“That’s because you can go into a gallery, show them your work, and instantly, you have a job.”
“Not quite,” Zoë said, looking up from her drawing. “It takes more work than that and I have a lot of supplies to buy.”
Faith and Amy looked at her.
“Okay, so Russ bought them and, yes, I did sell rather quickly to a gallery. Stop staring at me! It just seems to me that going to Eddie’s mother to ask for money would be like my going to my sister to ask for money.”
“Where did you get the hundred and fifty dollars that got you to New York?” Faith asked.
“Stole it from my sister,” Zoë said, grinning. “But didn’t she owe me?”
“And so did Eddie’s mother,” Faith said. “But I didn’t just borrow money, I gave her a piece of the business I wanted to start.”
“And what business was that?” Amy asked.
“Right,” Faith said, “you’ve been in this house and haven’t seen how I’ve changed the world.”
“You changed the world?” Amy asked.
“Changed it a bit,” Faith said as she got up and went to get her bag on the hall table. She reached inside and pulled out a jar of what looked to be face cream. It was a jar of dark blue glass, about two inches high, with a silver lid and silver writing on it. She handed it to Amy.
“I’ve never seen this before,” Amy said. “Indigo,” she read on the label. She unscrewed the lid and smelled it, then her eyes widened. “Beth. The seeds.”
She glanced at Zoë and saw that she was staring at Faith with a look of astonishment on her face.
“Did I miss something?” Amy asked.
“Indigo?” Zoë asked. “You don’t know about this stuff? No, right, you’ve been in here. That company is yours?”
“All except the seven percent that Eddie’s mother owns. I tried for five, but she held out for seven. She uses her millions to do charitable works in Eddie’s name. He died on the same date he died when I was taking care of him.”
“Destiny,” Amy said, then, “Millions?”
Zoë laughed. “More like megamillions. It’s hard to believe that you haven’t seen these bottles on the store shelves. There’s shampoo, face cream, you name it. It’s a whole line and they’re everywhere, on TV and in magazines. There isn’t a movie star who doesn’t use it.” She looked at Faith. “If you run this company, how do you have time for a life?”
“I let a bunch of people in New York who wear suits all day run it. I just stay home with my kids. And…” She hesitated. “I run the charity part of my company. We give a lot of money away. And—”
Faith seemed to pause, as though for a drumroll. “One of the first things I bought was Tristan’s house and the old medieval house next to it. I found out that after we left, William ran the cows out and restored the house, so it’s still there today.” Faith smiled. “I read that he never married, but he lived to be ninety-five. If you look deep in obscure books on landscaping, you’ll see his name.”
“That’s great!” Zoë said.
“The houses are mine and I’ve spent a lot on putting them back to the way they were. When my kids are out of the house, I hope to have the time to oversee the re-creation of an eighteenth-century estate and open it to the public, but for right now, it’s private housing. I don’t get to stay there very often, so maybe you two would like to visit. Amy, would your kids like that?”
“They’d love it. All of us would. What about the tower?”
Faith shook her head. “Part of it was still there, but the glass roof was gone and of course there were no plants.”
“You really did save them,” Amy said.
“I want to know what happened between getting money from Eddie’s mother to becoming a multimillionaire.”
Faith smiled in memory. “I talked to Eddie’s mother and I told her the truth, that I had come by some seeds from a plant that is extinct today and was mentioned in the Bible, and I wanted to grow it and make cosmetics with it. She wasn’t interested until I told her I planned to move to California to grow the plant there.”
“So she was paying you to get out of town,” Zoë said.
“More or less. Actually, that’s exactly what she was doing. The night before, she’d found the receipt for the engagement ring Eddie had bought me, and she knew what was going to happen. I took the ring off its chain and said I’d throw it into the deal. Gave her the diamond, I kept the chain.” Faith reached under her collar and pulled out a pretty little gold chain. “I always wear it to remind me of Eddie and what might have been.”
“What you escaped,” Amy said.
“So how much did she give you?” Zoë asked.
“We put the money in a revolving account. She’d support me for the seven years I figured I needed to get the plants to a good size, and of course I had to buy land. In the end, it was quite a lot of money, but she’s been repaid many times over.”
“What happened in your personal life in California?” Amy asked.
“I met a man who I hadn’t spent my childhood with and who I didn’t mother. We got married, started Indigo, and along the way I had six children.”
“Six!” Zoë said in horror.
“Six,” Amy said in envy.
“We live in a beautiful house in the Napa Valley,” Faith said, “and it’s surrounded by acres of the Balm of Gilead. I’ve given the plant back to the Holy Lands,” she added as though it meant nothing, even though it had been the happiest day of her life when she’d presented plants to their country of origin.
“What happened to Tyler?” Amy asked.
“He got married a few years after I left and he became a successful contractor. He built some very nice houses.”
“Children?”
“Three,” Faith said.
“And did you see him again?” Amy asked.
“Many times. My family and I visited my hometown often and we always saw him and Eddie and my mother. You won’t believe this, but Eddie’s mother and I became friends. She was great at business. I thought all her money came from her late husband, but I found out that that shrewd old woman was a whiz at the stock market. She’s stayed at my house in Napa a dozen times. My kids love her.”
Faith paused for a moment, then looked up. “One evening we were sharing a bottle of wine and she told me she wished she’d had a daughter-in-law like me.”
“Did you strangle her?” Zoë asked.
“No, actually, her words made me cry. She didn’t remember it, but I’d spent years working myself to death to try to make her like me, but she hadn’t. But when I stopped trying, it happened.”
“Too bad you could never tell Ty that you’d saved his life,” Zoë said.
“I nearly forgot!” Faith said. “At my mother’s funeral, he told a story that sent chills down my spine. He volunteered to give the eulogy and he told how my mother had saved his life. A few days after he crawled through my window—”
“And you weren’t there,” Amy said.
“Yes, by that time I’d already made my deal with Mrs. Wellman and I was getting ready to leave for California.”
“How did Eddie and Tyler take your news that you were leaving town?” Zoë asked.
Faith shook her head. “Very well. In fact, they took it too well for my taste.”
“As long as neither one of them got you,” Amy said.
“You’re right! I think I was the bone those two dogs had fought over for most of their lives, and as long as neither of them won, they were okay. I don’t like to think this, but in some ways I think they were relieved when I said I wasn’t going to marry either of them.”
“So what was your creepy funeral story?” Zoë asked. “How had your mom saved Tyler’s life?”
“Ty said he went out to the cliffs as we used to call the local make-out place. I look back on it and I’d panic if my kids went there. It was really dangerous. There was a turnaround that was on the edge of a huge drop-off. We used to dare one another to look over beca
use there were three cars at the bottom. It must have been a thousand feet down. Really scary.”
Faith looked at Amy. “Ty got too close to the edge and fell over. He said it was the middle of the day, nobody was there, and he was hanging on to the edge with his fingertips. By a one-in-a-million chance, my mother showed up there. He yelled and she used a rope and Ty’s truck to haul him up.”
“Wow,” Zoë said. “That makes my hair stand on edge.”
“When your mother thought you might marry him, she hit him with a rock, and…” Amy said.
“Watched him fall to the bottom,” Zoë said. “It’s a good thing you went back.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “A very good thing. You want to know something even more strange? After I left town, and after she saved his life, my mother and Ty became friends. He introduced her to his mother and when his construction company got going, he built them a new house, and I paid to furnish it. The two women lived together until my mother died. And Ty’s friendship with Eddie stayed strong. He was a pallbearer at Eddie’s funeral, and, yes, I was there too.”
Faith looked at her watch. “I don’t know about you young people, but I’m exhausted. I have a plane to catch tomorrow.”
“Me, too,” Zoë and Amy said in unison, then the three of them laughed.
Zoë turned her pad of paper around and showed what she’d drawn. It was Faith and Amy laughing together, glasses of wine in their hands. They looked as though they were the best friends in the world.
“Wonderful,” Amy said. “Could I have a copy?”
“I’ll have it framed and send it to you. We do plan to exchange addresses, don’t we? I mean our new addresses.”
“Mine’s the same,” Amy said, then looked away before she saw a look of sympathy cross their faces. She bid them good night and went to her bedroom.
As she showered, she thought about going home. It would be exactly the same, but Amy knew that she wasn’t the same. She tried not to let it hurt her feelings, but the fact that neither Faith nor Zoë had said thank you to her for taking them back to the eighteenth century did hurt. If Amy hadn’t insisted that they go back with her, Faith wouldn’t have the seeds for her multimillion-dollar cosmetics company. And Zoë wouldn’t have found her husband—and her backbone, Amy thought. It had taken a lot to make Zoë able to stand up to her bully of a sister.
But they hadn’t said a word to Amy. That’s all right, she thought. If they wanted to be selfish, let them. Amy had nothing to complain about. Tomorrow she was going to go home to her husband and sons, and she was going to be as happy as she had always been.
“I don’t even know why I bothered to come here,” she said as she got into bed. “Except that I saved Tristan. I did what I wanted to and that’s what was important.”
In spite of three glasses of wine, she had a difficult time going to sleep.
“She doesn’t know a thing, does she?” Zoë whispered to Faith in the bathroom they shared.
“Nothing,” Faith said, “and I felt bad for not telling her. She deserves to know.”
“She’ll find out, but I think her husband should tell her, not us.”
“I’m sure you’re right. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have agreed to keep my mouth shut.”
Zoë dried her hands on the towel. “By the way, you were brilliant at not giving anything away. ‘When did you get so good at stories?’” she said in a mocking tone. “I nearly lost it then.”
“Quiet,” Faith said. “She’ll hear you. If you’d dealt with as many big shots in the business world as I have, you’d be good at lying too. We just have to remember to not give anything away tomorrow. We’ll have a few hours together in the morning, then she belongs to her husband.”
“Who knows nothing,” Zoë said. “Didn’t you find it unsettling that no one remembered what had happened? I asked my sister several questions about when I was in the hospital, but she just thought I was crazy.”
“I feel sorry for Jeanne. This time around, she didn’t have you and me as patients. I didn’t hit my mother-in-law at the funeral of her son, and you didn’t set fire to a car.”
“No, this time it was all about Amy. Jeanne lent this summerhouse to a world-famous—” Zoë broke off at the look from Faith and lowered her voice. “Do you think Amy went to bed with Tristan?” Zoë whispered.
“I don’t think we’ll ever know that,” Faith said, “and I don’t think it’s any of our business.”
“Faith,” Zoë said, “I know that Madame Zoya said that we weren’t allowed to contact each other until we came here, but…”
“But what?”
“When I saw Amy’s name, I couldn’t help it. I sent her a gift.”
“What kind of gift? No, wait, don’t tell me. A picture of someone.”
“Yes,” Zoë said. “You don’t think that will mess up anything, do you?”
“It doesn’t seem to have. The truth is that I had to work hard not to contact her—and you. I wanted to jump up and down and say ‘I know her’ whenever I saw one of your paintings. I saw that you married a man named Russell, but I had no idea that he was a descendant of—”
“The man I loved?” Zoë said. “He’s so much like him that sometimes it’s freaky. I’m mad about him. But you! You’re the great success! I had no idea that Indigo was yours. I’m truly impressed. But it’s a good thing I didn’t know or I would have looked you up on the Internet and found out who you married.”
“Who I didn’t marry,” Faith said. “Zoë, I don’t know how you’ll take this, but my company has a new product line coming out and I’ve named it ‘Amy.’ I’m giving her a lot of the proceeds to do with as she wants.”
“She’ll give it to charities,” Zoë said. “I hope you didn’t think I’d be jealous of that. You and I owe Amy everything. If she hadn’t taken us back with her…” Her eyes widened.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Faith said. “I would have married Tyler and had a second miserable life.”
“And I would have spent my life feeling sorry for myself. By the way, I already sent Amy a letter saying she gets a portrait of her family from me every five years for life.” She raised an eyebrow at Faith. “What if I start to do a portrait and see that she has a son who looks just like a certain famous American author?”
“I know just the herb to give you to keep you from laughing,” Faith said. “I’ve had to use it at several board meetings.”
Laughing together, they went to their bedrooms.
Twenty-six
“I will not be disappointed,” Amy said to herself as she waited in line to get off the plane. “I won’t be disappointed or feel cheated. I did what I went there to do and that was all I needed to do. If I were a selfish person, I would have asked for something for myself, but I’m not so I didn’t.”
The man in line in front of her turned to glare at her.
“Sorry,” she said, apologizing for talking out loud to herself.
When she got to the airport, as soon as she saw Stephen and the boys, all thoughts of getting “more” left her mind. The boys ran under the guard tape and nearly tackled her. She fell back against her rolling bag, and threw her arms around them, kissing them profusely.
“Can I get in here?” Stephen asked as he gave her a quick kiss, then took her bag and ushered the three of them back under the tape. “Is this it?”
“Are you kidding?” Amy said. “I have three more bags full of…” She leaned down to the boys who were clinging to her. “Presents!” They yelled so loud that people frowned at them.
Stephen put his lips close to her ear. “I’d tell them to calm down but I feel just as they do. I’d like to yell with joy that you’re home at last.”
“I was gone just a few days,” Amy said.
“I know, but for some reason it seemed like you were gone forever. It’s like it’s been a lifetime since I saw you.”
“I’m here now,” she said. “And I’m not going to leave again.”
/> Stephen laughed. “That would mean you’d have to go camping with us next year and you know how you hate that.”
Amy’s mind filled with images. She had cooked over an open fireplace for over a year. She could stick her hand inside a wall oven and tell the temperature within a few degrees. She’d had to deal with weevils in the flour and maggots on the meat. She’d had to use an outhouse.
“I think I might be persuaded to go camping with you guys next year.” She smiled at the expression on Stephen’s face. “If I’m not a good camper, you can send me back after one day.” They had reached the baggage claim area. “There are my bags,” she added before he could say anything.
They got the luggage to the car and Amy opened one of them to give the boys what she thought of as “car toys.” They’d keep them quiet on the trip home. This time they were those plastic boxes filled with hundreds of dull-tipped nails. The boys could make images of their body parts.
When they got in the car, Stephen took her hands in his to kiss them, then he drew back. “What in the world have you been doing?” He turned her hands palm up and looked at them in horror. There were cuts, half-healed blisters, calluses, scars, and skin so rough it could have been used to sand the paint off the car.
She pulled her hands out of his grasp. “Just because I went ridin’ without my gloves one day…” she said in imitation of Scarlett O’Hara.
Stephen started the car and backed out of the parking space. “Wasn’t the truth that she’d been working like a field hand?”
“And that’s what I’ve been doing,” Amy said as she reached in her bag and got out the jar of Indigo cream Faith had given her. When she’d handed it to her, Faith whispered, “All my products will always be free to you.”
“You look different,” Stephen said, driving and glancing at her. “Besides your cotton picker’s hands, that is. Have you lost weight?”
“I lost weight before I left, but you never noticed,” she said, lying. “I’ve had time to get over my sadness, and that’s a big change.”
“No, it’s more than that. There’s something different about you. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s there.”