Ask Mariah (40 page)

"Let Mrs. Carstairs handle it."

"I'm still not comfortable with a wedding consultant planning my wedding."

Raymond laughed. "That's her job. Look, I know I'm asking a lot, but this account is just what we've been waiting for, especially since losing Bailey Brothers to Beverly Wickham earlier this year. This one will put us back on top."

"Is Beverly competing for Nature Brand, too?"

Raymond tugged at the knot in his tie. "Unfortunately, yes. There's one other thing -- the honeymoon."

She stared at him with dismay. "You're not planning on canceling the honeymoon?"

"No, of course not."

"Good, for a minute there ..."

"Just cut it short a day or two. If we get this account, Monty Friedman, Nature Brand's CEO, has asked that we meet the week after our presentation to work out a detailed game plan. I can put him off until Wednesday or Thursday, of course."

"Of course." Lisa echoed with a sigh.

"Once we have the campaign up and running, we'll take two weeks off and go wherever your heart desires. What do you say?"

What could she say? She couldn't deny Raymond the opportunity to land a big account. The agency was more than just a job to him. It was his life --
hers, too
. "All right."

"I can always count on you. So, what have you been up to today?" Raymond glanced at her desk, immediately zeroing in on the package. "Hey, what's this? Did we get a wedding present already?" He reached for the box before she could stop him.

"No. It's not a wedding present. It's --"

"A bracelet." His gaze turned puzzled as he looked into her eyes. "Baby shoes?"

Lisa swallowed hard as she stared at the gold charm bracelet swinging from his fingers. In her mind, she saw another man's hand, heard another man's voice.

"I wonder what other charms she'll get over the years, a baseball bat, a mitt, a basketball,'' Nick said with a laugh, his curly brown hair still mussed from his daughter's restless fingers, his light green eyes twinkling with pleasure.

"She's a girl," Lisa replied.

"She can still be an athlete.

"Like her dad.'' Lisa felt Nick's strong arm slide around her waist.

"Or a writer, like you. In fact, she can he anything she wants to be. As long as she's happy.

"Oh, Nick, you make it easy to believe in the impossible."

"I don't believe in the impossible. I believe in you -- in us.''

Damn that bracelet. She didn't want to remember.

"Elisabeth, what's wrong?"

She took a deep breath. "Nothing is wrong. The bracelet is a gift from my mother. Something old for luck."

Raymond didn't look satisfied with her answer. "You did tell her we're not planning on having children, didn't you?" he asked, worry running through his usually placid brown eyes.

"Yes, but my mother doesn't hear anything she doesn't want to hear. My father was gone for ten years before she admitted he might not be coming back. The woman is the queen of denial."

"Elisabeth, I raised a son, and I don't want to do it again. Frankly, I was never good at being a father. Just ask Ray Junior, if you don't believe me. He's twenty-five now, and I still don't know what to say to him."

Twenty-five! His son was twenty-five, only six years younger than herself. When she'd been in the first grade, Raymond had been having a child. Lisa took another deep breath. The age difference didn't matter. They had the same goals now. That's what was important.

"I don't want children," she said. "I don't need to be -- a mother."

He looked deep into her eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely, positively sure." She refused to let any doubts creep into her voice.

He glanced down at the bracelet in his hand, fingering the tiny gold baby shoes. Finally, he set it back in the box and checked his watch. "What time are you meeting Mrs. Carstairs?''

"Five-thirty at the bridal salon," she replied with a sigh.

Raymond sent her a curious look. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She hesitated. "Don't you think it would be better to have a small, intimate wedding?"

"How small would you suggest?"

"You and me and two witnesses," she said hopefully,

"Don't be silly. I have family, friends, business associates. I want to show you off. Every time I see you I thank God no one snatched you up before now."

Lisa's heart stopped. She had to tell him. She'd been trying to for days, but the right moment had never arrived.

"Raymond -- "

She stopped as the intercom buzzed, feeling both relieved and annoyed by the interruption. She reached over and picked up the phone. "Yes?"

"Maggie Scott on line one, Elisabeth," the receptionist said.

Maggie Scott -- another voice from her past.
Why were they all coining back now -- when she finally had her life under control? "Tell her I'll be with her in a minute."

"Problems?" Raymond asked.

"It's an old friend of mine, Maggie Scott. We grew up together in Solana Beach. We used to be best friends."

"Used to be?"

"She got married, had kids. I moved away." Lisa waved her hand in the air. "We drifted apart."

"That happens."

Lisa nodded, knowing they hadn't just drifted apart. She'd turned her back on Maggie, the same way she'd turned her back on her mother and ...

"Stop by my office when you're done," Raymond said, turning toward the door, "We'll discuss our plans for the weekend. Monty Friedman has invited us to a party tomorrow afternoon. Everyone will be there. It will be a good opportunity for you to meet the key players."

"Okay," Lisa replied, her mind more on Maggie than the upcoming party. She was suddenly filled with a sense of foreboding. The past was catching up to the present, and she wasn't ready yet.

* * *

Maggie Scott pulled the phone cord around the corner of the desk in the upstairs hall, searching for a quiet place to talk. She could hear her thirteen-year-old daughter, Roxanne, practicing cheerleading routines in the living room with three other giggling, adolescent girls. Her eight-year-old son, Dylan, was playing video games on the television in the family room, yelling "Victory!" every time he knocked out a warrior. Her five-year-old daughter, Mary Bea, was having a tantrum in her bedroom. Even with the door closed, Maggie could hear Mary Bea crying, her sobs intermixed with defiant shouts of "
I don't like you, and I wish I had another mommy!
"

For a guilty moment she wished the same thing. Not that she didn't love her kids; they were just driving her stark raving mad. She had them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without relief.

Of course, that's the way she'd wanted it. After her husband, Keith, had died last year, she had proudly told her loving family she could handle things on her own. She could be a single mother. She could manage her house and her children.

For ten months, she'd held it together. She'd smiled and laughed through her heartache. She'd learned how to fix the toilet, change an electrical fuse, and mow the lawn. She'd even bought a jockstrap for her son. Through it all, she'd pretended that Keith was coming home any minute, that he'd be proud of her accomplishments, and she'd finally have some help. But Keith wasn't coming home.

Her stomach churned at the reminder. Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt claustrophobic, scared, anxious. The attacks of panic had begun two weeks earlier when a card had arrived in the mail addressed to Keith. The letter was signed Serena Hollingsworth. Maggie had never heard Keith mention a woman by that name, but the letter had suggested a personal relationship.

Serena had asked why Keith hadn't contacted her as promised. She said she'd been traveling but had checked her messages faithfully, hoping to hear from him.

The first thought that came into Maggie's mind was that her husband had had an affair. Then it occurred to her that Keith had been dead for almost a year and this woman knew nothing about it. How close could they have been?

Maggie had thrown the card away, then dug it out of the wastebasket and stuck it in her "to do" pile, which never seemed to get done. She'd decided to simply notify the woman of Keith's death, only she hadn't gotten around to it. She hadn't wanted to confront the fact that Keith had had a friendship with a woman she knew nothing about. For the first time, she wondered what else she'd known nothing about. The memory of her loving husband, the foundation of her solid marriage, seemed suddenly unstable.

The thought once again sent adrenaline pulsing through her veins. In the past two weeks, she'd suffered several anxious moments when she felt her heart racing over something illogical, silly almost. She'd become afraid of so many things. She'd drive down the street and imagine how easily a car could swerve and hit her head-on. She'd get on an elevator and picture herself plunging to the basement in the express ride from hell.

Yesterday she had let Dylan take a bus trip to the zoo and had worried all day that the bus would get in an accident, that Dylan would get lost, or the zoo would suddenly become the target of a terrorist attack.

She was losing control. She felt as if her fingers were clinging to the edge of a cliff that was crumbling beneath her hand. The kids were suffering, too, and she couldn't help them. She yelled at them unnecessarily, making her fears their fears. By bedtime, all four of them were usually in tears. She wasn't being fair to them, and she had to do something soon before she destroyed what was left of her family.

"Mom, can we have a snack?" Roxy yelled up the stairs.

"I'm on the phone," she replied, walking around in circles, searching for a quiet place to sit. Her room was a mess, with a pile of laundry on the bed waiting to be sorted. The desk in the hall alcove was covered with bills she had yet to pay. Just looking at all those envelopes made her anxiety level rise yet again.

She jumped to one side of the hall as Dylan and their golden retriever, Sally, ran up the stairs.

"Sally found a dead bird in the backyard," Dylan said with excitement. The dog barked in delight. "Do you want to see it? It's in the kitchen."

"No. I'm on the phone." Maggie sighed as Mary Bea marched out of her room with her backpack in one hand and her cherished blanket in the other. Her face was streaked with tears, her blond curls a mass of tangles. "Where do you think you're going, young lady?"

"I'm running away unless you say you're sorry for yelling at me."

"I'm on the phone," Maggie replied for the third time. "And if anyone is going to run away from home, it will be me."

"Mom, we're starving." Roxy complained from the bottom of the stairs.

"I'm on the phone," Maggie yelled back. "Can't anyone see I'm on the phone? Do you think this receiver is an earring?"

Dylan and Mary Bea looked at her in bewilderment, then Mary Bea started to cry. "You're yelling again," she accused.

Maggie opened the door to the hall closet and walked inside, shutting herself in among the coats, the umbrellas and the tennis rackets that hadn't been used in years. She sat down on the upturned end of a suitcase she'd meant to store in the basement, but like so many things in her life, it had gone undone.

"Mom, why are you in the closet?" Dylan asked.

"Are you playing hide-and-seek?" Mary Bea asked hopefully. "Can I play, too?"

"She doesn't want to play with you," Dylan said.

"Yes, she does."

"No, she doesn't."

"Go away," she yelled. "I'm on the phone."

"Maggie?" Lisa's voice came over the receiver like an answer to a prayer.

"Lisa. Thank God, you're there." Maggie took a deep breath. Eight years ago what she needed to say would have come easily. Now there were barriers between them, years when they hadn't seen much of each other, layers of grief and disillusionment that weighed heavily on their friendship, but Maggie had nowhere else to turn. "I need you." She closed her eyes, waiting for Lisa's response.

Lisa stared blindly at her desktop, not seeing the work spread out before her, hearing only the anguish in Maggie's voice.
I need you
. Three short words that demanded so much, coming from a woman who had always asked for so little. They had been best friends forever. Maggie Maddux Scott with her golden hair, her big booming laugh and wide generous smile had befriended Lisa on her first day at a new middle school. She didn't care that Lisa was different, that she was too shy, too skinny, too nervous, too everything..

Maggie's friendship had come like the sun after a long winter's storm. She'd introduced Lisa to the joy of laughter, to the secrets of best friends. With two older brothers, Maggie was dying for a sister, and Lisa fit the bill. They'd been inseparable for years, until... Lisa's gaze drifted to the opened box on the desk, to the bracelet that gleamed against the tissue paper.

"Did you hear me?" Maggie asked.

Lisa started. "Yes, of course. What's wrong? Is one of the kids -- "

"No. It's me." Maggie's voice sounded edgy. "I'm losing it, Lisa. The walls are closing in on me. I can't breathe."