Honesty - SF8

by Meagher, Susan X

  "Do you think it might?" Ryan asked.

  "No. My name is common, but even if it wasn’t I don’t think he’d make the connection. I’ve never spoken to the guy in a one-on-one situation, Ryan. Morris and Foster has over 450 attorneys now, and I’m at the very bottom of the food chain."

  Breathing out a sigh of relief Ryan said, "That’s reassuring. I was afraid he might associate you with me and think less of you because of it."

  A soft, lilting laugh came out of the receiver and Ryan’s eyes drifted closed at the warmth that the sound evoked. "Being associated with you would only enhance my reputation with anyone who had a brain in their head," she said gently. "Don’t give this another thought, Ryan. I won’t," she promised.

  "It’s a deal, Sara. Thanks for being so mature about this."

  "It’s taken me a while to begin the process of maturing," she chuckled, "but now that I’ve started, I’m gonna do my best to keep going in the right direction."

  Part Eight

  Ryan had taken to riding her mountain bike to school, requiring her to carry a substantial amount of books and supplies on her back, and Jamie usually helped her get loaded up. As she prepared to leave on Monday morning, Ryan asked, "Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to see your father?"

  Gazing at Ryan for a full minute, Jamie worked her cheek between her teeth, obviously struggling with some inner conflict. Her blonde head finally shook briefly—her mind made up. "No. I want to talk to him alone. Even though he targeted you, he did so because of me. This is really between me and him."

  "All right," Ryan agreed, lacing her hands behind Jamie’s neck and giving her a tiny tickle as she did so. She leaned in close and brushed her lips across her cheeks, then embraced her gently and whispered, "I’m going to be worried about you all day. Promise you’ll page me after you see him?"

  "I will," she agreed. Patting Ryan’s chest with the flat of her hand, she forced a bright smile and said, "I’ll see you after practice tonight."

  Ryan rode away, feeling the anxiety building as she increased the distance between herself and her partner.

  Once again, Jamie used the ruse of paying her father a surprise visit to learn his schedule from his secretary. He was in his office when she arrived just after lunch, and she could hear his voice carrying clearly down the hallway when she approached. Allowing him the courtesy of finishing his phone call, Jamie chatted quietly with Helen for a few minutes, the small talk serving to keep her mind off the impending confrontation.

  As soon as she heard him say goodbye, she thanked Helen for arranging the meeting and slipped inside his office, closing the door firmly behind her. He looked up and his face betrayed a moment of surprise which was quickly replaced by a look of sad resignation. It was obvious that the young woman who stood in front of his door was not there to conduct a social call; Jim knew the many expressions of his daughter’s face better than most, and he immediately knew that she was, at the very least, intensely angry.

  He got up and crossed the room, unsure of how to greet her. For just a moment, he had the irrational notion to try to kiss her, then realized that would be a very bad idea. Instead, he offered nothing by way of greeting, and neither did she. He sat on the arm of his leather sofa and waited in tense silence, knowing that the very essence of their future relationship lay in her small, clenched hands.

  "A year ago, if I had been told that one day I would voluntarily choose to cut off contact with you, I think I would have laughed." He felt his stomach clench as she continued in a low, emotionless voice. "I thought, out of all of the people in the world, that you loved me more than anyone else did. More than mother, more than Jack, even more than Poppa. I thought that you understood me, and that my welfare was paramount to you." She shook her head, still unable to fully believe all of the evidence that now showed she had been mistaken. "Funny what a difference a year makes," she added, her voice now growing cold and bitter.

  "Jamie, please let me explain," he began, but she cut him off.

  "There is no possible explanation. You hired someone to investigate my lover. You did that only to cause me further pain and embarrassment."

  "I did not!" he cried, unable to hold his tongue. "I’m trying to show you who she really is!"

  "Hmm…let’s see, a few weeks ago she was a money-grubbing opportunist. Then your little investigation quashed that notion, so you no longer try to push that point. But you can’t admit that you were wrong. No, that’s not in Jim Evans' repertoire. You just change your focus. Now she’s a two-timing pedophile." She blinked slowly, cocking her head a tiny bit as she asked, "That is today’s incarnation of evil, isn’t it?"

  His head dropped in resignation as he realized that he had very little chance of reaching her now. Still, he tried for the last weapon in his arsenal. "So, when I have an affair, it’s evil and horrible. When Ryan has an affair with an older married woman--with a young child, no less--that just makes her more lovable." His tone was bitter and filled with rancor for the dark woman who had so alienated his child from his affections.

  "I never thought of you as stupid," Jamie mused, narrowing her eyes at him thoughtfully. "But it puzzles me that you can’t grasp a simple fact. Ryan’s never been married before. Before now she’s never made a vow to anyone to remain faithful. She’s never intentionally betrayed her spouse just…to…get…laid!" Each of her final words was nearly spat from her mouth as she tasted the bile at the back of her throat.

  "So, just your mother and I are beyond your contempt?" he asked softly, a malevolent gleam in his eyes.

  "I have no contempt for my mother," she snapped. "It’s not her fault that you can’t remain faithful any longer than a dog in heat!"

  He rose and went to his desk, opening his lowest drawer and extracting a file folder. Returning to his daughter, he pulled a few photographs from it and tossed them at her sharply, one at a time, her body reacting automatically to catch them. She didn’t want to look, but the first image caught her attention immediately and she was unable to stop her eyes from focusing on it. It was a crystal clear shot of her mother in the very recent past, judging from her haircut. She was sitting at an outdoor café that Jamie recognized as being close to her apartment in Milan. A very handsome dark-haired man held her hand in the photo, his black eyes boring into the fair woman with a magnetic intensity.

  The next photo was taken moments later, and their chairs had drawn closer. Now their arms were loosely draped around each other’s bodies, and their lips met in what was likely a short, tender kiss. The following picture showed Catherine’s head resting on his shoulder, his fingers tilting her chin up to be able to better gaze into her eyes. Another showed them entering her apartment building together, the time stamp showing three p.m. In the very last photo, Catherine stood on her balcony, offering a longing farewell to the man, who stood on the street below. She was now wearing a silk robe, and her hair was attractively mussed. The stamp on this photo read seven p.m., and from the golden light that colored her body, it seemed to reflect the accurate time. "Giacomo Fontini," she heard a voice intone. "Art gallery owner. 32 years old. Married. Three children." He waited until he could see the full realization of his words reach her, then asked, "What level of contempt does that engender, Jamie?"

  She rose and faced him, her green eyes filled with tears. Her gaze flicked over his face, trying to remember what it had been like to love and be loved by this man who now seemed like a complete stranger. "My contempt for you is so complete, that I have none left to spare."

  Without another word, she turned and walked out of his office, determined that those would be the last words she ever spoke to him.

  She was barely aware of the road she was on and even less aware of her destination. Her surprise was near total when she found herself entering the town of Hillsborough, and found her car automatically proceeding to her childhood home.

  She found her mother in the garden, the older women strolling along the gravel path in deep concentration. Th
e sound of footsteps startled her, and she turned to face Jamie with a look of shock. "Sweetheart…" she began only to find her arms full of her sobbing child. The young woman cried so hard that Catherine prepared herself for the worst, and, as she'd feared, moments later her daughter was bent over from the waist, retching violently onto the path.

  When she was able to stand, Catherine led her to a bench and left her for a moment to get her something to drink. Minutes later she returned, a tall glass of lemon-lime soda in one hand and a damp cloth in the other. Handing Jamie some tissues, Catherine wiped at the sweat that ran freely down the young woman’s face and neck.

  It took a long while, longer than she could ever remember, to calm her down enough to discuss what had happened. Jamie drained her glass of Seven-Up and put some of the ice cubes into the cloth, placing it on the back of her neck to help cool her fevered body.

  "Are you feeling better, Honey?" Catherine asked softly, her heart aching for her child. She intuited that her distress was over her planned confrontation with Jim, and she forced herself to be patient enough to let Jamie explain her plight when she was ready.

  "Yeah, I guess so," she replied, wishing that she didn’t have to share what she had learned. "I went to see my father today," she began, no longer able to even refer to him by his more familiar form of address. "It was…it was bad, Mom."

  Slipping her arm tightly around her daughter’s shoulders, Catherine assured her, "You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to, Honey."

  "No, no, I have to," Jamie swallowed convulsively, trying to stem another round of tears. "The really bad part was about you."

  Catherine stiffened, her eyes growing wide with alarm. "About me?" she asked, her mouth suddenly very dry.

  "Yes." Jamie took a deep breath and revealed, "He had you followed, too."

  All of the air seemed to escape from Catherine’s body, and she collapsed against the hard wooden bench, her heart racing, her palms covered with sweat. "Jamie," she whispered, "I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I…"

  Her daughter’s hand covered her own as the strong, firm voice said, "It’s okay, Mom. It’s a little late, but I…I finally understand what Ryan’s been telling me all along."

  Staying right where she was, Catherine merely inclined her head, silently urging her daughter to continue.

  "What happens between you and my father--between any two people for that matter--isn’t my business. I never should have been so judgmental about his behavior. I don’t have to like it, but I don’t have the right to get involved."

  Catherine let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding, and gave her daughter a relieved look. She dabbed at her eyes with the last of the tissues and said, "I know I’ve done some things that you don’t approve of, Jamie, but I honestly don’t know if I could survive if I lost your respect."

  Enveloping her mother in a hug, Jamie whispered, "I love and respect you, Mom. I don’t know what happened between you and Daddy, but I’m sure you had your reasons for what you’ve done."

  "I’ll tell you all about it, if you want to know," Catherine offered.

  Looking at her mother curiously, Jamie asked, "How long has it been going on?"

  "Not very long," Catherine revealed. "It started when I went to Milan after Christmas last year."

  "Why?" Jamie asked, thinking it odd that her mother would choose this point in her life to have an affair, since it was obvious that her father had been unfaithful for many years.

  "It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the condensed version," she said, taking in a deep breath to clear her mind. "Things got very strained between your father and I not long after you left for college. I think that both of us had a large void in our lives without you, and I decided that I didn’t want things to go on as they had been." She furrowed her brow, trying to decide how much she should reveal. "We hadn’t been intimate in several years, and I just decided that I couldn’t live without love for the rest of my life."

  Jamie’s eyes closed in pain as she considered how lonely it must have been for her mother to be locked into a sexless marriage to a man who was unfaithful.

  Catherine continued, "We discussed divorcing, but to my surprise, your father proposed that we try to start over again." She smiled softly, remembering his heartfelt plea to give him another chance. But her smile faded as she observed, "I think he just didn’t want to lose the houses and his cars."

  "That sounds like him," Jamie agreed, unable to see her father in even a glimmer of a favorable light.

  "We tried to re-establish our physical relationship, and even though it was strained, I thought we were making progress. Then we went to the New Year’s Eve party last year," she said, her voice tight with remembered anger. "One of the partner’s wives took me aside and told me that your father was having an affair with one of the associates." She shook her head slowly, the shame still causing her cheeks to flush. "That was the final straw for me, Honey. Being humiliated in public like that was just something that I couldn’t tolerate."

  "What was his excuse?" Jamie cried, unable to understand how a man could lie repeatedly to his wife.

  "I never told him that I knew," Catherine said softly. "I rebuffed his advances once or twice and he never made another overture." She looked every one of her 41 years as she sighed and said, "I think he was just sleeping with me so that I didn’t divorce him. He seemed… relieved not to have to touch me again."

  Blinking her eyes against the pain she felt for her mother, Jamie asked, "So you tried to find a lover?"

  "No, Dear. I’d known Giacomo for several years. We were great friends, and he’s helped me with all of the art I’ve acquired over the years I’ve lived in Milan." She blushed slightly as she admitted, "I’ve known he was interested for quite a while, but I always told him that I couldn’t return his affection." She looked up at Jamie with a hint of defiance in her deep brown eyes and said, "I stopped saying no after I found out about your father’s latest conquest."

  Jamie tried to get her mind around all of these events, finally asking, "But what about his wife and his family? Isn’t it hard on them?"

  Catherine shook her head slightly and assured her daughter, "Giacomo’s wife knows about us. She has a lover, too." A smile covered her face as she recounted, "His wife’s lover is a woman, Jamie."

  "Really?" The younger woman was somehow shocked by this revelation, and her face reflected her surprise.

  "Yes, Dear. Their marriage is quite secure. Neither wants to leave the other, but neither is completely satisfied at home. They’re home together in the evenings, and they spend time with their children on the weekends, but their afternoons are for their personal pursuits."

  Catherine seemed to think this was quite normal, but Jamie was having a tough time. "Is…is that enough for you, Mom? A few stolen afternoons, once or twice a year?"

  She shrugged her shoulders a bit, saying, "It’s not what I want, but it’s enough to make me feel like someone desires me, Honey. I feel young, and interesting, and attractive when I’m with Giacomo, and for now, it’s enough."

  "But wouldn’t you rather find someone in the States?"

  Catherine looked rather horrified at the mere suggestion. "Oh, I would never do that, Honey. Not when there was a chance you would have found out."

  Jamie swallowed and blinked her eyes a few times, wanting to make sure that she understood her mother’s point. "You…wouldn’t seek your own satisfaction because there was a chance that the gossip would get back to me?"

  "Of course, Sweetheart," Catherine said, puzzled that her daughter would even question her logic. "Your respect means everything to me. I would never put that at risk."

  Snuggling close and allowing her head to rest on her mother’s shoulder, Jamie closed her eyes, letting the enormity of the sacrifice reach her brain. "I think I understand," she said slowly. "When you’re a parent, you have to let your children’s needs come first."

  At Catherine’s nod, Jamie informed her, "I’m a
n adult now, Mom, and I want you to know that it’s perfectly all right with me if you want to find someone on this side of the Atlantic. I can handle it."

  Catherine smiled softly at her daughter and offered up a small tease to lighten the mood. "If I had played my cards right, I would have snared that darling Martin O’Flaherty while he was still on the market!"

  Jamie decided to stay in Hillsborough for dinner, feeling like she needed to spend a little more time with her mother. Things seemed fairly normal between them when she finally departed at 8:30, and she mulled over the developments of the day the entire way home.

  Ryan was sitting on a chair on the front porch when she arrived, and Jamie smiled to herself as she saw the phosphorescent glow of the laptop casting a pale shadow across her body. One of the things she had always loved about Ryan was her ability to make the most out of every minute—even tonight, when she was understandably anxious about the outcome of the day. Too antsy to wait in her room, she had brought her work with her, somehow feeling less anxious when she was outdoors.

  By the time Jamie had turned off the ignition, Ryan was at the door, looking at her with a face full of compassion mixed with trepidation. "Have you been worried about me?" she asked as Ryan wrapped her in a hug.

  "Of course I have," Ryan murmured, her face snuggled up against Jamie’s neck. "I knew you weren’t being very forthright and I assumed it’s because your mom was there. What happened?"

  "Shit. I’m sorry, Ryan. I should have gone into another room to call you. I…I just wasn’t thinking very clearly."

  "It’s all right," Ryan soothed. "You’re home now." She released her hold and took Jamie’s hand, leading her slowly up the sidewalk and onto the porch. "Wanna go inside, or stay out here?"

  "Out here, please," she decided. "Can I sit on your lap? I need to be close."