“I have a feeling a lot’s been going on that I don’t know about. Who did you see on your trip?” Maddie had told her very little from the road, which wasn’t like her, but she had been moving fast and covered a lot of ground, and hadn’t been ready to talk, so Penny hadn’t asked until now. She could see that Maddie was in good form.
“I saw my old boyfriend Bob Holland in Boston. I was thirty when I dated him. I broke it off. He turned out to be a bad guy all these years later. Worse than I would have imagined. He wasn’t a bad guy then, just ambitious. He took a lot of shortcuts to get what he wanted.
“I saw Jacques Masson in Chicago, also an old boyfriend, and a huge womanizer. He cheated on me all the time, he hasn’t changed.
“Then I went to see Andy Wyatt, the love of my life, in Wyoming. He died before I got there, but I was right about him too. His heart and soul were in Wyoming, mine were here. I saw his son and daughter-in-law and their babies.
“I met William, the writer, in Big Sur, when I couldn’t get up a steep trail at the beach with my cast. I spent a few wonderful days with Ben and Laura and the kids, and I had dinner alone with Ben for the first time in eight years. My son is a fantastic person!” she said, with eyes full of love for him and gratitude for what they shared. “Then I spent three days in Mendocino with Milagra and her guy.”
“Wait. Stop! Missing information. Her guy?” Penny looked shocked.
“Bert. He’s a commercial fisherman, they’ve been together for eight years, she’s been hiding him the whole time. He’s terrific. He may even get her home for a visit one of these days. He’s dying to see New York. He has never been here. I approve of him heartily, although Deanna won’t, for all the obvious reasons. And I guess that’s it. I saw William again after Mendocino. We went back to Big Sur for a couple of days.”
“Holy shit, you have been busy, woman. You didn’t leave a stone unturned.”
“No, I didn’t.” She looked like the old Maddie again, but an even better version, rock solid, happy, and at peace. Penny was thrilled to see it.
“So are we going to see more of William, or was it a passing fling?”
“We’ll see,” she said cryptically. “And just for the record, it was not a fling. For now, we have work to do. Where am I going after Shanghai?”
Penny took her cue and switched to work mode, but she was floored by everything Maddie had tackled and where she’d been. “Paris is on. Madrid got canceled. New Delhi is still pending, they’re not sure when they can do it. But you have a free week after Shanghai. You could do Delhi then if they confirm, or come home for a week, or go straight to Paris from Shanghai. Tell me what you want.”
“What’s after Paris?”
“Nothing right now. You come back here. Or you could do New Delhi then, if they drag their feet now. And there’s something cooking in Pakistan, but not for a while, I think. The French president wants a portrait to use for official purposes. They want him to look handsome, competent, and powerful. The Spanish royal family wanted a portrait with their daughters, but they had a scheduling problem and had to postpone it. And, we have an inquiry from Japan, but it’s nothing definite yet.” Listening to her, Maddie realized how fast her life moved once she was back at work. She had substituted everything in her life with work for so long. The void her children had left, her decision not to have a man in her life. It was going to be hard for William to keep up. She was a moving target. The challenge in their relationship would be that. Could he put up with it, and would he want to? Or would he expect her to slow down? She wasn’t ready to yet, even for him. But for now, she had a free week after Shanghai, before Paris, unless she had to go to New Delhi or Pakistan. But tentatively, she could meet him in Hong Kong, although that could change at a moment’s notice. She wondered how he would react to the constantly shifting sands of her life. That would be key. She wanted to see him. She just wasn’t sure when, or where. Her schedule was going to put him to the test, and her too. They might have hard decisions to make, both of them.
She sat down at her desk and began to go through Penny’s neat stacks in earnest. There was a tall pile of contact sheets she needed to review. She handed Penny her cameras with the digital images to print. She wanted a set of the Mendocino shots for Milagra and Bert, and the ones she’d taken of William for him, and a set for herself. Penny was the most curious to see those. And Maddie had a few sweet shots of Sean and his family to send them.
“Oh, Vogue wants you to do the cover for the December issue. You have to shoot it in September. They want your input on the model or a choice of three major actresses. They’re calling you tomorrow. And you have an appointment to get your cast off tomorrow at nine A.M. I bet you’ll be happy to get that done, although it certainly didn’t seem to slow you down.”
Maddie smiled at her. “No, it didn’t.”
By midafternoon, Maddie had finished the contact sheets, approved the bills that needed to be paid and signed the checks, approved her travel arrangements for Shanghai, and put a semblance of order back in her life. The groundwork had all been laid for her by Penny, but Maddie made all the decisions. Penny appeared in Maddie’s office doorway, as she signed the last check.
“Deanna is on the line,” she said with an ominous expression, and Maddie sighed and picked up the phone. She had to face the music sooner or later. She wasn’t looking forward to talking to her, or seeing her, after their exchanges before she left. But the tables had turned. Maddie was strong again. “Hi, Deanna, how are you?” Maddie sounded curter than she intended, and Deanna sounded cowed when she answered.
“I thought I’d come by later. Does that work for you?”
“I…uh…yes, of course.” It was the first time in years that Deanna hadn’t just shown up at whatever time worked for her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I missed you,” she said, and Maddie was struck by how subdued she sounded and wondered if something was wrong.
“I missed you too.” She felt dishonest when she said it, because she hadn’t. She had been relieved not to have contact with her for three weeks.
“What time is good for you, Mom?”
“Uh…actually, five-thirty or six would be great for me. I should have things wrapped up by then.”
“That’s perfect. I’ll come from my office when I’m finished.” Maddie hung up a minute later and stared at Penny in disbelief.
“She must be sick. She asked what time is convenient for me.”
“I’ll stick around. I can always interrupt if she gets too out of line.”
“I think I can manage it.” Three weeks before, Deanna had been beating her to a pulp emotionally on a daily basis. “But thank you. I wonder if something’s wrong. Maybe she and David are having problems.” She couldn’t imagine any other reason for Deanna to sound so civil. Something had to be wrong. She sounded almost humble.
She came promptly at five-forty-five, looking very trim and chic as usual in a black linen dress with wide white cuffs and high-heeled sandals, and her dark hair in a tight bun, looking serious. She walked into her mother’s office and didn’t sit down. Penny was still in her office next door, and hadn’t left yet intentionally. She didn’t trust Deanna for a minute.
“I just came to see how you are,” she said hesitantly as Maddie waved her to a chair.
“Are you okay? Everything all right with you and David?”
“Of course. Why?” She looked shocked.
“You seemed very quiet on the phone,” she didn’t want to say that Deanna had never had the courtesy to call before dropping by before. It was a first.
“No, we’re fine,” she said as she slid onto a chair facing her mother’s desk. Deanna hadn’t hugged her mother when she walked in, which wasn’t unusual for her. She was the least affectionate of Maddie’s children, and was even that way with her own. “The last few weeks have been kind of a shock
. You’ve never cut me off before. You just left. You didn’t say anything. You didn’t take my calls. You’ve never done anything like that.” Her eyes filled with tears as she said it, and her lip trembled, and Maddie felt sorry for her. She had brought it on herself, but Deanna didn’t understand that. She had no concept of her effect on others. She had been brutal with her mother, and Maddie felt that her lack of communication had been warranted, to protect herself.
“I know I was hard on you when you broke your ankle, but I was worried about you. I didn’t want you to get hurt again.” In the meantime, Deanna’s brother had given her hell and hadn’t minced words telling her what he thought of her, and how badly she had upset their mother. “I don’t want you falling down the stairs one night and killing yourself.”
“I know, my being on the ladder was damn stupid, but I can still manage on my own. I’m not ready for assisted living yet.”
“I know. I was wrong to say that. Ben told me. David was pissed at me too. He said I was too harsh, and I guess I was. I didn’t mean to drive you across the country on some crazy trip.” She obviously felt guilty about it.
“You didn’t. I’ve been wanting to do that for years. I’m glad I went. It was good for me in a lot of ways.” Maddie looked confident and in control again and was gracious with Deanna.
“Ben says you’re lonely,” Deanna said softly, still shocked at the idea if it was true. She never saw that side of her mother or her vulnerability. She only saw her strength, which was what Maddie chose to show her.
“Sometimes I am lonely,” she admitted for the first time. “You all have your own lives, as you should. And I’ve been alone for a long time. Most of the time I like it. Sometimes I don’t. But your words hit me hard. No one can hurt you like your kids.” She smiled at her daughter, no longer angry at her. She felt strong and centered again.
“Do you want to get married again?” Deanna looked anxious at the idea. “Is that why you went to see Andy Wyatt?…I’m sorry about him by the way. Ben told me.”
“Thank you. I don’t think I’d have married him, even if he’d been alive when I got there. All the same things were still true. He wanted a life in the wilds of Wyoming. I didn’t. I roam all over the world, but home is here.” Deanna nodded, reassured. It had been a strange feeling being out of touch with her mother for all these weeks, and she didn’t like it. “But I’m not ready for an alarm around my neck either. Give me a few years.” Maddie smiled and felt better than she had in years, and younger, and Deanna could see it. She had dropped ten years on the trip.
“I missed you,” Deanna said softly, and Maddie got up from her desk, came over and hugged her. “When Ben said you had run away, and probably because of me, I felt terrible. David gave me hell for that too. I know you’re not ready for any of the things I suggested, I just thought you should be prepared.”
“That’s a lot more preparation than I’m ready for,” Maddie said. It reminded her of what William had said, that you should never prepare for old age, just let it happen and deal with it when it does. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and just keel over one day, while I’m still busy and having fun. I’d rather go that way than with an alarm around my neck. I’ll just use the fire pole when I can’t manage the stairs anymore.”
“Ben said you would.” Deanna smiled. “I always hated how different you were from other mothers when I was growing up. Now I think maybe I liked it, or I should have.”
“That’s lucky, because I don’t think I’m ever going to learn how to be like everyone else,” Maddie said with a smile.
“I wouldn’t want you to be,” Deanna said, which was possibly the nicest thing she had ever said to her. She left a little while later after they hugged again, and Penny stuck her head in Maddie’s office after Deanna was gone.
“How was that?”
“Nice actually. She said she missed me while I was away. I think I scared the hell out of her when I left and cut her off.”
“She ripped my head off every time I told her I didn’t know where you were,” Penny said and they both laughed. But Maddie was proud of Deanna for coming to see her and apologizing. She had never done that before.
Penny left for the night a few minutes later, and Maddie called William and told him about Deanna’s visit. Maddie running away from everything had woken her up. She had been meek as a lamb. The one thing that Maddie hadn’t done was tell Deanna about William. She wasn’t ready to yet. She didn’t know where it was going and she didn’t want to deal with Deanna’s reaction. She hadn’t told the others either. Only Penny knew.
She admitted to William that it felt good to be back but she missed him too. And he sounded pleased to hear it.
They talked about her schedule for the next few weeks, and she told him about the free week after Shanghai, when she could meet him in Hong Kong, with the caveat that either her New Delhi or her Pakistan trips could preempt the free week closer to the time. But if not, they could have a week together in Hong Kong, and then she had to fly to Paris.
“Could I join you there too?” he asked cautiously. “I have the time. Would it be an intrusion?”
“Not at all. I’ll be busy in the daytime, but we could go out at night.”
“I want to hop over to England for an afternoon. I’d love it if you’d come with me, you could meet Theo.”
“That could work,” she said pensively. “The trouble with my schedule is that it can change at a moment’s notice. As long as you don’t mind that, you can come with me for most of what I do,” or at least some of the trips. She liked the idea of being in Paris with him, and Hong Kong, if it worked. “The subjects and magazines I work with flush my plans down the toilet regularly, which is why I don’t have any personal ones as a rule. I keep myself free for work.” But now she wanted to be with him too. It would be a juggling act for sure.
“I’ll book a flight to Hong Kong, and if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine. And I can book Paris too.” She gave him the dates and he jotted them down. “That’s going to be very soon,” he said, sounding pleased, if it happened. It was in a week, which wasn’t long at all.
“Where do you stay in Hong Kong?”
“The Peninsula.”
“I always stay there too.”
“I’ve agreed to separate rooms, but separate hotels might be a bit much.” She laughed at what he said. “Where should I book in Paris?”
“The Ritz.” She stayed in the best hotels whenever she could and billed them to the client. It made up for all the times she had to ride on muleback into the mountains, or sleep in a tent or the back of a truck in a war zone with missiles exploding around them. There were two extreme sides to her work. She wasn’t going to take William on dangerous missions with her, just the fun ones. Paris was sure to be that. And it would be nice to meet his son. They had a lot of good times in store, and probably some adventures that would be less so, but William was delighted that she was letting him come with her. It really was a dream come true, for both of them.
She thought about Deanna again after they hung up, and how far she had come in only three weeks. With her husband’s and brother’s help, she had backed down, and Maddie was safe from her for now, until the next time. With Deanna you never knew. Maybe something had really changed. If so, it would be an enormous relief, and she had made great strides today. Maddie sent her a text, thanking her, and saying how much it meant to her. There had been tears when they hugged. Deanna was a child who thought she had lost her mother for three weeks. It had been a frightening feeling, and she hadn’t recovered from it yet. She had never thought that her mother would have been capable of cutting her off and ignoring her as she had. But the lesson seemed to have been learned. Penny was still stunned by Deanna’s change of attitude when she left that night. She appeared to have been defanged. Maddie and Penny both just hoped the fangs wouldn’t grow back.
Chapter 15
/> Maddie’s appointment to get her cast removed went smoothly. She had healed faster than expected. The cast came off, and the skin on her ankle looked white and had the texture of a raisin, all puckered and wrinkled. An X-ray showed that the bone had mended completely. She had full use of her leg now but the ankle was still stiff and they gave her exercises to strengthen it. They told her to be slightly careful with it, so she wouldn’t break it again. But the pin should help strengthen it.
Forty-five minutes later, she was back in her office with two shoes on for the first time in six weeks. She had a phone conference with Vogue at ten about the December issue. They selected a famous actress for it, and Maddie couldn’t wait to shoot her. It was going to be a rare treat and privilege.
After the call, Maddie rushed out and bought matching dresses for Sean and Becky’s twins, and two pink teddy bears.
She left for Shanghai the following week to do a sitting with an important businessman. He owned several art galleries and had a significant art collection himself. He was a serious, very conservative subject. He spoke perfect English and Maddie enjoyed the shoot, and talking with him.
She spent the week in Shanghai, and boarded the plane to Hong Kong, wildly nervous, and excited about seeing William. She had only seen him in Big Sur and San Francisco, and now they would be halfway around the world together. She wondered if it would feel different. They had asked for rooms side by side if possible, or at least on the same floor. Traveling together would be an interesting test, to see if they got along. He knew Hong Kong well since he’d lived there for several years as a boy, when his father worked there. Maddie had had shoots in Hong Kong many times and loved it. Going to terrific places was one of the perks of her job, and even more so if she could go with him.
They were planning to stay for five days and then fly to Paris, without stopping in New York. The New Delhi and Pakistan trips had been rescheduled for later. It had all worked out. The gods were smiling on them and had since they’d met.
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