Ravenous after the intense physical activity of the day, Maggie ate the dinner that the nurse brought her, then sent J.D. out to get her a roast beef sandwich from the local ale house. She devoured it and part of his as well.
Jesse was ravenous, too, they found, when the nurse brought him to her for his first meal. Maggie held him to her, and his mouth sought her frantically. She jumped as he began to nurse.
“Take it easy, little boy.” She laughed and looked up at J.D. “He’s got a mouth like a little vacuum cleaner. Slow down, baby.”
She nuzzled his soft head and watched him nurse blissfully, his eyes closed and his tiny hand clenched in a fist. A light flashed before her eyes, and she looked up to see J.D. with the camera.
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re one of those dads who has to capture every moment with his camera.”
He laughed good-naturedly. “Not every moment, Maggie, but this one is special. You look so beautiful. And he’s so beautiful. It’s a lovely sight, you and Jess.”
“You look a bit misty-eyed, Jamey,” she observed.
“No doubt,” he admitted. “It’s been a big day for all of us. And we have this lovely little boy. What a miracle it all is, Maggie. Watching his birth was fascinating, but it all went too quickly. I’ve not had time to reflect on it until now. Seeing you hold him, nursing him, he seems such a part of you. Such a part of us. It’s absolutely incredible.”
“Do you want to hold him?” she asked.
“Is he finished with his dinner?”
“I guess so. He’s asleep.” She handed the tiny infant into his father’s arms.
“He’s just adorable, if I do say so. Who do you think he looks like? Do you think he looks like me?”
“Maybe. I can’t tell, truthfully. He reminds me a bit of Kevin when he was a baby, but I really can’t tell.”
She smiled as he seemed not to hear her, so lost was he in their son. When he looked back at her, she motioned to the side of the bed for him to sit down next to her. She leaned over and put her arms around his neck.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For all of it. For loving me. And for Jesse. And for being with me all through this.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, are you kidding? This was the happiest, most exciting day of my life, Maggie.”
“Time for the youngster to go back to the nursery,” announced the nurse who appeared in the doorway.
“So soon?” Maggie was reluctant to let him go.
“He’ll be back soon enough for a snack. You might want to get some rest.”
“Rest? I’m high as a kite. Let’s call my folks and Caroline and Lindy and your mother and Judith and Rick,” she suggested, “and Frankie. I want to talk to Frankie.”
By the time their first anniversary was but three weeks away, J.D. was itching to go back to London, having spent a good part of every day working steadily in his little home studio—a small outbuilding set back behind the house that had at one time served as a stable. He was working on some songs he’d offered to write for Rick, who had done absolutely nothing, workwise, since the band had split up. J.D. had hoped that the half-dozen songs he’d written for Rick would spur him back into the studio.
“Why can’t you and Rick do that here?” she asked. “What’s the point in spending all that money for a studio and then have to go someplace else anyway?”
“It’s Rick’s project. And even if he is ready to record and wanted to do it here, we’ll need engineers and other musicians, Maggie. The studio’s been a godsend, but he’ll need live musicians. And left to his own devices, Rick may not make an effort to even look at this stuff. Besides, it’s time Jesse met his other grandmother and the rest of his family.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that. Luke’s absolutely dying to see the baby, but if Rick doesn’t want to work, that’s his business, don’t you think?”
“Rick is lazy and irresponsible and would party his life away. Working will keep him out of trouble.” If it isn’t already too late, he told himself, disturbed by rumors passed along by mutual friends.
And so they spent the next two and a half months visiting with Luke, who adored Jesse and was grateful for the opportunity to have the family with her. When J.D. suggested he and Maggie look for a small house to rent for the duration of their stay, Luke had bristled indignantly, and Maggie supported her, preferring her mother-in-law’s company and home to a house some miles away. As long as Luke wanted them, they would stay with her. And the added bonus was that she proved to be a wonderful baby-sitter.
While J.D. stayed in London, Maggie sketched out her property back in the States, noting sunny spots and shaded areas, and Judith helped her draw up some plans for Maggie’s garden. Several nights a week J.D. returned for the evening but took Maggie back into London with him in the mornings, leaving the baby with a delighted Luke. The visit had been a happy one for Maggie as well as J.D., who was well pleased with the way Rick’s album turned out. J.D. had played on only two cuts but had lent his production experience to the project, which meant essentially letting Rick be Rick. The end result was a spectacular series of guitar solos that enhanced Rick’s reputation as a craftsman and an innovator and earned him a platinum record and numerous assorted awards for his efforts.
Maggie and J.D. had a party to celebrate their first anniversary as well as Jesse’s birth, pictures of which landed in a London newspaper. It had irked Maggie relentlessly that a photo of Glory Fielding, taken at the studio party celebrating the completion of Rick’s album, had appeared on the same page. Beautiful Glory, standing between Rick and J.D., an arm around both of them, her golden blond head tilted in J.D.’s direction. He had sworn he’d barely spoken to her all night and had been on his way out when she had nabbed both him and Rick and had swung in the direction of the ever-lurking photographer.
Soon it was almost November, time for them to leave. Luke reluctantly relinquished Jesse at the airport.
“He’s such a love, J.D., and ever so much more pleasant than you were as a baby,” she mused, confiding to Maggie, “J.D. was an absolute terror from the day he was born until he was well past four.”
“You’re welcome to come back with us,” Maggie told her. “It would be wonderful to have you visit.”
“Oh, Maggie, I’d love to,” Luke said, shaking her head, “but I’m afraid not even this darling baby could coax me across the ocean in a man-made bird.”
When they were back in their own house and stretched out in their bed, she asked, “When will you be starting to work on your own album?”
“Probably right after the New Year.”
“Oh, bother.” She wrinkled her nose and groaned.
“Now what was that for?” he said.
“It would appear Jess is going to have a sibling,” she announced, awaiting his reaction.
“What? So soon?” He sat up in surprise.
“I’d expect to hear that from my mother, but not from you,” she laughed.
“When?”
“I’ll have to check with the doctor to be certain, but I suspect around July.”
“How did that happen?” he asked.
“The same way it happened the last time.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think it always happens the same way, Jamey.”
“Another baby.” He plopped back on the pillow, pondering the news.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No, of course not. It’s wonderful. I just hadn’t expected it so soon, that’s all.”
“Neither did I.” She propped herself up onto one elbow. “But all the symptoms are there, and I feel just like I did the last time. So I’m sure.”
“Well,” he said, pulling her close and snuggling her, “any guess as to what this one will be?”
“It’s another boy,” she said with deliberate nonchalance.
“Oh, is it now?” he mused.
“Yes. It is.”
“Do I ge
t to name this one, or does he come, as his brother did, with a name?”
“Tyler. James Tyler,” she yawned, stretching out next to him.
“But what if it’s a girl?”
“It isn’t. But if it is, you can choose any name you like, okay?”
“I think we made this deal last time,” he recalled, laughing.
The following July, James Tyler Borders arrived just in time to help his parents celebrate their second wedding anniversary.
19
“TIME FOR ANOTHER BREAK… WE’LL BE RIGHT BACK.” Hilary reached for her water glass, found it empty, and with a bored smile went to seek a refill. This is all very nice, she was thinking, but I need to get to him. There are things he knows that no one else knows—except maybe her—that I’d love to be able to drag out of him. I’ll bet he knows where Daily was for those four months when he all but disappeared from the face of the earth.
The couple on the sofa sat in an uneasy silence. J.D. turned to his wife and shuffled through the scramble in his brain for something to say, but no clever words would come.
He could tell by a look that had crossed her face from time to time that she had not been untouched by the past. He wondered what had gone through her mind. Was there a longing to go back, to relive it all again, or merely a review of events, no more than the scanning of the table of contents in a magazine?
She gave no sign; her expression, for the most part, had been as tightly controlled as his own. He had felt a breaking of his own heart with each image that had emerged from the closet of his own memories, as he had pulled each out and held it before her, searching for the right one, much as he had seen her do with dresses before an evening out.
“This one, Jamey?” she would say, holding a garment up to her body. “Or this one? Which would work best?”
Which would work best, indeed, he thought. If I knew that, we’d be crying in each others’ arms by now.
“I can’t take anymore.” J.D. turned to Maggie, rubbing the palm of his right hand with the fingers of his left, the tension having caused him to dig his nails into the flesh without even realizing he had done so. The massage gave him little relief.
“You brought this on yourself,” she told him. “Don’t start just because she’s out of earshot.”
“You’re carrying this too far, Maggie,” he pleaded. “If you’d only hear me out, you’d know it’s not what you think.”
“I think the circumstances speak for themselves.”
“Damn you.” He banged an angry fist onto the top of the coffee table. Maggie jumped, as did the cameraman and two production assistants. “You’re so goddamned willing to believe the worst. Will you destroy this family without listening to the truth?”
They stared each other down. Hilary stood in the doorway and stepped into the room before either could blink. Very interesting. Maybe before the night is over I should try to divide and conquer, as the expression goes.
“So, let’s resume here,” she said, smiling, her hopes renewed. “J.D., many of your contemporaries have had serious drug problems, a few of whom did not survive. Some of those who died were close associates of yours. How were you able to avoid the involvements that afflicted some of your closest friends?”
“Well, I can’t claim to have been lily-white, Hilary. There was a time, when I was younger, when I experimented a bit,” he hesitated, not wanting to lie. He could not deny he had used drugs in his younger days, yet he did not wish to elaborate, knowing his children—particularly his teenage sons—were glued to the television and hanging on every word. “Of course, all that ended when I married Maggie.”
“Would that Rick Daily had been so fortunate,” Hilary noted, watching his eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked cautiously.
“Well, I recall the rumors that he was heavily involved with drugs. There were all sorts of stories going around that he had a serious addiction at one time.”
“Well, he may have dabbled with this or that.” J.D. was not going to discuss his best friend’s past problems for the sake of adding a touch of sensationalism to what he knew must be a lackluster interview.
Dabbled was the very least Rick had done, and God knows he paid dearly for it. In some ways, he's still paying the price, though no one knows that but me and Maggie. He’d been into it real deep for a while, though not, time would prove, as deeply as Lindy had been.
J.D. had completed the recording of another album—a commercial failure, though the critics had acclaimed his efforts—and immediately set off with Maggie on a belated second honeymoon. After dropping their sons off at his mother’s, they spent six weeks rambling—no itinerary, no reservations—Greece, Italy, France, Spain, living an incredible, romantic, once-in-a-lifetime dream. They’d returned reluctantly to England, happy though they were to see their sons. Jesse and Tyler had run Luke into the ground, she joked, but she’d had a wonderful time.
J.D. called Rick the day after they’d arrived but was unable to get an answer at his apartment. He tried the next two days without success and happened to mention it to Judith one morning as they sat in their mother’s dining room having their morning tea.
“Keep trying,” Judith told him. “My sources tell me that Lindy is here with him.”
“Lindy? Great! Maggie’ll be delighted.”
“I’m not so sure. I hear she’s quit her job and come to stay with him.”
“I don’t understand why you think that would bother Maggie…”
“My sources tell me they’re messing with some heavy stuff,” Judith told him levelly.
“How heavy?” he asked, putting his cup down quietly.
“Big time.” She nodded her head up and down very slowly, her eyebrows arched, her demeanor grave.
“Lindy, too?”
“In a very big way, or so they tell me,” she stared at him intently. “And you, J.D., are you off the stuff?”
“Good God, Jude, I haven’t had so much as a joint since I met Maggie.” Finally, he had to ask, “Okay, so how’d you know anyway? That I used to smoke.”
Judith laughed, repinning a few stray hairs that had slid from the tight dark twist at the back of her neck. “You have to be kidding, J.D. Did you think I was stupid? Jesus. ‘How did I know?’ ”
“Guess I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was,” he acknowledged.
“J.D., I know just about everything you did up until your nineteenth birthday and you went to Germany on that tour. I admit I lost track of you there for a while, but I could fill in a lot of highlights from your early days.”
“How’d you hear so much?”
“Friends. Your big sister is very well connected. I heard about almost every move you made there for a while.”
“Like what?” he felt compelled to test her.
“Like Lilly what’s-her-name taking the train down to London that time on the pretext of visiting her girlfriend from summer camp. Only she and her girlfriend spent their long weekend in that apartment that you and Rick and Hobie had. The person who related this little tale, incidentally, was scandalized, since you’d just turned eighteen. Of course, my informant didn’t know you’d long since lost your virginity. Now that was a scandalous episode.”
His jaw almost dropped to the floor. “You couldn’t possibly know about that.”
“Of course I could. I know who, where, and when.”
“You’re bluffing.”
Judith leaned back in her chair and sighed, a sly smile on her lips as she related, “You were fifteen years old. I admit I’ve forgotten the girl’s name, but she was eighteen or nineteen and worked in Mr. Dixon’s pharmacy. Shall I continue?” she asked smugly.
He was speechless.
“Damn,” he said when he’d found his voice again, “you’re good, Jude.”
She laughed again, then noted, “My sources are very good.”
“This is your way,” he told her soberly, “of telling me that those same sources are telling you about Rick.”
> She nodded glumly.
“And you’re certain they know what they’re talking about this time?”
“Absolutely certain.” She hated telling him as much as she had hated hearing it herself. Rick was like family and Lindy was one of Maggie’s best friends.
“Would you be insulted if I checked in with my own sources?”
“Not at all.”
He went into the kitchen and called around to a number of old friends. Judith’s sad news had been immediately confirmed.
“Your network is incredibly accurate,” he told her, “but my God, Jude, how will I ever tell Maggie?”
“Tell me what?” Maggie had been out jogging along the four-mile trail she’d laid out for herself, and her unexpected return startled both J.D. and Judith, who exchanged a look of conspiracy. Balancing a cup of coffee in her left hand, she struggled to remove the sweatband from her forehead. “Come on, Jamey, tell me what? Why the gloomy faces on this lovely morning? First morning since we’ve arrived that it’s not raining…”
“Well, Maggie… Lindy and Rick are in London.” As the words left Judith’s mouth, she became aware of the expression on her brother’s face.
Don’t, it pleaded.
Too late, she apologized.
“Great! That’s wonderful. I had no idea Lindy was considering a trip over. What a coincidence. Let’s call them. Maybe they can drive up for a few days. Maybe tonight. I’m dying to see them, Jamey.” She reached for the phone and looked up at him. “What’s the number?”
“Maggie, put the phone down.” J.D.’s voice was soft, but the seriousness was unmistakable. She hesitated and looked across the room at her husband. “Hang up, Maggie. They’re not at Rick’s.”
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