Now and Forever

by Danielle Steel

“What happened?”

  Jessica only shook her head, clutching the hat.

  “Did she do anything?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Did you?”

  And again, a silent no.

  “Oh, babe.” He pulled her into his arms, and took the hat from her hand, tossing it onto a nearby bench. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go home.” In fact, he was going to get her out of town. To hell with what Martin said, they needed to get away. Carmel, maybe. Anywhere. He wondered how long Jessica could take the pressure. How long he could. The hat seemed to look at him accusingly from the bench as he held his wife in his arms, and he shuddered. It was the hat she had worn that day at Enrico’s. That day … the day he’d be paying for for years, one way or another. He kept an arm around Jessica’s shoulders and walked her slowly toward the elevator. He wanted to pour his soul into hers, but he wasn’t even sure he had enough for himself anymore, let alone for anyone else. He wanted the horror to be over, and it was only beginning.

  When the elevator came she walked silently into it. Her eyes were soldered to the doors, and he wanted to shake her. He was watching her slip away again: he had seen this mask before.

  The elevator spat them out into the chaos of the lobby. It was filled with police and inspectors, private lawyers and assistant district attorneys, and people waiting in line to get passes to the jail. Ian and Jessica melted into the sea of swarming people. And here and there was an ordinary, untroubled face, someone in the building to pay a parking ticket, or fill out a car-registration form. But they were so few that they blended in with the rest, which was why neither Jessica nor Ian saw Astrid, on her way to get a new sticker for the one that had fallen off her plates at the car wash. They were only a few feet away and never saw her. But she saw them, and was stricken by the expression on their faces. They passed six feet away, and she let them go. It was the same look she had worn when the doctors had told her just how sick Tom really was.

  Chapter 13

  The following morning, Ian made up his mind. Jessica had to get away. They both did. And when she was making breakfast, he even went to the trouble of clearing it with Martin over the phone. Martin agreed, and Ian announced it to Jessie as a fait accompli.

  “We’re doing what?” She looked at him incredulously as she stood barefoot in her robe in the kitchen.

  “We’re leaving for Carmel in half an hour.” This time he smiled when he said it. “Pack your gear, my love.”

  “You’re crazy. Martin said—”

  “—to send him a postcard.” Ian smiled victoriously as Jessica chuckled.

  “And just when did he say that?”

  “Just now.”

  “You called him?” She still looked dubious, but amused.

  “I just hung up. So, my beloved—”he approached her slowly, with a wisp of a smile—“get your beautiful ass moving before we waste the day.”

  “You’re a nut.” He kissed her and she smiled up at him with her eyes closed. “But such a nice nut.”

  They reached Carmel in two hours with Ian at the wheel of the Morgan. The air was cooler than it had been for weeks, and it was brilliantly sunny all the way down. They put the top down on the Morgan and arrived wind-blown and happier. It was almost as though the constant sweep of wind on the highway had cleared the worry from their minds. The trip hadn’t been such a bad idea after all, and after the first fifty miles, Jessie had stopped imagining that Inspector Houghton was following them. She was constantly haunted by him, but maybe now it would stop. It was just that he seemed omnipotent. He would go away and then could come back again, with a search warrant, a gun, a friend, a look in his eye … a twist of his mouth … he terrified her, and she didn’t dare tell Ian how much. She never mentioned him. She had also been worried about the expense of the trip, but Ian had insisted that he had enough left in his account to cover it. She had been ordered to mind her own business and warned that they were going economy all the way, no deluxe accommodations this time. She felt guilty, doubting his assurances, but she was obsessed with their finances now, and the upcoming staggering expense of the trial. And Ian was so strange about money, maybe because he had never had any. He had a way of buying her fabulous presents and creating magnificent moments when they were plainly out of funds. He would take the last of what he had and throw it out the window in style. In the past, this trait had amused her. Right now it did not.

  But she was grateful for the trip to Carmel. She knew how much she needed it. Her nerves had been on the raw edge of disaster. And she knew that Ian’s had been too, no matter how hard he’d tried to cover up.

  Astrid had told them about a little hotel where she had stayed the previous spring that she’d insisted was a bargain. So they forfeited the deluxe delights of the familiar Del Monte for the cozy plaid and pine atmosphere of L’Auberge. It was run by a middle-aged French couple, and among its other pleasures, it boasted “Café Complèt” in bed in the morning. The Café Complèt consisted of homemade croissants and brioches, with bowls of steaming café au lait.

  They walked to the beach and canvassed the shops, and on Saturday took a picnic out to the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea.

  “More wine, love?”

  Ian nodded and pushed a long strand of blond hair from her eyes. They were lying side by side, and she was looking up at the sky while he rested on one elbow and looked down at her. He smoothed her face with his hand and kissed her gently on the lips, the eyes, the tip of the nose.

  “If you do that, I’ll never sit up to get you your wine, my love.” He smiled again and she blew him a kiss.

  “You know something, Ian?”

  “What?”

  “You make me very happy.” His face clouded as she said it, and she caught his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her. “I mean it. You do.”

  “How can you say that now?”

  “Because now is no different from any other time, Ian. You do beautiful things to me. You give me what I need, and I need a lot. Sometimes you pay a price for that. And okay, so it’s hard now, but this’ll be over soon. It won’t go on forever. All in all I think we’re damn lucky.” She sat up and faced him, and finally he looked away.

  “Lucky, eh? I guess that’s one way to look at it.” He sounded bitter, and she reached for his hand.

  “You don’t feel lucky anymore?”

  “I do. But do you, Jessie, really? Be honest.” He looked back at her with an unfamiliar look in his eyes, a kind of openness that frightened her: as though he were questioning everything. Her. Himself. Them. Life. Everything.

  “Yes, I feel lucky.” Her voice was a whisper in the brisk wind of the sunny October day.

  “Jessica, my love, I was unfaithful to you. I made love to another woman. A neurotic tramp, but still another woman. You’ve been supporting me for almost six years. I am not a successful writer. And I’m about to go on trial for rape, I may go to prison, and even if I don’t, this is going to be the ugliest thing we’ve ever lived through. And you feel lucky? How do you manage that little feat?”

  She looked down at her hands for a long time, and then back up into his face. “Ian, I don’t care if you made love to another woman. I don’t like it, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. Not for me. Don’t you let it change anything. I don’t suppose it was the first time, but I don’t want to know. That’s not the point. The point is, so what? So you made love to someone, so what? So you jacked off, so what? I don’t care. Does that make any sense to you? I don’t care. I care about you, about us, about our marriage, about your career. And I don’t ‘support’ you. Lady J supports us both. We’re lucky to have it, and one of these days you’re going to sell a book and a movie and another book and a pile of brilliant work, and make a fortune. So what’s the problem?”

  “Jessica, you’re crazy.” He was smiling at her, but his eyes still looked serious.

  “No, I’m not. And I mean it. You make me happy. You make me glow, y
ou make me care, you make me know I’m loved, you’re always there for me. You know who I am and what I am and why I am better than I do even. Ian, that’s so rare. I look at other people and they never seem to have what we have.” Her eyes were fiery now, and the color of jade.

  “I don’t know what to say, Jessie … I love you. And I need you too. Not just to support me while I write. I need … oh, hell—”he smiled, more to himself than to her—“I need you sitting bare-assed and solemn-faced at two in the morning, telling me why my fourth chapter isn’t working. I need the way you fly in the door at night with that look of ‘Oh, wow!’ on your face … the way you know, the way you … respect me, even when I don’t respect myself.”

  “Oh, Ian.” She slid into his arms again and closed her eyes as he held her.

  “I need you a lot, babe. But … something’s going to have to change.”

  Her eyes opened slowly. He had just said something important. She knew it from the change in the way he held her more than from the words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know yet. But something’s got to change, after we survive this holocaust we’re going to walk through in the next couple of months.”

  “Like what, dammit? Change what?” Her voice was unexpectedly shrill, and she sat back from him a little so she could read his eyes.

  “Take it easy, Jessie. I just think it’s about time for an overhaul. I don’t know, maybe it’s time I shelved my fancy ideas about a writing career. Something. We can’t go on exactly like this, though. In some ways it doesn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I feel kept. You pay the bills, or most of them, and I can’t live with that anymore. Do you know what it feels like to have no income? To feel guilty every time you dig into the kitty, the ‘joint account,’ so-called, to buy a couple of T-shirts? Do you have any idea how it feels to have you footing the bill for this disaster now? To have you pick up the tab on my alleged ‘rape’? Jesus, Jessie, it chokes me. It’s killing me. Why the hell do you think I’ve been impotent lately? Because I’m so thrilled with myself for how I’m running my life?”

  “You can’t really take that seriously. You’re under an incredible amount of strain right now.” She wanted to brush it aside, but he wasn’t going to let her.

  “That’s right. I am under a lot of strain. But part of that strain is because we haven’t got things set up the way they should be. Did you ever wonder what would happen if you didn’t have Lady J, or if your parents hadn’t left you some money?”

  “I’d be working for someone else, and you’d be working in advertising and hating it. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  “No. But what if you weren’t working at all, and I were working at something else?”

  “Like what?” Her face seemed to freeze on the words.

  “I don’t know like what. I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Ian, you’re out of your mind. I’ve never seen you work as hard on a book as you are on this one now, I’ve never heard you sound so sure about anything you’ve written. And now you want to quit?”

  “I didn’t say that. Not yet. But maybe. What I’m saying is: What would happen to you, to us, to our marriage, if you didn’t support us, Jessie, if I did? What if we just kept your money as a nest egg, as an investment?”

  “And what would I do all day? Needlepoint? Play bridge?”

  “No. I was thinking of something else. Maybe for later.” There was something soft and distant in his eyes as he spoke.

  “What’s the something else?”

  “Like … well … like what if we finally had children—after this whole mess is over, I mean. We haven’t talked about that for a long time. Not since before …” She knew what he meant by “before.” Before things had changed. Before her parents had died. Before she’d inherited their money … before. That one word said it all. They both knew. “Jessie … baby, I want to take care of you. Besides, you’ve earned it.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, ‘why’?” He looked momentarily confused.

  “I mean why should we scramble everything up now? Why should you suddenly take on the whole burden? I love working; it’s not a burden for me. It’s fun.”

  “Can’t kids be fun too?”

  “I didn’t say they weren’t.” Her face was as tight as a drum.

  “But?”

  “Oh, for Chrissake, Ian, why do we have to get into that now?” That one hadn’t come up in years.

  “I didn’t say now. We’re just talking what if’s.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It’s like playing games.” She turned away and suddenly felt Ian’s hand on her arm. Hard.

  “It’s not like playing games. I’m serious, Jessie. I’ve turned myself into a fucking gigolo in the last six years. I’m a failure as a writer, and I just balled some two-bit tramp and got falsely accused of rape. I’m trying to figure out what means something in my life and what doesn’t, and what needs changing. And maybe part of what needs changing is us. Not even maybe. I know it does. Now are you going to listen, and talk to me, or aren’t you?”

  She sat silent, looking at him. But she knew she had no choice. He let go of her arm and poured two more glasses of wine. “I’m sorry. But this is important to me, Jess.”

  “Okay. I’ll try.” She look the glass of wine and sighed deeply as she looked up at the sky. “All this because I told you that you make me happy? Oy vey … I should have kept my mouth shut!” She smiled back at him, and he kissed her again.

  “I know. I’m a bastard. But Jessie … I want to make it work with us. I want to make it better. I don’t want to go screwing other women, or hating myself or … it matters. It really matters. And I’m glad I make you happy, and you make me happy too. Very happy. But we can do better, I know we can. I’ve got to feel like your husband, like a man, like I carry the weight, or most of it at least, even if it means selling the house and living someplace where I can pay our rent. But I need to do things like that for you. I’m tired of having you ‘take care’ of me. And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, Jess, but … I just need to, dammit.”

  “Okay. But why? Why now? Because of that idiot woman? Margaret Burton? Because of her, you have to give up writing and move us into some shack in the Mission where you can pay the rent?” She was getting bitchy now and he didn’t like it. The comment hadn’t missed its mark.

  “No, sweetheart. Margaret Burton is just a symptom, just like the hundred or two hundred pieces of ass before her. Is that how you want to play this, Jessie? Shitty, or straight? Take your pick. I’m willing to play either way.”

  She polished off the rest of her wine at a gulp and shrugged. “I just don’t get the point.”

  “Maybe that is the point. Just like when I talk about having a child. You don’t get the point of that either, do you? Doesn’t that mean anything to you at all, Jessie?”

  She shook her head solemnly, looking down, avoiding his eyes.

  “I just don’t understand that. Why? Look at me, dammit. This is important to me. To both of us.” But when she looked up, he was surprised.

  “It scares me.”

  “A baby?” She had never admitted that to him before. Usually she’d gotten nasty about it and closed the subject rapidly. It made him feel tender toward her to hear that. Scared?

  “It scares you physically?” He reached for her hand gently and held it.

  “No. It … I’d have to share you, Ian, and I … I can’t.” Tears swam in her eyes and her chin trembled as she looked at him. “I really can’t share you, Ian. I can’t, not ever. You’re all I have. You’re …”

  “Oh, baby …” He took her in his arms and rocked her gently, tears stinging his own eyes. “What a crazy thing to think. A baby’s not like that. It would never be. We’re special. A baby would be something more, not less.”

  “Yes, but it would be yours. Real family.” And then he understood. He had his parents, of course, but they w
ere so remote and so old. He hardly ever saw them. But a baby would be so present, so real.

  “You’re my real family, silly. You’ll always be my real family.” How often had he told her that, after her parents had died? A thousand times? Ten thousand? It was strange to think back to those days. She had been so fiercely independent and sure of herself when he’d married her. But she had loved both her parents and adored her brother; just hearing her speak of them was like hearing reminiscences of very dear friends who had had a marvelous time together. And spending time with them was an extraordinary experience—four exceedingly handsome people, with lightning minds and quick laughter and immeasurable style. They’d been quite something. And when they were gone, part of her went too. Not an obvious part. She still had as much spirit, as much life, as much style, but suddenly in her soul she was an orphan. She had loved Ian before, but she hadn’t needed him in the same way. Then she’d become like a frightened child lost in a war zone, stricken, scared, wandering from the burnt shell of one memory to another. Lost and alone. The attempted suicide had come after Jake. And it had left her different. Dependent. It was Ian who had led her to safety again after that. That was when she had started calling him “real family.” Where before their closeness had been a loosely woven, sparkling mesh, suddenly there was nothing loose about it, and over the years it had all gotten too goddam tight. And now there wasn’t even room in her heart for a child. He had known that for a long time, but he had thought that eventually the panic would ebb. It hadn’t, now he was sure of it. Her own needs were still too intense, and probably always would be. It was a bitter thing for him to accept.

  “Oh, God, Ian, I love you so much and I’m so scared … I’m so fucking scared.” He felt her in his arms again, his mind pulled back to her, away from his own thoughts. She took a deep breath and held tightly to him as he slowly stroked her hair, thinking of what he now understood and had to accept. Had to. Nothing was ever going to change. Oh, some things would, and he was going to see about making those changes, but she was never going to stand on her own two feet again, not entirely, not enough for them both to reach out to a child.