Golden Vows

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Amanda nodded. “The Reichmann account, I imagine. I know he was completing the scale models for that hotel chain. Just think, one day we’ll walk into a hotel in another country and recognize Dane as the architect. Won’t that be marvelous?”

  “For some of us.”

  “Martha, please. Just because Dane and I aren’t together anymore….” She had to stop and swallow again—hard. “I’ll always be very proud of him.”

  Martha gave an audible sniff. “You once said you’d always love him.”

  How could she answer that? “I know,” she said quietly. “I know.”

  “Let’s eat.” Martha rolled to her feet and walked to the doorway with a cursory glance at Amanda. “We’re having Chinese tonight. Stringy vegetables with globs of rice and Lord only knows what else. I made the mistake of letting Mr. MacGregor buy a wok, and he’s starving me to death.

  Amanda’s gaze followed her hostess from the room, but her mind was a little slow to catch up. The change of topic had been deliberate, of course. Martha was never subtle, but she had a way of making her point. With a shake of her head Amanda rose and started toward the dining room. Dane was in her thoughts now, as he hadn’t been before. His absence was an empty feeling that surrounded her and would almost certainly linger for the rest of the evening.

  Martha. You couldn’t trust her for a minute.

  As Amanda entered the room and seated herself, Martha smiled complacently. She waited a moment before bracing her hands on either side of her plate and challenging the burly man standing beside her. “All right, Mr. MacGregor, bring it on.”

  “With chopsticks or without?” he asked with brusque amusement.

  “Without, you sorry excuse for a cook!”

  Not by the blink of an eye did he let Martha intimidate him as he turned to Amanda with a wide grin. “You’ll like supper, Amanda. I know you appreciate fine cuisine.”

  Martha leaned close to rasp a whisper. “Don’t you dare encourage him. He’s unbearable as it is. I don’t know why I keep him around.”

  That was something Amanda had often wondered herself. She lifted a finger to her lips to quell their tendency to smile and remembered the first time she’d met Mr. MacGregor. He had just been there one day, acting as chef, butler, gardener, and generally aggravating Martha. There had been no explanations, only a brief introduction, and after that he was simply a member of the household.

  Even now Amanda had no idea if he had a first name other than Mister.

  She liked him, liked the crusty way he talked and the faded blue of his eyes. And she liked the way he handled Martha. Amanda’s curiosity had pushed forth a dozen possible definitions of the relationship, but none of them seemed to fit. She remembered asking Dane what he thought.

  “Well, if you want my opinion,” he’d replied with a slyly suspicious arching of his brow. “I suspect that Martha and MacGregor are living in sin.”

  Amanda had gasped in shocked surprise. “You don’t mean—!”

  “Yes.” Dane had frowned in mocking sobriety. “I suspect they are carrying on right in this very house. And you know what else, Amanda?”

  “What?” She had practically fallen off her chair waiting for him to continue.

  “It’s none of our business.”

  Of course, it hadn’t been then and it wasn’t now. There had never been an iota of evidence to support the idea. But there had been none to discredit the possibility either. And she did wonder....

  She let her lips tip up at the corners and wished Dane were here to speculate with her again.

  “See, Amanda? What did I tell you?” Martha gave a disparaging look at the food being placed on the table. “It’s a miracle that I haven’t gotten sick eating all this health food.”

  “You’re never sick, Martha.” Amanda thought the food looked appetizing and smelled even better. “It must be all those vitamins you take.”

  “Vitamins?” Martha grumbled as she ladled extremely healthy portions onto her own and Amanda’s plates. “It’s good, clean living. That’s what it is.”

  Amanda couldn’t resist the laughter that welled in her throat and her gaze automatically crossed the table to share.

  Loneliness closed around her like a cold December day. Dane should be there and he wasn’t. She should be looking into brown eyes spiced with laughter and she was staring at an empty chair.

  Oh, Dane.

  Her heart twisted with missing him.

  Dinner passed in a superficial haze of conversation. Martha talked about something, but Amanda didn’t really pay much attention. She supposed she made the proper responses, smiled at the right times, but her mind was caught in a tide of memories that ebbed and flowed through her consciousness. A reminder of Dane called to her from every corner of the room and superseded Martha’s words to plunge deep into the past and reminisce.

  Images bathed in the perspective of time; glimpses of moments, indistinct in their importance except for the quiet pleasure they evoked. Dane, captured in a heartbeat, for her own private portfolio. How strange that she had fought these memories, chased them from her whenever they appeared. Yet now, unexpectedly, to the accompaniment of a mundane conversation, she welcomed that which she had forbidden herself to recall.

  She felt warmed by her thoughts of Dane and curiously comforted by the admission that she missed him. Even when she followed Martha into the front room again and resumed her place on the sofa, Amanda let the memories drift at will.

  Was it a good sign? Was her heart finally accepting the past, both painful and sweet? Would there be times, like now, when she could wrap herself in memories and not be afraid?

  She sipped at the coffee Martha had so thoughtfully provided and was grateful for the companionable silence. Perhaps she was entering a new phase of healing. Perhaps this was a natural progression of emotion. Perhaps one day she really would feel whole again.

  “You’re very quiet tonight.” Martha set the rocker into a gentle, mesmerizing motion. “Would you like to tell me where your thoughts have been all evening?”

  Amanda let her lips slant in a fleeting confession. “I’m sorry. I suppose I haven’t been very good company, have I?”

  “The nice thing about family is that you don’t have to pretend. I may not be your blood kin, Amanda, but we’re family just the same. The first time I saw Dane when he was just a tow-headed, obstinate little boy, I knew he belonged to me in a special way. And I knew when he brought you to meet me that you belonged too. Children of my heart, Amanda. That’s how I feel about you and Dane.” Martha curved thick fingers around the arms of the rocker and pinched her mouth tightly over her emotions. “I hurt for you,” she said after a moment. “For both of you.”

  The bittersweet reminiscing slipped from her grasp and Amanda faced numbing reality again. “I know, Martha. I just don’t know what to say, except that I believe the hard part is over. From now on it’s just a matter of adjustment.”

  “Adjustment.” Martha repeated the word with a shake of her head. Her green eyes assessed Amanda and looked away as if to conceal her skepticism. “Do you still love him, Amanda?”

  Amanda’s hand jerked slightly and coffee sloshed to the edge of the cup and splashed onto her skirt. In a sort of panicky indecision she grabbed a napkin and dabbed at the stain, but her efforts were as futile as her wish to escape an answer to the question.

  Slowly she laid the napkin aside and raised uncertain blue eyes to Martha. “I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “How can I deny something that has been a part of me for so long? How can I say I don’t love him anymore when something inside me aches with the very thought of him? We shared some exquisite moments, a thousand intimate details of life. We had a son.” She closed her eyes against the memory and released her emotion on a sigh. “Yes, I still love Dane. But, Martha, I just don’t have the will to love him anymore.”

  “Amanda, I....” The desire to understand glistened in her eyes as Martha searched for something to say. The shri
ll tone of the telephone jarred the silence once and then again before Martha rose to answer. With her hand on the receiver she turned to Amanda. “This will be Dane,” she said evenly. “He calls every night to check on me.”

  The phone rang again and Martha lifted it to her ear. “Hello? ... Yes, Dane.... Yes, fine. We’re all fine. Have you eaten? ... Well, you should be glad you weren’t here to see what Mr. MacGregor tried to pass off as dinner. I could hardly swallow a bite….”

  Amanda concealed her acute interest in eavesdropping by turning her head and pretending to study a speck of dust on the coffee table. She knew her every movement was watched and evaluated by Martha, but it didn’t really matter. The rapid flutter of her pulse and the stirring of excitement within her could be hidden from view, but Amanda knew and recognized their import.

  Dane was near. She could feel his presence, knew the husky resonance of his voice was only an insignificant distance from her ear. In her imagination she crossed the room and took the phone from Martha’s hand. Dane? This is Amanda, she would say as if he wouldn’t know. How are you? Are you at the office or at home?

  No, she shouldn’t mention home. That was too intimate ... too much “theirs.”

  I’ve redecorated the cottage. You should come to see it.

  But he wouldn’t.

  Do you go out much? Do you ever see any of our old friends?

  She couldn’t just casually toss that into the conversation.

  Have you been sailing, Dane? It’s beautiful weather for sailing, isn’t it?

  No, too impersonal.

  Dane? You’ve been in my thoughts all evening. I miss you.

  No. No, she couldn’t say something so revealing ... so personal ... so inadequate.

  Amanda licked dry lips at the realization that there was nothing to say after she said hello. More than anything, at the moment, she wanted to hear his voice. But then what? Awkward silence? Or, worse, a forced effort to keep the tone of the conversation friendly?

  With grudging acceptance she picked up the threads of Martha’s chatter, knowing that eavesdropping was as close as Dane would be to her tonight.

  “You know better than that, Dane Cameron Maxwell.” Martha punctuated the words with a scolding click of her tongue. “I do not exaggerate and I never lie. She’s too thin and I know she’s not sleeping well.”

  Amanda froze to attention as she realized they were talking about her. Tilting her chin at an indignant angle, she turned to give Martha a warning glare which was, of course, totally ineffective.

  “It doesn’t matter how I know,” Martha stated crossly to the telephone receiver. “If you saw her, you’d see for yourself—” The pause stretched unbearably and Amanda alternated between feeling irritated at being the object of discussion and feeling oddly pleased that Dane would even ask about her. “Why don’t you ask her?” Martha said. “She’s right here.”

  Like the last leaf of autumn, Amanda hung suspended, waiting, hoping for the chance to hear his voice once more. She composed her eagerness into a questioning frown and looked helplessly at Martha.

  Dane’s answer appeared first as disappointment in Martha’s green eyes and then as cool disapproval in her voice.

  “You must do what you think best, I suppose. But you might at least listen to my advice once in a while. It couldn’t do any harm to talk to her. All right, all right, I’ll mind my own business, but you’re making a big mistake.”

  Amanda’s eagerness vanished beneath a wave of distressingly unsatisfying rationale. Dane didn’t want to speak to her. He didn’t need to hear her voice. He probably didn’t miss her at all. And that was good, she told herself firmly. She didn’t want him to feel responsible for her or to cling to the past. It was better not to talk with him, of course. He’d realized that right away, even if she hadn’t. But she couldn’t remain in the room while he and Martha sparred over her well-being.

  Amanda rose and walked sedately toward the door, although she wanted to run from the room. She even managed a half-smile when Martha motioned for her to stop.

  With a shake of her head Amanda mouthed a “see you later” and lifted her hand in good-bye. She heard Martha’s gruff, “Now, see what you’ve done? She’s left.”

  Amanda pulled the front door closed behind her and stepped into the twilight.

  It was soothing, this indigo evening. Quiet and restful and nice. She could bathe in its stillness, absorb the night sounds, and cover the noisy clutter inside her. By the time she reached home she could be as calm and composed as she had tried to convince Martha she was. She could be ready for a deep, tranquil sleep.

  Could.

  An elusive word with an indefinite meaning. Of course, she could do all those things if only she hadn’t gone to Martha’s for dinner. She could if only she hadn’t let the memories take hold. She could if only she had never met Dane.

  Her heart recoiled from the thought. How could she even think such a thing?

  Not ever knowing Dane? Never experiencing the sweet ecstasy of seeing his smile and knowing it was only for her? Never knowing the challenge of his mind or the charm of his laughter or the magic of his lovemaking?

  No, she didn’t, couldn’t wish they had never met. She couldn’t begrudge herself the experience of loving someone so completely. Their marriage had been good, once, and she knew she would live through it all again if given the opportunity.

  Amanda slowed her steps. That wasn’t true either. She would gladly live through the good times, but under no circumstances would she repeat the last few months. She was never going to hurt like that again. Never.

  With the force of a hundred regrets the memories returned. But this time Amanda found no comfort, no pleasure in remembering. Bit by bit the uprooting of her life with Dane came into focus. The first time he’d gone on a weekend business trip and had forgotten to call her. The first time he’d spoken affectionately of a friend whose name she didn’t recognize. The first time he’d locked himself in the study and then gone on to bed without even saying goodnight.

  Courtesies thoughtlessly neglected, little hurts that went unspoken and unresolved. A gradual undermining of the love that bound them together in understanding. And she had ignored the signs of trouble, pretended that the only problem they faced was conceiving a child.

  Amanda tried to stop the memory. She tried to concentrate on the rustling sounds of approaching night, on the full moon just coming into its own as the sunlight faded across the horizon. But she heard the plaintive song of the whippoorwill and she remembered....

  She had always wanted children and hadn’t considered that wanting didn’t necessarily fulfill the desires of the heart. Dane had said he wanted children, too, but he thought they should wait. “We’ve been married only two years,” he had reasoned with her. “You’ve just begun your career. Let’s wait a little longer.”

  But she had known he didn’t really mean it; he just didn’t understand how a baby would enrich their marriage. She had known, though, and she hadn’t hesitated to cajole him into agreement. It hadn’t taken long to convince him or to convince herself that he was as happy with the decision as she.

  Amanda kicked blindly at a tuft of grass in her path. Oh, she had thought she knew all the answers then. Everything was just the way she wanted, all was right with her world. She and Dane shared something special, something out of the ordinary, and a baby would be a culmination of that, a fulfillment of their love for each other.

  In her mind it had all been so simple, but it hadn’t been simple at all.

  Like the changing seasons she had changed, and with each barren month came impatience and frustration and a deepening of the insatiable yearning within her. Dane had been understanding at first. He had comforted her, reassured her, sympathized with her during the endless medical tests. He had teased her out of melancholy and made her hope again. He had bribed her laughter with gifts and extra attention. But after a while she couldn’t be reassured or teased or bribed and he gradually stopped tryi
ng.

  It had been fatally easy to misinterpret those early signs of resentment. She had told herself that because he was a man he couldn’t really identify with her desperate longing to bear his child. How could he truly understand that a baby, their baby, would be worth all the waiting and the frustrating disappointment they were facing? She had been foolishly, naively confident that everything would be all right again ... just as soon as she became pregnant.

  The cottage came into view as a welcome interruption to the memories. Amanda opened the door but didn’t go inside. Instead, she lingered on the porch, consciously placing her fingers on the railing where she had last seen Dane rest his hand.

  She had wished many times that she could go back and erase the mistakes she’d made. If she had only realized then that they needed to talk about their feelings openly and honestly. But the prospect of never being able to give him a child frightened her, made her feel less of a woman, and she couldn’t admit that ... not even to him. So she pretended there was nothing wrong, that the widening gap between them wasn’t really there.

  A heavy sigh wafted from her throat into the night air as Amanda leaned against the railing. Now she realized how blind she had been. Too obsessed with her desire for motherhood to realize that she was losing Dane.

  It was hard to admit that she had been wrong about his feelings from the beginning, but Amanda knew that must have been the case. Dane hadn’t really wanted the baby. Oh, she had no doubts that he would have been a loving, responsible father. But he hadn’t really wanted or needed the role of parent. And in the end he had gotten his wish.

  Somehow that realization hurt more now than it had at the time, but in light of everything that had happened, she couldn’t put any other interpretation on it. Dane had resented her longing to become pregnant; he had resented the pregnancy and he had left her to face alone the miracle of birth and the devastation of....

  Amanda straightened abruptly. Enough. Her dreams were too often full of that nightmarish pain. She would not consciously remember it now. She had made a promise to put the past into perspective and get on with living. And she would do it, one day, one moment at a time.