Never Too Late: A Novel

Chapter 1

Kezia Cooper Hobson flew from San Francisco to New York in first class, with four big suitcases that held the last of her things she was bringing to New York. Everything had been sent ahead weeks before, her clothes, all her mementos, her papers and personal treasures. Her furniture and art were due to arrive at the end of August. She’d been living at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco for the last month, while she concluded the sale of both her Pacific Heights home and her share of the venture capital firm she had inherited from her husband, Andrew Hobson, when he had died five years before, after a business trip to China. Twenty years older than Kezia, he was seventy-five at the time, vital, healthy, active, handsome, successful, and youthful for his age. The virus had hit him hard and he was dead in five days. He was a wonderful person from a wholesome Midwestern background. He had gone west to Stanford for college and business school, established his groundbreaking business in San Francisco, and remained there.

Andrew Hobson had been one of the legends of early venture capital and one of its innovators in high-tech and biotech investments.

The firm he had founded originally with two partners had been bought by a newer, larger venture capital firm, since Andrew’s partners had been older than he and were now well into their eighties. The life had gone out of Weintraub, Mills, and Hobson once Andrew was gone, with his incredible energy and constant daring new ideas. One of his partners was ill now, the other eager to retire, and the offer they received for the firm had come at the right time. Kezia had been active on the board since Andrew’s death.

Originally from a small town in Vermont, the only child of a widowed and dedicated country doctor, Kezia had shared a thrilling life with Andrew. She had met him at a high-tech medical conference she went to in San Francisco, and married him not long after that, when she was thirty-five. The twenty years they had been married had been extraordinary, and profoundly happy. He had shown and taught and shared things with her that she would never have experienced otherwise. San Francisco had been the perfect small city to bring up their two daughters, with an agreeable cultural life and active business life for him of major international proportions with important investments in Asia, and good schools for their two girls. But once widowed at fifty-five, she found the city small and lifeless and limited. It was a lonely life for her. Everyone in her social circle was married, many of the men to younger women, much younger than Kezia by then. Her girls, Kate and Felicity, had gone east to college and never moved back to San Francisco. They loved living in New York, so Kezia traveled there frequently, to see them. She was bored with the opera and ballet boards she had served on for years. It all felt different as a widow. She felt like the odd man out with her married friends, and the city was just too small and provincial to provide an interesting life for her as a single woman. She could see herself growing old, with nothing changing in her life for the next forty years or more.

In exchange for the golden life Andrew had given her, she felt an obligation to remain involved with his company and sit on the board, but the offer to buy the company that came along unexpectedly was a blessing for Andrew’s partners, and for Kezia. It forced her to re-evaluate her life and decide how she wanted to spend the rest of it, and where. It was time to let go of the past and move on. She would be turning sixty in the fall, even if she didn’t look it, and it felt like the right time to make a bold move and reenter the world, at fifty-nine.

Once she’d made the decision, her house sold quickly, and with two daughters in New York, it was the obvious place for her to go, and it would give her the life she needed and wanted after twenty-five years in San Francisco, the last five of them without Andrew. San Francisco had stopped making sense for her once he was gone. He had added life to it for her.

One of her daughters had a booming career and life in the city, the other, lived in the West Village and some of the time in a house close to the Vermont town where she and her mother had been born. Kate was trying to write a book. She spent enough time in New York that Kezia knew she’d see more of her if she lived there herself than she would visiting her from San Francisco.

Kezia was excited about the move. Her whole focus was turned to what lay ahead for her.

She was still beautiful at fifty-nine, and easily looked ten years younger than she was. She was tall and slim, with a lithe, youthful, trim figure and strikingly pretty face, with blond hair and deep blue eyes. She felt profoundly revitalized and renewed by the move to New York. San Francisco was just too small and too sleepy and now that she was no longer married to Andrew, even though she was a powerful force on the board of the company, people forgot about her. She wasn’t by any means ready to give up her life yet, and quietly close her doors and sit at home. New York had all the life, vitality, and energy she craved, and with her daughters there, it made total sense. She was sorry she hadn’t made the leap sooner. She was in great spirits on the flight on the way there.

It was the last week in June, and the weather was warm. The airport was teeming when she arrived on a Friday afternoon. She already knew that both her daughters were out of town for the weekend. Her younger daughter, Felicity, was working in Paris for two weeks, at Paris Fashion Week. At twenty-three, she had become a stunningly successful model and had been on magazine covers all over the world for the past three years. She had been eighteen when her father died, and she went to college at USC in L.A., as he would have wanted her to. But she had never been a strong student, and she dropped out after two years, when she was discovered by the head of a major New York modeling agency. Within the first six months she was on the covers of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and L’Officiel, and was known all over the world as the most exciting new face to come along in years. Felicity was responsible about her career. She took it seriously, and worked hard, and Kezia was proud of her success. Felicity had bought her own apartment in Tribeca from her earnings a year before, at twenty-two, and led a glamorous life that would have turned most women’s heads. She had learned to spot the men who pursued most models and were just looking for entertainment or arm candy, or simply wanted to be able to say they’d gone out with her. She had a tendency to go out with older men. Her boyfriend for the last year, Blake White, led a fashionable jet-set life at thirty-nine, and had a big job as a wealth management consultant at Goldman Sachs for some very illustrious clients. He was from a prosperous family himself, knew many important people as clients and friends, and loved going out with beautiful young women. But he also saw something deeper and different in Felicity, something that he hadn’t come across before. In spite of her success and the money her father left her, she had sound values, strong family ties, and a good mind, and was more sensible than most women her age. Her own success hadn’t turned her head. She was upbeat and fun to be with. Blake had been married before, to a socialite he had grown up with. He was divorced and had a six-year-old son, Alex, who spent alternate weekends with them, and would be with Blake for the month of August.

Felicity enjoyed spending time with Alex, and he loved her. She treated him more as a big sister would, rather than taking on a motherly role, which Blake also liked about her. She had no hidden agenda, considered herself too young to marry anyone, and had no desire to have children of her own anytime soon. After years of dating women since his divorce who were hell-bent on getting Blake to marry them, being with Felicity was refreshing, happy, fun, and a huge relief. She didn’t try to court Alex in order to woo his father, she just had a good time with him. She was in love with Blake, but she loved her career too. She considered herself fortunate that her career had taken off and provided her a big income and great opportunities over the past three years. Blake loved being with her. He considered it ironic that the one woman he had taken seriously since his divorce didn’t want to get married, and viewed herself as too young to consider it for at least another ten years.

Kezia knew that Felicity had been in Paris for fittings all week, at the various houses she would be “walking” for in the fashion shows. Both Chanel and Dior had hired her as one of their star models, and she was spending the weekend in Saint-Tropez at the house of friends of Blake’s. He had flown over to be with her and see her in the haute couture shows the following week. Kezia couldn’t wait for her to see the new apartment when she got back. She had gone all out with a real showplace in New York.

The apartment Kezia had bought was half of the penthouse floor in a relatively new sixty-story building on Fifty-fifth Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues. It was two floors taller than any other building near it, and she had a hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the city. She had been ordering furniture and draperies with a New York decorator for the past few months, and it was going to be sublimely comfortable and elegant. She had put some of the old furniture in a storage unit to keep for the girls. She had sold a lot of it, and sent only her favorite pieces to New York. It was a new world, a new life, a new home.