First Things First

by Barbara Delinsky

  So she quickly dressed and ran to the post office, to pick up her mail and arrange to have its delivery resumed; the supermarket, to restock her empty refrigerator; the bank, to withdraw what she’d deposited of Beatrice London’s retainer. The only part of the money she’d keep, she decided, was what she’d already spent on the trip. That seemed fair. As for the rest, it was tainted. After what Sam had said, she knew she’d feel dirty until she’d returned every remaining cent. The sooner she got it out of her possession, the better.

  Determinedly, she put in a call to the Wellesley Hills estate as soon as she returned to her apartment. Beatrice London, quite appropriately, was at work. So she looked up the number of the London Corporation and dialed, only to learn that the woman was in conference and would have to get back to her.

  Frustrated, Chelsea hung up the phone. She stowed the food she’d bought in the refrigerator and thumbed through the mail that had collected during her absence. It was small solace to find a letter of acceptance into the doctoral program at Boston University; she wouldn’t be going this fall, that was for sure.

  Tossing the rest of the mail impatiently onto the table, she paced her apartment, glaring at the phone each time she passed it, willing Beatrice London to call her back. She knew that she’d never be able to think about resuming her own work until this last bit of business had been cleaned up, and in the meanwhile she was restless and distressed.

  Her apartment was home, but it wasn’t. It was empty. She was empty. She felt lost, at loose ends and oh, so weary. She had to do something. She had to keep busy.

  But still she waited on Beatrice London’s call.

  At long last she sank onto the sofa and, in an attempt to curb the self-pity that shadowed her, took stock of exactly where she was and what she had in life. She had her apartment here in Cambridge, with its relatively reasonable rent. She had a business that only awaited her go-ahead to spring back to life. At Icabod’s she had a friend in her boss, who’d told her she’d have a job if she wanted it. She even had the admission letter from BU, an admission that she was sure could be deferred for a while. It was even remotely possible that, given the nature of the work she’d been doing for the past six years, the proper university personnel might be able to arrange for some kind of fellowship to see her through. And if that didn’t happen, she would continue on as she’d been doing before that fateful June day when she’d been summoned to Wellesley Hills. She’d work, save, and eventually get to grad school as she’d planned.

  So what had she lost? One month … and a hefty chunk of her heart. Her eyes watered again. She missed Sam so! It was bad enough today not waking to his commanding presence, not talking with him, not helping him work. But thought of the days and weeks and months to come without seeing him, without feeling his arms around her and knowing his warmth and caring and the kind of gentle protectiveness he’d shown her … made her feel hollow and positively destitute.

  The phone rang and she jumped. Dashing the tears from her cheeks, she ran to the kitchen and snatched up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Miss Ross. This is Beatrice London.” The tone was colder, more imperious than ever. “I understand you called me.”

  Chelsea pressed her fingers into the folds of her skirt. “Yes. I’d like to meet with you as soon as possible.”

  “And I you, Miss Ross,” the other woman stated indignantly. “My office is at One Boston Place. Be here in half an hour.”

  “That’s fine,” Chelsea answered boldly. If Beatrice London was angry about something—presumably that Chelsea was back and Sam wasn’t—she was no less so. Without another word, she hung up the phone, picked up her purse and headed for the subway.

  She walked at what seemed to her a clipped pace, though it was no faster than everyone around her was walking. She assumed she was simply used to the more casual pace of Mexico, and when that thought brought a hard lump to her throat, she forced herself to swallow. Gritting her teeth, she focused on her upcoming meeting with Mrs. London.

  By the time she emerged from the subway in Government Center and headed down State Street to One Boston Place, she was incensed. She’d told Beatrice London that Sam was a grown man and had a right to make decisions for himself. What right did the woman have in meddling? Didn’t she realize that it was her interference that had alienated Sam in the first place? How could she continue to make him miserable? He’d done nothing to deserve it, nothing at all!

  While the elevator carried her to the thirtieth floor, Chelsea took deep breaths to calm herself. Beatrice London was no longer a client, but there was still some propriety to be observed. The last thing Chelsea wanted was to show that she’d been out of her league this time around.

  Walking straight and tall, she approached the receptionist and announced herself. It was exactly half an hour since she’d hung up the phone, but she half suspected Mrs. London would keep her waiting purely as a show of power. When the receptionist immediately directed her through the wide doors and into the inner sanctum of the London Corporation, Chelsea was frankly surprised. But she kept her composure and smoothly glided through the doors and down the corridor until she reached Beatrice London’s secretary.

  “Mrs. London is expecting you,” the young woman said coolly. “Please go in.”

  The door to the office beyond was open, but not for long. Chelsea had no sooner stepped over the threshold than Mrs. London, who was sitting behind the large desk with her elbows on the arms of her high-backed chair, spoke.

  “Close the door, Miss Ross. I don’t care to have my employees hear what I’m about to say.”

  Chelsea closed the door, then turned to face the woman. Beatrice London was as perfectly dressed and coiffed as she’d been at their last meeting, though there was a pinched look around her nose and mouth that spoke of pure anger.

  “Please sit down,” she commanded quietly.

  “I think not,” Chelsea responded, willing herself to appear poised and self-assured—neither of which she was feeling, since the woman before her was thoroughly intimidating. The aura of regality she’d worn that first day had metamorphosed into one of tyranny. Chelsea well understood why for sheer survival Sam had broken free.

  Reaching into her purse, Chelsea drew out the money order she’d had the bank draw up. She’d clipped a list of her expenses behind it. Both she placed on the desk. “Here is the retainer you gave me, less what I spent for plane fare, taxis and car rental. You’ll find a detailed list of those expenses on the second sheet. I want no part of this job, Mrs. London. You’ll have to hire someone else to do your dirty work.”

  Beatrice London’s eyes were hard as charcoal. “It’s a little late for that, Miss Ross. I should be suing you for damages, and I may yet, so if you’ve got your heart set on that graduate degree of yours, perhaps you ought to think again.”

  Chelsea hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t this. “I’m … I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Samuel called me last night, Miss Ross. He was absolutely furious, and, frankly, so am I! I thought I told you that you weren’t to let him know I had any part of this”

  Sam had called? He’d called his mother. It took her a minute to ingest the information. “There were extenuating circumstances,” she offered at last, but her voice sounded decidedly meek, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “I was with Sam for over three weeks. It was only at the end that I felt I had to tell him the truth.”

  “And now the whole thing is ruined,” Mrs. London railed. She sat forward, placing her hands on the desk. Her fingers tightened until her knuckles were white. “Thanks to you, he blames me for everything! There’s no way he’ll return now, and there isn’t a chance in the world that he’ll trust anyone else I might send. You’ve done that, Miss Ross. You’ve made a bad situation even worse!”

  Chelsea didn’t know what to say. “I—I’m sorry. I never intended that.”

  “And just what did you intend, Miss Ross? It appears you m
anaged to get under Samuel’s skin. Did you hope to hook a wealthy man and have your future made?”

  On the one hand Chelsea was appalled by the suggestion. On the other she wanted to laugh. “If you could see the way Sam’s been living, you’d never be saying that. During the time I was with him, it never once occurred to me that he had more, monetarily, than I did.”

  “Then what did occur to you? You were there for three weeks. Were you just vacationing? Along for the ride? It must have become apparent after a time that Samuel didn’t want to come back. Why on earth did you stay after that?”

  Chelsea chose her words with care. With even greater care she struggled to contain her anger. That this woman was making her out to be the villain was incredible! “You hired me to do a job. You told me to take as long as I needed. It wasn’t simply a matter of going down there, telling Sam he ought to come home and expecting he’d comply. At the beginning he wouldn’t talk about it at all. As we got to know each other he opened up more. He has some very strong feelings—”

  “I know that, Miss Ross. I was the one who had to hold the phone a foot away last night while he thundered on. And I’d like to know exactly what you did to make him so angry at me.”

  “I told him that you’d hired me. That was all.”

  “You sided with him, didn’t you? You told him he’d be a fool to come back.”

  “I did not! I’d never have done that! I wanted him back too!”

  “Yes,” the older woman stated, her eyes narrowing. “You wanted the rest of your money.” She sat back suddenly. It was the most abrupt movement Chelsea had seen her make and it said something for her composure. “But now you’ve returned most of what I gave you in the first place, Miss Ross. And I have to ask myself why. The only conclusion I can reach is that you know you’ve done wrong and you’re trying to buy your way free and clear. Is that it, Miss Ross? Are you wallowing in guilt?”

  Any thoughts Chelsea had of remaining composed fled then. Her legs had begun to shake and she was clutching her bag for dear life. She felt that she was raw, and that the odious woman before her was rubbing salt on the wound. “Yes, I feel guilty! But that isn’t why I’m returning your money. I’m returning it because it’s dirty and it makes me feel that way too. No, Mrs. London, I feel guilty because I kept your filthy secret for three long weeks, and during those weeks I fell in love with Sam. It began to gnaw and gnaw at me that he didn’t know everything, because I think he loved me too and still I was keeping things from him. I was frightened of telling him the truth, and rightly so, as it turned out.” She took a shuddering breath. “I think that I hurt Sam very, very badly. That’s what I feel guilty about!”

  Beatrice London stared at her with those coal-dark eyes for a minute. When she spoke, her tone was scathing. “Very touching, Miss Ross. You fell in love with my son. And you thought Samuel loved you? Did you honestly believe that a girl like you could appeal to a man of my son’s station? Did you honestly think it would ever really work?”

  “It was working in Mexico. I hadn’t thought of the future. We both avoided it.”

  “Well. That was intuitive, at least.”

  “Not intuitive,” Chelsea argued, feeling her anger coming to the fore. “It was the way things were down there. We lived day to day, enjoying the present without brooding on the future. At least, it was that way till the end, when both of us began thinking more. I had to get over the hurdle of telling Sam the truth before I could begin to think of a future with him. As for Sam, I honestly think he was beginning to consider coming home.”

  “Until you told him about me.”

  “I told him the simple truth. He was angry, and he stormed off. I love him, and I hurt him, and because of that I’m hurting too. Very badly.”

  “So now you’re back here, with a broken heart. And that’s two of us, Miss Ross. That’s two of us.”

  “No, Mrs. London,” Chelsea stated distinctly. There were several things she wanted to make very clear before she left. “Don’t ever make the mistake of putting us in the same boat. I love Sam, love him with all my heart. I don’t have to love him. He’s not flesh of my flesh. He’s not my ‘responsibility.’ I don’t love him because of what business he’s in or who he knows or because he makes just the right appearance at very proper social functions. I love him because of him, because of the beautiful person he is inside. With every single trapping of civilization stripped away, I love him.”

  She took a quick breath, then raced on. “It really is ironic that you’d suggest I might be after his money. The man you described to me in June, the man I went looking for didn’t appeal to me at all. I didn’t believe Sam was who he said he was at first, because he was different in every conceivable way from what I’d come to expect. And all monetary considerations aside, it’s possible that if he had come back with me, I might have found him to be a very different man from the one I’d fallen in love with.”

  She turned to leave, feeling that if she didn’t soon she was sure to explode. She was so hurt, so angry, so lovesick, so utterly distraught that her nerves were strung tight. She didn’t even care when her eyes flooded with tears. “I want you to know one last thing. Your son happens to be the finest, the warmest, the most caring person I’ve ever met in my life. He’s intelligent and witty. He’s thoughtful and giving. And he’s strong, so much stronger than either you or me, because he was able to see something desperately wrong with his life and take steps to change it. I respect him for that. Respect him, and love him. I’ll always love him, Mrs. London. And I’ll always pray that he finds the peace and happiness he deserves.”

  She was breathless when she finished, and it was all she could do to stumble from the room, run down the corridor, get into the elevator and reach the ground floor before she was reduced to a quivering mass of misery. Getting Beatrice London off her back had been the final severance of her link with Sam. Not that her heart would listen, but her mind did and her body did and she felt bereft.

  Dragging a pair of oversized sunglasses from her purse, she put them on to mask her grief from the world. Then she started walking up over Beacon Hill, down to the Charles and along the river path toward Cambridge. She’d never have dreamed of walking the entire way home, but the thought of being contained in an airless subway car, with people milling about, was anathema to her. And more than anything, she wanted to exhaust herself so that when she finally reached her apartment she’d be numb.

  Which she was. Numb. And tired. She crawled into bed, heedless of the fact that it was early afternoon and that she was still fully dressed. She was hot and sweaty, yet she pulled the sheet to her ears; there was a chill inside her that no amount of heat seemed able to ease.

  She fell asleep for several hours and awoke, if not feeling rested, then at least feeling she’d put some distance between herself and the scene in Beatrice London’s office. Sam was another thing, because she couldn’t put distance between herself and him. She remembered every little thing they’d done together as though it had been yesterday, rather than a week, ten days, two weeks ago. She lay in bed wondering what he was doing at the moment, picturing him at the pueblito working among the men, eating at Tonia’s hut, sleeping in the hammock they’d shared.

  She took the Mayan calendar from her suitcase and fingered it lovingly because Sam had touched it. She looked at her ring and knew she’d never take it off because he had bought it for her and helped design it. She put on the shorts and the “Cancun” T-shirt, and even the styleless underpants he’d picked up at the store in Valladolid.

  And she sat on her bed dressed that way and hugged the round wood carving to her breast while she wept at the knowledge that she couldn’t have Sam, that she’d never have him again.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING she fetched her car from the garage where she’d stored it and drove to New Hampshire to see her parents. She felt a desperate need to go home, to remember all that had been good there, the warmth, the love.

  She hadn’t intended to weigh her par
ents down with her tale of woe, but within hours it was spilling out anyway. She supposed she’d needed to share her heartache with people who cared. That, subsconsciously, this was one of the reasons she’d come. And it helped some, telling her parents how much she loved Sam, feeling their arms around her as she cried, hearing their gentle words of consolation.

  But they had no miracle glue to repair her broken heart. She knew she’d be the only one who could tend to it.

  So, after two days, she returned to Cambridge. She still hurt. Every time she thought of Sam she hurt. But the wound wasn’t quite as raw anymore, so she was able to do what she’d originally intended, to throw herself back into her work, make up for lost time, move on.

  After a handful of phone calls, she had several children to find. With another call, she was back on the payroll at Icabod’s. Her life returned to the pattern she’d known before she’d left for the Yucatán, and she was in demand and busy. And excruciatingly tired.

  She couldn’t seem to sleep, not well at least. She’d lie awake for hours trying not to think of Sam but failing. She’d awaken in the middle of the night and imagine he was with her, only to be disillusioned when she opened her eyes and realized where she was and that she was alone. Then she’d lie on her back, staring at the ceiling, hashing and rehashing what had happened, wondering if there had been any other way, if she might somehow have been able to salvage their relationship. Once or twice, in moments of overpowering distress, she contemplated flying back to Mexico and begging, but she knew Sam wouldn’t want that. She kept seeing the disdain in his eyes that last day, and she knew she couldn’t bear to face it again.

  So she rationalized. Beatrice London was right. Chelsea and Sam came from different worlds. Their relationship would never have survived the return to Boston. He’d be back in his office, wearing his tense face and glasses, and she’d die a little each day because he’d be so embroiled in his rat race that she wouldn’t be able to reach him. So she’d watch as he very slowly drove himself into the ground, and she’d feel guilty for having dragged him back from the Yucatán, where he’d been so healthy, so vibrant, so happy.