Safe Harbour (12 page)

“I wrote them some pretty pathetic letters for years before I gave up. And they never answered. And sometimes I write to them now, but in the end, I never send the letters. It doesn't seem fair to put pressure on them. I miss them like crazy. I don't think I exist for them anymore. I've talked to their mother and she says it's for the best. She tells me they're happy and don't want me in their life. I never did anything wrong, from my perspective, they just don't need me anymore. Their stepfather is a great guy. I like him myself, or did. We were good friends for years before he and Sally got together. Anyway, that's the story of my kids, and the last ten years. The last six without my kids. She sends me photographs with the Christmas card so I know what they look like. I'm not sure if that's better or worse. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. I feel like one of those poor women who've given birth to a baby, and for whatever reason, given it up. And all they get are pictures once a year. She sends me Christmas cards with all eight kids on it, his, mine, and theirs. I usually cry when I look at it,” he said, barely looking embarrassed. They knew a lot about each other now. “But I stepped back for them. I think it's what they need, or want, or so she tells me.

“Robert is eighteen now. He'll be going to college soon, probably over there. They have a great life in Auckland. Hamish owns the biggest ad agency in that part of the world. Sally runs it with him, just as she did ours with me. She's a very capable woman. Not a lot of heart, but enormously creative. And a good mother, I think. She knows what the kids need. Better than I do probably. I don't even know them anymore. I'm not even sure I'd recognize them on the street, which is an agonizing admission. That's the worst of it. I try not to think of it. I let go for their sakes. Sally wrote to me a few years ago and asked how I felt about Hamish adopting my kids. It damn near killed me. I don't care how much they don't want me in their lives, they're still my kids. And always will be. I wouldn't agree to it. I've hardly heard from her since, except at Christmas. Before that, we'd talk once in a while. I think they just wish I'd go away quietly and disappear somewhere, and I pretty much have. Out of their lives and everyone else's. I lead a very quiet life here, and it's taken me a long time to get over everything that went wrong between me and Sally, and losing my kids to Hamish.” It was an agonizing story, but explained a lot of things to her as she listened, and said much about him. Like her, he was a man who had lost nearly everything that mattered to him, his business, his wife, and his children. And he had retreated into the life of a hermit. At least she had Pip, and was grateful for it. She couldn't even begin to imagine her life without her.

“Why did the marriage break up?” She knew it was impertinent, but it was a piece she didn't have yet of the total picture, and she knew that if he didn't want to tell her, he wouldn't. After all that they had told each other, they were friends now.

He sighed for a moment before he answered. “It's a pretty classic story. Hamish and I went to grad school together. He went back to Auckland afterward. I stayed in New York. We both opened ad agencies, and formed a sort of loose alliance with each other. We shared some clients with international interests, referred business to each other, consulted on some big accounts together. He came to New York several times a year. We went there. Sally was the creative director of our agency, she was the brain of the outfit, and also handled the business side, and brought in most of the clients. I was the art director. We were a fairly unbeatable combination, and we had some of the biggest clients in the business. Hamish and I stayed friends, and he and his wife and Sally and I went on a number of vacations together. Mostly to Europe. A safari in Botswana once. We rented a château in France one fateful summer. I had to go back early, and Hamish's wife's mother died unexpectedly and she went back to Auckland. He stayed in France. So did Sally, with our kids. In as few words as possible, Hamish and Sally fell in love. Four weeks later she came home and told me she was leaving me. She was in love with him, and they were going to see what happened. She needed to get away from me to figure it out. She needed space, and time. Those things happen, I guess. To some people. She told me she'd never really been in love with me, we were just a great business team, and she had had the kids because it was expected of her. Hell of a thing to say about our children, and about me, but I actually think she meant it. She's not known for her sensitivity about other people's feelings, which is probably why she's so successful.

“Anyway, Hamish went home and delivered the same piece of news to his wife, Margaret, and the rest is history. Sally moved out of the apartment in New York with the kids, and stayed in a hotel. She offered to sell me her half of the business, but I had no desire to run it without her, or find a new partner. I just didn't have the heart to do it. She knocked me flat on my ass, and I couldn't get up for a long time. We sold the whole shebang, lock, stock, and barrel, to a major conglomerate. It was a terrific deal for both of us, but all I had left after fifteen years of marriage was a hell of a lot of money, no wife, no job, and kids who had moved nine thousand miles away to Auckland. She left me on Labor Day, and she and the kids moved to Auckland the day after Christmas. They got married as soon as the ink on our divorce was dry. I'd been hoping that if I let her be, and didn't push her, she'd come back to me. Crazy of me to think that, I guess. But we're all crazy, and stupid sometimes.

“By the time she left, my head was still spinning. And I guess that, my friend, answers your question about my marriage. The worst of it is I still think Hamish Greene is a great guy. Not a great friend, mind you, but he's an all-around bright, fun, amusing person. And from all I can gather, I think they've been very happy with each other. And their business is booming.” From the outside, all Ophélie could see was that Matt had been screwed royally, by his wife, his best friend, and maybe even by his children. She'd heard stories like it before over the years, but none as totally ruthless. He had lost everything, except his money, and it didn't look like that mattered much to him. All he seemed to want was a quiet life in a bungalow on the beach at Safe Harbour. Other than that, and his talent, he had absolutely nothing left. It was disgraceful what they had done to him. The thought of it left her speechless and grief-stricken on his behalf.

“That is a horrible story,” she said, frowning. “Absolutely awful. I hate them both, just listening to you. But not the children. They are the victims of all this, as you have been. They've obviously been manipulated into shutting you out and forgetting you. It was your wife's responsibility to help them maintain their relationship with you,” she said sensibly, and he didn't disagree with her. And amazingly, he had never blamed his children for their defection. They were too young to know what they were doing, and he knew how convincing Sally could be. She could turn anyone around in a hot minute, and confuse them forever.

“That's not Sally. She wanted a clean break from me, and she got one. Sally always got what she wanted, even from Hamish. I'm not sure whose idea their children were, but knowing Sally, she thought it was a smart thing to do to lock him in. Hamish is a little naïve in some ways, it was one of the things I always liked about him. Sally isn't. She's as clear and calculating as it gets, and she always does what's best for Sally.”

“She sounds like a very evil woman,” Ophélie said loyally, and it touched him. Telling her about his life had been somewhat emotional for him, and as he stoked the fire again, they were both silent for a moment.

“And what about since then? Has there been no one important to you?” It would have been the only possible consolation, but there was no evidence of a woman in his life. He seemed to lead a very solitary existence, or at least that was her impression of him. There could have been someone, of course, but she didn't think so.

“Not really. I was in no condition to get involved with anyone else for the first few years after Sally left. I was a basket case. And after that, I was commuting to Auckland to see my kids, and I wasn't in the mood. I didn't trust anyone, and I didn't want to. I swore I never would again. There was a woman I liked very much about three years ago, but she was a lot younger than I, and she wanted to get married and have kids. I just couldn't see myself doing that again, or trusting anyone enough to put myself in that position. I didn't want to get married and have kids, and risk getting divorced again and losing them. I couldn't see the point. She was thirty-two years old, and I was forty-four at the time, and she gave me an ultimatum. I don't blame her. But I couldn't make a commitment to her either. I bowed out gracefully, and she got married about six months later, to a very nice guy. They just had their third baby this summer. I just couldn't go there. I hope I'll get back in touch with my own kids again someday, when they get a little older. But I have no desire to start another family, or open myself up to that kind of disappointment. Going through that once in a lifetime has done it for me.” Ophélie had to admit that very few people would have survived what he'd been through. And in some ways he hadn't. As gentle and caring as he was, he was emotionally shut down, and not willing to open up again, but she couldn't really blame him. It also explained why he had opened up to Pip so much and reached out to her. She was almost the same age as his children the last time he saw them. And he was obviously hungry for some kind of human contact, even from a little girl of eleven. And she was safe for him. He had no real investment in her, other than friendship. There was nothing wrong with it, and it met Pip's needs at the moment as well. But it was hardly enough emotional sustenance for a man of forty-seven. He deserved so much more than that, in Ophélie's eyes at least, but he wasn't brave enough at this point to share more than he did with a child on the beach, whom he could teach to draw a few times a week. For a man of his caliber and abilities, it seemed a paltry existence. But clearly, it was all he wanted.

“What about you, Ophélie? What kind of marriage did you have? I get the feeling that your husband wasn't entirely an easy person. Geniuses usually aren't, or so they say.” Ophélie looked gentle and accommodating to him. And from what she had said about her husband's relationship with his sick son, he had the feeling that her late husband hadn't given her an easy time. He wasn't far from wrong, although she didn't often admit it to anyone, and hadn't over the years, sometimes even herself.

“He was a brilliant man. With incredible vision. He always knew what he wanted to do, from the beginning. He was single-minded in his purpose, and he refused to let anything stop him. Absolutely nothing. Not even me, or the children, not that we wanted to stand in his way. We did everything we could to support him, or I did at least. And he finally got what he wanted, and achieved what he'd always dreamed of. He was a huge success in the last five years of his life. It was wonderful for him.” But not necessarily for her or their kids, other than materially.

“And how was he to you in all that?” Matt asked persistently. It was obvious that he'd been a success, even from the little Matt knew of him. He had achieved greatness in his field. But the real question, in Matt's mind, was how was he as a human being and a husband? Ophélie seemed to have dodged the question.

“I always loved him. From the very first moment I met him. I had a huge crush on him as a student. I always admired him, his brilliant mind, his singlemindedness of purpose. He was a man who never lost sight of his dreams. You have to admire someone like that.” Whether or not he had been difficult had never been the issue for her. She accepted that about him. She thought he was entitled to be.

“And what were your dreams?”

“Being married to him.” She smiled sadly at Matt. “It was all I ever wanted. When he married me, I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. And it was difficult certainly at times. There were years, many of them, when we had absolutely no money. We struggled for about fifteen years, and then he made so much we didn't know what to do with it. But that was never what was important to us, or me anyway. I loved him just as much when we were poor. His money never mattered to me. He did.” He had been the sun and the moon to her, along with their kids.

“Did he spend time with you and the children?” Matt asked quietly.

“Sometimes. When he could. He was always incredibly busy, doing far more important things.” It was obvious to Matt that she had worshiped him. Probably far more than he deserved.

“What's more important than your wife and kids?” Matt said simply, but he was very different than Ted, in a lot of ways. And she was light-years from Sally. Ophélie was everything Sally wasn't. Gentle, kind, decent, honest, compassionate. She was locked in her own miseries at the moment, but even with that, he could tell she wasn't a selfish person. She was lost and grieving, which was different. He knew it well. He had been there himself. And grief could be allabsorbing when you were in the midst of it, which was why she was less attentive than she had previously been with Pip. But she was aware enough to berate herself for it.

“Scientists are very different people,” Ophélie explained tolerantly. “They have different needs, different perceptions, different emotional abilities than the rest of us. He wasn't an ordinary person.” But in spite of her excuses for him, Matt didn't like what he was hearing. He suspected that the late Dr. Mackenzie had been narcissistic and egocentric, and possibly even a lousy father. And he wasn't at all sure he'd been a decent husband to her. But if not, Ophélie was clearly not prepared to see it, or admit it to him. Death was different from divorce, Matt knew too, with a deceased spouse came early sainthood. It seemed to be hard to remember the flaws and failings of someone you loved who had died. In divorces, all you remembered was what had been wrong with them. And over time the remembered flaws just seemed to get bigger and worse. When they died, all you remembered was the best part, and then you improved on it. It made the deceased spouse's absence seem that much more cruel. And Matt felt genuinely sorry for her.