Under a Firefly Moon

by Donna Kauffman

  Once Chey recovered from the tidal wave of oh my that was Grant Harper, she noted there had been no kiss to Vivi’s temple when he took the coffee mug from her, or any little affectionate byplay between the two. In fact, they hadn’t so much as touched each other. But the way he’d looked at her when he’d crossed the room toward her was so steamy it could have peeled the old paint off the walls.

  “So,” Avery breathed, “that’s going to take some getting used to.”

  Hannah nodded faintly, still looking at the doorway he’d exited through. “Hubba and hubba, then hubba some more.” She fanned her face.

  “He was born for the big screen,” was all Vivi said, though she’d said it with a smile.

  “So,” Chey said, then looked to the door, then to Vivi. “Um . . . ?”

  Vivi took her seat at the table and placed a scone on a napkin in front of herself. “Not one of you has an inch of room to talk about my relationship development choices, but if you must know—”

  “They didn’t sleep together.” This from Avery. “The window with the view to the farm is the guest room window,” she explained, when they turned to look at her. “Why would he be in there if he hadn’t slept in there?”

  Hannah and Chey looked to Vivi for confirmation.

  She carefully stirred a dollop of cream into her coffee and said, “I will neither confirm nor deny.” Then she looked up at them and, finally, the twinkle was back. “Let an old woman have some mystery.”

  “Old woman, my fanny,” Chey said. “Have you seen him? I mean . . .”

  “Why yes,” she said, with full Vivienne Baudin sparkle. “I have.”

  Hannah sputtered her coffee and Chey let out a hoot of laughter, then put her fist forward. “Right here,” she said, and Vivi fist-bumped her, then surprised them by doing the explosion finish, which made them all laugh.

  “Bailey,” she said, when they looked at her in surprise. “I like to stay hip.”

  “You have Grant Harper in your bedroom,” Hannah said. “I’d say you are currently the epitome of hip.”

  “Yes, well, it’s not so simple as all that,” she admitted.

  All three of them folded their arms on the table and leaned closer to Vivi. “What’s the story?” Chey asked. “In general. I mean, we’re not asking you to kiss and tell.”

  “Oh, you most certainly are. And fair’s fair, we did the same to Hannah and Avery, and I’m about to want the same from you.” Vivi propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands, then batted her perfect lashes. “Pray tell, what’s life like on Reed Planet?”

  Hannah and Avery turned to her. “Right! Yes, we need more.” Then they mimicked Vivi’s pose.

  Chey waved her spoon, then stirred a little sugar into her coffee. Avery always made it too strong. “Oh, no. There will be no distraction from the topic at hand.” She paused, then caught their collective gaze and smiled. She let her head dramatically fall back. “Except to say life on Reed Planet is ah-mazing.” She straightened while they cheered. “Okay,” she said, and turned to Vivi. “Now you.” She lifted her hand. “I’m not asking for details. I’m asking how you feel about him being back in your life. He said you were the one who got away and I know you haven’t communicated in a very long time. Yet he literally dropped everything and came running the moment you crooked your little finger. And you knew he would. Because you were pretty certain yesterday that our problem would be solved.”

  Chey laid her hand on Vivi’s wrist. “We just worry about you, is all. We don’t want you putting yourself in a personal situation you would otherwise avoid, just to help the town. We will find another way. Nothing is worth being where you don’t want to be. We worked too hard to get here, to put our lives back together.” Chey knew Vivi and the other two realized she wasn’t just talking about being in Blue Hollow Falls.

  Chey sat back and Vivi sighed and studied her coffee for a long moment. They gave her all the time she needed.

  She kept her gaze on her coffee when she finally spoke. “Grant and I . . . it was quite the whirlwind romance when we first met. And it was a very long time ago.” She paused and still, no one spoke, realizing she needed time to tell this her own way. “I fell madly in love with him, and I think, at that time anyway, he simply fell madly in lust with me. His star was taking off; he went from the chorus to understudy to star in the blink of an eye. I was still in the chorus and happy to be there, thrilled for his successes.”

  Chey could see where this was going and her understanding must have shown on her face, because Vivi looked up at her, then nodded.

  “He was suddenly the darling of Broadway; then he got his first movie role, and the gap that had sprung up between us grew to a canyon seemingly overnight. He was given so much attention, with people literally throwing themselves at him, and not just women. Movie executives, Broadway producers, television people.” She set her spoon down, having stirred her coffee about to death. “To his credit, he honestly remained the same wonderfully thoughtful, charming, and down to earth man you see right now. It truly didn’t go to his head. But he was overwhelmed, certainly. It was a steep, fast learning curve. In the end, he didn’t think he could juggle everything and give our relationship the time it deserved. I never felt he thought less of me because his star was rising and mine was simply twinkling along where it had always been.”

  “He was honest with you then,” Hannah said. “That speaks well of him.”

  Vivi smiled and nodded. “He knew he needed to go live his life and experience what was coming at him, unencumbered, as it were. But even though I saw it coming, the breakup was awful, and my heart was utterly shattered. He had ended things about as well as he possibly could have. It was just that we wanted two very different outcomes for our love story, and it was hard for my heart to accept that, because we’d been so wonderful together.”

  “How long did it take him to realize he’d screwed up the best thing that ever happened to him?” This from Chey.

  “You see, darling, that’s just it. I don’t think he screwed up. I think what he did was the right thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but looking back, I know that to be true. If we’d stayed together at that time in our lives, we’d have become very different people to each other, and I doubt either one of us would have loved who we would have become. It was a thrilling time, just an incredibly demanding one. I had my own dreams, my own goals. Yes, I wanted to marry him. Yes, I wanted the white picket fence with him, but I didn’t want to be Mrs. Grant Harper in terms of my professional goals. Becoming his wife, at that point, in that day and age, would have ended my career, most assuredly.”

  “That must have been a very hard decision to make,” Hannah said softly.

  “I was so heartbroken, but I wasn’t mad at him.” She laughed. “It would have been easier if I were.” She picked up a scone, then put it back down. “We did stay in touch while he was still in New York. It made things harder on us both, but we couldn’t seem to help ourselves. We were just the best of friends.”

  She looked at Chey then, and they shared a smile. Chey knew Vivi was thinking of Chey’s childhood with Wyatt. Some comparisons were inevitable.

  “When he finally left New York for good, for Hollywood, and moved to California full time, we broke contact completely. Or, I guess I should say that I did. I knew I had to, for my own healing. There were no cell phones or social media and the like in those days. Calls were long distance and expensive. It was an easier time, compared to now, to cut things off. Though, admittedly, it felt horrifically lonely.” She smiled at them. “And then things did begin to take off for me. In my desperation for a distraction from my sadness and my loneliness, I think I was more daring than I might have otherwise been. I pushed harder to get noticed, and instead of waiting for things to happen, I worked to make them happen.” Her smile spread and that twinkle came out once again. “And they did.”

  “Good for you,” Hannah said. “Sometimes the best love story is the l
ove we discover for ourselves. Sometimes we have to put our own love story first, before we can love someone else.”

  “That is absolutely the core of it,” Vivi said, “though it took years and two failed marriages to figure that out. Despite all of it, I’ve regretted that Grant and I met at the wrong time, but never that we parted at the time we did. It was the right thing to do then.”

  “Did you ever think of contacting him later in your life?” Avery asked.

  “Oh, many times,” Vivi said. “I married not long after he starred in his first movie. Absolutely a rebound situation, as you know. We’ve talked about it before, but losing Grant was the reason I ran off and did it. And why we ended that union before our second anniversary.” She waved her hand. “You know about both my marriages; we’ve covered this ground before, when I told you about Harold.”

  Harold Wolff III had been the dominant love interest of Vivi’s life, or the one who’d been present in her life the longest, Chey thought now. Which wasn’t to say he’d been the love of her life, as Chey was beginning to suspect, though that’s what they’d always assumed. They also knew Vivi had divorced her second husband after a decade of marriage. That union had been more of a love story than the first, at least in the beginning. The marriage had long been strained, though, due to her inability to have children, and eventually fell apart completely when he’d abruptly announced he was expecting a child with another woman.

  She’d been in her late thirties, maybe a half dozen years after her second divorce when she’d met Harold. He’d been one of the new benefactors of the chorus line production that Vivi had been headlining at the same Forty-Second Street theater for several years. Sort of a Rockettes kind of show. She had been doing some costume designing for the production as well and met Harold at one of the promotional functions put on by the theater.

  They’d hit it off straightaway and he’d always made it a point to see her when he was in town. The thing was, in addition to being almost fifteen years her senior, Harold was also married. His wife had been put in a convalescent home after a car accident had left her comatose, with little to no chance of recovery. Harold took his vows seriously, and in all the years he and Vivi were close, he’d never once strayed across the line. Not so much as a peck on the cheek. Of course, according to Vivi, it was obvious to them and everyone around them that they were madly in love with each other.

  Chey knew over the course of their close relationship Harold had often urged Vivi to go find someone else, fall in love and get married for good, but after her two failed attempts, she simply wasn’t interested in playing that field. Instead, she poured her frustrations and her passion into her career. Eventually she’d been forced out of the lead roles as she grew older and had turned to her design business full time. In the end, that career had become her true claim to fame, and she’d known great success.

  Chey, Hannah, and Avery had poured over scrapbooks and albums filled with photos and articles and magazine layouts showcasing her work. She designed mostly for Broadway, but also for Hollywood on occasion. She professed that she’d been surprised when movie producers had sought her out, had noticed her designs for the stage.

  Chey couldn’t help but wonder now if Grant had played a role in at least initiating those contacts. Having met him, seeing the way he looked at Vivi, with such admiration and respect, she would bet on it.

  As to Vivi and Harold, their relationship ended in tragic circumstances, which she’d always maintained she’d deserved for pining after a married man.

  Harold had flown from his home base in Chicago to New York to see the opening night of Vivi’s first major Broadway production as lead designer. That same night, Harold’s wife had suffered an aneurysm and died. Despite the fact that Harold could have done nothing to prevent what happened, or saved her had he been there, he couldn’t forgive himself for not being by her side, as he would have been if he hadn’t given in to his desire to share in Vivi’s big triumph and flown to New York to surprise her.

  Rather than being freed by the loss of his wife, Harold had been drowned in overwhelming grief and guilt, causing him to abruptly end things, leaving Vivi devastated.

  She’d even swallowed her pride, opting to fight for what they had, and sought him out, all but begging him to reconsider and at least give them a chance. He’d refused even to see her. He’d passed away two years later, almost nine years ago now, without their ever seeing or speaking to each other again. It had been grappling with his loss, her unresolved anger, fear, guilt, and grief that had sent her to that counseling group the day they’d all first met.

  They hadn’t been friends for long when Vivi confided she’d gotten word from an attorney in Chicago that Harold’s estate had finally finished probate and that he’d left her something.

  The four of them were seated that very morning at a table in the middle of her inheritance. It was no surprise that it had taken a few more years after hearing of the bequest before she’d even been willing to go look at it.

  “Why?” Hannah asked Vivi gently. “Why didn’t you seek Grant out? Either when Harold was begging you to find someone else, or after his wife passed and he hurt you so terribly.”

  Vivi shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

  “But—” This from Chey.

  Vivi interrupted her. “It’s hard to explain, but I cherished what I had with Grant. It was, by far, the happiest and certainly the healthiest love affair I’d ever had. Yes, we were very young, but the mutual respect, love, and admiration we shared and showed one another from beginning to end was actually the most mature relationship I’d been in.” She picked up the same scone, set it back down. “Harold . . . our love story was so complicated. He was a sanctuary for me. In all ways.” Her smile was bittersweet. “I knew I couldn’t have him, so he was perfect. He couldn’t hurt me, he couldn’t leave me, so I could trust him, love him.” She let out a short laugh. “Of course, I was so very wrong about both of those things. But while I was in it, I felt so free, and so very mature. I was having this grand career, a powerful man loved me and I loved him back. I admired him even more deeply for his dedication to his wife.” She shook her head. “I mean, just listen to that, will you?”

  “Vivi—”

  Her smile turned sardonic. “As we know, it took a good deal of counseling to understand it was really more a codependent relationship that we each used as a crutch. So we wouldn’t have to make the hard decisions about how to have a truly fulfilling life, or a real relationship.” Vivi reached out and took Chey’s hand and Hannah’s hand, and Avery laid hers on top. “After Harold left, after he died, and I started to really examine my life, my choices, while trying to get a handle on my grief, I felt like . . . well, like such a failure, like I was damaged goods.”

  “Vivi,” Hannah whispered.

  She shook her head. “Now I know the truth about all of that, but then? The very last thing in the world I’d have done was to dare assume Grant Harper would want anything to do with me, a woman who’d pined after a married man for so many fruitless years, only to be ditched by him when he was finally free. How pathetic I would have surely seemed to him. He was doing so well. I would never intrude on his life. I felt I’d had my chances. When I moved here with you three, honestly, I was at peace.”

  “He never married,” Avery said, then guiltily held up her phone. “I just did a quick look at his IMDb. His Internet Movie Database file,” she clarified when Chey merely looked confused. “Sorry. I was just curious.”

  Vivi shook her head. “He never did, no.”

  “Because of you?” Hannah asked gently.

  Vivi sighed, then let out a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Even I’m not vain enough to believe that. He was my perfect love, I suppose, but surely that was a romanticized fairy tale of youth.”

  “How did you know he would come?” Chey asked. “How long has it been since you’ve spoken? All the way back to when he moved to California?”

  Vivi shook her head. “No. We�
��ve been in touch. Well, not directly, but I guess you could say professionally, though very, very infrequently. I’d sent him a note to congratulate him on his first Oscar nomination. I thought it was very mature of me. I was with Harold then, so it seemed a decent thing to do. He did the same whenever I reached a career milestone. We never spoke, never saw each other. Just a card with some flowers or a bottle of champagne. So, we both knew we kept tabs.” She looked down, and Chey saw the brief smile.

  “What,” Chey chided. “What is that smile?”

  “Well, the cards were really pretty generic, though he’d usually address me by the nickname he had for me, and I always called him Cary Grant instead of Grant. Some silly joke that started . . . well, I don’t even recall now why, but we thought it was endlessly amusing.”

  “What did he call you?” Avery wanted to know. All of them wanted to know.

  “Daffy,” she said, then laughed when their mouths collectively dropped open.

  “Daffy?” Chey said, sounding almost affronted.

  “It was short for daffodil. My favorite flower.”

  “Aw,” Hannah said, and they all melted a little. “That’s so sweet.”

  “So, he’d send the cards to Daffy and you’d send yours to Cary Grant?” Avery asked.

  She nodded. “One of the last cards he sent, he wrote, ‘The one who got away, my only true regret.’ And he signed that one, ‘Love, Grant.’ Now, I thought he was just being a charmer, but I admit, it did stick with me.”

  “Did you give him a signal like that?”

  She shook her head. “I only sent maybe one after that. If I’m being honest, I think his card spooked me a little. I didn’t want to even contemplate a thing like that.”