She had a peaceful day without him on Friday, and felt back in control again when he picked her up on Saturday night in a silver Ferrari and drove her to a fashionable restaurant, where everyone knew him. She noticed that people recognized him wherever they went. And they were always happy to see him. He was such a nice guy.
“How was Switzerland?” she asked him, looking bright-eyed and cheerful. He was particularly handsome that night. She had worn her plain black dress in order not to entice him. She didn’t want to mislead him. However much she had loved him at seventeen, she didn’t want to love him at forty-eight. She was past being dazzled by someone who would be a colossal mistake. The boat, the plane, and his fabulous penthouse didn’t change that. What she liked about him was who he was and always had been, not the trappings he had picked up along the way.
He told her he was going to Luxembourg the next day and had business there the following week.
“Maybe you are a drug dealer,” she teased him. “You sure move around a lot.”
“I have a lot of corporations. It’s all legal, but it takes a lot of shuffling to avoid losing half of it to taxes.” She wondered if he took risks on that front too, but was sure he had capable tax lawyers to keep him out of trouble. “I’m going to Hong Kong in two weeks. And after that, I have a race in Barcelona.” She felt a little shiver run down her spine then, like a premonition. It was precisely why she didn’t want to fall for him again.
She felt now as though he had been put on her path as a reminder of what she didn’t want, and a challenge to make sure she could resist him. He looked sad as they finished the meal. She had loved seeing him, but he was far more dangerous now than he had been at eighteen, because he was even more appealing. The sophistication he had acquired in the last thirty years made him seem like a grown-up, but she knew he wasn’t. He was still a wild kid, tempting fate and wanting to see how far he could push the limits.
He drove her back to Claridge’s, and he looked at her as she was about to get out of the car.
“It’s been wonderful seeing you,” she said gently. “Take care of yourself. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t,” he promised her, which she knew meant nothing. He would do something stupid again and again until one day his luck ran out. It was part of his appeal, wanting to believe in the impossible with him. He leaned gently toward her, and kissed her. It brought back a flood of memories, as though it had last happened yesterday, like a perfume she had forgotten and suddenly remembered. She could recall perfectly how he tasted now, how he kissed her, and how badly she had wanted him, but still managed to resist him. She didn’t want to stop kissing him, and they didn’t until they needed to come up for air.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Yes, you did.” She smiled at him, still out of breath. “You were never a liar before.”
“Okay, so I meant to do it. I’ve been wanting to kiss you all week.”
“Me too,” she admitted. She had never lied to him either. “But we can’t. It doesn’t make sense anyway. Your life is here, all over Europe and Asia, and mine is in Lake Forest, a million miles from the life you lead.”
“There’s nothing there for you anymore,” he reminded her, in a final attempt to hold on to her, although he knew he couldn’t.
“Aden will come home for holidays,” she said stubbornly.
“For a few years, until he gets a job somewhere else. Come back, Maggie. I need you. We still love each other.” What they had was a powerful attraction, but she wasn’t convinced it was love.
“There’s no room in your life for someone like me,” she said, “and you know it too. You want me to give you stability, so you can turn my life upside down. That’s not fair.” He didn’t answer her then, he just kissed her again, and she could feel all her resistance evaporate. She knew that if she didn’t get out of his car, she would wind up in bed with him before the night was over and she’d regret it later. She kissed him one last time, and then without saying a word, she opened the door and got out, and he didn’t stop her. They had entered a time warp for a week, in Monte Carlo and London, but now she had to let go and return to her real life, alone. She waved to him and disappeared into the hotel without looking back. He wanted to rush in after her, but he didn’t. He knew that now, if he truly loved her, he had to let her go. And she knew it too. He drove away, blinded by tears. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He knew for certain this time that there would never be anyone like her in his life again.
Chapter 8
Traveling west in daylight hours, Maggie was awake for most of the flight from London to Chicago. She ate lunch, watched a movie, and closed her eyes for a while, but she kept thinking of Paul no matter how hard she tried not to. He was like background music in her head. She remembered each time she had seen him in Monte Carlo, the time they’d spent on the boat, and every moment they’d spent together in London. The vacation in San Francisco, Rome, and Paris had been peaceful and productive. She’d discovered cities she had always wanted to see. It had freed her and made her feel strong and independent. She had found her own footing again. It was the first thing she had done without Brad in almost twenty years, and she had proven to herself that she could. She had managed perfectly on her own, and even enjoyed it. It cleared her head and lifted her spirits.
But London and Monte Carlo were different, because she ran into Paul. It had seemed fun and exciting at first to see him after so long, and revive cherished memories of her past, before Brad was even part of her life. It was like revisiting her youth, and she could no longer tell if what she felt for him was the echo of a distant time rekindled, or if it was what she felt for him now. The memories and the present reality were hard to discern and untangle. Every time she looked at him she saw the boy she had loved at eighteen. He hardly seemed any different now, other than the extravagant trappings that surrounded him, which meant nothing to her. She cared about Paul, both the boy and the man.
There was no option to go back to Brad now. She loved all of him without reserve, and could hold him close in her heart and mind, but she could never touch him again. Being with Paul was an alluring possibility, a choice she could make if she wished to, and a road she knew would be fraught with danger at every turn. Her mind shrieked Run! while her heart longed for his return. The last days of the trip when she was with him were a double-edged sword. The thought of it sliced through her again and again on the flight home.
* * *
—
She had been gone for four weeks in all, and was returning three weeks before Thanksgiving. She couldn’t wait for Aden to come home. She needed to see him. He was the present and the future, where her responsibilities lay, and her strongest link to Brad. She wanted to hang on to the present, and all that was real in her life to keep the past at bay. She’d started having nightmares again in London, which she hadn’t had on the earlier part of the trip. She thought it was guilt tormenting her again, this time for being attracted to another man. She had mixed feelings about that too. She didn’t want to be with anyone after Brad, out of loyalty to him. And even if she would feel different one day, it was still too soon. The first anniversary of his death was looming in six weeks, which she thought might be causing the nightmares too.
In fact, the decision about Paul had been made thirty years before, and she knew she had made the right one. With the life choices he had made, Paul hadn’t changed. If anything, he was more addicted to risk than before.
She hoped that Paul wouldn’t call her or try to get in touch with her in some other way. She was shocked by how easily she had melted into his arms and wanted to be there. It took all her resolve not to send him a message before she left. He hadn’t called her that morning before her flight either. She was ready to put him back into ancient history, but each time she did, he popped into her mind again, like a jack-in-the-b
ox she couldn’t close. He refused to disappear from her thoughts, and she could still feel his lips on hers.
She was exhausted when she got off the plane, claimed her bags, and went through customs in Chicago. She’d booked a car to take her home. She was shocked by how cold it was. Winter had already begun to creep in, which suited her mood as she rode home to her empty house. But this was her turf now, not Paul’s. She had given him all her contact information in Monaco, and hoped now that she wouldn’t hear from him. She didn’t want loneliness or grief, or the upcoming anniversary date, to color her decision or weaken her resolve not to see him again.
The house looked empty and bleak when she got there and let herself in. The woman who came to clean twice a week had left everything in order and put food in the refrigerator for her, but the house felt abandoned. You could tell that no one had been there. Aden’s sports equipment wasn’t lying in the front hall. There were no clothes scattered anywhere. Her mail was stacked neatly in the hall, but being there was like prying her heart open again, remembering that Brad was gone forever and Aden no longer lived there. It put her face-to-face in sharp relief with the reality that she was alone. Even Paul seemed like a dim memory when she walked in.
She dragged her suitcases upstairs to her bedroom and wandered around the house feeling lost. She texted Aden that she was safely home, but she didn’t call anyone. She was no longer in a rush to see Helen. She would want to hear all about Paul, and Maggie didn’t want to talk about him and stir the embers again. They needed to die now. She had been stunned by how easy it was to revive them, as though his memory had remained closer than she thought. Thirty years had vanished like mist as soon as she saw him.
She didn’t bother to eat dinner, and it was a long sleepless night. She told herself it was jet lag, but she knew it was more than that. It was Paul, and her guilt about Brad had gotten stronger again the moment she walked through her front door, as though he were waiting there to reproach her. She still loved him, and knew she always would, but for a few days in London, Paul had filled her thoughts and her time, not her husband. She had finally fallen asleep when the sun came up. Helen called her three times after she got up, and she finally answered the last call. Maggie couldn’t avoid her any longer. She had to say something.
“Are you okay? I’ve been calling you all day.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. “I was jet-lagged last night and couldn’t sleep.” The six-hour time difference with London was a plausible excuse, and Helen believed her.
“How does it feel to be home?” Helen sounded happy to hear her. She had missed her while she was gone.
“Strange. Hard. The house seems so empty without Aden.” She hadn’t really had time to realize to what degree. She had left so soon after he took off for Boston. It hadn’t hit her yet, the way it did now.
“I was afraid of your walking into an empty house, although I could use a little of that here. You missed Halloween. We had kids in costumes in and out of here for days, Joey was in two parades at school, and wanted two different costumes,” her youngest. Maggie missed those days and was happy she’d been in London. “So how’s your old love? Do you think you’ll hear from him again now that you’re home?” She sounded hopeful, which set Maggie’s nerves on edge immediately.
“I hope not. Sometimes the past is best left in the past. This is one of those times. Our lives are too different. And all the same things that would have made it wrong thirty years ago are still there and worse. I don’t need to be widowed twice. Once is enough for me. A race car driver is not an option. I don’t care how successful or famous he is.”
“He managed to stay alive this long. He might make it to retirement in one piece,” Helen said, sounding disappointed.
“He’ll find something else dangerous to do if he ever does retire. He can’t help himself. It’s stronger than he is. It always will be. Skydiving, helicopter skiing, mountain climbing, the possibilities are endless and he loves them all. If anything, he’s worse than he was as a kid. Maybe now he feels he has to prove something. He’s one of the older drivers around now. And he has greater access to dangerous activities than he did when he was young and poor. He can do anything he wants now.”
“It’s such a shame. He sounds perfect,” Helen said wistfully.
“Not for me. And apparently not for his ex-wives either. They both left him. One of them in less than a year.” He had told her that in London. She was a model, eighteen years younger than he was. He said it had put him off younger women, but she wasn’t sure she believed that either, if the temptation was strong enough. And Maggie had seen how women looked at him. He was a star everywhere he went. To his credit, she hadn’t seen him look at any other women when he was with her. He hadn’t been a cheater, even as a kid. And success hadn’t gone to his head in that sense. But his career and love of danger weighed heavily enough on the wrong side of the scale.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Helen said sincerely.
“I’m not. I averted disaster again this time.”
“How did you leave it with him?” She was curious, and didn’t want to let it go. He seemed like such an exciting option, and a way to fill Maggie’s empty life now. She still had hard times ahead. And she was going to be so alone, with even Aden gone. In Helen’s mind, a romance would have been a blessing. However loyal Maggie was to him, Brad wasn’t coming back.
“We agreed on the last night that it was over.” She didn’t say “after we kissed for half an hour.” Helen didn’t need to know that. Maggie wanted to forget it herself. She had to, for her own peace of mind. “I think he was sad about it. He’ll forget soon enough,” she said, sounding hard for a minute. “Women must crawl all over him. People recognized him wherever we went. Guys think he’s a hero. Women think he’s hot. He’s still good-looking.”
“I looked him up on the internet. He is hot! He’s great looking, and in the real world, he’s still pretty young.” At forty-nine, he was younger than Brad, and better looking, which wasn’t what mattered to Maggie, any more than Paul’s boat or his plane. They were just nice add-ons, but they weren’t the main event for her. “I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him. We could use a little window dressing around here.” Her own husband was very good-looking, tall, athletic, with a great body. He kept in shape, worked out every day before work, and got up at four a.m. to do it. Helen worried about the women he met at work, who were twenty years younger than she was. She was two years younger than Maggie and the interns they hired at the agency were fresh out of college. Fortunately, most of them drove Jeff crazy. He said it was like hiring teenagers, and they weren’t far from it. The agency had a game room for them now, and a candy bar, to keep them happy on their breaks. All the ad agencies and start-ups had them. Helen’s boys loved going to visit him at the office so they could play. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do now?” Helen changed the subject, but Maggie still didn’t know. She had thought about all kinds of options, from volunteer work to going back to school for a master’s in art, but nothing felt right so far.
“I thought about volunteering at the convalescent home here, but it sounds so depressing, talking to old people with dementia. It reminds me of my mother at the end. There has to be something more fun that I can do. Maybe something at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Even a class. There were so many great small art galleries in Paris. I thought about opening one here. But I’m not sure people buy art in Lake Forest. They go to the city for that, to give some weight to it.” Helen didn’t disagree with her.
“What about Brad’s old firm?” Helen knew she had sold it.
“They don’t need me. And I think it would remind me too much of Brad. Every time I’ve gone there, I expect him to walk out of his office, and say he was just kidding, and has been hiding for a year.”
“I know. I felt that way about my sister. Every time I went home, I expected
her to be there, for years.”
“I’ve given myself till January to come up with an idea for work of some kind. It’ll be here any minute, and I’m no closer to figuring it out than I was eleven months ago. It’s hard to invent a career out of whole cloth. I didn’t exactly have a booming career before I married Brad. I worked for him, as a receptionist at his accounting firm.”
“You married the boss’s son. As my mother-in-law says, it’s nice work if you can find it.” They both laughed and bantered back and forth for a while, and then Helen had to drop off a forgotten lunch at school for one of her boys. She seemed to be doing fine without her oldest son, since he was at Yale, but she still had the two younger ones at home, which helped. Maggie didn’t have that consolation with an only child. And with a late baby, Helen wouldn’t be facing an empty nest for another twelve years. Maggie envied her that. They agreed to have lunch the next day before they hung up, and Maggie was glad they’d talked. That way, she wouldn’t have to rehash everything about Paul the next day.
It didn’t help when three dozen red roses arrived from a local florist that afternoon. The card read “Thank you. I’m sorry. Love, Paul.” They were beautiful but she was sorry he had sent them. It just prolonged things for another day, but it was thoughtful of him. She sent him a text to thank him, and was relieved when he didn’t respond.
It took two weeks to stop thinking about him constantly, like giving up an addiction. The early days were the hardest. But by the time she’d been home for two weeks, Thanksgiving was only a week away, and she was busy getting ready for it, and Aden’s return. It was going to be their first Thanksgiving without Brad. It would just be the two of them. She had taken out their Thanksgiving decorations, and she wanted to set a pretty table for them. She knew Aden wanted to see all his friends while he was home. The house would be bustling again, with kids arriving at all hours, Aden ordering pizzas for them, and all the boys watching football over the holiday weekend. Christmas was just around the corner, with Brad’s anniversary date first, the anniversary of the crash. She hoped the media wouldn’t hound her, looking for a follow-up to the story. There wasn’t any at her end. She had read that some of the families hadn’t settled with the airline, and were suing, and the airline was trying to keep it quiet.
Nine Lives Page 11