Legacy: A Novel

by Danielle Steel

  She waited a few more minutes, staring at her untouched chocolate cake before looking up at him again. She was fighting to stay calm, and suddenly wanted to howl in disappointment. After all this time, she had actually been ready to accept his proposal. And there was none. “What does this mean for us?” The possibilities were obvious, but she needed them spelled out. She didn’t want to guess again about something this important, nor assume. This time she wanted to hear his plan for them, if there was one, and what he planned to do about them.

  “I guess we always knew that this would happen sooner or later,” Ted said soberly. “I can’t take you along. There’s no job for you on the dig, and I don’t know if you could get a visa just as a hanger-on. Besides, what would you do there, Brig? I know that your work is important to you here. I think the inevitable has happened. We had a good run for six years, Brig. I love you. We’ve had a great time. But with me in Egypt for three to five years, or longer if the dig goes well or they give me another one after this, I won’t be back for a long time, and I don’t expect you to wait around for me. We both have to go on with our lives. Mine will be there, and yours is here. We’re both reasonable people, and we knew this would happen one day.” He sounded perfectly calm about it. He was leaving in three weeks, and that was it. Bye, thanks for a fun six years, see ya.

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” she said, still looking shocked. “I thought we’d wind up together,” she objected as tears stung her eyes. She couldn’t hold them back. He had broadsided her so completely, she could hardly think straight.

  “We never said that,” Ted reminded her. “We talked about it theoretically, but we never made any plans. You know that. Maybe if I never got a dig. But to be honest with you, in the last year or two, whenever I’ve thought about it, I realize I’m not really a commitment kind of guy. Not in the classical sense. I like what we’ve had, but I don’t need more than that, nor want it. I never thought you really did either. You’re not one of those women desperate to get married and have kids, which is why it worked so well for us.”

  “I thought it worked because we love each other,” Brigitte said bleakly. “And I wasn’t ‘desperate’ to get married and have kids, but I thought we would.” She had assumed it, which made her feel incredibly stupid now. It was painfully obvious that he could hardly wait to leave and start his dig. Without her. He clearly didn’t want to take her with him. She could see it in his eyes.

  “You still can get married and have kids,” he reassured her quietly. She was a free woman now. “Just not with me. I won’t be here, for a long time. Who knows, if the excavation sites are rich, I could wind up staying there for ten years, or longer. I’ve waited for this all my life. I’m in no rush to come back, and I don’t want to have any obligations here complicating things for me.” Now all she was was a complication. It sliced right through her aching heart to hear it. “I thought we had an unspoken agreement, Brig, that this was great for now, with no future plans.”

  “That’s the trouble with unspoken agreements, everyone interprets them the way they want. I thought we had a commitment, apparently you didn’t.” She sounded both angry and sad all at once.

  “My primary commitment has always been to my work. You knew that,” he reproached her quietly. He didn’t want to be made to feel guilty. His mother always did that to him and he hated it. Brigitte never had. He wanted to celebrate his dig, and his departure, not feel like a bad guy for leaving, which was more than a little simplistic, since it meant the end of their romance. But that was a price he was prepared to pay, and she had never expected. She realized now that she had been blind. And now he was, to everything but his dig. “I’m sorry, Brig. I know this is sudden. It’s hard for me too, but it’s pretty clean actually. We don’t even share an apartment. In fact, I was going to ask you if you want some of my stuff. I’m going to donate the rest. I don’t have a decent piece of furniture in the place, except the couch.” They had bought it together the year before, and now he was getting rid of that too, as easily as he was getting rid of her. She hadn’t felt this shocked or abandoned since her father’s death, and that came to mind as she sat and stared at Ted.

  “What about my eggs?” she asked, as tears rolled down her cheeks. She was slowly losing control of her emotions and feeling panicked. This was not the Valentine’s Day dinner she had planned, nor that Amy had hoped for her.

  “What eggs?” Ted looked blank.

  “My eggs. The babies we’ll never have, and I may never have at all now. I’m thirty-eight years old, we’ve been together for six years. What am I supposed to do, put a notice on the bulletin board for some guy to marry and have kids with?”

  “Is that all I was?” He looked insulted.

  “No. You were the man I love, you still are. It was just so simple the way it was, I never asked the pertinent questions, I didn’t think I had to. Why can’t I go with you?” She looked at him pointedly, and he looked instantly uncomfortable.

  “I can’t think about a wife and kids with a job this important to do. I don’t want the responsibility or the distraction. Besides, I just don’t want that kind of commitment. This is the right time for both of us to move on, and see what life has in store for each of us on our own.” She felt her heart ache as he said it. “I’m not even sure I’ll ever want marriage, or not for a long, long time.” Way too late for her by then, as Amy would have reminded her. Her eggs were of no interest to him, and apparently never had been. She felt stupid now for having assumed so much and understood so little. She never thought she had to ask him. It was all so comfortable for so long, she had just drifted down the river with him, and now he was kicking her out of the boat, and paddling on alone. He had made it clear that he didn’t want her in Egypt, now or later. She couldn’t even blame him for it, she was as responsible as he was for the misunderstanding, and she knew it. He hadn’t misled her. They had just lived from day to day and weekend to weekend for six years. And now she was thirty-eight years old, and he was leaving to live his dream, without her. Hearing him say it was the loneliest feeling she’d ever had.

  “How do you want to handle this before I go?” he asked her gently. He felt sorry for her—she looked devastated by what he had told her. There was none of the joy for him that he had hoped for, and he realized now that that had been unrealistic. He had never fully understood how far-reaching her hopes were. She hadn’t shared those hopes with him. And now all her broken dreams and incorrect assumptions were crashing down around her. She looked like she’d just been hit by a semi and run over. She felt even worse than she looked.

  “What do you mean?” She blew her nose into a tissue and couldn’t stop crying.

  “I don’t want to make this any harder for you than it has to be. I’m leaving in three weeks. Do you want to stay with me till then, or would you rather see less of me before I go?”

  “If I’m understanding you correctly, you consider our relationship over when you leave, you want to move on, is that right?” He nodded, and she blew her nose again and looked at him miserably.

  “I can’t maintain a relationship with you here and live in Egypt. And your coming with me makes no sense. I think we would have ended it sooner or later.” That was news to her. But she was beyond arguing with him. She had taken too hard a hit.

  “Then I think it’s better if we end it now,” she said with dignity. “I’d rather not see you again, Ted. It’ll just make it worse. It was over for us as soon as you got the dig.” Or maybe even before that since he wanted no commitment between them.

  “It has nothing to do with you, Brig. It’s just life and how things work out sometimes.” But it was his life, not hers, that he was concerned with. She had never before realized how selfish he was. It was all about him, and now his dig.

  “Yeah, I understand,” she said, slipping into her coat and standing up. She looked him straight in the eye. “Congratulations, Ted. I’m happy for you. I’m sad for us, and for me, but I’m happy for you.” Sh
e was trying valiantly to be gracious and he was touched, although still disappointed that she hadn’t been more enthusiastic and supportive of him. But he also understood that telling her he wanted to move on was a blow. He had wanted to do that for a while, but hadn’t had the guts. But now that he was leaving for Egypt, it seemed like the perfect time. To him.

  “Thank you, Brig. I’ll take you home,” he offered.

  She started crying copiously again and shook her head. “No … I’ll take a cab. Thanks for dinner. Goodnight.” And with that, she hurried out of the restaurant, hoping that no one would see her crying. Thanks for dinner, and for six years. Have a nice life. All she could think about as she stumbled out into the snow and hailed a cab was everything she had done wrong for six years. She wondered how she could have been so stupid. He wasn’t a “commitment kind of guy,” he didn’t know if he wanted a wife and kids, now or ever. It had been easy for both of them. Comfortable. That was the operative word and all she ever wanted in life, and now look what she wound up with. A man she had been “comfortable” with for six years, and now on a moment’s notice, he had dumped her and was leaving for Egypt and the dig he had always dreamed of. He had said goodbye to her the way you would to a student or an assistant, not a woman you were in love with. She realized then that he wasn’t in love with her. And maybe she wasn’t with him either. She had settled for easy, and comfortable, instead of commitment and passion. It had seemed like enough for six years, and look where it got her. She sat crying in the cab all the way back to her apartment. It was a terrible feeling knowing she would never see him again and it was over. Even worse since she had thought he would ask her to marry him that night. What a fool she had been, she kept telling herself over and over. Her cell phone rang as she walked into her apartment. She glanced at it and saw that it was Ted. She didn’t answer. What was the point? He wasn’t going to change his mind. It was over. And all that was left now were pity and regret instead of love.

  Chapter 2

  It snowed all night and there was another foot of snow on the ground by morning. It was now officially a blizzard, and gave Brigitte the perfect excuse not to go in to work. She lay in bed crying when she woke up, and just couldn’t face getting up and getting dressed. She felt as though her life was over, and she was overwhelmed by sadness and disappointment. And on top of that, she felt stupid. She had always known Ted wanted a dig of his own, she had just never understood how much he wanted it, or that he would dump her and run if he got one. She thought she had meant more to him than that, but apparently she didn’t. She had been a stopgap, a time-passer, until his career panned out the way he wanted.

  Meanwhile she had done nothing about her own career, and had dawdled for seven years over her book. She felt like an utter failure as she read a text message from Ted. All it said was “I’m sorry.” She knew he probably was. He wasn’t a mean person, but he had his own goals in mind, and she wasn’t part of his master plan, which made her easy to leave behind. She wouldn’t have done it to him, but she also realized now that he was more ambitious than she had thought him. This dig meant everything to him, and she didn’t. It was a terrible feeling.

  She got another text message about ten that morning. Brigitte was still in bed, and cried as she read it. It was from Amy. “Where are you? In bed, celebrating? Are you engaged? Tell me, tell me!” For a minute, Brigitte didn’t know what to answer, and then realized that she had no choice but to tell her. She’d have to sooner or later anyway. She texted back, “Not engaged. Dumped. It’s over. He got his own dig in Egypt, and leaves in 3 weeks. We ended it last night. Am taking the day off.” It was amazing how you could reduce major life events, and even tragedies, to text messages. She had learned it from the students, who conducted their relationships, and all vital communications, by text.

  Amy let out a low whistle in her office when she read it. That was not what she had expected at all, and she knew Brigitte hadn’t either. She felt terrible for her. Ted wasn’t even a bad guy, he just had his own agenda, which apparently didn’t include Brigitte long term. And at thirty-five, he could afford to have wasted six years of his life. Brigitte couldn’t. Amy tried to call her then, and she didn’t answer, so she texted back.

  “Can I come over?”

  The response was quick. “No, I feel like shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She left her alone for a few hours then, and started calling her repeatedly that afternoon, and finally Brigitte answered. She sounded awful.

  “It’s not his fault.” Brigitte was quick to defend him. “I was stupid not to ask him what his plans were for us. He says he’s not a commitment kind of guy. How did I manage to miss that?”

  “You didn’t ask,” Amy said honestly, “and you were both content the way things were. And maybe too scared to ask.” She knew that Ted’s parents had had a bitter divorce that had blown their family apart, and he was skittish about marriage. Amy had figured he’d get over it, and so had Brigitte. And now he didn’t have to. Destiny had intervened and given him a dig in Egypt. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. Cry for a year or two. I’m going to miss him.” But even she had noticed in her misery that as sad as she was, she wasn’t as devastated as she thought she should be. So what had she done? Wasted six years of her life because she was afraid of taking a risk and making a commitment? And what happened now? What if she never had kids because of the time she had wasted? Thinking about that depressed her. She didn’t want to end up like Amy, going to a sperm bank, and she knew she wouldn’t. That was a risk that Brigitte knew she would never take. If she had kids, she wanted the real deal, a husband, a family life, or nothing. She didn’t want to bring up children on her own. She had seen her mother, always struggling, always carrying everything alone, all the responsibilities and problems, all the joys and heartaches, and no one with whom to share them. She didn’t feel as brave as Amy or her mother, and she didn’t want to do it alone. She’d rather not have kids, which was beginning to seem like what might happen. It certainly looked like that now. Her whole outlook on the world and her future had changed in the past twenty-four hours, and not for the better. In spite of everything that had happened, her mother had never been bitter. Brigitte didn’t want to be either. It would only poison her own life if so.

  “Can I come over after work?” Amy offered. “I can leave the boys in day care till seven, and I can be out of here by five.”

  “I’m okay. I’ll be back at work tomorrow,” Brigitte said sadly. “I can’t stay in bed and cry forever.” She had been trying to decide if she wanted to see Ted before he left, but realized that she didn’t. It would just be too hard, knowing that it was over and she might never see him again. She was ready to bury it now. She sent him a text that night, telling him she was okay and wishing him well, and thanking him for six great years together. After she sent it, she felt strange. Crazy even. Six years, and all wrapped up in a single text. That seemed much too easy. And how quickly those six years had ended, in one night. One turn of fate, and it was over.

  The snow had stopped the next morning when she went to work. The streets had been cleared by the snowplows. It was bitter cold as she pulled her collar around her neck, and her hands were icy when she got to her office. She had forgotten her gloves. She felt as though she had been gone for a lifetime, not just a day, to mourn the end of her relationship to Ted. She was wearing an old gray sweater, which was the one she wore when she was sad or upset. It was a time for comfort foods, cozy clothes, and all the things that would ease the pain she was in. It was a time of sadness and mourning for her.

  She had been in her office for half an hour, going over applications, when the head of admissions, Greg Matson, asked her to come into his office. He had only been there for a year, but had been pleasant to work for so far. He had come to BU from Boston College, and had often relied on Brigitte’s advice and experience about their policies. It had startled her to realize when he arrived that he was y
ounger than she was, as was the woman next in line for his job. Brigitte had been there longer than either of them, but had never wanted the burdens that went with his job. She had always told herself that it was easier for her to continue working on her book if she was in a lesser position, and she had no need or desire to be “the boss.”

  Greg invited her to sit down with the same collegial smile he always wore. He said she looked tired and asked if she’d been sick. She said she’d had the flu the day before. They chatted for a while about current applications, and he praised her for her diligence and said she did a remarkable job. He explained to her then about the new computer system they were installing in the next few weeks. He said it would make everyone’s job easier, and allow them to streamline the department, which was always a concern now with tighter money. He said that their main goal was efficiency and staying ahead of budget cuts, and the new computer system had been a great investment. And then, with a small look of apology, he explained that the new computer system meant that they would be reducing the size of the staff in the admissions office. They hated to do it, particularly after she had been there for ten years. It wasn’t personal, he insisted, but she and six other people were being laid off. He said generously that because of her long years of employment at BU, they were giving her a six-month severance package. He said he hoped it would give her the time and money she needed to finish her book. And he said he was really sorry she had to go. He stood up then, shook her hand, gave her a hug, and gently propelled her out of his office and back to her own. He said that arrangements would be made to complete their admissions process for the current applications without her input, and she could leave that day, and get on with her new life.