“I remember,” she said softly. “You hardly spoke English then.” He still spoke with a heavy accent, but his vocabulary had improved immeasurably. He was an excellent businessman and had done extremely well, not as much so as Bob Holland, but she was sure that he hadn’t sold out either. Jacques was true to himself.
“Where are you going on this driving trip of yours?” He was curious about it.
“I’m going to stop and see a friend in Wyoming, and maybe after that, I’ll head to California to see my children there. I haven’t figured it out yet. I have to be in Shanghai in four weeks. I’m relatively free until then.”
“You should stay in Chicago for a while. It’s a fun city.” He reached for her hand and held it as he said it, and she felt the same warm thrill she had felt twenty years ago. He was sexy and warm, and attractive, and as they looked into each other’s eyes, a beautiful, young woman in a sexy, half-naked dress walked over to their table and smiled at Jacques. She spoke to him in Spanish, and he answered her quickly. Maddie caught something about seeing her later, and meeting her at his apartment, and Maddie laughed as the young woman walked away.
“Did I screw up your plans for tonight?” He had been so quick to invite her to dinner, but she had dropped out of the sky with no notice, which really wasn’t fair.
“Not at all,” he said smoothly. “I haven’t gone into religious orders since I’ve last seen you,” he said, and they both laughed.
“I never thought you would. She’s very pretty,” and she seemed no more than twenty-five years old, or maybe less. He definitely had an eye for sexy, attractive women, and they flocked to him as they always had. He was at least thirty years older than this one.
“She’s a sweet girl. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months. It’s not serious. She has a boyfriend who works in Costa Rica. She likes to have a little fun when he’s gone.” Maddie couldn’t help laughing as she listened to him. She had almost fallen for him again. One touch of the hand and she was attracted to him and felt like a woman again. Bob Holland had lost his soul and was no longer the man she’d known. And Jacques hadn’t changed at all. There was something comforting about it in a way, and at the same time she knew that if she had let herself fall for him, he would do exactly what he had before, and cheat on her constantly. He couldn’t help himself, it was just who he was and had remained.
She hadn’t come on this trip to rekindle old flames, but she had been curious to see if any of the embers were still burning. And they could have been with Jacques, physically anyway, but he would have been as big a mistake for her now as he had been before. His morality was different from hers. And his needs. He needed a constant variety of women to keep him interested, and she knew that if she ever fell in love again, it would have to be with one man. She had always been that way, and she hadn’t changed either. They would have run into all the same problems all over again. He hadn’t slowed down, and, if anything, the girls he was attracted to were younger, as though they could share their youth with him.
He still found Maddie attractive too. He had always thought her a very sexy woman, and he still did. He liked her elegance and her style, her honesty and warmth and openness. She had never played games with him, and he knew where he stood with her. He liked that about her. She had been in love with him, but it hadn’t been a lasting love for either of them. There hadn’t been enough substance to it. They could both feel that again now. It would have been easy and immensely appealing to go to bed with him, but she knew she’d regret it later.
The meal at his new restaurant was excellent, and she let him talk her into going dancing with him afterwards. Maddie wondered if the pretty young girl was still waiting for him, and she couldn’t dance much with her foot in a cast. They had fun together, and she felt young again being with him. He was reminding her of a part of her life that she thought she had put away forever. She hadn’t been out dancing in years.
“Don’t forget what an exciting woman you are, Maddie,” he said to her when he drove her back to the hotel and parked off to the side. “You need a man in your life, even if you don’t think so. Life isn’t just about work and duty, your talent and your career. You have to play too. It used to be all about your children, then your work. It has to be about you now. You deserve that. Promise me you won’t forget it.” His words to her were a gift, and when he kissed her longingly, she didn’t resist.
She floated up to her room afterwards, glad she hadn’t gone to bed with him, but happy he had kissed her. It would have been wrong to kiss Bob in Boston. He would easily cheat on his wife. But Jacques wasn’t cheating on anyone. He was just a man who loved women, and they all knew it. Maddie was smiling when she went back to her room. She was sure he was on his way to the other girl by then, but she didn’t care. He had given her a playful, tender memory to take with her, and a wise message. He had told her he was going to Las Vegas the next day. And she was heading for Wyoming, to face whatever she found there. It would be harder to see Andy again, knowing what they had shared. But so far, each of her past loves had bestowed a gift on her. Bob had freed her of any regrets or questions she had about her decision about him, and Jacques had made her feel like a woman again. She had no idea what she would find in Wyoming. But she knew she had to go there, if only to see Andy one more time, and then go back to her life in New York again, perhaps free of the past at last, or still in love with Andy. She was eager to get to Wyoming and find out.
Chapter 7
Maddie took her time driving west after she left Chicago. She liked the city, but she had nothing to do there after she saw Jacques, and she sensed that hanging around would only get her into trouble, and possibly back into a relationship or a fling that would go nowhere and shouldn’t. Fortunately, he was going to Las Vegas anyway. He had invited her to join him there, but she’d feel ridiculous being part of his harem at her age, and he was more blatant about it now. He no longer hid his indiscretion and the women who were with him knew what to expect. There was always one who thought she would land him, but Maddie knew better. She couldn’t imagine Jacques ever settling down, and being with a man who always had another woman stashed somewhere was disappointing and exhausting. She wasn’t desperate for a man, but if she had any, she wanted one of her own, not one she had to share.
He had done something nice for her, though. She had become a work machine in the last ten or fifteen years. She was all about duty, giving her all to the latest assignment and pouring herself into it heart and soul, and then moving on to the next one. Sometimes she got off a plane in another city after taking a red-eye and went right to work. She was always proving that she could do it. Her life was a constant challenge and an endurance contest, and she had the stamina she needed to pull it off, even though she was exhausted sometimes. But in the process, she had forgotten all about being a woman, intentionally at first. After Andy, she never wanted to love someone that much again. It had taken her years to get over him and not wake up feeling a lead weight on her heart every morning, the constant reminder of loss. By the time she was no longer in acute pain, she was too deep into her work to let herself care about anything else. She told herself she didn’t need or want a man, or a tender touch. She saw the world through her camera lens, and nothing else. She had blinders on and kept them there.
Jacques’s gentle words when they said goodbye the night before had let the light in, like opening the shutters on a window. She had forgotten how beautiful the sky could be, how thrilling the world was. Her photographs spoke of agony and loss, mothers, children, lovers, the wounds of grief were on their faces and tore at one’s heart. She had forgotten about joy and laugher and a lighter touch. She had been serious for so long, steeled against the pain of leaving Andy, and now she was smiling as she drove along.
Jacques had always seemed a little foolish to her, and easily distracted, with his immense charm and roving eye, but he was smarter than she gave him credit fo
r. He knew how to live and enjoy it. She wanted some of that back now. She had been more lighthearted when she’d met him, although even then, she had been focused on her children and trying to be a good parent. Too much so, Jacques always thought. The world seemed suddenly broader now and feeling her emotions was a relief. He had reminded her that she couldn’t stay numb forever. She felt suddenly more alone now, not with gritted teeth holding on tightly, but with an open heart.
Once she was well out of Chicago, in open country, the beauty of the wheat fields caught her eye, mile after mile, as the gentle breezes moved them. She stopped in the early afternoon, and pulled over to take some pictures. She used a camera she’d brought along, and took a few with her phone to put on Instagram.
She felt peaceful as she saw the fields stretching to the horizon as far as the eye could see. There was a gentle solitude to it that wasn’t painful for once. After she posted some of the photographs on Instagram, she got in the car, turned the music louder, and drove on. There was a message from Deanna on her phone, and she didn’t bother to listen to it. She knew it would be about the benefit. It occurred to her that her daughter needed to learn how to let go of things, and so did she. Deanna was so intense. Maddie was just serious, but she didn’t bludgeon people the way Deanna did. It wasn’t an appealing trait in anyone, and made Deanna unpleasant to be around.
As Maddie got back on the highway, it was late morning in California and Ben saw the beautiful images of the wheat fields. They were different from the photographs she usually took. There were no people in them, no sense of suffering, and he had a feeling that she was at peace when she took them. He couldn’t tell where she was now, somewhere in the Midwest in an agricultural area, and he wasn’t sure where she was headed. He thought that maybe she was trying to prove something to herself, that she was not the lost soul and rapidly deteriorating elderly person that Deanna had told her she was. His mother was searching for something. What, he didn’t know. When he checked her Instagram again late in the day, he saw a field of wildflowers that were a symphony of blue and yellow. Happiness exuded from the pictures, and a kind of unbound joy. It was an explosion of color beneath the bright blue sky, and he felt happy seeing them and sensed that she had been happy when she took them, instead of just wanting to give others pleasure. He hoped she found whatever it was she was looking for, either a person or inner peace, but he had a feeling she was on the right track now. He didn’t try to call her, and left her on her journey without intruding. He wanted Deanna to do the same. Maddie had earned it. She had done so much for them. She needed something for herself now.
Maddie stopped at a motel that night, after driving for ten hours. She was tired but relaxed. The room was simple and clean, with no frills and an old TV. They charged her fifty dollars for the night, and she lay on the bed and looked around. She had stayed in a variety of places on her travels, in tents, in cabins, sleeping in the back of supply trucks in war zones, in huts or even barns with farm animals, in India and Pakistan, Tibet and Nepal, in Somalia and the Sudan. She had been in some of the poorest countries in the world and in palaces and here at home in America. The room was small and bare. It reminded her of a monastery she’d stayed in in Spain, where they took in pilgrims. It had what she needed, a bathroom, a shower, a bed, clean sheets, and in this case, the luxury of a TV. She turned it on and saw that there had been a shooting at a university in Mississippi, and she turned it off again. There was nothing she could do about it. She didn’t want to see the tearful faces of shocked students mourning their friends, heartbroken parents, or bodies being taken away. She was on a mission of her own, and all she wanted right now was peace, and to heal her own wounded soul.
Deanna had taken away something important from her after she broke her ankle. She had robbed Maddie of her faith in the future, her confidence that everything would be okay. What Deanna had foretold was a descent into hell, the worst that Maddie could imagine, a loss of health and intelligence, purpose and freedom. Maddie couldn’t imagine anything worse except the loss of her children. But the prospect of losing herself was frightening too. She needed to get away to find herself again, in a place where Deanna and her dire predictions couldn’t reach her. She knew she couldn’t let those dark things happen to her. She had run away when she left New York, but in the stark motel room, driving through the heart of America before that, and seeing the men she had once loved and no longer did, she had begun to find herself again. The broken ankle didn’t matter to her, and it wasn’t bothering her now. What was much more dangerous was that Deanna had tried to break her spirit and had overwhelmed her with fear. Maddie had started the trip longing for someone to protect her, and in the peace surrounding her, she remembered that she could protect herself, and she didn’t intend to lose that again.
There was a truck stop near the motel, and she walked there to buy herself a sandwich, brought it back to the room, and ate it. There was no sound except the distant hum of trucks on the freeway, which lulled her to sleep after she finished eating and took a shower.
She woke in the morning, after a sound sleep, as sunlight streaked into the room. She dressed and left the key at the front desk. No one else was up yet, and she went back to the truck stop, had breakfast, then set off again. It was a gorgeous day. She saw that she had a text from Ben when she left the truck stop and opened it with some trepidation. She wondered if he was going to try to track her down. She didn’t want them chasing her. She needed this time to herself.
“Beautiful pictures, Mom. I love you” was all he said. He asked no questions and she was relieved. She didn’t want to lie to him, or tell him where she was going and what she was doing.
“Thank you, I love you too,” she answered, and drove off with a lighter heart.
She kept up a good speed on the road. She knew she had another ten hours of driving ahead of her if she wanted to get to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, by that night. It was the largest town closest to Andy’s ranch. The ranch was forty miles out of town, according to her GPS. It was away from all the tourists and city slickers who came to Wyoming to say that they had been on a ranch, and to admire the magic and grandeur of the Teton mountain range. Maddie had been there with Andy years before. He’d taken her to the rodeo with him, she loved the honky-tonk of it, mixed in with the genuine aspects. The clowns, the steer ropers, the men who rode the bucking broncos hoping to win some money, the teenagers riding their horses, the rodeo queen on her best horse in her fanciest rodeo gear, wearing too much makeup and an earnest expression. She had taken wonderful pictures. And Maddie had cried when they sang “The Star Spangled Banner.” It actually meant something there. But no matter how much she loved it, she was still a tourist, even with him, and she couldn’t see herself living that life forever, any more than Andy would have survived on the streets of New York. He would have been a lost soul forever, and she couldn’t do that to him. He needed to exist in his natural habitat in order to thrive, and so did she. Wyoming wasn’t it for her, no matter how beautiful it was or how much she loved him, and he loved her.
The terrain grew slowly more rugged, and the air cooler as she drove through the day. She had stopped to take pictures again along the way. There were bluffs and red clay hills where she could easily imagine Indians roaming, native villages, and war parties. She sat in the shade of a tree for a while and admired the scenery. There was nothing ominous or aggressive about it. Everywhere she looked, she had a sense of peace and beauty.
Ben could sense it with every photograph he looked at as he followed her journey. He didn’t write to her again. Deanna had sent him an irritated text halfway through the day, so typical of her.
“What the hell is she doing?” He didn’t bother to answer her, she wouldn’t understand it anyway. For all her intelligence and talent in design, his sister was obtuse. She was too intent on herself to be able to relate to what anyone else was doing or feeling, particularly their mother.
As
the terrain grew rockier and rougher, Ben suspected he knew where his mother was going. And as the mountains came into view, with their velvety purple sheen at sunset, he figured out who she was going to see. He remembered those mountains so well from his youth, and he had loved them too. He had been excited at the idea that they might live there one day, but he was involved with his student life at Berkeley, and it never happened. He had missed Andy afterwards too, but he’d had other things on his mind by then. He wondered now how long his mother had missed Andy, maybe all seventeen years since he’d gone out of her life. He hoped not, for her, but suddenly thought it might be true. He didn’t want to bother her, she was obviously doing something important to her. There was a sacred quality to her pictures now, almost like a religious experience. They were deeply spiritual, and the mood seemed very private and intimate to him, maybe because he knew her so well. To others, they would just be beautiful photographs, and to his sister they were a total mystery.
She got to Jackson Hole at nine o’clock that night, and drove past the shops and restaurants, and tourist traps selling souvenirs. There were a dozen dude ranches in the surrounding area, and she drove ten miles out of town to Moose, where she found a small bed and breakfast, took a room, and then she went out for a walk and looked up at the mountains. She could see their shape against the night sky in all their grandeur. They were as majestic as she remembered, and as she sat on a log, the sky filled with stars. She saw two fall as she sat there, and the Big Dipper was as clear as though a child had drawn it. She saw the Milky Way, and the lesser-known constellations Andy had taught her. She hadn’t thought of them in years. But she was here now, in his country, and in her mind, those stars belonged to him and were part of him and the magic he’d brought her. She had loved everything about his life, except the fact that he wanted to stay here, and she knew she couldn’t. It had been the only bone of contention between them. Everything else had worked perfectly, for more than a year. And then she walked away from it. She regretted it now, but there had been no other choice then, nor was there now, so there should be nothing to regret, except that she did.
Lost and Found Page 9
