Ray groaned. “This is going to be a touchy-feely weekend, isn’t it? Where’s the nearest bar?”
“Not allowed.” She was smiling. “Did you and Elise talk?” She nodded toward the young woman who had politely stepped away from them.
“Nothing but about how pretty the flowers are. I get the idea she came from money.”
“You think?”
Ray laughed. “She kind of oozes it, doesn’t she? What’s her problem? Daddy wouldn’t buy her a jet of her very own?”
“Now who’s judging?”
“Okay, I’ll back off. But it’s my job to quickly figure people out so I can sell them things. For her, it would be Chanel and Cartier. Bet she has a black Amex.”
Olivia didn’t want to reveal confidences, but sometimes assumptions needed to be stopped. “Elise escaped authorities by being locked inside the trunk of Jeanne’s car. No color of credit card would have helped if either of them had been caught. You ready to go?” As she walked away, she called for Elise, who got in the seat beside her, and they left for the summerhouse. When she looked in the rearview mirror, she was glad to see that Ray still wore a look of astonishment. Good! Looking at someone else’s problems often helped you solve your own.
* * *
It wasn’t until 3:00 p.m. that Olivia was able to get away from her housemates. She had driven onto the grounds of Camden Hall, Elise beside her, Ray in his sleek car close behind. At the gate, Young Pete—past eighty years old—waved them in and Olivia went left to what had been the gardener’s house. There was a plaque on the door that read Diana’s Cottage. She figured it was probably named after Diana the Huntress. Her mother said there had once been pheasants on the property, so maybe the little house had belonged to the gamekeeper.
Whatever it had been, the cottage was now so cute it almost hurt a person’s eyes. It was stone, with a tall roof punctured by two windows. One of them was round, like an eye watching over the estate. Olivia hadn’t been surprised when Elise wanted the upstairs bedroom with that window. It was small enough to be difficult to see into, but large enough for her to watch for anyone approaching.
Olivia took the second bedroom and was glad she would have her own bath. There hadn’t been any discussion of the matter, but Ray seemed to know he was to stay downstairs.
She was glad to see that the refrigerator and the small pantry had been fully stocked, and wondered who’d done it. Jeanne, who owned the cottage? Or had Kit called someone and asked them to do it? Olivia was learning that her husband had become a person who made others jump to do his bidding.
It hadn’t always been that way, she thought. When they’d met, he’d been a boy of nineteen, and all the world had been a wonder to him.
By the time Olivia got her housemates settled, all she wanted to do was escape. Ray looked like a bull with four red flags being waved at him. Now that it was time for him to start making his decision, he had no idea where to begin the process.
As for delicate, ethereal-looking Elise, for all her pretending that being signed into a mental ward and escaping inside a car trunk didn’t bother her, she’d gone around the house pulling the shades down. Even with that, she sat on the far end of the couch, a pillow on her lap, and kept looking toward the back door as though she were ready to run through it.
Olivia nearly ran outside, then stood there for a moment breathing in the fresh air. Did she really and truly want to take on these two needy...well, children? Big Ray with his wild-eyed looks. Tall, fragile Elise with eyes that darted about the room. Could she deal with them?
She’d had to reassure Ray that he could indeed make a sandwich all by himself, and had to show Elise that her bedroom door could be bolted. Olivia tried to calm herself and look around. She was standing on a pretty flagstone terrace that was in a little garden with a short wall around it. She had an idea that the area had once been used for vegetables, but now had only a few shrubs. Surrounding the little enclosed garden were trees that needed pruning.
Beyond that was a tall stone wall that encircled the entire property. Everyone in town knew that in the spring Young Pete hired brawny high school kids to assess the winter damage and repair the old wall. “Roofs and walls,” he said. “That’s the key to maintenance.” Nowadays, he rarely left the grounds that his family had looked after for three generations. Old Pete, Pete, Young Pete. No one in the next generation of the family wanted anything to do with taking care of some old houses.
As Olivia looked about the bit of garden with its scraggly shrubs, she thought how she’d like to divide it with crisscrossing paths. She’d use bark rather than gravel so walking on it would be silent. In the middle would be an arbor with a bench under it. Along the sides—
She broke off her thoughts. Was this derelict garden part of the enticement to get her to take on these damaged people? If so, who had thought of it? Kit? Or the unmet Jeanne?
When Olivia heard a noise from inside the house, she left through the little gate and hurried toward the road they’d driven in on. But she avoided it. She didn’t want to be seen. Both Ray and Elise had looked as though any second the question was going to come from them: “What do you think I should do?”
Olivia dreaded hearing it. Maybe in other circumstances she could come up with an answer, but right now her own problems filled her mind.
As she walked past the old stables, she looked toward Camden Hall. It was a big, sprawling Edwardian house, three stories high, “more glass than wall” as the saying went. It was a beautiful house, but it had that hollow look of a place that had been unoccupied for as long as anyone could remember.
Behind the house was what was once a pleasure garden, all flowers and little ornamental trees. It was neatly trimmed, but was now mostly bare.
Ahead of her was what she’d been looking for, the tall fence that Kit had recently had replaced. The old roses had been carefully pulled away from crumbling bricks. After the new fence was up, the pruned branches had been tied back on. In another year, they’d return in full, glorious color.
The fence enclosed River House—the place Kit had bought for her and they had restored while they were on their long honeymoon.
Olivia had told Ray that she didn’t want to see the house without her husband and that was true. What she did want to see was the tiny island in the shallow river that ran in front of the house. It was where she and Kit had made love back in 1970—and been caught doing it.
Even now, so many years later, the memory made her smile. How Kit had protected her! Back then, Young Pete had only recently taken over the caretaker’s job and he was zealous at it—and very serious. That day he’d heard voices and had run home to get his shotgun.
Olivia and Kit, both naked, their clothes on the ground, had looked through the trees and shrubs to see Young Pete standing on the other side of the water. He was coming toward them with a gun in his hand.
They looked at each other, arms entwined, bodies bare, eyes wide. Did they call out and tell Young Pete that they weren’t trespassers? But actually, they were. Had it been the father, Olivia would have identified herself. But the son was a different matter. Who knew what he would do?
Kit took over. He grabbed a handful of mud, smeared it on his face, and stuck a big, leafy branch into his hair. Yelling at the top of his lungs and looking very scary, he ran, stark naked, over the bridge and toward the wall that surrounded the estate.
Young Pete was so flabbergasted at the sight of the naked, wild-looking man that he stood and stared, his shotgun lowered.
Kit was almost over the wall before Young Pete recovered enough that he raised the gun and took aim. Olivia, who’d been on the girls’ softball team in high school, picked up a rock the size of her fist and threw it. It hit Young Pete in his lower back. As he spun around, the shotgun accidently went off, and the unexpected recoil sent him facedown into the water.
Olivia, naked as the day sh
e was born, grabbed their clothes, ran across the bridge, and headed for the wall. She leaped onto a stump and propelled herself up. As she knew he would be, Kit was leaning over, both his arms held out to her. He pulled her up and over. With clasped hands, they ran through the wooded area. When they reached the edge, they stopped and looked at each other. She used Kit’s shirt to wipe the mud off his face and he kissed the bloody scratches on her body that had been made by the stony wall.
It wasn’t until after they’d made love on the grass that they saw that Olivia’s brassiere was missing.
They halted, fear in their eyes. Would they be identified through that? Arrested for trespassing?
But then, Kit’s eyes began to sparkle. How could a piece of underwear identify its owner? “Was it that pink one with the rosebud in the center?” Kit asked.
“The very one,” she answered.
They began laughing and didn’t stop until they got back to the huge old plantation, Tattwell, where they were both living and working. After that, just the mention of the word rosebud sent them into peals of laughter.
As for Young Pete, when he went to the sheriff with the pink satin brassiere and demanded that they find the owner, he set off laughter that didn’t die down for twenty years.
The sheriff said, “We’ll have a town-wide search to find out who it fits.”
“Like Cinderella’s shoe,” the deputy said. “Just a different body part.”
“When duty calls, we must serve,” the second deputy said.
The men looked at Molly, the dispatcher, who had on her usual tight sweater. She was a thirty-six triple D and the bra was a thirty-four B.
The men were smiling at her, as though to say, “You first.”
“In your dreams,” she said, and went on typing.
The story spread as only gossip in a small town could. Young Pete was constantly asked if he’d identified his trespasser yet. Asked if he needed help in looking at mug shots of possible suspects. Some wit took a photo of the found article and made it into a wanted poster.
$1000 reward for the Satin Bandit. Please call me.
One by one, every male in town had crossed out phone numbers and put his on it.
It was that place Olivia wanted to see. The house held no memories, except that she and Kit had thought it was beautiful. She saw the back of the house first. Three stories with a long, one-story addition to the side. They’d agreed that would be Kit’s office. The idea was that he’d work there, but the truth was that neither of them could imagine being in the same house but rooms apart. They had so very much time to make up for. They’d been together for one glorious summer, then separated for decades. Too much time lost!
Quietly, slowly, she walked past the house, then looked back at the front. There were lots of different heights of roofs from all the additions that had been tacked on over the years. One tall window had a rounded top. It was said that in the 1930s that had been an artist’s studio. In the ’50s it had been made into a kitchen and that’s the way she and Kit had left it. They hadn’t wanted an island—which to the two of them was a modern concept—but a table where one could sit while the other cooked. She wasn’t tempted to peek in the windows to see the restoration work.
To her right was a little round brick building. It had been used to store garden equipment, but Olivia and Kit agreed that it was too pretty for that. So far, they hadn’t decided what else to use it for.
Ahead of her was the old bridge. It was weathered and splintery, but caught in the grain of the old wood were flecks of the blue paint that had once covered it. That day she and Kit had made love on the island, he said, “It should be lacquered red. Twenty coats of it.” Laughing, kissing, she’d agreed with him. Lacquering the bridge red was on their list of things they planned to do.
She took her time crossing, remembering every second of that long-ago day. She’d ridden piggyback on Kit across the bridge. The island was small, created by the man who built Camden Hall. The river, deeper back then, had been widened to form a large pond in front of the house. The excavated dirt had been piled in the center, the edges reinforced with stone.
In its heyday, it must have been a fisherman’s dream.
At the far end they’d found the remains of what may have been a hut, something to sit in while waiting for unsuspecting deer to come to drink.
Kit had said it was a place for lovers to meet.
At their age, all it had taken was the mention of “lovers” to get them to tear off their clothing. They’d tossed them on the ground at the far end of the island, then fell down on the mossy surface that had once been a fisherman’s hut or a place for lovers to meet or the purpose Olivia liked least: a place to hang deer carcasses.
When she got to the end of the bridge, she looked around. The landscaping had changed. Years ago, it had been kept mowed and there was a path edged with little woodland flowers. Now it was just weeds and overgrown trees that darkened the place.
She raked her shoe through the grass until she saw the bits of gravel. Stepping over some stout fallen branches, she went to the far end of the island. The foundation stones of the little building were nearly covered now, but they were still there.
Bending, she touched one, smiling at the memory of that day. She could almost feel their lovemaking. Hear it. Smell it. Feel the sun coming through her clothes. Kit’s strong young hands on her breasts. Her head was back, wanting more and more of him. To become one with him. Body, mind, and soul.
Suddenly, she became dizzy and had to sit down on the stones. A bit of sunlight came through the trees and she held out her hand to it.
How different! she thought. In her mind, she remembered smooth, pink skin. But the sunlight showed lines, veins, and a couple of those brown spots that no amount of sunscreen could prevent.
She snatched her hand back. Balled it into a fist and for a moment, she closed her eyes.
Over forty years, she thought. That’s what she and Kit had lost.
She stepped up onto the stone foundation. On impulse, she lay down on it and looked up at the trees. On their honeymoon, Kit had talked about his diplomatic service, even about the three scary years when he’d infiltrated young Gaddafi’s new regime. He told her of the months in the hospital after an armored vehicle had rolled over with him in it. His pain and rehabilitation had been excruciating.
Olivia talked of running the appliance store and how she’d opened more stores. She’d discovered that she had a knack for business.
What they didn’t talk about were their marriages. They’d decided that one afternoon in Paris. They were sitting at one of the lovely outdoor cafés having coffee and Kit started telling about the birth of his son.
“When I held him in my arms, I didn’t know I could feel such love. He was red faced and hairless, but I thought he was the most beautiful thing ever put on the earth. And Gina was—”
He broke off when he looked across the table at Olivia. She was smiling, but there were tears running down her cheeks. His son had not been their child. It hadn’t been Olivia in that bed.
Kit took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “There was no one else,” he said softly. “It has always been us. Together or apart, just us.”
Olivia was swallowing hard, trying not to let the tears overwhelm her. They’d had full lives. They just hadn’t been with each other.
Kit kissed her index finger. “What...” He kissed her second finger. “The hell...” Kissed her ring finger. “Am I going to do...” He put her little finger between his lips. “With that bloody theater?”
His question made her laugh and the tears disappeared.
It was a relative who’d brought Kit to Summer Hill in 1970, and it was another relative who brought him back many years later. Kit told her he hadn’t been worried about returning and possibly seeing her. He’d thought that if he did meet her, he’d feel nothing. Surely, a
ll those years apart, with the lives the two of them had experienced, would make that one summer seem long ago and far away. Maybe they could even laugh about it. Become friends.
But it was the opposite. Kit saw Olivia walking on the street and everything fell away.
To his eyes, she was as beautiful as she’d been when he met her.
He was afraid to approach her, afraid she’d tell him to get out of her life. And too, Kit knew himself well enough that he feared his pride might make him leave and never return.
Instead of direct confrontation, he set up a trap to lure her to him.
“Like a spider,” Olivia had said later.
“Exactly,” he said. “A huge and very hungry spider.”
During the first, long-ago summer they’d spent together, Olivia had been preparing for a Broadway show. She was to play Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. She would have been on the stage that summer but there’d been a fire in the theater. While it was repaired, the play had been put on hold until the fall.
In his attempt to rewin Olivia, Kit bought an old warehouse in Summer Hill and turned it into a theater. He then set about casting the play—Pride and Prejudice, of course—even finagling his famous actor cousin into playing Darcy.
There were a lot of hiccups along the way, and one of the players ended up in prison, but Kit got what he wanted. He and Olivia married not long after the final performance, and that day they set out on their long honeymoon.
“Really,” Kit said. “That warehouse cost me a fortune and the remodeling cost even more.”
With his every word, Olivia was smiling more broadly. What sixty-plus-year-old woman had a man do all that to win her?
“Want to run it?” he asked.
“Me?” Olivia sat back in her chair. “You mean be director, producer, stage manager, and...?”
“Actress. All of it. Why not?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not for me.” In that long-ago summer they’d spent together, she’d believed she wanted to become an actress. When she’d won the lead role, she was sure that was the beginning of her glorious career. But once she was there, all she thought about was home—and Kit. He had disappeared without a word and it had taken the heart out of her.
As You Wish Page 3