Sam was still up when he got there, and he was playing with the guinea pig in the kitchen, as Oliver walked in looking as though he'd been run over on the Santa Monica Freeway.
“Hi, Dad.” He looked up with a grin and then stopped, forgetting the guinea pig for once. “What's wrong?”
“Nothing. I had a terrible day at the office. I'm going to bed.” He ruffled Sam's hair and went straight up to his room, without saying another word. And Sam ran right up to his sister's bedroom, with a look of terror.
“Something's wrong with Dad!” he reported. “He just came home and he was green.”
“Maybe he's sick. Did you ask him what was wrong?”
“He just said he had a bad day at the office.”
“Maybe he did. Why don't you just relax and leave him alone? He'll probably be fine in the morning.”
But the next morning he wasn't. They all noticed it. He was quiet and pale, and he didn't say a word. He came down late, and he didn't touch his eggs, as Sam looked pointedly at his sister.
“You sick, Dad?” She tried to sound casual. And without meaning to, Sam hit the nail on the head. His father almost flinched at the boy's words.
“You have a fight with Charlie last night?”
“No, of course not.” But she hadn't called after he'd left, and he hadn't been able to sleep all night. The terror of losing her was more than he could bear. And at what price. He loved her too much to try to hang on to something he could never have, just as he had discovered he had never really had Sarah.
He left for the office that morning feeling like a zombie, and he almost shuddered when his secretary told him that afternoon that Charlotte was waiting in his outer office. Suddenly he was afraid to let her in, afraid to see her, afraid to hear what she was going to tell him. He felt trapped when the secretary let her in with a look of awe, and he didn't stand up because suddenly his legs didn't feel strong enough to hold him.
“Are you okay?” Charlie looked at him worriedly, and walked slowly toward the desk, her eyes gripping his, her face pale, but no paler than Ollie's.
“You've made a decision, haven't you?”
She nodded, and slumped in the chair across his desk. “I had to come now. It's going to be on the news at six o'clock. The producers of the play made a deal with the network, and they've agreed to write me out of the show by Christmas.” … Christmas … their wedding day … almost.
“And you'll do the play?” He could hardly force the words out.
She nodded slowly, with a look of tension in her eyes. “I guess so.” And then reaching out and taking both his hands in her own, she begged him, “Can't we work this out? Can't we at least try a compromise? I love you. Nothing has changed.” She looked desperate, but Ollie knew better.
“Not now maybe. Not yet. But eventually, it'll just be too much. We'll be strangers. You'll live in New York, with your own life, your play. I'll be here, with my job and the children. What kind of life is that?”
“Difficult, challenging, but worthwhile. Other people have done it and survived. Ollie, I swear I'll do all the commuting.”
“How? You have two days off. One day to fly here, one day to go back. What does that leave us? A night at the airport? How long do you think that would last?” He stood up finally, and walked around the desk to face her. “You've made the right choice. You're a talented woman, Charlotte. You have a right to the best.”
“But I love you.”
“I love you too. But I can't make something work that isn't going to. I've learned that lesson before. The hard way' The scars were too deep, the pain too great, and as he looked at the woman he loved, he knew he had already lost her.
“What happens now?” She looked broken, but she didn't fight him.
“We hurt for a while. We both grow up. We go on. You have your work. I have my kids. We take comfort from that, and eventually it stops hurting.” Like it had with Sarah. It had only taken a year of constant agony. Only that. And the prospect of losing Charlotte seemed worse somehow, they had had so much hope and joy and love, so many plans, and now it was over.
“You make it sound awfully simple, Ollie.” She looked at him with grief-stricken eyes, and he gently reached out and took her hands in his own.
“That's the only trouble. It isn't.”
She left his office a few minutes later in tears, and he poured himself a stiff drink at the bar before going home, to find Aggie and Sam watching the news as they fed Alex dinner. The announcer was just telling greater L.A. that there was a rumor that Charlotte Sampson was leaving her show and going to New York to be in a play on Broadway.
Sam laughed out loud, as Aggie handed the baby another cookie. “That's dumb, isn't it, Dad? Charlie's not going to New York. She's staying here, and we're getting married.” He looked up at his father with a broad smile, and suddenly his face froze. Ollie looked glazed as he turned from the TV to Sam and shook his head, as though in a stupor.
“No. I don't think so, Son. She's had a very good offer to do an important play. It means a lot to her, Sam.” Aggie and the boy both stared at him, as Benjamin let himself into the kitchen and saw the drama unfolding, without knowing what had caused it. Alex let out a squeal and reached chubby arms up to his father, but for once, no one seemed to hear him.
“Are we going back to New York, too, Dad?” Sam looked both frightened and hopeful, but his father shook his head, feeling as though he had aged a hundred years in a single day.
“We can't, Sam. You're all in school here. And I have an office to run. I can't just pull up stakes and move once a year.”
“But don't you want to?” Sam couldn't understand what had happened. But for that matter, neither could Ollie.
“Yes, I do. But I also don't want to interfere in someone else's life. She has her own life to lead, and we have ours.”
There was a moment's silence, and then Sam nodded, quietly wiping a tear from his cheek as Benjamin and his father watched him. “Kind of like Mom, huh?”
“Kind of.”
Sam nodded and left the room, as Benjamin gently touched his father's arm, and Aggie took Alex out of the high chair and took him with her to check on Sam. It was easy to figure out that hard times had struck again, and Sam was going to take it hard. He had been crazy about Charlotte. But then again, so had his father.
“Is there anything I can do, Dad?” Benjamin asked quietly, touched by the look of grief in Ollie's eyes. But Oliver only shook his head, squeezed Benjamin's arm, and went upstairs to his own room. He lay on his bed thinking of her all that night, and he felt as though he'd been beaten in a bar brawl by morning.
It wasn't fair that it was happening to him again. It wasn't fair that he was losing her. As he lay in bed alone, he wanted to hate her, but he couldn't. He loved her too much, and the irony of it struck him with full force again in the morning, after a sleepless night, as he threw out the brochures of Bora Bora. He had a knack for falling in love with women who wanted more out of life than just plain marriage. He couldn't imagine ever loving anyone again. And as he stared out the window, thinking of her, he couldn't hold back the tears. He wanted her desperately, but he knew it would never work. He had to let her go, no matter how painful it was to break the bonds that had held him.
He wanted to call her all day, but he forced himself not to. The papers were full of her that day, and for several days, but she never called him. And it was Thanksgiving before he could hear her name without flinching. He longed for her to leave for New York so he wouldn't be tempted to drive by her house, or stop by the studio to see her. She would be gone, to another life, far from his own. Forever.
Chapter 29
The day before Thanksgiving, Sarah arrived to take Mel and Sam to San Francisco with her to see friends. She had even agreed to take Aggie and Alex, and Benjamin was going to get in some early skiing at Squaw Valley. Sarah had finished her book a few weeks before, and Oliver thought she looked well. The odd thing was that when he kissed her on the chee
k, she felt like a stranger. He never longed for her anymore, and now her perfume was an unfamiliar smell. The woman who haunted his dreams at night was Charlie. His heart still ached each time she came to mind or he saw her name in the papers.
“When are you getting married, Ollie?” Sarah asked as she held Alex on her knee the morning they left, and Oliver looked startled.
“I thought the children would have told you.” His voice was tense and quiet.
“Told me what?” She seemed surprised, as the baby drooled happily all over her clean shirt. Aggie had gone to get the children's things, and Sarah was waiting in the kitchen.
“Charlotte's doing a Broadway play. She should be leaving pretty soon, in fact. And, well … we decided that was a better move for her than marriage.” He smiled gamely, but Sarah wasn't fooled. She knew him too well. And she felt desperately sorry for the pain she knew he felt. It was different from what she had gone through with Jean-Pierre, but loss of any kind was painful. “Guess I just have a knack for falling for that kind of lady. The smart ones with ambitions of their own.”
“You'll find the right one, one of these days, Ollie, you deserve to.” And she really meant it.
“I'm not sure I'd have time for her, if I did,” he smiled to hide his sorrow, glancing at Alex, “this guy keeps us all on our toes all the time.” Benjamin took him from his mother then, and took him out to the car to put him in his car seat in Sarah's rented Pontiac wagon. He hated to leave the baby at all, but Oliver had insisted that the skiing would do him good. And he himself was happy that Sarah was taking the children. The punch of losing Charlie was still too great and Oliver felt anything but festive.
Sarah and the younger children left a little while later, and Benjamin's friends picked him up only moments later. Ollie was alone in the house, trying to get through a stack of bills and mail. It seemed strangely silent, and as Ollie leaned back in his chair, he sighed, as though trying to decide if he liked it. Too quickly, he found himself thinking of Charlie again, and even Sarah. He wondered if things could ever have been different, with either of them, but deep in his heart, he knew they couldn't. Maybe if they'd done things differently at first, Sarah wouldn't have bolted later, he thought to himself as he sat back at his desk, and then realized it was a foolish thought. She would have done what she'd done anyway. She was meant to be free, and live alone, and write her novels. As Charlie was, with her Broadway play. Megan, in her penthouse in New York. And even Daphne, with the man who would never leave his wife in Greenwich.
It only irked him that Charlie had made such an issue about marriage and children and “real life” being so important to her, and then in the end, she had made the same choices as the rest. Independence. Her play, New York. With a promise to commute that would never have happened, no matter how good her intentions.
It was late that afternoon before he left his desk again, and went to make himself a sandwich. And then he saw her standing there, hesitating, near her car in the driveway. It was Charlie, he realized, in a T-shirt and jeans, with her hair in the familiar pigtails that made her look more like one of Mel's friends, than the woman who had broken his heart and their engagement. She stood there for a long time, staring at him through the window, and he didn't know whether to open the door to her or not. He thought it was cruel of her to come to say good-bye if she had. And then finally, unable to resist the pull he still felt for her, he walked to the door and pulled it slowly open. And she walked up to him looking very nervous.
“I didn't know if you'd be here or not. … I was going to leave you a note …” He saw she held it in her hand, but he didn't want to read it. “I guess I should have called before I came by.”
“Mailing it might have been a lot simpler.” He had nothing left to say to her now. He had said it all. And cried too often.
She looked beyond him then, into the kitchen, as though hoping to see the children but the room was empty and silent.
“How is everyone?” Her eyes sought his, and he nodded, still wondering why she had come.
“Okay.”
“I still miss them,” she admitted, looking sad and feeling guilty. She had never come by to explain any of it to them. She knew it would have been too painful.
“They miss you too.”
“How's the baby?”
“Fine.” Ollie smiled. “Benjamin is great with him.”
“Where are they all?”
“Away for Thanksgiving.” For a mad moment, he wanted to invite her in, but that wouldn't get them anywhere except straight into more pain. And then, with a shrug, he stepped back, and waved her in. “Do you want to come in for a minute?”
She nodded and followed him into the kitchen, thinking how handsome he was, and how much she still loved him. She looked around and slipped the note she had brought back in her pocket.
“When do you leave for New York?”
She seemed to hesitate, as though she wasn't sure what to say to him. She knew how badly she had hurt him, and there was no way to repair it. And now there was so much to explain. She didn't know where to start, or even if she should, as he watched her. “That's a long story.”
“You must be excited.” He tried to keep his voice noncommittal, but it wasn't. In it were anger and grief and hurt and the love for her that wouldn't go away, no matter how hard he had tried to kill it.
“A lot's been happening,” she tried to explain. The last few weeks had been hell for her, but she didn't tell him that. She could see in his eyes that it was too late. She had been foolish to come, and now she knew it.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” he offered. Part of him wanted her to leave, so he could be alone with his grief again, but part of him wanted her to stay. Forever.
She looked at him long and hard, and despite the pigtails, her eyes said she was not a girl, but a woman. They were the eyes of someone who had paid a price for what she'd done. And then she spoke very softly. “I'm not going to Broadway, Ollie.”
“You're not?” He looked thunderstruck. What the hell did she mean? She had told him. And after that he had seen it on the news and read it in the papers. What had changed? And when and why?
“No, I'm not. I'm staying with the show here.”
“Wouldn't they let you out of your contract?”
“They would have, but …” He waited, stunned, for the rest of the story. “I decided it was wrong to go.”
“For your career?” It was barely a whisper.
“For us. Although I guess it's too late now. But it was the wrong thing to do and I finally understood that. I kept talking about how much marriage and family meant to me, and then I was willing to dump every-thing and run, no matter how much it hurt all of us, you, and me, and the children.
“It was the wrong thing to do. It was too high a price to pay for giving up someone I loved, no matter how much I thought I wanted to do it. It wasn't right, so I turned it down. And even if I don't get any of you back, turning them down was the right thing to do.” She smiled a bittersweet smile. “I felt better as soon as I did it.”
Oliver looked stunned as he looked at her, and then he grinned. “They must have been furious.”
“Yeah,” she smiled. “That's the end of Broadway, I guess. But the network loves me.” And then, “I was afraid to call you, Ollie.”
“Why?”
“Because I hurt you so much. One minute I leave you to go to New York, and the next minute I come back and tell you everything's okay. I couldn't do that to you. That's what the note is about. I thought I'd let you know before you read about it somewhere, and I figured if you wanted to get in touch with me, you would. But I didn't really think you'd want to.” She looked as though she expected nothing more from him, but would regret what she'd done till her dying day. And then, to lighten the moment as he absorbed it, she looked around the kitchen for Charlie's cage. “How's my namesake, by the way?” The guinea pig was nowhere to be seen, and Ollie grinned at her, feeling a ten-thousand-pound weight lift fr
om his shoulders.
“He's relegated to the garage in Sam's absence, the noisy little bastard. I have enough trouble sleeping at night, without listening to him play.”
She looked more than a little apologetic. “I haven't been sleeping all that well either. I really screwed things up royally, Ollie, didn't I?” Her voice was soft and sad as he nodded.
“Could be.” He smiled slowly at her. “Maybe … maybe not. It's what you do in the end, that counts in life. We all stumble along the way.” They were still standing awkwardly in the kitchen, their lives in the balance, their eyes full of fear and pain and tension. They had so much to lose … and so much to gain, depending on what he did now.
“I've missed you, Ollie. I'm going to miss you for a long, long time if you don't forgive me.” She loved him enough to come back and ask him to forgive her. “Every day I wanted to call you … to come over … to tell you I was sorry … what a total fool I was … how wrong I was to think that the play on Broadway mattered more than you did. It was a stinking decision to make, even if I came to my senses in the end.”
“But it was honest,” he defended her, “it was what you'd always wanted. You had a right to that, Charlie.”
“I wanted you more. I just didn't know it for sure till I lost you. And then it was too late.” His eyes told her that it was, and she was sorry she had come then, but he was moving slowly toward her with an odd look on his face.
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