Blue Bloods (Blue Bloods 1)

The nurse shook her head and looked at Schuyler as if there were something slightly wrong with her.

"Yeah, it's just a trick of the light," Schuyler said. "I thought I saw something..."

The nurse nodded and walked away.

Schuyler entered the room. The mysterious visitor had disappeared, but Schuyler noticed that the chair was still warm. She looked around the room and began to call out softly, the first time she had done so since she had spotted the crying stranger.

"Dad?" Schuyler whispered, walking into the next room, a fully furnished living room suite for guests, and looked around. "Dad? Is that you? Are you there?"

There was no answer, and the man did not reappear. Schuyler sat down on the chair he had vacated.

"I want to know about my father," Schuyler said to the silent woman in the bed. "Stephen Chase. Who was he? What did he do to you? What happened? Is he still alive? Does he come visit you? Was he here, just now?" She raised her voice, so that if the visitor was still within earshot, he would hear her. So that her father would know that she knew it was him. She wished he would stay and talk to her.

Cordelia had always given her the impression that her father had done some grievous harm to her mother. That he had never loved her - a fact that she could not reconcile with the image of the sobbing man by her mother's bed.

"Mom, I need your help," Schuyler pleaded. "Cordelia says you can get up anytime you want, but you won't. "Wake up, Mom. Wake up for me.

"Please."

But the woman on the bed didn't move. There was no reply.

"Stephen Chase. Your husband. He died when I was born. Or so Cordelia tells me. Is that true? Is my father dead? Mother? Please. I need to know."

Not even a toe wiggle. Not even a sigh.

Schuyler gave up her questions and picked up the newspaper again. She continued to read the wedding announcements, feeling oddly comforted by the litany of marital unions and their homogeneity. When she had read every single one, she stood up and kissed her mother on the cheek.

Allegra's skin was cold and waxy to the touch.

Like touching death.

Schuyler left, more disheartened than ever.

CHAPTER 24

That evening, when Schuyler returned home, she received an interesting phone call from Linda Farnsworth.

Stitched for Civilization was the hottest jeans company in the city (and de facto the world) at the moment. Their splashy billboards were all over Times Square, and their three-hundred-dollar signature "Social Lies" cut - super-low-rise, butt-lifting, thigh-shaping, whiskered, stained, bleached, torn, and extra-long - were the cult object of obsession among the jeanerati. And apparently, the designer had flipped for Schuyler's moody Polaroid.

"You are the new face of Civilization!" Linda Farnsworth gushed on Schuyler's cell phone. "They must have you! Don't make me beg!"

"Okay, I guess." Schuyler said, still feeling a bit dazed by Linda's exuberance.

Since Schuyler couldn't come up with a legitimate reason to deny the fashion gods (who was she to say no to Civilization?), the next morning she journeyed downtown for the scheduled photo shoot. The photo studio in far west Chelsea was housed in a mammoth block-long building that had formerly been a printing factory. The service elevator was manned by a bleary-eyed gentleman in a utility suit, who had to manually operate the lift to take Schuyler to the proper floor.

She walked down a maze of hallways, noting the many designer names and Web site addresses that looked familiar on the nameplates of the closed doors.

The photo studio was in the northeast corner. The door was propped open and loud, electronic music was blasting from the inside.

She walked inside, not quite sure what to expect. The studio was a large, open space, an all-white box with shiny white polyurethaned floors and floor-to-ceiling windows. A white ?seamless? background was carved into one wall, and a tripod was set up across from it. Yawning interns were wheeling in clothing racks so that a dreadlocked stylist could examine the garments.

"Schuyler!" A scrawny man with a five o'clock shadow, wearing a shrunken T-shirt and baggy jeans, approached her holding a hand out enthusiastically. He was smoking and wearing Ray Ban aviator sunglasses.

"Hey," Schuyler said.

"Jonas Jones, remember me?" he asked, lifting his sunglasses and grinning.

"Oh ... of course!" Schuyler said, a little intimidated. Jonas Jones was one of Duchesne's most notorious alums. He had graduated a few years ago. He had made a big splash in the art world with his shredded paintings. He had also done a movie, Lumberjack Quadrille, that had placed at Sundance, and his latest career turn was as a fashion photographer.