Olivia had to pause, closing her eyes for a moment. “For weeks we were a very happy family. We were joyous that Uncle Freddy was alive, that Ace’s mother was hanging on, and Kit and I were...were full of laughter.” She gave a one-sided grin. “We used the well house as our private place. Kit bent some galvanized siding to make a sort of tunnel so we didn’t get torn up by the thorns, and he put lots of cracked corn by the entrance.”
“So the peacock would be your guard,” Elise said.
Olivia nodded. “It was a divinely happy time. All of us lived very well together. To this day, Kit thinks we didn’t know it, but dear little Ace started sleeping with him. The child knew what was coming and he needed comfort.”
“But it all ended,” Kathy said.
Olivia took several deep breaths. “My life changed because I went to Richmond. No, that’s not true. It changed because the day before, I said those words. ‘I love you.’ I hadn’t meant to, but it was just before I was to leave and they came out. Kit kissed me but he didn’t say the words back to me.”
She paused. “That afternoon he nearly killed himself clearing a half acre where Uncle Freddy’s swimming pool was going to be put in, and the next morning he slept late. I was so annoyed with him for not telling me he loved me that when Mr. Gates said he was taking Uncle Freddy into Richmond for his six-month checkup, I said I’d go with him.”
She was silent for a few moments. “As I was leaving, I tiptoed into Kit’s room and looked at him sleeping. He had scratches on his face and soft black whiskers. He looked so good that I almost stayed. But unfortunately, my anger overrode my passion. I bent over and kissed his forehead, then left the room.” She turned away and whispered, “I didn’t see him again for over forty years.”
She looked at Kathy and Elise. “When we got back, Kit wasn’t there. Clothes, books, records, everything. It was as though he’d vanished. Poof! The completeness of his disappearance almost made me doubt that he’d ever existed.”
“You thought he ran away because you told him you loved him,” Kathy said.
“I am ashamed to say yes, that’s exactly what I thought. The kids said that Kit’s father came to get him in a big black car. I thought that’s what Kit had told them. I was too upset, too angry, to realize that was their childish interpretation of what they’d seen. Man in a suit equals father.”
She paused. “I thought Kit had called his father and said, ‘Come and get me out of here’ and he came running. Uncle Freddy said he called Kit’s family and they said they didn’t know where he was, but I thought they were lying. None of them knew that I’d said those three little words, so how could they know anything?” Her voice was rising.
“What was the truth?” Elise asked softly.
Olivia took a few breaths. “The military came for him. That’s why he was there, hiding from his nosy family, and tanning all over. He was preparing to go on an undercover mission. They knew what he’d taken with him and they made sure they got it all. But he did manage to leave a message for me in the well house. Actually, it was a marriage proposal—along with his grandmother’s ring.”
Olivia held out her hand to show the beautiful ring. White gold lacework with a big round diamond in the center. “I didn’t see it because I was so angry that I refused to ever again enter the well house. I didn’t want to hear his name, to think about him. Or...” When she looked up, her face was white. “My stupidity still angers me, and regret eats at me.”
“Love is stupid.” There was venom in Elise’s voice. “Why does Kent love Carmen and not me? And why do I lust after—” She sighed. “There is no sense in love.”
“I agree,” Kathy said. “My husband is one gorgeous hunk but I wanted Andy, an ordinary-looking little man who has never so much as glanced at me.”
The three women were silent for a moment.
“You went to Broadway?” Kathy asked.
“Just days after Kit vanished, I was on a plane to New York.”
For a moment, the women were silent, but then Kathy spoke, her voice puzzled. “You trained to be an actress for most of your life, but you left your lifelong dream and returned home.”
“And married someone else,” Elise said.
Olivia seemed to be considering what to say—but in the end, she didn’t reply. She stood up. “I really do need to go to bed.” Abruptly, without another word, she turned on her heel, grabbed a flashlight, and went out the front door.
“Wow,” Elise said softly. “Forty years.”
Kathy was staring at the door. “I think she left out a lot of the story.”
“Like what?” Elise asked.
“Remember how she started? Nixon, Vietnam, and...”
“That no one was using birth control pills,” Elise said as she began to gather up dishes to take to the kitchen, then she halted. She and Kathy exchanged looks.
“Let’s leave this mess,” Kathy said softly. “I don’t want Livie to be alone. We can clean it up tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea.”
They walked back to the summerhouse in silence, each with her own thoughts. What had happened to Olivia’s life was a travesty—and they wanted to prevent something similar happening in their own lives.
The cottage was quiet, and upstairs, Elise paused outside Olivia’s door but she heard nothing.
That was because Olivia had had forty years to learn how to cry in absolute silence.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning Kathy woke to a silent house. It had that feeling of people in it, but they were far away. She got up, dressed, and went outside. It wasn’t full light yet, but she liked the early morning. The grass was damp with dew and it felt good on her sandaled feet.
Young Pete was raking a patch of lawn and she waved at him. He stopped and smiled at her in a way that would have made her blush if she hadn’t been so pleased. With as much time as she spent with Ray, she nearly forgot how good it was to feel desirable and womanly.
She went past the yawning vacancy of Camden Hall and through the rose-covered wall to River House. For a moment she stood looking out at the stream with the curved bridge and the pretty island. She was sure most people would think how they’d love to live in a place like this, but all Kathy saw was maintenance. The ten acres she and Ray owned in Connecticut were as beautiful as this. A treat for the eyes. One of Ray’s clients said it was “Serenity personified.”
She’d trade every perfect flower that took so much of her time for an apartment in New York. She’d happily exchange birdsong for the scream of an ambulance siren.
The front door of the house was unlocked and she went in. On the floor was a small box, neatly wrapped in brown paper. The label had the names of all three women on it, but no return address. It must be from Ray, Kathy thought. Only he knew that the women were there. Or maybe Young Pete had left it, Kathy thought with a smile.
She picked up the box, set it on a table by the front door, then began cleaning up from last night. Olivia’s story of her past had made Kathy think about her own life. Ray had said she should stay here so she could have a vacation. “Enjoy yourself. Go shopping.” He seemed to think that shopping cured every woman’s problems. But right now, the last thing she wanted was a new blouse. What she really and truly wanted was a new life.
She turned on the dishwasher, then walked through the house. There were art objects from around the world, beautiful things, but as she looked at them, she thought of Olivia’s story. Regret, Olivia had said. She regretted so very much.
“So do I,” Kathy said aloud.
“So do you what?” Elise’s voice startled Kathy.
“Nothing important.”
Behind her was Olivia and she was holding the box. “What’s this?”
“I found it on the floor. I guess it’s from Ray. A thank-you gift.” I taught him to say thanks, Kathy thought but didn
’t say.
“I think we should open it.” Olivia began removing the paper. Inside was a note from Dr. Hightower.
This is real. Please try it.
Then her signature.
Olivia set the box on the table. It was filled with what looked to be cotton quilt batting and buried inside were three business cards. On the back, their names were handwritten in old fashioned copperplate.
Futures, Inc.
Have you ever wanted to rewrite your past?
Madame Zoya can help
333 Everlasting Street
At the bottom had been handwritten “now off Farm Road 77.”
Olivia and Elise sat down at the big kitchen table, and Kathy opened the refrigerator to pull out a dozen oranges. There was a tall manual juicer clamped to the counter. She cut the oranges in half, pulled the handle down, and filled glasses with fresh juice.
“Lovely fantasy, isn’t it? To rewrite the past.” Elise was smiling at the absurdity of it.
“I agree.” Kathy put full glasses of orange juice on the table. “But it is a great thought, isn’t it? So where would you go back to?”
They were ignoring Olivia as she sat there staring at the card. Her eyes were fixed, unmoving, unblinking. No one needed to ask her what she’d change. She wouldn’t go to Richmond on that day.
“I’d go to my wedding,” Elise said.
Kathy cracked some eggs and was whipping them about in a bowl. “I’d think you’d want to go back and say no when your husband proposed.”
“That wouldn’t work,” Elise said. “If I said no in private, my parents and Kent’s would drive me so crazy that I’d eventually say yes just to make them shut up. I’d have to say no in a big, huge, public way. I’d throw my skirt over my arm and run out of the church.”
“Then what?” Kathy asked.
“I have no idea. I’d like to be rescued by a gorgeous man riding a big black horse, but since that wouldn’t happen, I don’t know.”
“How about a driver and a long black limo?” Kathy began scrambling eggs. “Have him drive you to the airport, then fly somewhere. If you planned it beforehand, you could have a suitcase packed and in the trunk. You could change clothes in the back of the car.”
“I like that,” Elise said. “Except that I have nowhere to go.”
“Maine.” Olivia was at last coming out of her trance. She put the card down on the table. “Kit has lots of single male relatives in Maine. You could take your pick. I’m sure they’d compete to see who could win you.”
“That sounds great!” Elise was laughing. “I’ll elope with one of them and return home married to some guy who is so rich he’d please even my parents.”
“What about Alejandro?”
“I didn’t realize it at the time but he started working there just a week before my wedding. But even if I went back, nothing would have changed. We still live in different worlds. I don’t know how they could be merged.”
“What about you?” Olivia asked Kathy, who was putting a bowl of scrambled eggs and a plate of whole wheat toast on the table. “Would you go back to get your Andy?”
As Kathy sat down, she was frowning in concentration. “What would I change?” She looked up. “Does it have to be about a man?”
“No!” the two women said in unison.
“Hmmm,” Kathy said. “If I went back in time—knowing what I do now, that is—the first thing I’d do is make a place for myself in my father’s advertising firm. A lot of the ideas that Ray presented were mine. The second thing I’d do is stay away from Ray. You know something? I hate living in Connecticut. I hate the big house Ray and I own. I even hate my gorgeous garden. Keeping it all going takes masses of my time—not to mention how much it all costs.”
She took a bite of egg. “I’d go back to those two weeks when Ray got caught in a blizzard in Chicago. Before we were married. Married or not, I’d never be able to do anything with him around. Dad was crazy for those two weeks that Ray was gone. He had clients coming in from Hong Kong and...” She shrugged.
“How did it get resolved?” Olivia asked.
Kathy shrugged. “Like always. Ray came back from Chicago with a great campaign and everyone was happy. My fantasy is that I would be the one to win the hearts of the clients.” Her chin came up. “And after that I’d demand that my father give me a real job, something other than playing a social hostess to him and Ray. I’d like to have a real salary and an office with my name on the door—and an apartment on the Upper West Side. Something cute with a terrace.”
She sighed. “But I’ll never get that. Ray is just like Kent. He believes he needs the Connecticut house to entertain clients.” She looked down at her plate.
“Ray wants to divorce you,” Olivia said softly. “That’s why he’s been going to Dr. Hightower.”
Kathy’s eyes widened for a moment, then she buried her face in her hands and began to cry loudly.
Instantly, Elise and Olivia were beside her, hugging and patting.
“I’m so sorry,” Olivia said. “I shouldn’t have told you. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.”
Kathy got up, her pretty face covered in tears, and went to the refrigerator. She withdrew a cold bottle of champagne, untwisted the bale, and the cork popped out. She poured it into the glasses of orange juice and held hers up. “A toast! At this moment I am the happiest woman on this planet.”
Elise and Olivia were too stunned to speak. They managed to pick up their glasses but all they did was stare.
Kathy drank deeply, then poured more champagne into her juice. “Ray would never leave without someone waiting for him. Tell me it’s Rita. Please, I hope it is. They’re so perfect for each other. And if he marries her and they produce kids maybe Carl’s mother will forgive him about her son.” She looked at them. “If he told you about Rita, did he tell you about Carl too? Of course he did. Just so you know, Carl was a thug. Not the saint Ray wants to believe he was.”
Elise and Olivia were still holding their glasses in silence.
“Drink up, girls! We have a lot to celebrate.”
They took sips but their eyes showed their shock.
Olivia began to recover. “How do you know about Carl?”
“I’ve always known about him,” Kathy said. “Ray and Dad met when Ray invaded a lunch Dad was having with a client. Afterward, Dad said Ray was either the best salesman he’d ever met or a lying thief. He told me to find out which. My report said that Ray was both of them. Dad said he was perfect for the advertising world and hired him.”
Wide-eyed, Elise and Olivia sat down at the table and began to eat. “Ray said you hired his secretaries,” Olivia said.
“Yes, I did.” There was pride in Kathy’s voice. “Both my father and Ray dump clients’ social lives onto me. If some guy who owns half of Iowa comes to New York and wants Dad’s agency to advertise whatever it is he sells, I am delegated to show the wife around. Whatever she wants to do, I’m told to fulfill her wishes. One wife wanted me to hire a Magic Mike–type dancer to visit her in her hotel room. She seemed to think I’d know how to arrange that. ‘You live in New York, don’t you?’ she said.”
Kathy took a breath. “Anyway, I’d had enough of all of it. I was married to Ray but I didn’t feel like his wife. We were to the point where he’d pat me on the shoulder and say, ‘Good job.’ Like I was one of his colleagues. I wanted out. But you’ve met Ray. It was just like with Dolores. It had to be Ray’s decision to end it. I knew that the only way he was going to let me go—I mean really and truly release me—was if he had someone else.”
“So you set out to find her,” Olivia said.
“When Ray’s original secretary retired, I coaxed him into letting me find someone to replace her. I treated it like a beauty pageant. I don’t know Ray’s sexual preference except that he doesn’t like big, healthy, curvy women like me, so I
went for a variety.”
Smiling broadly, Kathy took a drink of her mimosa. “I found a Scandinavian blonde who had the men in the office running into glass doors. But Ray never looked at her. Next came a cute little Latin girl who married another guy in the office. Then there was a buxom redhead.”
Kathy laughed. “I nearly drove my husband crazy for over two years. Every time a girl learned how to run his office, I’d make up an excuse to get her another job.”
“And you were trying to find a wife for your husband.” Elise sounded as though she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Yes. Ray may wear a suit to the office, and he can sit down to dinner with men who play polo, but scratch the surface and he’s the guy from the streets of Brooklyn.”
“And that’s where Rita is from,” Olivia said.
“Oh yes! She was a godsend. The answer to all my prayers. I was to the point where I thought I was going to have to ask Ray for a divorce.”
“And if you did, he’d dig in his heels and say no,” Olivia said. “He had to make the decision and no one else. If you asked, out of principle he’d wage a war—and everyone would lose. You, your father, Ray, the company, your clients.”
“I think you understand my husband completely—and so did Carl’s mother. When Rita needed a job, she sent her to me, not to Ray. I think she figured that after years with him, I probably knew him pretty well. I had Rita come to the house for lunch and right away I saw that she was reserved enough for him in public, but underneath, she still had that street flair. I thought they’d make a perfect couple. I hired her to work for Ray.” Kathy grinned. “I am very proud of myself!”
“What about Dr. Hightower?” Olivia asked.
“That was another gift out of the blue. Totally unexpected,” Kathy said. “When Ray told me he was going to see a therapist, I think he expected me to talk him out of it, to say that nothing could be wrong with a great guy like him. But I didn’t. I was hoping with all my might that he was trying to get up the courage to ask me for a divorce. The man has the strange belief that my entire life is him. It almost is, but not by choice!” Kathy poured herself more champagne, minus the orange juice.