She made the mistake of confronting him with it the night they returned to the apartment from the Armory benefit where they had shared the head table with the mayor and four Broadway–Hollywood stars and two noted philanthropists and their wives. Bert was in an elevated mood when they came home: his eyes were aglitter with a kind of vengeful satisfaction, for there was in him (she had discovered) a streak of childlike vindictiveness that was rewarded whenever he was treated like an equal by the sort of people who reeked of old money and spoke with Ivy League establishment drawls. Bert carried himself with a forceful kind of panache but there was no disguising the fact that he was a child of New Jersey, descended from lower-class immigrant Corsicans; he never pretended to be otherwise than nouveau riche but still it pleased him to dine not only with celebrities but especially with brahmins and aristocrats.

Seizing the chance to catch him in a good mood she evaded his embrace in the bedroom. “Let’s talk.”

“Later.”

“No, Bert. Now.”

“Come on. Let’s fool around.”

“I want to take the baby away for a while.”

He tried to absorb that. “Aagh,” he said, dismissing it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I need a change.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

“Don’t dismiss it like that. We’ve got to talk about this.”

“Talk about what? You been smoking something or what?”

“We’re going away. The baby and I. We’re not staying here any more.”

He watched her very closely. He hardly seemed to be breathing.

She plunged on. “We’re just going away for a while, that’s all. Call it whatever you want. Say I want to get my act together. Say I need an ocean voyage. Call it a vacation. I need air.”

“Call it leaving me. Call it walking out on me. What the fuck are you talking about? You’re my wife. Ellen’s my daughter. What’s this you need a change, you need air, you want to go away for a while? What’s this shit? Who the fuck you think you’re talking to?”

“Please don’t make a bigger thing out of it than it is. I just need a little space to breathe for a while.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed and began to unlace his shoes. He kicked them off and stared at them. Finally he looked up at her and she could see his disbelief and she realized her tentative approach had been cowardly. It would have been better to tell him the truth from the outset.

She tried to make up for it. “All right. Let’s have it out in the open. I’m leaving you.”

He looked a little punchdrunk. She’d caught him so badly off balance she nearly felt sorry for him.

She pounded it home: “She’s not going to grow up in a dope dealer’s home. My daughter’s not going to live in that environment. I can’t allow that. I’m taking her away from here.”

A deep breath: don’t run out of gas now. Keep going.

Finish it. “I’m sorry, Bert. You should have been content with the construction business. I can’t go on living with the kind of thing you’ve turned into. I can’t expose my daughter to that.”

He stared at her, his face closing up as she spoke—and then his continuing silence made her break out in a cold sweat.

She felt a growing desperation. “We can do this like civilized people or we can do it the hard way, you know. If that’s what you want I’ll have to get a lawyer and believe me I’ll get the nastiest bastard I can find. I don’t imagine any court in the world would grant custody of a baby girl to a dope peddler.”

She gathered up her handbag and the wrap she’d been wearing; still in evening clothes, stalking on high heels, she went toward the door. “We’re going now. I’ll let you know where to send our things.”

“Like hell you will.”

It wasn’t his words; it was the low even rasp of his voice that stopped her.

He said to her back, “Just stay put. I need some time to think about this.”

“Fine. Think about it all you want. I’ll let you know where you can reach me when you want to talk about it.”

“You want me to sleep in the other room tonight? Fine. All right. But nobody’s leaving right now.”

She turned to face him. “You can stop me from taking her tonight, of course. You’re strong enough. But I’ll just get a court order. Is that what I have to do?”

He shook his head—more in bafflement than in visible anger. “No divorce. No custody. That’s all. Okay? Understand?”

“You’re having some kind of Corsican dream. Let’s talk about reality.”

“I’ll tell you reality. Reality is you don’t take my daughter away from me. Reality is you don’t walk all over me in a divorce court. You don’t like it here any more? I’m sorry about that. But you made a bargain. You took my name, you took my money.”

“You can have them both back. I don’t need your money.”

“Yeah. How noble. Okay. Reality, now, reality is you don’t walk out on Albert LaCasse. And Ellen stays with her daddy.”

“Jesus, haven’t you heard a word I said?”

“Sure I heard you. Let’s discuss one simple fact.” He’d gone glacial; his enunciation became angrily precise:

“You file against me, you try to take Ellen away, anything at all along those lines, the whole thing comes to an end for you right then and right there.”

She gaped at him. “Are you actually threatening to kill me?”

“Kill you? What the fuck am I now, some kind of murderer? Christ almighty. Who said anything about killing anybody?” The big shoulders lifted; the expressive hands gesticulated, then subsided. He had control of his alarm now.

He descended into dark weary sadness. It was only partly an act, an aspect of his voluble Corsican theatricality; it was also a manifestation of genuine pain and loss. He brooded; he scowled; he searched for thoughts he could express.

And finally without heat he said: “I don’t think you have any idea how many subsidiaries I run, how many people owe me consideration.”

He looked up. She was watching him, puzzled, not able to anticipate where this might be leading.

“I got a truck-leasing lot on Northern Boulevard and twenty percent of a cable TV outfit in Trenton, okay? I got a piece of a resort hotel down in the Bahamas. I got nursing homes in Staten Island I built and I own, you know that?”

He was sitting on the bed, elbows on knees; his hands dangled from the wrists. He wasn’t looking at her.

“I got half of a little private hospital out in Amityville. What this leads up to, Madeleine, the point I’m trying to make, you’ve been acting very strange all of a sudden here and I think maybe you’re having a little nervous breakdown or something, and if you were to go and see some lawyer or try to steal my daughter out of her home or anything like that, then I guess I wouldn’t have any choice but to have you committed to a mental facility for observation and treatment. For however long it might take to straighten out your head.”

Then he looked up and smiled.

It was a warm smile full of bright pleased triumph: it was the most frightening expression she’d ever seen on a human face.

After that it was a question of opportunity and even more of courage.

Neither came easily. She realized belatedly how stupid it had been to forewarn him. Now the baby was always under supervision: there were nurses and nannies around the clock. No one prevented the mother from being with the baby; no one limited the mother’s freedom of movement—so long as the baby remained in view of employees—but the unspoken rules were manifest. She never doubted Bert had meant every word he’d said, quite specifically and literally. He was entirely capable of putting her away in a rubber room somewhere and locking it for the rest of her life.

He would grieve, of course. He would be mortally offended. He would be the suffering injured party, filled with pain. As the little girl grew up he would explain to her how her mother had gone mad and tried to break up the family and actually tried to kidnap poor baby Ellen from her loving daddy.…