by Jean Stone
Stepping out one door, Elaine thought how wonderful it was that Marion was so happy. It was nice to think that by canceling her own wedding, Elaine had contributed a little to another person’s joy. Two people, actually, if she counted Ted the Butcher, who had waited so long for Marion to accept his proposal.
Just as she reached in her pocket for the keys to the shop, footsteps approached. It was her father. And he was smiling.
“Your kitchen’s clean and the dishes are put away,” he said, buttoning the front of his red-and-black shirt. “I’m headed back to Saratoga, but I wanted to say good-bye.”
They went into the shop.
He looked around, let out a low whistle. “Fancy,” he said of the organza and velvet and pearl motif that Sarah had selected for the holidays.
“You know I can’t thank you enough,” she said as she sat down. He sat across from her.
“My pleasure,” he said. “I’m only sorry I can’t be here for the main event.”
Elaine shrugged. “We’ll work it out. I’m sure I’ll find a caterer somewhere on the planet.” She’d tried not to dwell on the fact that he wouldn’t be with her, but with Mrs. Tuttle.
He fiddled with the buttons of his shirt the way she fiddled with the drawstring of the sweatpants that she wore at night. She wondered if the gesture was genetic.
“Thanksgiving is just around the corner,” Bob said suddenly.
“Oh, good heavens, I nearly forgot. What with everything going on . . .”
He nodded. “I meant to tell you earlier: I’ve been invited to Syracuse.”
She felt a small chill, not ice-cold, but a chill nonetheless.
“Larry’s son, Dennis—you remember her twins?”
Elaine said that she did.
“Well, her son Dennis and his family are there. They invited us both. He has three kids, Larry’s grandkids.”
He had three grandkids, too, but there was no need to say it. “What about her other son, is it Danny?”
Bob frowned, then shook his head. “Didn’t you know? Danny died a half-dozen years ago. Killed by a drunk driver.”
No, Elaine hadn’t known. “That’s horrible, Dad.”
Bob stood up. “Yeah. It’s still hard on Larry, but she never complains. So I hope you understand, about Thanksgiving and all.”
She thought about Mrs. Tuttle, who’d survived the death of a child. Loss, Elaine thought, comes in all kinds of ways. “Oh, Dad,” she said, standing up, “it’s fine.” She gave him a hug. “I think it’s wonderful that they want to include you.” And then she realized that she really meant it.
“Christmas?” he asked.
“But your cruise . . .”
“We don’t leave until the day after. And I’ll want to see my grandkids . . . so I can indulge them.”
She kissed his cheek, and that time, she felt no disappointment.
Bitch.
Andrew turned the word into a mantra as he repeated it with every cadence of his right, then left, foot.
Bitch.
Bitch.
Bitch.
He could have used some adjectives, but he wanted to keep it clean. Patty was Cassie’s mother, after all: Cassie was half her as much as him.
Bitch.
He had no idea where she was going. To his house? The school?
Would she really have the balls to go to Cassie’s school?
Or would she return to Second Chances and blow his cover? Not that it mattered anymore, because Andrew had a sick, sick feeling that he was about to enter into a custody fight for which he was not prepared.
But your honor, I have matured, she would plead with those huge turquoise eyes. I have a home now. A stable home. Cassie has a brother who would love to know his big sister. Andrew has had her all these years. Isn’t it time for me? I’m her mother, after all.
Her mother.
Her mother.
What chance did he have?
And then he thought, Oh, God. Would the bitch go to the police?
40
He’d walked for twenty or maybe thirty minutes, which seemed like several hours.
He could have hitched a ride, but he was in the middle of goddamn nowhere. He could have used his cell phone, but it was in the car with the bitch that he’d been dumb enough to marry.
“Chemistry has no brains,” John had warned when Andrew bought the diamond. He should have listened: John was, of course, older and an expert.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Andrew walked with hard, deliberate strides, head bent in concentration, eyes locked on the pavement.
He had no clue what he was going to do. He only knew that if Patty were given some kind of custody—any kind of custody—he probably would die. How could he live without Cassie? There’d be no reason to make blueberry pancakes in the morning, or brush up on his math tables, or plant a pumpkin patch, or any of the hundred thousand things he did because she was there, because she was his responsibility and she meant more to him than Andrew could express—not to Patty, not to himself, and certainly not to some damn judge.
Without Cassie he might as well go back to the city, go back to being Andrew David, immerse himself in a life where fame and fortune were great panaceas for all things that weren’t there, things like love and trust.
He continued walking, trying not to think how his actions—and his lies—of the past few months would hold up in a courtroom, if it came to that. And if the media was going to have a field day with something as insignificant as the Benson wedding, what in God’s name would they do with this story of the supermodel and the journalist-turned-recluse who was pretending to be gay?
And what would the judge have to say about that?
Just then an old pickup truck lumbered down the road, slowed down, then stopped. It backed up to where Andrew stood.
“Need a lift?” the driver, a man who was even older than the truck, asked. His white hair was unkempt, some of his teeth were missing, but he certainly seemed more harmless than Patty whatever-her-name-was-now.
Andrew climbed in.
“Car break down?” the old man asked.
“You could say that,” Andrew said.
“Where you headed?”
“West Hope Elementary. I have to get my daughter.”
She wasn’t there.
“I was standing right here when Cassie left her classroom and walked down the hall to see her mother,” Arlene Franklin, the school office manager said. “I told the woman she wasn’t allowed to take her, that Cassie’s father was the only one authorized to take her out of school. But then Cassie seemed so excited to see her mother. ‘Mom! Mom!’ she cried as she raced down the hall toward her. Then the woman said she was there to surprise her and Cassie said she’d written to her and asked to see her, and that you’d said it was okay, so what could I do? I tried calling you at work, but they said you weren’t there.”
Andrew stood there the whole time staring at the woman, wondering if he should choke her or turn her over to the police.
But violence had never been his method of day-to-day operation, and the police would ask too many questions, so he simply turned around and walked away without saying another word. Then, as he pushed open the front door, he saw a pay phone on the wall. It was a long shot, he knew. But any shot would be worth it.
He dug into the pocket of his jeans, pulled out two quarters, and dialed the number for his cell phone. Then he closed his eyes and held his breath.
“Dad? Is that you?”
He slumped against the green cinder-block wall in the school corridor. His eyes stung with tears. Thank God he’d left his phone on the front seat of the car. “Cassie. Are you all right?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m fine. Mom’s here! I guess you know that!”
“Honey, tell me where you are.”
“In the car.”
“Where are you going?”
Cassie giggled, then didn’t say anything else. He could hear faint music from the radio, and muffled voic
es of his daughter and her mother.
“Andrew?”
Shit. It was her.
“Put my daughter on, Patty. I want to talk to her.”
“Sorry I had to leave you. I decided you needed a few minutes to cool off.”
“Let me talk to Cassie.”
“Cassie and I have a proposition for you, Andrew. You know she wants to visit me in Australia. You said yourself it was okay with you.”
Oh, how he was beginning to regret that. “I told you I will bring her during summer vacation.”
“Well, I’d like to take her now.”
Now?
He blanked out for a moment, as if he had the kind of epilepsy where the seizures were like brain paralysis.
Now?
“She’s not going anywhere,” he said. “She has school.”
“I’m sure we can arrange for her schoolwork to come with her. I can help her with it. I’m not stupid, you know.”
He wouldn’t comment on that remark. “Where are you, Patty? Right now. Where are you and where are you taking my daughter?”
“We’re going to the mall to buy her a few clothes. Things she’ll need Down Under. It’s almost summer there, you know.”
He didn’t ask how long she planned for Cassie to stay. “We need to talk about this,” was all he said.
“Sure. We’ll be home for dinner. Is six o’clock okay?”
41
Second Chances bustled the rest of the day. The phone rang several times.
The florist: “Samples of the white-and-silver floral soaps from the UK have arrived.” Elaine knew Irene wanted something lovely and unique for the guest rooms at the castle.
The pyrotechnics manager: “The good news is we’ve been able to assemble a crew at such late notice. The bad news is you’ll have to pay a premium. It’s New Year’s Eve, you know.” Well, yes, they were aware of that.
One call had been more than positive: “Can you plan my second wedding for sometime in April?” They now had seven weddings booked after the Bensons’. It looked as if Second Chances might succeed after all. Elaine jotted down the name and number of the caller and explained that Jo Lyons would contact her. Jo was their official “front man,” the one who knew how to get business rolling in their direction.
At four-thirty Jo and Sarah arrived back at the shop, having had a successful day in Boston with Irene, who’d caught the fast train to New York from there.
Andrew never had returned during the day. Elaine said she thought he’d had a migraine or food poisoning or something.
At five o’clock they locked up the shop and Elaine went home. When she walked in the door she was surprised to find Karen sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space, with no headphones on her ears and no TV noise in the background.
Elaine didn’t want to ask Karen what was wrong. She had planned to have a quick dinner, then go to bed early. Tomorrow she’d have to start thinking about Kandie and Kory coming home for the holiday, in between trying to figure out what she would do about talking to caterers and picking the best one and worrying about how on earth she’d accomplish all that needed to be done.
But because she was a mom first, she set down her bag and said, “Honey? What’s wrong?”
It took Karen a minute to reply, during which time Elaine took off her jacket, fired the gas under the teakettle, and sat down to listen.
“I’ve totally screwed up,” Karen said.
Elaine didn’t laugh. “Well, I doubt that.”
“No, Mom, it’s true.”
Elaine waited.
“And now Thanksgiving’s coming.”
“Yes,” Elaine said.
“Grandpa’s not going to be here.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
Karen lifted her eyes. “Mom? Would you mind if I went with Kory and Kandie over to Dad’s?”
Lloyd’s?
She wondered if something in the universe had decided it was time for children of divorce to switch parents.
“Well, honey,” was all she said. Didn’t her daughter realize that would mean she’d be alone?
Karen shook her head. “There’s something you don’t know,” she replied. “And it’s part of why I said I screwed up.”
“What?” Elaine asked, mentally bracing herself.
“Dad wants me there at Thanksgiving so all us kids can be with him. He wants us to help celebrate that he and Beatrix got back together.”
The whistle of the teakettle blew. Their eyes lingered on each other. So much, Elaine thought, for Lily’s belief that Lloyd still adored her.
Karen got up, turned off the gas, and fixed tea.
“I don’t understand,” Elaine finally said.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Karen said.
“But he’d sent me all those damn roses.” Had he been so annoyed when she’d told him to stop—had he been so annoyed that he’d gone back to his second wife?
Karen was silent. She returned with two mugs and sat them on the table. “Mom,” she said, “it isn’t his fault.”
“What’s not his fault?” Elaine felt as if she were in a dream. Yes, that was it. She was so tired, surely it was a dream.
“The roses,” Karen quietly said. “I sent the roses on Sundays. Not Dad.”
42
He hadn’t been able to breathe right since Patty had arrived. It hadn’t helped that she stayed at the cottage and Andrew had slept—or not slept—on the old lump of a couch again. The only good thing was that Irene had gone home, one less thread in his tangled web.
“You can’t do this,” he said to Patty, who sat in the kitchen drinking thick black coffee because, God knew, she rarely ate. Thankfully, Cassie had gone to school.
“Yes, I can,” she replied. “Cassie is my daughter.”
“How nice you remembered.”
Patty drained her mug. “Don’t do this, Andrew. Cassie has decided. She wants to come.”
He was pleased to notice she looked old in the morning and not very attractive. “Give me until Thanksgiving. If she still wants to go, fine.” He wondered if that was a promise he’d be able to keep.
“What do I do until then?” she hissed. “Sit here and wait all day?”
“No,” he replied. “You can’t stay here, Patty. But there’s a nice room up at The Stone Castle.” It had been good enough for Irene, it would be good enough for Patty.
“I’ll need a car,” she said, “so I can do things.”
“What kind of ‘things’?”
She hesitated. “Boston. I could go into Boston. Or Albany, if there’s anything up there.”
“Shopping, you mean?” Of course it was what she meant. What else did Patty know?
“Well,” she said, “yes.”
“Or,” he said as he leaned on the table and looked without fear into those turquoise eyes, “you could do some things with your daughter. She rides horses, you know, or maybe you don’t. And she loves museums. But that might be too tame for you.” He stood up and turned his back to her again because it was too hard to argue when he couldn’t breathe.
“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll go to New York. I’ll look up some old friends.”
“Fine,” he said. “You do that. But don’t expect an answer until Thanksgiving.”
So Lloyd didn’t love her after all. Elaine supposed she should be upset, angry, or hurt. But the next morning, as she headed out to work, she realized she was none of those things. Instead, she felt oddly uplifted, unburdened, finally free to be Elaine.
It was a little bit scary, a little bit nerve-wracking, but Elaine suspected it was about damned time.
43
For days Jo wrestled with the decision about whether or not to tell her mother that she’d seen the “other woman,” that she’d learned what she’d learned about her grandfather, and about Sam.
She waited until an afternoon when she knew the butcher shop would be open and Ted would be at work. Then she called and asked if Marion would like to accom
pany her to the secretaries’ building to get a few more of her things.
The road from the new condo near Tanglewood toward Jo’s apartment passed the rest stop that ran along the river. Though it was nearly dusk, Jo pulled in. She turned off the ignition and looked down at the water. It was churning steadily, a prelude to a chilling winter.
“The river never changes, does it?” Jo asked.
“Your grandfather loved fishing here. He loved it when you went with him.”
Jo moved her eyes from the water to the riverbank, where frost had already hardened the fragile ground. “My father loved it, too, I guess,” she said.
For a moment Marion said nothing, then, “Well, I guess I knew you didn’t really bring me out to help you move boxes.”
Jo shook her head. “I thought about what you said, Mom. About how you were to blame that Dad never came back to see me.”
Marion didn’t answer.
“It isn’t true,” Jo said. “It was because of Grandpa.” Then she told her mother what she had done, what she’d been told, and how she now knew Marion had been right: There were two sides to every story.
When she told her about the threats her grandfather made to Sam, Marion quietly said, “I think I knew that. I think I knew that but I was too afraid to try and change his mind.”
“Dad’s mind or Grandpa’s?”
“Either,” Marion said. “Both, I guess.”
They watched the river with its ceaseless motion. Then Jo said, “He bought a necklace for me for graduation. It has a silver charm of an oak tree. His way of wanting me to grow strong of body and of mind.”
Marion nodded again. Jo sensed she did not want to speak because she feared that she might cry. She was going to offer to show the necklace to her mother—it still sat in the glove box, mere inches from her mother’s knees—but suddenly Jo decided that wasn’t necessary. If Marion wanted to see it, she would have asked.