by KG MacGregor
sulking scornfully away while everyone else celebrated.
That moment marked the end of her job, and she began the
methodical task of stowing her equipment. There wasn’t much
else to do, since her tripod and camera bag were already locked
up with the bell captain.
Claudia sauntered over after the others left, her arms folded
casually across her chest. “What’s up next for you, Photographer
Lady?”
“Since I canceled my plans to be at a magazine shoot in
Tucson all weekend, I find myself free.”
“So you have until…”
“Tuesday noon. Then I have a meeting in San Francisco.”
0
She considered offering to share the ride down to Cambria but
getting back to Monterey would be a bitch.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to stick around here for
another day.”
“You aren’t going home?”
Claudia shook her head. “No, I promised to pack up the
bridal suite. The bathroom alone could take me all day.”
“Why didn’t you ask your sweet sister-in-law for help?”
That earned her a guffaw. “In the first place, she would have
said no. In the second place, I’m done with Deborah and her
little dog too. And I’m also done with Marjorie, at least until Eva
decides to have children. By then it’ll be up to Eva whether or not
she wants her children to grow up with that kind of influence.”
“Maybe she’ll put it off a few years.”
“We’ll see. Family planning isn’t exactly our forte, you
know.”
Leo snorted.
“Just sayin’.” She hooked her arm through Leo’s unabashedly
and steered her back into the hotel. “So what do you say? Are you
going to help me or leave me stranded?”
She looked down at Claudia’s arm and noticed for the first
time a woven bracelet containing the Vulcan jade pendant she
had given Claudia for her college graduation. “I could never turn
down a beautiful damsel in distress. But I can’t promise I won’t
fall asleep if you let me sit down.”
The bridal suite looked like a tornado zone. Eva’s billowy
dress covered the entire sofa, and all her accessories were
scattered about.
Claudia eyed the bedroom door, which was partially closed.
“If this outer room is any indication of what’s behind that other
door, I don’t even want to see the rest of it.”
Leo tiptoed over and peeked into the bedroom. “I see pieces
of a tuxedo and a couple of suitcases. Not too bad…except I
spotted a sports car out there that had your name all over it. I
don’t think there’s any way all this stuff will fit in it.”
0
“Very funny.” Claudia shouldered past her and removed
a garment bag from the closet. “I’m only responsible for the
wedding dress. Todd’s parents are taking everything else back to
San Francisco so it will be in their apartment when they get back
from Africa. But I promised to pack it up.”
“Shouldn’t take long.”
She eyed a pair of men’s designer briefs on the floor next
to the bed. “Do me a favor, would you? Pack all the boy things
in that black suitcase. I don’t want to know my son-in-law that
well.”
Leo laughed and set about picking up Todd’s belongings.
Claudia entered the bathroom, where cosmetics and hair
styling tools occupied every square inch of the counter. “God, it
seems like it was just yesterday that she was getting into my stuff.
Now she has enough to open a store of her own.”
They worked diligently for over an hour getting things
packed and ready for the McCords, folding each crumpled item
with far more care than it had been shown the night before. It
took both of them to stow the flowing wedding dress inside the
clear plastic bag. Then Claudia called Todd’s mother to report
things were ready to go.
With their task done, her anxiety grew about what would
follow. No one but Leo had ever sparked the giddy feelings
that gripped her now. Over the years it had happened whenever
Maria mentioned her name, or when she had driven up the coast
through Monterey, and it had built steadily in anticipation of
seeing her again at the wedding. What was different now was
that Leo seemed to be feeling it too. There had been a moment
the night before when she almost thought Leo would kiss her,
and undoubtedly they would have tumbled into the bedroom to
rediscover their lost love. Then something had stopped them,
something that felt more like caution than denial. Now they had
to chart the course for what would happen next.
“I need to drop this off in my room,” she said, hoisting the
dress over her arm. “Then if you have the energy, maybe we can
just sit and talk.”
0
“What do you want to talk about?” Leo sported a tiny smile,
a look more confident than Claudia could remember seeing away
from the camera.
“I want to know everything you’ve done since the last time
I saw you.”
“That’s a lot of photo shoots.”
“I can read your bio on your Web site…which I’ve done, by
the way, so I already know what a hotshot you are.”
Leo laughed as they reached the Sunset Suite. “I don’t know
about being a hotshot, but I’m doing the kind of work I always
dreamed about.”
“I remember those dreams.” She hung the dress in the closet
and gestured for Leo to sit on the couch. “Is this okay, or do you
want to go out to the bluff?”
Leo answered with a familiar gesture by taking a seat and
propping her feet on the coffee table. “Since you’ve already
read my bio, why don’t you tell me yours? You don’t have a Web
site.”Claudia sat across from her in an ornate wingback chair,
remembering how special it had felt the first time she saw Leo
let down her guard and relax. “Nothing really to add to my story,
except that I got part of my dream too. I’ve been teaching third
grade now for eighteen years, ever since Eva started school.”
“I remember that. I almost called you when Maria told me
you were back from Taiwan.”
It was bittersweet to think they might have reconnected so
long ago and kept at least a friendship alive. “I wish you had. I
didn’t have many friends back then besides Maria and Sandy.”
The smile left her face as she recalled one of the darkest times of
her life. “What stopped you?”
“I didn’t want to disrupt your life. Besides, I was going cold
turkey on my Claudia Galloway addiction. If I’d gotten just a
little bit, it would have made me want more.”
It was an unusually candid statement from someone who
kept her cards so close to her vest, Claudia thought.
Leo continued, “If you had talked to me on the phone, I
0
would have wanted to meet you at Maria’s, and then I would
have asked to see you alone. Sooner or later you would have told
me no and it would have
been like losing you all over again. The
only way to resist you was not to see you at all.”
She had no trouble wrapping her head around that
explanation. The temptation to contact Leo had been intense
at times, but she always backed down out of fear she would be
rejected, or that Leo would welcome her and it still wouldn’t be
enough. “Maria talked about you every now and then. Nothing
specific, just that you came down, you looked good, that kind of
thing. It was vague unless I asked her something point blank.”
“She kept me up with you too, especially when you first got
back. I was really glad to hear when you got the teaching job.”
Claudia shook her head to recall that particular episode in
her life. It was the first time she had defied Mike to do something
for herself and there had been consequences. “Maria said you
quit asking about me.”
“It made me miss you too much,” she said matter-of-factly.
“She called me when Mike died, and then again a few years ago
when your mother died, but other than that I just had to keep
telling myself you were doing fine and that you were happy.”
“Happy isn’t necessarily the word I would use, but between
Eva and my job I had some good things going on in my life.”
“I found one of those good things on the Internet once.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There was an article in the Tribune when your class won the
award for reading the most books.”
Her mind ticked off the years as she tried to remember that
class, and she smiled to realize Leo had kept up with her that way.
“That was ages ago.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you because you’d cut your hair.
But back then it was still brown,” she added with a smirk.
“That’s because Eva wasn’t a teenager yet. These are all hers.”
She ran a hand through her white hair. “Actually, that’s my dad’s
line about me, and you can see that I took after him in the hair
department…except for the goatee, of course.”
“I remember the goatee. You were obsessing about your
pointy chin.”
“And now I have an extra chin to obsess about.”
Leo shook her head. “You don’t have a double chin and
your hair is gorgeous. In fact, you’re even more beautiful than I
remember.”
A feeling of tenderness overtook her as she relished Leo’s
words. “I bet the last time someone said something that sweet to
me, it was you.”
“I find that pretty hard to believe.”
“It’s true.” She sighed and let her gaze wander to the window
where the mid-afternoon sun put a sparkle on the ocean. It was
difficult to talk about Mike with Leo, because Leo’s pain was
obvious. There was no other way, however, to catch Leo up on
her life. “Mike and I never really recovered after I broke our
engagement that Christmas. Getting married was about Eva, not
us. I thought we might do better when we all came back from
Taiwan, but once I insisted on going to work, he took off without
us for a new project in Jakarta. I didn’t care by that time. Eva was
all that mattered.”
“Was he a good father?”
“He wasn’t there much, but you’d have to ask her to know
for sure. Even when he was home he was working. Marjorie
smothered her though, once she saw how much she looked like
Mike. She had to stop whispering to everybody that he probably
wasn’t her father. Once she came to grips with that, we couldn’t
get rid of her. I put up with it because I always believed Eva
deserved the chance to know her father’s family, but she can make
her own choices about them now.”
“I remember when you got upset about that boy in your class
when his parents were splitting up. You said parents should do
whatever they had to do to keep the family together until the
kids were old enough to make it on their own.”
“Yeah, that was what I expected of everyone else, but not
myself.” Even her daughter didn’t know she had given up on
that particular principle. “The irony is that Mike and I had been
separated for four months when he died. He didn’t care whether
he was married or not and he certainly didn’t care about me.
He had already signed papers giving me physical custody of Eva.
His mother was the only one who knew and she threatened to
tie up Eva’s trust if I took her away from San Simeon before she
finished college.”
“Just like she threatened you when she learned you were
pregnant.”
“Exactly.” And all of her friends in Monterey, but Claudia
had never told Leo that part. She would have wanted to fight
and there was no beating Marjorie Pettigrew. “But I couldn’t risk
giving Marjorie any ammunition. Besides, I considered moving
back up this way when Eva started at Stanford, but then Mom
died that year and I didn’t want to leave my dad alone.”
Leo flashed a gentle, poignant smile.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.” She kicked at Leo’s foot. “What was that look
for?”“I was just thinking how so many of the decisions you’ve
made have been for other people. I wish you had made one for
me…or rather for us.”
The words stung, but Claudia had no comeback. It was
undeniable that she had forced Leo to share her sacrifice.
“I didn’t say that to be cruel, Claudia. I know it’s pretty selfish
of me to feel that way, but I’ve always wished things had been
different.”
“It isn’t selfish to want love, Leo. What was it you said last
night? We can’t change the past. All we can do is go forward.”
“I’ve beaten myself up with what-ifs.” She dropped her head
in her hands and groaned with unrestrained frustration. “You
can’t imagine how many times I dreamed about you coming
back. I’d sit out on the porch and watch every damn sports car
that came down the road, hoping it would be you.”
Claudia moved to the space beside her and put a hand on
her back. They had to get past the old hurts before they could
look ahead. “I did the same thing, Leo. I drove by your house at
least a dozen times. Every time I’d see a car parked in your spot,
I’d get a rush out of knowing you were just on the other side of
that door. It was so tempting to stop just so I could see your face
again.”
“You should have.”
“I drove by one time and saw Patty on the porch. Maria said
you were with her for a long time…until what? Just a couple of
years ago?” That news had made her burn with envy. “I have to
admit I was surprised. I couldn’t really picture the two of you
together.”
Leo folded her arms across her chest in an obviously defensive
pose. “We were there for each other when it mattered. I can’t say
that about everybody.”
Claudia couldn’t help but squirm as she noted Leo’s accusatory
look. “I didn’t mean to say anything bad about her, ju
st that your
personalities didn’t seem to fit like that.”
She relaxed visibly, dropping her elbows to her knees as she
leaned forward. “Joyce left her for somebody at work. Kind of
tough on the old self-esteem, if you know what I mean. After a
couple of years I started making her do things with me because I
was worried about her, and the rest of it just happened out of the
blue. We never lived together though. In fact, when we stopped
being lovers about seven years ago, nobody noticed because we
stayed friends. People probably wouldn’t have known at all if
Patty hadn’t started seeing somebody else.”
“Were you in love with her?”
Leo frowned and Claudia thought she had her answer.
Realizing now that Leo hadn’t been involved with Patty all these
years made her want to kick herself. She would have called years
ago.“I loved her and I always will, but I don’t think either of us
was ever in love. It’s hard to have a life with one person when
you’re still in love with someone else.”
The words resounded between them like wind through the
room. “All this time?”
“Nobody was ever going to measure up to you, Claudia. We
were lovers for three days so all my memories of you are perfect.”
She rose abruptly and started to pace the small living room. “We
were young, everything was new and we made love like a house
on fire. We never fought or even had to deal with each other on
a bad day. I was driving home last night and it hit me that if I lost
you again, it would spoil the way I’ve always thought about us.”
Panic gripped her as she saw Leo’s agitation rise and she
stood for a face-off. She couldn’t let Leo back away now that
they were free to be together. “Are you telling me you’d rather
have a perfect memory than a future that might have ups and
downs? Because that’s some serious bullshit, Leo. I don’t know
who taught you about love, but it doesn’t mean you get to be
happy all the time.”
“Nobody knows that better than I do,” Leo said defiantly, her
eyes smoldering with resentment. “Because everything I know
about love I learned from you.”
“If you learned it from me then it’s still there, and it’s as
strong as it ever was.”
Leo’s fiery gaze suddenly softened and she closed the distance
between them.
