. They had forgotten her. They did that sometimes when they were busy. And then the door opened and her father walked in. He was wearing his uniform and he looked very serious. He looked at her sitting on her bed with the bear in her arms. He stared at her for a minute. She was a tiny miniature of her mother, with the same red hair and green eyes. Possibly an unwelcome reminder now. Then finally, he spoke.

"Your mother's gone away," he said in a solemn voice. He hesitated for an instant and then added, "She's not coming back." He waited, not knowing what else to say, and then he turned around and left and closed the door softly behind him. He had forgotten that there was no one in the house to feed Allegra, since it was Anna's day off. It didn't matter. Allegra wasn't hungry anyway. She sat looking at the door, holding George tightly in her arms. Her father hadn't told her where she was going, or if she was going anywhere. She had no idea what was to become of her. All she could think of was that her mother had forgotten to say goodbye when she left. Her father always told her to be brave, so she didn't cry, in case he came back to her room. But he didn't. She curled up into a ball on her bed, holding George, until she fell asleep.

—

The briefly torrid affair between Bradley Dixon and Isabelle VanderHolt had lasted months, and the marriage seven years. Everything about it was improbable. She was a Golden Girl, a dazzling young debutante-turned-socialite in New York, the wild child of the ultrarespectable VanderHolts. At eighteen, after graduating from an exclusive private girls' school in New York, she had no interest in college. She had fallen in with the fashionable underground elite of the city, with Andy Warhol and his entourage. She was a nightly regular at Studio 54, known as "a modern day Gomorrah," a hotbed of drugs and disco, socialites mingling with musicians, Hollywood stars, and a hefty dose of appealing riffraff. The ambience was racy and unsuitable. Her parents had long since given up trying to rein her in. She was their only child. A trust fund set up by her paternal grandparents gave her total autonomy at twenty-one. Her parents couldn't stop her. She was beautiful and young and wild, with Rita Hayworth looks and a body to match. She'd been paired with various inappropriate people, including her friends at Warhol's Factory. She'd made cameo appearances in several of his films, more beautiful than any movie star. She was twenty-one when she met Bradley Dixon.

It was 1979, and Colonel Bradley Dixon, much decorated hero, veteran of Vietnam, had spent the last four years, after the final skirmishes in Vietnam, in Laos, Cambodia, and various trouble spots in Africa. High-ranking in the Military Intelligence Corps, he'd played an important role in the signing of the peace in Vietnam. He was forty-three years old the night he walked into Studio 54 with friends, wearing black tie and not his uniform, and saw Isabelle. It wasn't his usual scene, but his friends insisted he go with them. They said he needed to loosen up. They weren't wrong. He had lived in the military all his life. Only son, only child of four-star general Tom Dixon, Bradley had grown up all over the world. He had graduated from West Point and had trained for military intelligence early in his career. He'd married an army brat like himself, the daughter of another high-ranking officer. The marriage fell apart while he was in Vietnam for extended tours of duty. His career always came first and wasn't compatible with marriage. His wife had divorced him while he was gone, and eventually married someone else, another officer with a tamer and less illustrious career. Bradley had no children with her and had never remarried. One had to make choices in life. His first love was his career, until he met Isabelle that night.

He had spotted her as soon as he walked into Studio 54, a dazzling redhead dancing wildly with a famous Black singer. She saw Bradley too, handsome in black tie. He had two drinks and asked her to dance. They danced for hours, and he left her at Studio 54 and went back to his hotel, bewitched by her. He was based in Washington, D.C., for a few months, and came to New York often to see her. They were married in six months. She was twenty-two years old and he was forty-three. Her parents were dubious about the match, and about her ability to settle down. Bradley's father wasn't enthused about Isabelle either. Everything about her spelled trouble, starting with her looks, her friends, her history, her freedom.

They had Allegra quickly, an unwelcome surprise. The baby startled Bradley with how sweet she was, the rare times he was home. Isabelle was not the kind of woman one left quietly sitting by the fire, or with a baby in her arms. She spent more time with her friends in New York than with her baby when Bradley was gone. He was well aware that he couldn't control his wife and stopped trying early on.

In the seven years of their marriage, he had been sent all over the world, to every trouble spot on the map. Panama, the Middle East, Libya, Korea. Isabelle toned down her social life on Bradley's brief visits home, as much as she was able, and stayed in Washington with him, but the pull to Warhol and his cohorts and her other friends in New York was strong. She could hardly conceal her relief whenever Bradley left. She was dazzled by him when they met, but got bored with him quickly. It was no secret that she wasn't cut out to be a military wife, and never even tried. She hated the other army wives, and they didn't like her either. She lived and played by her own rules. She was part of another, fancier, more social world. She had thought he was strong and sexy, and discovered too late how cold he was, though fabulous in bed in their early days.

Their daughter, Allegra, was an unfortunate mistake. As soon as Bradley left town, so did Isabelle, going back to New York. She stayed with friends. Her life never slowed down, nor did his. She was deeply embedded in the fast life in New York. Living in Washington never kept her at home, it was a convenient place to leave the child with their housekeeper or a nanny or babysitter, whoever she found to stay with her. Isabelle's parents never interfered. They knew better. Isabelle did what she wanted. Bradley's parents recognized how wild she was and felt they were too old to get involved. They had no other grandchildren and saw very little of Allegra. Children made them uncomfortable. Bradley's father was in his seventies by then, still involved with the Department of Defense. Their son's fascination with Isabelle was beyond their comprehension. She was anything but a wife or mother.

In spite of a thousand reasons not to, Bradley hung on to the marriage. He didn't want a second divorce, but he wasn't home enough to fix the marriage or try to get Isabelle in line. He could handle military maneuvers of a thousand men or ferret five hundred guerillas out of the jungle better than he could manage one wife like Isabelle. He had loved her in the beginning, but that gradually waned. She was like a wild horse one loved to own but couldn't ride. And Allegra became a forgotten bystander, an observer of her parents' unraveling marriage. Bradley wasn't surprised when Isabelle said that she was leaving and that he no longer loved her. The problem was the child. He had no idea what to do with her, and Isabelle flatly refused to take her. She had never wanted to be a mother.

It took him two weeks to convince his parents to let Allegra stay with them, at least until he returned to Washington again. He had no time to make other arrangements, and they agreed to let her come for a few months. It wasn't an ideal arrangement. They weren't set up to care for a child and weren't enthused about it, but Bradley knew she'd be well cared for and safe, so he insisted. They lived in upstate New York on the Hudson, near West Point, in healthy surroundings for a child. The night before she left, Bradley told Allegra where she was going. She was packed up and taken there a few days before he left. Isabelle had already made it clear to him that she didn't want custody and would let him know when she could manage visitation, but certainly not now. At twenty-nine, free of him and Allegra at last, the wild horse had been let out of the barn and was about to run free. She was leaving for London shortly, another scene that suited her even better. Her London friends were just as racy as those in New York.

—

General Thomas Dixon and his wife, Carol, welcomed Allegra with their usual reserve. They weren't accustomed to children, and hadn't seen Allegra often in her six years. Bradley rarely had time to see them between trips and Isabelle never bothered. They were shocked by Allegra's mother abandoning her and leaving their son with the burden of caring for her, since he traveled easily ten months of the year, if not more. They were proud of his career, but much less so of his marriage. Bradley hadn't heard anything from Isabelle's parents since she'd left and he didn't expect to. They weren't avid grandparents either, and Isabelle saw little of them. She had worn them out in her youth, they had no patience for her, and they avoided her as much as possible. They were constantly afraid of a scandal, and were not pleased at the idea of a divorce either.

—

When Allegra arrived at her grandparents' home in upstate New York with her two suitcases, driven there by her father three days before he was due to leave, she had no idea how long she was going to stay there. Nor did Bradley. His parents said they would see how it worked out. They thought she was too young to be separated from both parents, but there were simply no other options. Anna hadn't wanted to leave Washington. She had a fiancé there, and Bradley's parents didn't want a stranger underfoot in their home. Bradley had told Allegra she had to behave, which she normally did anyway. She was an extremely quiet child, and respectful of adults.

The Dixons' home was big and joyless and institutional-looking. It was near the Academy. Bradley had made arrangements for Allegra to go to a local school. The public school was good there. A school bus would pick her up every day. All his parents had to do was feed her and house her, and they weren't planning to do much more than that. They had a cook and a housekeeper, and Bradley's mother said the help could babysit for Allegra when necessary. None of them saw this as a long-term arrangement. It was a stopgap measure for as long as Bradley was away.

His assignment was due to last eleven months. To their surprise, Allegra was as little trouble as Bradley had said. She was like a little ghost living in their midst. They never saw her. She stayed in her room most of the time, much to their relief. Their two employees fed her and kept an eye on her. The cook took Allegra to a Disney movie at Christmastime, and the housekeeper picked all the Christmas gifts the Dixons planned to give her. There weren't many. Allegra was used to emotional deprivation even before she arrived, so she made no demands and had no expectations. She had a rich fantasy life in the loneliness of her grandparents' home. She read all the books she could. Her father came to visit when he returned from his assignment, and by then it appeared that the arrangement was working, and his parents agreed to let her stay. Bradley had let the house in Georgetown go when Isabelle left and got an apartment instead, so it didn't matter how long he was away.

Bradley was back for a month and only had time to see Allegra twice. West Point was a long way from Washington, D.C. Anna had married and moved away by then, so he had used a service to keep his apartment clean during his absence and had no one who could have taken care of Allegra while he was home. He was at meetings night and day, preparing for his next assignment. Isabelle was still in London, and he hadn't heard from her in several months. Their divorce had already been filed and was in its final stages, giving sole custody to Bradley, with Isabelle's full consent.

Allegra was used to living with her grandparents by then. She loved spending time outdoors and being in the country, and she liked her school. She wasn't allowed to bring friends home. There was no reason to change what was working, and Bradley still had no better solution to suggest. Isabelle's parents had made it clear to him that they couldn't possibly take on a child Allegra's age.

—

Allegra lived with her paternal grandparents for five years, making herself as small as she could in the rigid, chilly atmosphere of their home. At first she had tried to win them over and be loving and helpful. Overt signs of affection made both her grandparents uncomfortable, and they discouraged them. Bradley visited her there when he was home, but she never lived with him again. After Isabelle left him he was assigned to Libya, the Persian Gulf, Panama, and Liberia, and was rarely back in the States for long.

Allegra enjoyed visiting West Point whenever her grandfather took her there to observe maneuvers or see a parade. She thought it was exciting, and it reminded her of her father. All the men in their uniforms looked a little like him to her.

Her grandparents had taken her to see her mother twice in five years, when Isabelle was in New York visiting from London, where she had settled. Allegra thought Isabelle was as beautiful as ever, and was bowled over when her mother hugged her. She was so starved for affection that she felt a rush of love for her the moment she did. She had become accustomed to the austerity of her grandparents, who spoke to her as an adult and never touched her. When she hugged her father, he always stiffened, and she knew she'd done something wrong. There was nowhere to go with the love she had inside her, no one to give it to. It lay dormant within her, like a deep well filling up from an unknown source. She still slept with her teddy bear at night, which her grandmother disapproved of, but allowed.

Allegra loved seeing her mother the two times she did. Isabelle was so exquisite and so exciting. She was easy to love and to hug, and Isabelle let her. She was soft and smooth, and her perfume smelled delicious. She still wore the same one. Allegra always remembered it. Allegra spent a day with her, and then, like a butterfly, her mother flew away, and the brilliant colors of her wings disappeared from Allegra's world. She had gone somewhere to see her friends, and Allegra went back to upstate New York with her grandparents to the drab world there. Her grandparents' worst fear was that she might turn out like her mother, and they did everything they could do to discourage that and ensure that she grew up to be a responsible, serious person, with "normal" values. Bradley tried to encourage that too on his rare, brief visits.

The five years of almost military austerity ended suddenly when her grandmother had a stroke and died, and her grandfather, with advancing senility, was unable to take care of Allegra or himself. Bradley had to make other arrangements for both when he came home for his mother's funeral. There was no other solution than to put Allegra in an excellent private boarding school. At eleven she was old enough by then, in his opinion. The school had male and female sections, and served as a feeder school for West Point. Bradley had attended high school there. He told Allegra she would love it. And once again, there was no other option.

Bradley had just begun a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf region and was expecting to be away for at least a year. For the first time, he turned to Isabelle's parents for help. They had offered none so far. They sent her token Christmas gifts, some sweaters and books, and once a doll. They were old but still very social. At Bradley's insistent urging, they agreed to let Allegra spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with them, as well as whatever time she didn't spend at a camp he put her in for the summer in Maine.

The VanderHolts weren't equipped to care for a child, but when they saw Allegra, they were reassured. She was extremely subdued. She knew what was expected of her from her years with the Dixons. She was to make no demands, act like an adult, keep a respectful distance, and be invisible, and she was good at it. She read voraciously, staying in her room during her visits to them. Her only escape from her loveless existence was in books. She was a package whom the adults in her life passed to each other with reluctance and restraint. Isabelle had long since decided to stay in England, and she told Bradley that sending Allegra to her was unthinkable. She had no time for her daughter, and even she admitted that her life was unsuitable for a child. Bradley could guess that was true and didn't question it or insist.

Bradley went back to the Gulf, and Allegra began her seven-year sentence in boarding school. She was a diligent student and a bright girl. She had her father's fine mind and her mother's looks. It was a winning combination. Her teachers liked her, and she made a few friends, but she was retiring and shy after years of feeling unwelcome wherever she was, and it was embarrassing, not having a family when the other students spoke of theirs. They had brothers and sisters, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, people they spent their school holidays with and had had a life with previously. Allegra had had an absentee father for her entire life, a mother who had abandoned her at six. Her paternal grandfather had died within a year of his wife, when Allegra was twelve. She didn't see him after she left for boarding school. She had attended the funeral, with all the pomp and ceremony due a four-star general. There was no way she could explain all that was missing from her life. She always felt that somehow it must be her fault. If she had been more lovable, or met their expectations better, or maybe if she looked less like her mother, they would have liked her better, or even loved her. She was too young to understand that her father's and her grandparents' failure to express love to her was due entirely to their inability to love anyone. Her mother was so narcissistic that the only person she was able to love was herself. Her six years of motherhood had been more than enough for her. Allegra got letters from her occasionally in response to hers that were like letters from a distant friend, not a mother. Isabelle abhorred the role of mother and avoided it at all cost.

Her maternal grandparents faced Allegra's initial visits with dread, terrified that she would become as uncontrollable and unruly as her mother had been, which was far from the case. Sensing their reluctance to have her there, she only came out of her room for meals. They lived on Fifth Avenue in New York and had a "cottage" in Newport, Rhode Island. It was one of the great homes, a vast marble mansion as cold as they were, but a spectacular place that looked like a museum. They spent holidays and vacations there. The house was very grand, filled with valuable objects and art. They had a large staff and Allegra had dinner in the kitchen with the servants, who were very kind to her, while her grandparents were out almost every night with equally social friends, or when they entertained them at home in black tie, and she was too young to be included, much to their relief.

Allegra had tea with her grandparents once or twice a week. They would talk to her about school. They gave her gifts on Christmas and her birthday that had been picked by the housekeeper, and at the end of the school vacation, she gratefully went back to boarding school. At least she had somewhere to go for holidays, but she never felt welcome or as though she belonged there. She was the interloper in their midst. They were fulfilling a duty they felt obliged to perform, forced into it by her father. As time went on, she realized that her father had shamed them into having her spend her school holidays with them. They were the only family she had, other than her father, who was on the other side of the world most of the time, and a mother who had no interest in her whatsoever. Essentially, Allegra was alone in the world. Her father visited her at boarding school when he came to the States. He never stayed long, as he was very busy at the Pentagon. They were strangers to each other and always had been. The walls he had built between them were too high to scale now. Allegra accepted the boundaries he set.

—

Allegra was sixteen the summer she met Shepherd Williams, a tall, handsome, bright boy with dark hair and blue eyes. His parents and grandparents spent the summers in Newport in a cottage almost as large as the one she stayed at. His grandparents knew hers. His family were very proper, traditional Bostonians. Shepherd was twenty and attended West Point, which was familiar to her. He had two older brothers he wasn't close to and who were considerably older, both married and living on the West Coast. She and Shep became fast friends. He told Allegra he wasn't sure he wanted to make a career of the army, but his parents had convinced him that West Point offered him a good education in the meantime. And his grandfather had gone to West Point. Shep had doubts about West Point, since he didn't want a military career. He was sensitive and thoughtful and very smart. He and Allegra became good friends and confidantes, and felt like soulmates. He had never had a friend like her. He could tell her anything, and she could pour her soul out to him. He was fascinated by her. She said whatever she thought and was unfailingly honest but never unkind. She was a gentle person. Knowing him changed her life. She shared the ideas and feelings with him she had never been able to express with anyone. They wrote to each other between summers, and saw each other at Christmas in New York or in Newport.

Their friendship deepened into love the summer she was eighteen. She had been accepted at Columbia and was starting college in the fall, and he had just graduated from West Point as a second lieutenant, and not knowing what else to do, he had decided to stay in the military. Allegra's father didn't attend her high school graduation. He was in Afghanistan and the Sudan, but promised to spend Christmas with her. Her grandparents had come to her graduation. It was awkward but she felt it was nice of them to come. She felt grown-up now that she was about to enter college.

She and Shepherd became lovers that summer, and her heart poured out all the love she had to give him, love she had waited a lifetime to give someone. It was a tender relationship, and he was a sensitive young man. He wanted to go into military intelligence, like her father, "but only for a while." He was about to start a basic officer leader course for a year in Washington, D.C., and would then lead a military intelligence unit. He had five years of active duty ahead of him. Allegra warned him that military life and the army would swallow him up and eat him alive. He promised that would never happen. She had seen what her father's military career had done to him. He was ice cold and seemed almost inhuman. She had come to recognize that her father was incapable of allowing himself to have feelings for another human being. He had been dutiful toward his parents, but not affectionate, nor were they to him. He had been disappointed by two women, and Allegra sensed that she was an unfortunate reminder in the flesh of one of them. She looked more like her mother with every passing year, without the wild exuberance and flamboyant behavior, but their physical traits and beauty were strikingly similar. By burying himself in his career, Bradley had kept himself from deep and lasting attachments, even to his only child. He looked pained every time he saw her, and almost frightened that some emotion would surface that he didn't want to deal with. As she got older, she read about the wars he was involved in, and realized that he must have seen unimaginable horrors in his job. She feared that for Shepherd. He thought he could deal with it, but few people could. They either turned into robots, like her father, or they shattered inside, into a million broken pieces.

Shep's paternal grandfather had been military, but his father was in business, and although they weren't warm people, they were more accessible than her family, and polite to her. Her mother's family, the VanderHolts, had made a lifetime career of social engagements and superficial values, and were selfish and self-centered more than anything. Her father's family, the Dixons, were encased in ice. By the time she turned eighteen, from a lifetime of observation, she understood it. She didn't want anything like what had happened to her father to happen to Shepherd. He was a deeply sensitive person, which was what she loved about him. The Military Intelligence Corps would send him to trouble spots all over the world, which could ruin him, as it had her father. She didn't know if her father had ever been a warm person, but he certainly wasn't now. Or for as long as she could remember.

"I'm not going to stay in the army long enough for that to happen," Shep reassured her. "I'll do my five years' active duty in intelligence and get out. And the reserves after that. You have to stay in active duty for a lot longer for it to break you."

"That's not always true. Who knows how many wars it takes in uncivilized places before that happens? Why don't you try to quit sooner?" she suggested naively, and he smiled.

"That wouldn't be honorable. Besides, they don't let you. I owe them the next five years after West Point. And at least intelligence is interesting."

"That's what I'm worried about. I just don't want them to break you by the time you get out."

"Trust me, they won't. I won't let that happen. It's going to work out just fine. Right about the time you graduate, I'll be almost ready to get out of the army, and then we can decide what to do next." He had it all figured out, and she hoped he was right. She wasn't as confident as he was that he could escape the damage that being in military intelligence could do, depending on where they sent him. But they both still had a long way to go. She was just starting college at Columbia, and he had military intelligence training to get through and his own unit to run. He was going to be based in Washington, D.C., for several years, at George Washington University, which brought back memories for her. She hadn't lived in Washington since her mother left, but she still remembered it fondly.

Shepherd had promised to visit Allegra frequently in New York. That would be fun too. She was looking forward to being a grown-up, being able to make her own decisions, and not being sent to relatives who didn't want her around. She wanted her own life now, and she had been lucky enough to meet a boy who actually loved her. It was the first time she could remember ever being loved. She had a lifetime of unspent love to give Shep, like money in the bank that had been piling up and accruing interest. She had never been so happy in her life as the summer of 1998 drew to a close.