Honesty - SF8 (29 page)
Dropping her head into her hands Ryan moaned, "He doesn’t care about anything other than getting what he wants. It doesn’t matter how many innocent people he hurts." She sighed heavily and said, "I’ll read the damn thing when we go downstairs. If I need to call Sara, I will," she agreed, not looking forward to that conversation in the least.
As they drove along in the still-heavy Friday night city traffic, Catherine leaned her head back against the headrest and gave voice to her slightly disordered thoughts. "Martin?" she asked lazily. "Have you ever wished that Ryan…
Siobhan
wasn’t a lesbian?"
He was a bit taken aback by the question, but he answered honestly, and from his heart. "No. Never." Glancing at Catherine he continued. "I take it that you wish Jamie wasn’t."
Shaking her head slowly she said, "Not for me. It doesn’t bother me at all." Shrugging her delicate shoulders she said, "How can I express this?" She thought about her point for a few minutes, finally saying, "Since she is gay, I’m very, very happy that she’s found Ryan. They seem like a perfect pair, and I want you to know that I couldn’t have picked a better partner for my daughter." Her voice was earnest, and Martin realized that what she was saying was very important to her. "But there is a part of me that wishes she was straight, Martin. I would never want her to pretend to be who she wasn’t—I just sometimes wish she wasn’t who she is."
"Why?" Martin asked simply. "She’s such a fine lass, Catherine. Why nitpick?"
"I don’t know," she sighed, feeling very open with a man she knew so little. "All of the trouble started when she first started having misgivings about her engagement. I know now that Jack wasn’t right for her, but there is a part of me that wishes she had found a man who would have made her happy. I just can’t tell you how horrible it is for me to watch her sever her relationship with her father over this. A year ago Jamie would have told you that her bond with her father was the strongest one in her life." Tears sprang to her eyes again as she whimpered, "It’s breaking my heart, Martin."
"I can’t imagine," he soothed, reaching across the car to grasp and squeeze her hand. "I truly can’t imagine, Catherine." He had a lot to say to the woman—mostly reminding her that Jim had chosen this split, but he didn’t think now was the time. He knew that she had to mourn the death of trust that both Jamie and she had once shared with the man, and he knew that he couldn’t help her with that.
She looked out the window, watching the brightly colored buildings fly by. "Forgive my musings, Martin. I know that things are what they are. Lord knows, there’s no guarantee that Jamie could have ever found a man to love her and care for her as much as Ryan does." Bitterly she added, "I certainly didn’t."
Catherine insisted that Martin drop her off, resisting his offer to find a place to park and accompany her. Now, as she rode up in the gold-toned elevator, she mused,
I should have let him walk me up. It’s so comforting to be in his presence. No wonder Jamie cares for him so much.
Slipping her key into the lock, she opened the door to the muted sounds of a television playing in the background.
Shit
, she muttered to herself, uncharacteristically cursing. All of her instincts told her to back out of the apartment, preserve her dignity, and walk to the first hotel she spotted. But some insolent part of her—long buried—poked its head out and caused her feet to carry her towards the sound.
They were nestled together on the couch. Jim was bare-chested, and as Catherine walked closer she could see that he was wearing only his boxers. The young redhead was attired in a skimpy ribbed tank top—only. Jim’s head was resting on her shoulder, and Catherine detected that he was asleep, which made perfect sense since the young woman was watching MTV and she knew that her husband would never choose that channel.
Gathering every bit of gumption that she had been gifted with, Catherine strode to the front of the sofa and extended her hand, pasting on a cultured smile as she said, "Catherine Evans. I don’t believe we’ve met."
The young woman paled noticeably and pushed Jim from her body, cowering in the corner of the sofa as if Catherine was planning on shooting her. Her sudden movement woke him and he blinked slowly, as he tried to focus. "Wha…?" Turning his head in the direction of his lover’s frightened gaze he focused on his wife, standing two feet in front of him with an eerily calm look on her face.
His head swiveled in all possible directions, finally lighting on his lover as he noticed her state of dishabille. Grabbing a chenille throw from the back of the sofa he gallantly covered her, trying to get to his feet at the same time. "Now look here, Catherine…" he began, his authoritative voice coming to the fore.
"I’m going to sleep in the guest room, Jim."
She stepped around the piece of furniture, confidently making her way towards the hall when he called out, "You can’t just barge in here…"
She turned quickly, her brown eyes flashing with seldom-seen anger. "This is a community property state, Jim. Until the divorce, one-half of this apartment is mine. I’m sleeping in my half tonight. Try to keep the noise to a minimum, won’t you?"
With that, she turned on her heel and continued on her path, not stopping until she reached the well-appointed guest room, immediately locking the door behind her. Her body sagged against the heavy, solid surface, her legs slowly losing their muscular tension until she had slid down the length of the door and collapsed onto the plush pile carpet. With all of the strength that she could summon, she focused on keeping her sobs nearly silent, intent on never letting her husband know that he had finally managed to break her heart.
"Your mom seemed pretty sedate today, don’t you think?" Ryan asked after Catherine showed up to collect her car on Saturday morning.
"Yeah," Jamie agreed. "She probably has a bit of a hangover. I don’t think she’s been drinking much lately. She’s outta practice."
"Do you think we should have gone home with her? I hate to see her looking so sad."
Turning to look at her partner fully, Jamie said, "You know, even if you didn’t have any other good qualities, I’d love you just for the way you care about my mother. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Ryan."
"I love her too," the taller woman said simply, meaning every word.
"Are you going to call Sara today?" Jamie asked, not wanting to bring up the sore subject, but feeling that she should.
"Yeah," Ryan said glumly. "I think I should."
"Wanna talk about it first?" Jamie asked.
"Nah. I’ll just tell her and hope she doesn’t freak."
"Hard to imagine that an incident that happened seven years ago could show up in some investigator's report about an entirely different matter."
"Yeah. Hard to imagine is an understatement," she groused.
"Sara?" the anxious woman asked a few minutes later.
"Hi, Ryan," she said immediately, not needing further identification from her old friend. "I’m surprised to hear from you."
"Yeah," she said quickly. "You’ll be surprised and displeased when I tell you why I’m calling."
"What’s wrong?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch.
"Nothing," Ryan started to say, but amended quickly. "Plenty of things are wrong, but nothing life-threatening. Let me just get to the point so you don’t have to guess, okay?"
"Sure. Go ahead, Ryan."
She blew out a breath, unsure of where to start. "Very shortened version of the story," she said in the familiar shorthand that Sara was so used to. "Jim Evans is unhappy with Jamie and me being together. He has some doubts about me as a person and he had me investigated."
Sara gasped in shock, mumbling, "That sucks."
"Sure does," Ryan agreed. "This affects you because he went back and delved into my uh…
romantic life," she said with a nervous clearing of her throat.
"And he knows about you and me," Sara said quietly.
"Yeah. Your name was in the report," Ryan agreed. "It was pretty accurate factually."
Sara was quiet for a moment and Ryan waited also, letting her friend have time to think about her reaction. "Thanks for telling me, Ryan," she finally said. "I’d hate to have that blindside me if it came up at work."
"Do you think it might?" Ryan asked.
"No. My name is common, but even if it wasn’t I don’t think he’d make the connection. I’ve never spoken to the guy in a one-on-one situation, Ryan. Morris and Foster has over 450 attorneys now, and I’m at the very bottom of the food chain."
Breathing out a sigh of relief Ryan said, "That’s reassuring. I was afraid he might associate you with me and think less of you because of it."
A soft, lilting laugh came out of the receiver and Ryan’s eyes drifted closed at the warmth that the sound evoked. "Being associated with you would only enhance my reputation with anyone who had a brain in their head," she said gently. "Don’t give this another thought, Ryan. I won’t," she promised.
"It’s a deal, Sara. Thanks for being so mature about this."
"It’s taken me a while to begin the process of maturing," she chuckled, "but now that I’ve started, I’m gonna do my best to keep going in the right direction."
Ryan had taken to riding her mountain bike to school, requiring her to carry a substantial amount of books and supplies on her back, and Jamie usually helped her get loaded up. As she prepared to leave on Monday morning, Ryan asked, "Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to see your father?"
Gazing at Ryan for a full minute, Jamie worked her cheek between her teeth, obviously struggling with some inner conflict. Her blonde head finally shook briefly—her mind made up. "No. I want to talk to him alone. Even though he targeted you, he did so because of me. This is really between me and him."
"All right," Ryan agreed, lacing her hands behind Jamie’s neck and giving her a tiny tickle as she did so. She leaned in close and brushed her lips across her cheeks, then embraced her gently and whispered, "I’m going to be worried about you all day. Promise you’ll page me after you see him?"
"I will," she agreed. Patting Ryan’s chest with the flat of her hand, she forced a bright smile and said, "I’ll see you after practice tonight."
Ryan rode away, feeling the anxiety building as she increased the distance between herself and her partner.
Once again, Jamie used the ruse of paying her father a surprise visit to learn his schedule from his secretary. He was in his office when she arrived just after lunch, and she could hear his voice carrying clearly down the hallway when she approached. Allowing him the courtesy of finishing his phone call, Jamie chatted quietly with Helen for a few minutes, the small talk serving to keep her mind off the impending confrontation.
As soon as she heard him say goodbye, she thanked Helen for arranging the meeting and slipped inside his office, closing the door firmly behind her. He looked up and his face betrayed a moment of surprise which was quickly replaced by a look of sad resignation. It was obvious that the young woman who stood in front of his door was not there to conduct a social call; Jim knew the many expressions of his daughter’s face better than most, and he immediately knew that she was, at the very least, intensely angry.
He got up and crossed the room, unsure of how to greet her. For just a moment, he had the irrational notion to try to kiss her, then realized that would be a very bad idea. Instead, he offered nothing by way of greeting, and neither did she. He sat on the arm of his leather sofa and waited in tense silence, knowing that the very essence of their future relationship lay in her small, clenched hands.
"A year ago, if I had been told that one day I would voluntarily choose to cut off contact with you, I think I would have laughed." He felt his stomach clench as she continued in a low, emotionless voice. "I thought, out of all of the people in the world, that you loved me more than anyone else did. More than mother, more than Jack, even more than Poppa. I thought that you understood me, and that my welfare was paramount to you." She shook her head, still unable to fully believe all of the evidence that now showed she had been mistaken. "Funny what a difference a year makes," she added, her voice now growing cold and bitter.
"Jamie, please let me explain," he began, but she cut him off.
"There is no possible explanation. You hired someone to investigate my lover. You did that only to cause me further pain and embarrassment."
"I did not!" he cried, unable to hold his tongue. "I’m trying to show you who she really is!"
"Hmm…let’s see, a few weeks ago she was a money-grubbing opportunist. Then your little investigation quashed that notion, so you no longer try to push that point. But you can’t admit that you were wrong. No, that’s not in Jim Evans' repertoire. You just change your focus. Now she’s a two-timing pedophile." She blinked slowly, cocking her head a tiny bit as she asked, "That
is
today’s incarnation of evil, isn’t it?"
His head dropped in resignation as he realized that he had very little chance of reaching her now. Still, he tried for the last weapon in his arsenal. "So, when I have an affair, it’s evil and horrible. When Ryan has an affair with an older married woman--with a young child, no less--that just makes her more lovable." His tone was bitter and filled with rancor for the dark woman who had so alienated his child from his affections.
"I never thought of you as stupid," Jamie mused, narrowing her eyes at him thoughtfully. "But it puzzles me that you can’t grasp a simple fact. Ryan’s never been married before. Before now she’s never made a vow to anyone to remain faithful. She’s never intentionally betrayed her spouse just…to…get…laid!" Each of her final words was nearly spat from her mouth as she tasted the bile at the back of her throat.
"So, just your mother and I are beyond your contempt?" he asked softly, a malevolent gleam in his eyes.
"I have no contempt for my mother," she snapped. "It’s not her fault that you can’t remain faithful any longer than a dog in heat!"
He rose and went to his desk, opening his lowest drawer and extracting a file folder. Returning to his daughter, he pulled a few photographs from it and tossed them at her sharply, one at a time, her body reacting automatically to catch them. She didn’t want to look, but the first image caught her attention immediately and she was unable to stop her eyes from focusing on it. It was a crystal clear shot of her mother in the very recent past, judging from her haircut. She was sitting at an outdoor café that Jamie recognized as being close to her apartment in Milan. A very handsome dark-haired man held her hand in the photo, his black eyes boring into the fair woman with a magnetic intensity.
The next photo was taken moments later, and their chairs had drawn closer. Now their arms were loosely draped around each other’s bodies, and their lips met in what was likely a short, tender kiss. The following picture showed Catherine’s head resting on his shoulder, his fingers tilting her chin up to be able to better gaze into her eyes. Another showed them entering her apartment building together, the time stamp showing three p.m. In the very last photo, Catherine stood on her balcony, offering a longing farewell to the man, who stood on the street below. She was now wearing a silk robe, and her hair was attractively mussed. The stamp on this photo read seven p.m., and from the golden light that colored her body, it seemed to reflect the accurate time. "Giacomo Fontini," she heard a voice intone. "Art gallery owner. 32 years old. Married. Three children." He waited until he could see the full realization of his words reach her, then asked, "What level of contempt does that engender, Jamie?"
She rose and faced him, her green eyes filled with tears. Her gaze flicked over his face, trying to remember what it had been like to love and be loved by this man who now seemed like a complete stranger. "My contempt for you is so complete, that I have none left to spare."
Without another word, she turned and walked out of his office, determined that those would be the last words she ever spoke to him.
She was barely aware of the road she was on and even less aware of her destination. Her surprise was near total when she found herself entering the town of Hillsborough, and found her car automatically proceeding to her childhood home.
She found her mother in the garden, the older women strolling along the gravel path in deep concentration. The sound of footsteps startled her, and she turned to face Jamie with a look of shock. "Sweetheart…" she began only to find her arms full of her sobbing child. The young woman cried so hard that Catherine prepared herself for the worst, and, as she'd feared, moments later her daughter was bent over from the waist, retching violently onto the path.
When she was able to stand, Catherine led her to a bench and left her for a moment to get her something to drink. Minutes later she returned, a tall glass of lemon-lime soda in one hand and a damp cloth in the other. Handing Jamie some tissues, Catherine wiped at the sweat that ran freely down the young woman’s face and neck.
It took a long while, longer than she could ever remember, to calm her down enough to discuss what had happened. Jamie drained her glass of Seven-Up and put some of the ice cubes into the cloth, placing it on the back of her neck to help cool her fevered body.
"Are you feeling better, Honey?" Catherine asked softly, her heart aching for her child. She intuited that her distress was over her planned confrontation with Jim, and she forced herself to be patient enough to let Jamie explain her plight when she was ready.
"Yeah, I guess so," she replied, wishing that she didn’t have to share what she had learned. "I went to see my father today," she began, no longer able to even refer to him by his more familiar form of address. "It was…it was bad, Mom."
Slipping her arm tightly around her daughter’s shoulders, Catherine assured her, "You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to, Honey."
"No, no, I have to," Jamie swallowed convulsively, trying to stem another round of tears. "The really bad part was about you."
Catherine stiffened, her eyes growing wide with alarm. "About me?" she asked, her mouth suddenly very dry.
"Yes." Jamie took a deep breath and revealed, "He had you followed, too."
All of the air seemed to escape from Catherine’s body, and she collapsed against the hard wooden bench, her heart racing, her palms covered with sweat. "Jamie," she whispered, "I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that I…"
Her daughter’s hand covered her own as the strong, firm voice said, "It’s okay, Mom. It’s a little late, but I…I finally understand what Ryan’s been telling me all along."
Staying right where she was, Catherine merely inclined her head, silently urging her daughter to continue.
"What happens between you and my father--between any two people for that matter--isn’t my business. I never should have been so judgmental about his behavior. I don’t have to like it, but I don’t have the right to get involved."
Catherine let out the breath she didn’t know she had been holding, and gave her daughter a relieved look. She dabbed at her eyes with the last of the tissues and said, "I know I’ve done some things that you don’t approve of, Jamie, but I honestly don’t know if I could survive if I lost your respect."
Enveloping her mother in a hug, Jamie whispered, "I love and respect you, Mom. I don’t know what happened between you and Daddy, but I’m sure you had your reasons for what you’ve done."
"I’ll tell you all about it, if you want to know," Catherine offered.
Looking at her mother curiously, Jamie asked, "How long has it been going on?"
"Not very long," Catherine revealed. "It started when I went to Milan after Christmas last year."
"Why?" Jamie asked, thinking it odd that her mother would choose this point in her life to have an affair, since it was obvious that her father had been unfaithful for many years.
"It’s a long story, but I’ll give you the condensed version," she said, taking in a deep breath to clear her mind. "Things got very strained between your father and I not long after you left for college. I think that both of us had a large void in our lives without you, and I decided that I didn’t want things to go on as they had been." She furrowed her brow, trying to decide how much she should reveal. "We hadn’t been intimate in several years, and I just decided that I couldn’t live without love for the rest of my life."
Jamie’s eyes closed in pain as she considered how lonely it must have been for her mother to be locked into a sexless marriage to a man who was unfaithful.
Catherine continued, "We discussed divorcing, but to my surprise, your father proposed that we try to start over again." She smiled softly, remembering his heartfelt plea to give him another chance. But her smile faded as she observed, "I think he just didn’t want to lose the houses and his cars."
"That sounds like him," Jamie agreed, unable to see her father in even a glimmer of a favorable light.
"We tried to re-establish our physical relationship, and even though it was strained, I thought we were making progress. Then we went to the New Year’s Eve party last year," she said, her voice tight with remembered anger. "One of the partner’s wives took me aside and told me that your father was having an affair with one of the associates." She shook her head slowly, the shame still causing her cheeks to flush. "That was the final straw for me, Honey. Being humiliated in public like that was just something that I couldn’t tolerate."
"What was his excuse?" Jamie cried, unable to understand how a man could lie repeatedly to his wife.
"I never told him that I knew," Catherine said softly. "I rebuffed his advances once or twice and he never made another overture." She looked every one of her 41 years as she sighed and said, "I think he was just sleeping with me so that I didn’t divorce him. He seemed…
relieved not to have to touch me again."
Blinking her eyes against the pain she felt for her mother, Jamie asked, "So you
tried
to find a lover?"
"No, Dear. I’d known Giacomo for several years. We were great friends, and he’s helped me with all of the art I’ve acquired over the years I’ve lived in Milan." She blushed slightly as she admitted, "I’ve known he was interested for quite a while, but I always told him that I couldn’t return his affection." She looked up at Jamie with a hint of defiance in her deep brown eyes and said, "I stopped saying no after I found out about your father’s latest conquest."
Jamie tried to get her mind around all of these events, finally asking, "But what about his wife and his family? Isn’t it hard on them?"
Catherine shook her head slightly and assured her daughter, "Giacomo’s wife knows about us. She has a lover, too." A smile covered her face as she recounted, "His wife’s lover is a woman, Jamie."
