They had made their plans as far ahead as they needed to. She sighed that she hadn’t brought city clothes with her for London at the end of January, and would have to go shopping again.
* * *
—
The next three weeks on the boat with him were like a honeymoon, and they both hated to leave when they met up with his plane in Antigua. They flew to London, and within hours he was tied up with conference calls and meetings with firms he invested in all over the world.
She bought just enough clothes to look respectable when she went out with him. They stayed home a lot, and he was doing deals in a dozen time zones, busy and awake at all hours.
They stayed at the Baur au Lac in Zurich when he had to go there, and she took long walks around the lake, and thought about the changes she’d made in her life in the past month, and even the past year since Brad died. Her horizons had broadened exponentially.
She called Helen when they got back to London, who said she’d been worried about her. Maggie had sent her regular texts, but they were somewhat cryptic.
“Where are you?”
“In London. I’ve been on Paul’s boat since right after Christmas.”
“Wow, how is that going?”
“Okay, so far. We’re living day to day, which is the only way I can do this. I need to see what it feels like to live with a man who risks his life for a living. It probably won’t last forever, but it works for now.”
Helen admired her courage and willingness to check it out, given her history. But Maggie did love Paul. It made it worth trying to make it work, for both of them.
“When are you coming home?”
“In a few weeks. He has a race in February. I want to leave before that. And Aden has spring break in March, so I’ll be home for a while. Maybe I’ll come to see Paul again in April. And then Aden’s school year ends in May. And he wants to stay home until he goes to Europe with friends in June.”
“Complicated life. It sounds like a balancing act between Paul and Aden.”
“It will be. And I don’t know how Aden will feel about him. He may see it as a betrayal of Brad.” She was prepared for the possibility and would face it when it happened. They talked for a few more minutes, and then hung up. Maggie promised to call her again soon. Helen missed her, but she was happy for her if Paul made her happy. Maggie still wasn’t sure, but loved being with him every day. They understood each other, and he was a kind, loving man who knew her well.
As she spent more time with him, Maggie noticed that Paul didn’t have many friends, if any. A few acquaintances on the London scene. All he had were people he did business with. The calls between Paul and his advisors developed a frantic quality in early February. She didn’t ask Paul why, and didn’t want to be intrusive, but she noticed that he often looked stressed after the calls. There was a tension in him that he didn’t always explain. He said nothing to her about his complex business dealings, and always told her everything was fine. He shielded her from anything stressful or unpleasant. She’d been through enough pain.
The race in the north of England was set for the twelfth of February, and she was planning to leave two days before that on a commercial flight to Chicago. The night before she was due to leave, Paul asked her to come with him, and be at the race.
“You know I don’t want to do that,” she said, frowning. He was crossing a line.
“I know. Just this once. You’ll bring me luck. You don’t have to do it again if you hate it.” He didn’t push her, but she could see that it meant a lot to him, so she agreed, and changed her flight to three days later.
She drove north with him two days before the race. She stayed in the background once they got there. He was busy checking out the car. He was as intense about his racing as he was about his business dealings all over the world. He did everything with passion, including loving her.
The day of the race, she woke with a feeling of terror. She hated being there, and was annoyed at herself for getting talked into it.
She stood grim-faced as the race began, her whole body tense until it ached. He had several near disasters on the track, scraped along a wall, tore off part of a fender, narrowly missed a collision twice. Yet in the end he won. But at what price glory? Maggie was drenched in sweat and shaking when he came to find her, beaming. He was filthy, and his broken ribs were still taped, but to him, every minute was worth it. It was what he lived for.
“It was great, wasn’t it?” He smiled broadly at her and kissed her, but she didn’t answer him at first.
“Great for you. Agony for me. You’ll have to go to your races without me,” she said, and he knew she meant it, so he didn’t argue with her. He didn’t want to upend the delicate balance they had established in the past two months, which seemed to be working.
“I understand,” he said gently. They drove back to London, with his car on a truck, to be worked on at his warehouse close to London, where he kept all his race cars. They spent a quiet night together, without talking about the race after she congratulated him. They made love that night, as she clung to him desperately, and he felt guilty when she had nightmares all night, the worst he’d ever seen. She would fly to Chicago the next day. It was time to go back to her own life, check on her own investments, and get ready for Aden to come home in three weeks. She needed to be on her own turf, sleep in her own bed, and be away from Paul for a while. Everything about him was intense. She kissed him when she left and was happy to go home to her simple life in Lake Forest, and be by herself.
* * *
—
She could hardly wait to see Aden. When he came home, it felt like Christmas all over again. He knew that some of his friends would be there, and others wouldn’t. He saw as many friends as were there, and had a couple of quiet dinners with his mother.
The second night he ate at home, she told him about Paul, and braced herself for his reaction.
“Paul Gilmore? The race car driver? Are you serious? That’s sick, Mom!” She thought he meant it literally and her face went pale, only to discover from his comments a minute later that “sick” was the new jargon for “cool in the extreme.” For a few minutes, he had panicked her. Then they both got serious. “Are you in love with him?” It was a reasonable question, and she wasn’t sure what to answer.
“I was very much in love with him as a teenager, when I was seventeen. I loved him like a kid then. And I love him differently now. I like being with him, we understand each other and know each other well, even though there was a thirty-year gap before I saw him again last September in Monte Carlo. I loved the life I had with your father. I don’t like the life of being with a man who needs to risk his life every day in order to feel alive and justify his existence, and who thinks that’s fun.”
“That’s how he makes his living, Mom. He’s a legend. He’s one of the most important drivers who ever lived. He’s broken nearly every record.” Aden was vastly impressed by him, and wanted a hero in his life, which worried Maggie too.
“That’s hard on the people who love them. That’s why he isn’t married and doesn’t have kids. Racing is more important to him. I wouldn’t want to live that way forever, but it works for now. He’s a very kind, generous man, and I think you’ll like him. I like him too. I even love him, though differently from your father. I loved the sense of safety and security your dad gave me. That’s important to me. So where this is going? I don’t know yet. Maybe nowhere.” She was trying to be as honest as she could with him, although he was young to understand it.
“Are you having fun with him?”
“I am,” she said, and smiled.
“Then why don’t you just enjoy it and see what happens? Why do girls have to get so serious all the time?” She laughed. He sounded like a man.
“Are you having problems with that?” She was curious about his love life. He didn’t tel
l her as much now that he was in Boston.
“I don’t know. I’ve been seeing this girl, and she always wants to know where it’s going. I don’t know where it’s going. I don’t want to worry about that now. I just want to have fun with her. She acts like she wants to get married. I’m too young for that.”
“Yes, you are. And I’m not interested in getting married either. I just wanted you to know that we’re dating.”
“Can I tell people?” he asked, smiling widely. He had had none of the bad reactions she had feared. He was being very mature about it, maybe because of who Paul was.
“Yes, you can. It’s not a secret.”
“Wait till I tell the guys you’re dating Paul Gilmore.” They both laughed at that. Paul was a star in Aden’s world.
“He invited us both on his boat in the South of France in July. It’s a beautiful sailboat.”
“I’m coming!” Aden said immediately. Problem solved. She had heard horror stories of children his age and older objecting vehemently to their mothers dating at all, but Aden had no problem with it. And the fact that she was dating a legendary race car driver was even better. There was a bit of stardust in Aden’s eyes. She just didn’t want Aden emulating Paul and wanting to race one day. She had already said that to Paul many times. She didn’t want him glamorizing it to Aden, or doing anything dangerous with him. She had a feeling that Aden would find his way to his own dangerous pursuits soon enough. He had the DNA for it on her side. She was enormously relieved by his sensible reaction to her news, and he didn’t seem at all surprised that she was dating. It had been over a year since his father died.
She called Paul and told him about it late that night, when Aden was out. It was late enough to be morning in London.
“I thought he’d be okay with it, or at least I hoped so. But you can never tell with kids,” he conceded.
“I think he’s hungry for male company, or male guidance. His father has been gone for fifteen months now. He hangs around a lot with his friends’ fathers, and he was very close to the coach last year in high school.”
“I’d like to spend time with him when I’m around,” Paul said softly. “We’ll have fun together on the boat in July,” he promised her, and she was touched. She noticed that he sounded tired, and he had been stressed lately. He never discussed his business problems with her. She knew he had corporate entities in several countries and they seemed very complex. Her own financial setup was much simpler and her investments had done well in the past year. She had gathered that Paul liked the high stakes in his financial affairs too. His theory was that you only made the big money with big risks, but you lost big too. It was the exact opposite of how she invested her money. She wanted to hang on to as much of it as she could, and have it grow if possible, for Aden to have in later years. Paul invested as he lived, on the razor’s edge, with his money, with his life, with his career. Danger was always the principal ingredient, and she didn’t want him sharing that with her son. She knew where it could lead.
* * *
—
Aden went back to Boston after spring break. He would be home in two months for the summer. His first year at BU had gone well. His grades were reasonable, though not extraordinary, but he had been through a lot of difficult changes in the past year. And he had enjoyed playing on the junior hockey team. He was looking forward to discovering Europe with his friends in June. And now he would be joining her and Paul on the boat at the beginning of July. It was going to be a sharp contrast to his travels by train with a backpack around Europe. He and his friends were planning to visit Spain, France, Italy, Scotland, and England. Paul was talking about going to Corsica and Sardinia with the boat. There was so much she wanted to share with Aden now. He had grown wings of his own in the past year, and she wanted to spend time with him while she still could, before he flew too far in his own skies and no longer wanted to be with her. She knew that time was coming, and was already near.
She hadn’t spread her own wings and found an avenue to pursue career-wise yet. She still wanted to, but dividing herself between Paul’s world and her own, she wasn’t in either place long enough to get a job. She was afraid to start her own business, and she was in Europe so much with him, she couldn’t offer any employer enough time to be useful to them. But the time she spent with Paul was important to her too. The idea of working for or owning an art gallery appealed to her, but she wasn’t around anywhere long enough to run it.
She said something about it to Helen, who suggested she sell art on the internet, and Maggie liked the idea. She wanted to explore it further, maybe over the summer. She could have a gallery online. It might be the perfect solution for her. She wanted to have her own activity. She didn’t want to be a hanger-on in Paul’s life with nothing to do. She wanted to be her own person, with her own interests and pursuits.
She tried to talk to Paul about it after Aden went back to school, but he seemed distracted and short with her every time they spoke. She thought he might have a big deal of some kind cooking. Whenever she called him lately he was on a conference call, or told her he’d call her back, and then didn’t for hours, or not at all. Until then, he had been far more attentive. She was thinking of meeting him in London in April, before Aden came home for the summer in May. She wanted to visit Paul at the right time for both of them, and not just land on him, but he didn’t have time to talk to her when she called him about dates. She hadn’t spoken to him in two days, which was unusual. She wondered if he was traveling to one of the other cities where he had either corporations or investments.
She was mildly annoyed by his two-day silence when Helen called her with a strange tone in her voice.
“Have you seen The New York Times today?” Helen asked her.
“No. Why? I usually only read it on Sundays. The rest of the time I just read bits and pieces online.”
“It’s on the front page. About Paul.” She sounded somber. “ ‘The famous Formula One driver, international investor, and bon vivant, Paul Gilmore, is under investigation for tax evasion, fraudulent activities, and the use of illegal offshore corporations, involving many millions of dollars.’ And it says that his apartment in London has been seized by the British tax authorities who are investigating him too. His accounts in both countries have been frozen pending further investigation. The ownership of his yacht and his corporate jet are in question, and they may be seized as well.” Helen sounded shocked.
“Oh my God.” Maggie hung up seconds later and read the article herself online. She had no idea what had happened. He hadn’t said anything to her. As soon as she finished reading the Times article, she called him, but all she got was his voicemail. She realized that he couldn’t be at the London apartment if the government had seized it. The question now was where was he and what had he done, and whether or not she even knew him. Her heart pounded as she called him a second time, and got voicemail again. Three hours later, after trying to reach him everywhere, she still hadn’t found him. Paul seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Chapter 11
Twenty-four hours after the call from Helen, Maggie still hadn’t heard from Paul, or been able to reach him. She hadn’t spoken to him in three days. Aden had seen the article by then too, and called his mother immediately.
“What’s going on, Mom? Is all that stuff true? Do you think he’ll go to jail?” Aden hadn’t met Paul yet, but he idolized him and hated the idea that he might be a crook. So did Maggie. She was worried about it too.
“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is what you read too. He hasn’t called me, and I haven’t been able to reach him. I think he’s an honest man, but you don’t always know people as well as you think.” To both of them, this seemed huge and frightening if the accusations were true and he was in as much trouble as they said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something. There has to be an explanation.” But she wasn’t sure, and d
oubt and fear were gnawing at her.
“I hope so, Mom,” Aden said, worried for her too, on the chance that she could somehow be implicated also because of her close association with him. It had crossed Maggie’s mind as well. She didn’t know what to think.
Late that night, she finally heard from Paul. He sounded tired but calm. There was no panic in his voice and he apologized profusely for not calling her for nearly four days.
“I’ve been on the phone constantly with lawyers in four countries, and tax authorities here in the U.K. and in the U.S. Bottom line, they don’t like my corporate setups, but I’ve always been careful to stay just this side of the line. What we’ve done isn’t illegal, but undeniably we’ve kept my money out of the hands of the tax guys in both countries whenever we could. We knew it might come to this one day, but it’s been worth it. And we’ve known there was something brewing for the last three or four weeks, but I didn’t want to worry you. We’ve been creative, but not dishonest. Tax laws keep changing so it’s easy to find yourself on the wrong side of the line, but we keep a close eye on it. Whenever the laws changed, we shifted our setup to accommodate them. They’re going to have a hell of a time proving that I did something wrong. Sometimes how you read the law is a matter of interpretation. It’s not always crystal clear. I’ve got corporations in Hong Kong, Luxembourg, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. We knew that they’d object to Luxembourg eventually, and they don’t like the Cayman Islands, but I pay hefty taxes in the States. In the end, after they try to shake me up for a while, it’ll come to a negotiation about how much I’ll pay, but they have to make a lot of noise first to scare me. I’ll lose some money on this, but hopefully not too much. And it has saved me a lot till now. I know it sounds bad, but I’m not worried. I took the risk that part of the roof might fall in one day, but not the whole house. I’ll probably have to repatriate a nice chunk of change back to the U.S., which is infuriating, but just the way it is. Most of my investments are still safe offshore and will stay that way, owned by sheltered corporations they can’t invade. I’ve been protecting myself for a long time, and they know it. They hate that. I have money in Malta too, which the Brits and the U.S. can’t touch.”
Nine Lives Page 14