Invitation to Provence(55)
He looked bleakly at her, a man reliving a nightmare. He felt her hand on his, stroking him gently, the way she’d stroked the injured dog.
“I still blame myself,” he said. “I’ve gone through all the permutations of how I should have been more alert. Amanda trusted me so completely and I failed her. There’s no way to find forgiveness for that.”
He shrugged. “I was strong. I pulled through and after a year of tough physical therapy I considered myself ready to be back in the game. But not those in authority—they knew I burned for revenge and because of that I was dangerous. So they offered me the usual desk job given to ‘disabled’ personnel. I chose retirement instead.”
He got up and walked to the edge of the gazebo. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared blankly across the lake. “I hung around the bars for a year,” he said, “drinking too much and not caring where my life was going. Then I pulled myself together and bought my twenty-acre retreat on the mountain. I built my cabin there, every bit of it with my own hands. I let no one else touch it, allowed no one up there. The hard work, the solitude, and the simple goodness of the animals, Criminal and Dirty Harry, saved my sanity. Eventually, though, I needed more and so I set myself up in Manhattan as a P.I.
“Because people knew my father’s name, knew who I was, I got the big society scandals, the divorces, the probate squabbles and disappearances—wives running off with another man, that kind of thing. Then, because I was good at the game, came the corporate clients, pharmaceutical companies, and manufacturing giants worried about industrial spies. Then requests for guards and special security from foreign statesmen afraid of assassins and Hollywood royalty afraid of stalkers. I recruited Mossad-trained security personnel for billionaires living on the Riviera, and I still worked closely with Intelligence, searching out potential troublemakers and terrorists. And all the while I was looking for Amanda’s killers.”
He turned to look at Franny, who was sitting with her legs curled under her, watching him, wide-eyed. “I know a lot of people in high places,” he said, “and a lot more in lower ones. I know a lot about almost everybody whose names you are familiar with, and therefore everybody is my friend. But my real friends are the guys I was in the service with. They are the men who work with me now. Them, I know I can trust.”
He shrugged again, finally meeting her eyes. “And that’s why I am who I am, Franny Marten.”
He picked up the rose from the floor where he’d dropped it and held it to his nose, breathing in its wild, mossy scent. Then he held it out to her. “It’s not a bouquet of Casablanca lilies,” he said softly, “but again, it comes with my apologies.”
“Thank you,” she said softly, and he came and knelt before her. “We’re alike, you and I, Franny,” he said, taking her hands in his. “Two warriors against the war of loneliness.”
Then she slid to the ground next to him and he took her in his arms and he kissed her. Properly this time, with all the passion in his warm lips, in his long, lean, hard body, in his encircling arms, that any woman could want.
43
JULIETTE PERCHED on the edge of Rafaella’s bed, just as she’d done so many times in their youth, but then they had been gossiping about men and clothes and children. Now there were no men to gossip about, and for Rafaella now there were no longer even any children.
Louis and Mimi sprawled at the foot of the bed, exhausted after their long walk with Jake, snoring and twitching and smelling of the woods they’d been digging in, but Rafaella didn’t mind. She lay back against the pillows, the white wicker breakfast tray on her lap, not even touching her coffee. Juliette looked worriedly at her. “It’s better you know the truth, chérie,” she said. “Having children is one of life’s great joys, but it can also be heartrending. Believe me, you did not fail Alain, unless it was to give him too much love. And because you loved him so much, you closed your eyes to his faults. Now, my dear, you must unload yourself of this great guilt because Alain’s choices were his own, not yours.”
Impulsively, she put down her coffee cup and climbed into bed, snuggling up next to Rafaella, the way they used to in the old days. She said, “Remember, you have Little Blue now, and Franny, as well as Jake and Clare and Scott. Life is for them, Rafaella. You must move on, chérie, and I am here to help you do that.”
Rafaella looked gratefully at her. “Tell me, how have I managed without you all these years, Juliette?”
“You managed because you never needed to go shopping. If you had, then you would have called me,” Juliette said, making Rafaella laugh. It was the best sound Juliette had heard that morning. “Now,” she said, “what are you planning on wearing for tonight’s soirée?” It was what they had always done, discussed who was wearing what so they could present the perfect picture together.
Rafaella forced herself to think. “The midnight blue lace, I believe. You remember the Saint Laurent? You were with me when I bought it.”
On the surface life was back to normal and Juliette thought that was all she could expect for the moment.
44
LITTLE BLUE SAT at the square scrubbed-pine table in the kitchen. The woolly lamb was perched on a chair, carefully wrapped in a wash-cloth in lieu of a blanket. There was a glass of milk in front of her and she was counting the black-and-white floor tiles, thinking there must be enough to cover dozens of rooms like the one she shared with Bao Chu. She was missing Bao Chu very much.