Coming to Rosemont (2 page)

She paid the driver, walked up the stone steps,
and shut and locked the front door behind her. She toyed with the idea of phoning
one of her children to let them know she changed her plans but decided against
it. They could call her cell if they needed her. She wanted to savor her brave
decision and her first night in her new home without the intrusion of their
opinions.

Maggie picked up her groceries and headed in the
direction of the kitchen. Dusty and in need of a thorough cleaning to be sure,
but what a glorious kitchen! Beautiful walnut cabinets adorned with
furniture-maker details soared to the twelve-foot ceiling. A huge window over
the antique French sink and a smaller window over an old-fashioned copper vegetable
sink would make the room irresistibly cheerful in daytime. The appliances and
fixtures were outdated and would need to be replaced, but it was still the most
beautiful kitchen she had ever seen—much less owned.
People will
really have high expectations of a meal fixed here,
she mused.
I used to
be such a good cook. I wonder if I can still muster up anything that does
justice to this kitchen? I’ll practice and get back on my game,
she decided
with a bit of her characteristic determination.

Maggie stashed her groceries and dug into the
rotisserie chicken and coleslaw that she bought for her dinner. She began a
systematic reconnaissance of the kitchen. To her delight, it was equipped with
every specialty pot, pan, and utensil imaginable.
I’ve been lusting after
some of this stuff in catalogs for years,
she thought.
What great fun to
cook in this kitchen.

Along one wall was an enormous antique hutch.
Maggie found it contained five complete sets of china, including specialty
pieces like eggcups, double-handled soup bowls, and tureens. She recognized
Colombia Enamel by Wedgwood and Botanic Garden by Portmeirion, but had to check
the bottom of a plate to see that she had place settings for twelve of Derby
Panel by Royal Crown Derby and a lovely blue-rimmed favorite called Autumn by
Lenox. A set of cheerful yellow Fiestaware completed the collection.
Good
Lord
—she felt faint. Maggie was a self-described china addict; now she
had the collection to prove it. She vowed to use the good dishes every day.

Maggie made herself tea in a Wedgwood cup and
wandered through the house to find a place to tuck herself away to enjoy it.
The long day had taken its toll; she was exhausted. As she passed through the
archway into the library, she found an overstuffed chair in the moonlight by
the French doors and knew she had found her spot. Maggie dragged the sheet off
the chair with one hand while waving away a cloud of dust with the other and
settled into the chair’s protective embrace.

An unblemished blanket of snow in the garden
looked like frosting on a cake. At least four inches already, and it was still
coming down hard. For the first time in months, everything around Maggie was
quiet and still, and she felt peaceful. Thoughts of Paul were always crowding
her, and they gradually settled on her now. Who was the man that she had been
married to for over twenty-five years?

On the surface, Paul Martin was the charismatic
president of Windsor College. Charming and handsome, with a killer smile. And
laser focus. When he turned his attention on you, you felt like you were the
most interesting and important person in the world. She had felt that way for
years; had never doubted his integrity or fidelity. Mike and Susan, now both
grown and out of the nest, adored their father. Paul’s unexpected death at the
age of sixty-two had unearthed a number of betrayals.
Were there others yet
undiscovered?
He evidently thought he had plenty of time to cover his
tracks. Now Maggie was left to cope with it all.

The first shoe to drop was his embezzlement from
the college. The interim president discovered suspicious receipts in Paul’s
desk, receipts that he had been careless enough to leave sitting in a drawer.
An audit was hastily done and the results discreetly fed to her. Paul had been
submitting fraudulent expenses as far back as they could trace, in excess of
two million dollars. Where in the world had he been spending all of this money?

At first, Maggie wondered if Paul had a gambling
problem. As she pored through the college’s audit, however, it became very
clear that the money was being spent in one location: Scottsdale, Arizona. And
another fresh hell was born. She would never forget that day, last September,
when she had summoned the courage to uncover the identity of the other woman.

Her short flight had been turbulent, and wedged
into a middle seat between an overweight man with a dripping nose and a sprawling
teenager; she was queasy by the time they landed. Taxiing to the gate seemed
interminable. She snatched her carry-on from the seatback in front of her the
moment they came to a stop, and shoved past the teen, jostling the woman in the
seat across the aisle as she attempted to stand up. “Getting a bit
claustrophobic in there,” she muttered in a half-hearted apology. The woman
huffed and fixed Maggie with an icy stare. She didn’t care what anyone thought;
she needed to get off of that damn plane. The line in front of her inched along
to the door. Why in the hell were people so slow and clumsy with their luggage?
Why did they insist on stuffing bags into the overhead bins that they couldn’t
handle on their own?
Just breathe deeply,
she told herself.

The rental car was waiting for her. Thank goodness
for the perks of being a frequent traveler. She settled into the seat and
turned the air conditioner on full blast. Maggie fumbled in her purse for the report
the private investigator had given her. She double-checked the address, but
didn’t need to; it was seared into her heart. Maggie punched it into the GPS
system, adjusted her mirrors, and began her journey.

It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but
near-record temperatures were predicted and heat waves shimmered off the
highway. The GPS was reliable, and she was close to the address in under thirty
minutes. Maggie decided she needed something to drink and turned into a
convenience store to get a giant diet cola and a bottle of cold water. No one
was behind her in line, so she took her time fishing out the correct change.
Now that she was here, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to pick at this scab. She
lingered over the rack of tabloid magazines by the door. What was the matter
with her? She was just going to drive by a house. She probably wouldn’t even
see “her.” She had come all of this way—she needed to hitch up her
britches and do this thing.

Maggie coiled herself into the now oven-like car
and burned her hands as she grasped the steering wheel. She took a long pull on
her diet cola and set off once more. She drove slowly as the ascending street
numbers indicated she was getting close.
Undeniably a swanky neighborhood,
she brooded.
Nicer than ours.
Spacious, new stucco homes with red-tile
roofs and soaring arches. Intricate iron gates and ornate light fixtures.
Manicured lawns tended by efficient landscapers. No signs of life on this
oppressive day. Everyone was safely tucked away.

And there it was. Bigger than the rest—or
was she imaging that? It was unquestionably the nicest house on the street.
Bile rose in Maggie’s throat. If you had lined up photos of all of the houses
on that street and asked her which one Paul would have selected, Maggie knew it
would have been this house. More grand than their home in California. Maggie
drifted across the centerline and caught herself before she hit the other curb.
Thank God she was the only car on the street. She needed to get hold of
herself; she didn’t want to get into an accident right outside the other
woman’s house. How cliché would that be? She was acting like a stalker, for
goodness sake. No one could ever know she had done this.

She turned around in a driveway five houses down
and drove past to view it from the other direction. It looked even better.
That
bastard.
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel and turned the car
around again, trying to find a shady spot along the curb where she could discreetly
watch the house. A couple of palm trees provided the only shade available, and
she pulled to the curb. The air conditioning was no match for the midday sun,
and she felt like one of the ants that her brother would fry under a magnifying
glass on the sidewalk when they were kids. Why in the world had Paul done this?
Why hadn’t they just divorced? Was he that concerned about the effect it would
have on his career? Divorce wasn’t a stigma anymore. And he evidently had
plenty of money, so splitting what they had in California wouldn’t have posed a
problem. Surely he knew that she would never have gone digging for more.
Or
was he addicted to the thrill of living a secret life?
She instinctively
knew she had hit the mark dead center.

Her soda was long gone and she was taking the last
swig of water, chiding herself that it was demeaning to be sweltering in a
rental car outside of the other woman’s house—then she appeared.

Maggie crouched over the dashboard, the air
conditioning blasting her hair out of her face, and focused on the other woman
like a laser. Tall, thin, and pretty—with shoulder-length blond hair and
long, tanned legs—she was laughing with two school-aged children as she
herded them into her Escalade. She pulled out of the driveway and glanced in
Maggie’s direction as she turned to say something to the children in the
backseat.

Maggie clutched the steering wheel as nausea
overwhelmed her. She tried unsuccessfully to choke it back and grabbed
frantically for the empty soda cup and heaved violently. Sweating profusely,
she fumbled in her purse for some tissues and a breath mint. The tears she had
been holding back for months now broke free. This had been a stupid, crazy
thing to do. Why had she expected it to turn out differently? She was a mess.
Vomit on her cuff and in her hair. The last thing she wanted to do was spend
the day here and get back on a plane later. To hell with the one-way drop-off
charge for the rental car. It was only a six-hour drive. She’d be in her driveway
about the same time as her scheduled flight was supposed to land. And she
wouldn’t have to see anyone or talk to anyone along the way. She swung the car
around and set her course for home.

The minute she uncovered the Scottsdale
connection, Maggie had a gut feeling about what she would find. Paul had
supported a second family there. The investigator found that the two children
weren’t Paul’s, thank God. But it had been a long-standing relationship and by
the looks of the financial records, he had been supporting her handsomely. The
most difficult part of Maggie’s situation was bearing this knowledge alone; she
dared not confide in anyone she knew.

Paul had been acting strangely after he took the
post at Windsor College eight years ago. And Maggie had done her best to
contrive an innocent explanation and rationalize Paul’s odd behavior. But everything
now made sense: the weekends away, when he was ostensibly too tied up in
“strategic planning sessions” to call home; his trendy new wardrobe and
haircut; and his younger, more “hip” vocabulary. When Susan pointed this out,
Paul laughed and passed them off as his way of relating to the student body.

He had also become increasingly critical of
Maggie’s blossoming consulting business as a forensic accountant. At first, she
believed he was genuinely concerned she was taking on too much and spreading
herself too thin. He was emphatic that he needed her by his side for the
numerous social engagements required by his position. Somewhere along the way
she realized that he resented her success and her growing independence from
him. Paul loved to tell his amusing little story about meeting the shy, studious,
plain girl in college and turning her into the beautiful, polished,
accomplished woman she was now; that their love story was a modern-day
My
Fair Lady
.
Ugh!
She might not have been a sophisticate, but she
hadn’t been a country bumpkin, either. Even Eliza Doolittle outgrew the
tutelage of Professor Higgins.

The turning point in their relationship was that
horrible fight about the black-tie fundraiser he wanted to chair. He would turn
up at the event in his tuxedo and make a nice podium speech, and she would work
tirelessly on it for almost a year. She had begged him not to volunteer, told
him that she simply didn’t have the time, that just this once she needed to focus
on herself first. She was about to land a lucrative expert witness engagement
she had worked so hard to get. It was a fascinating case and would demand all
of her time. And would undoubtedly lead to more such work. She simply could not
turn it down.

Paul had railed that he couldn’t turn the
fundraiser down, either. He started on his usual refrain of “whose job pays
more of the bills around here” when Maggie quietly pointed out that her income
had exceeded his for several years. For the first time in their more than
twenty years of marriage, Maggie had put her foot down and told Paul no. Paul
had exploded and they had gone to bed angry. This time, however, Maggie didn’t
give in or apologize just to keep the peace.

They didn’t speak for a week. When they
tentatively resumed communication, Paul was derisive and demeaning, constantly
criticizing Maggie in matters both large and small. But his opinion of her
appearance, her job, and her social skills didn’t matter much to her anymore.
Maggie’s friend Helen summed it up nicely: Paul had lost control of Maggie and
he didn’t like it. She had half-heartedly defended Paul, saying he was a leader
and not a control freak, but she knew Helen was right.

Her lawyer negotiated a settlement of the
college’s claim against Paul’s estate in exchange for his million-dollar life insurance
policy. The board of regents hadn’t been anxious to have their lax oversight of
the college’s finances exposed, and Maggie didn’t want Mike and Susan hurt by a
public discrediting of Paul’s memory. She needed to get to the bottom of the
mystery that was Paul Martin before she brought Mike and Susan into this nightmare.
Maggie hired a private investigator that quickly uncovered the truth.