Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (26 page)

“We can try.”

“No, you’d only wind up wondering if I held you back somehow. These have been the best few weeks of my life, Tommy. You helped me grow up. I love you.” She saw his eyes open wide. “Yes, I love you, but I know it wouldn’t work.”

And he knew it too, had known it, and was bereft because of it.

“Don’t look so sad, Tommy. You’ve helped me more than I can ever say. You helped me heal and I’ll always be grateful to you for that. You made me whole again.”

He kissed her cheek softly, gently and she ached for what couldn’t be. “You were always whole, Johanna. I just made you see it, that’s all.”

She laughed lightly, touched. “Have it your way.” She couldn’t resist touching his hair, letting her fingers travel through it one more time. Words came to her that she had once been forced to read in some faraway English class light years ago. “ ‘And when you speak of this, and you shall, be kind.’”

“Kind?” Tommy laughed, incredulous at her statement. He had never heard of Tea and Sympathy nor the quote, but he understood what she was saying. “I’ll be proud, not kind, Johanna. Proud that once a lovely lady spent a little time with me.”

He kissed her then, kissed her long and hard, with all the love they felt and all the love that would never be. When their lips parted, it was for the last time and they both knew it, even though there were promises exchanged of keeping in touch and possible visits sometime in the future. They both knew that the words were empty words that needed to be said, to be heard, to keep tears from coming. They were words that would never bear any fruit.

“I have a present for you,” he said, rising.

“Oh?” It took her a moment to regain control of herself. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry. He had made her happy and there was no reason to cry and ruin that. But still she felt the sting of gathering tears. She struggled to keep them back. “You shouldn’t have gone to the trouble, Tommy.”

“No trouble.” He crossed to the hope chest and then turned to look at her. “I want you to have this.”

“The chest?”

He nodded.

She didn’t remember walking over to it, but she found herself on her knees before the finely carved work of art. “But Tommy, I can’t. This is so beautiful, and you worked so hard on it. I saw you, last night, working on it in your workshop.”

“I know. I felt you standing there. I knew you were leaving and I wanted to have it finished for you before you were gone.”

Lightly, her fingers traced a rose that would live forever. “I don’t know what to say.”

He took her hands and raised her to her feet. “Say you’ll take it. To remember me by.”

She looked up into his face. As if she could ever forget. “Everything I need to remember you by is in my heart.”

“You can have something in your bedroom too. I’m hanging your sketch in mine.”

She laughed and leaned her head against his chest. “Thank you. With all my heart, thank you.” She hugged him, glad that he couldn’t see her face or her tears.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Johanna’s stomach began to rebel, churning. The airplane was descending. Kennedy Airport waited in the distance to receive them. God, she hated flying. As the ground came barreling up closer and closer, Johanna wrapped her fingers around the armrests and looked straight ahead. She had flown countless times and it only got worse with each flight.

With a little luck, she wouldn’t be flying again any time soon.

She hadn’t called Mary to say she was coming. She didn’t want anyone meeting her and Jocelyn at the airport. Not immediately. Johanna needed a little time, time to get her bearings. Time to decide what to do and where to do it. Her life lay stretched out before her like a field of tall, tangled weeds. Somewhere beneath it all was order. She had to believe in that, cling to that. There was a path there, but she had to clear away the debris first in order to find it.

And she had absolutely no idea if she could or if she was even up to it.

She had to be up to it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

To take her mind off the fact that the plane was swiftly approaching the airport, where hundreds of planes took off and landed every day and could very easily collide with the one she was on, Johanna glanced at Jocelyn. Her daughter was looking beyond her out of the window, a mixture of awe and apprehension on her face.

The same as me, Jocey, Johanna thought, the same as me. And not just about the landing. About our new life. Except that she couldn’t admit it, couldn’t afford to lean on anyone. Not anymore.

Johanna turned her face forward again. Her thoughts gathered around the immediate future. The unknown, unformed immediate future. She had to be up to facing it, tackling it and winning. She didn’t have the luxury of failing. She’d be failing for two and she owed Jocelyn much better than that. Silently, she linked her fingers with her daughter’s.

Jocelyn responded to the gentle pressure by squeezing back. Despite the arguing that had transpired, that was yet to transpire, they had a basically good relationship and could communicate with one another at times with just a touch. At bottom there was love.

Johanna saw the apprehension mount in Jocelyn’s eyes. She forgot about her own fears. “It’s going to be fine, Jocelyn.”

“No, it’s not. I wish we were going home,” Jocelyn pouted.

Jocey’d get used to it eventually. It would just take time, Johanna told herself, hoping she was right. “This’ll be home soon enough.”

Jocelyn thought of the friends she missed and her own room. “Where are we going to live?”

Johanna took a deep breath. The plane landed. Her stomach lurched. “I don’t know yet.”

“Terrific.”

“Think of it as an adventure, Jocelyn.”

“Yeah.” It was clear that she didn’t, that she wasn’t in the mood for adventures.

“Jocey.” Something in Johanna’s voice made Jocelyn look at her mother. “I need help here, okay?”

“You’re asking me for help?” Jocelyn asked incredulously.

Maybe the burden was too much for a twelve-year-old. And then again, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Jocelyn needed to feel more of a part of her life than Johanna had allowed her to be. Protecting her, sheltering her from things had set her apart, caused a schism to form. They had to be together, to pull together to make this work. “A little cheering section wouldn’t hurt, Jocey. I haven’t been on my own in a long, long time.”

The fact that her mother was unsure made Jocelyn nervous. “When Daddy gets out—“

Johanna hadn’t told Jocelyn that she was divorcing her father and now wasn’t the time to begin explaining. Not with a planeload of passengers as a backdrop. Johanna unbuckled her seatbelt, her body alert.

“Until then,” she said, quickly brushing Jocelyn’s words aside, “we’re on our own. Just the two of us.” All around them there was commotion, as people pulled out pieces of luggage from the overhead compartments and gathered their things together. Mother and daughter looked at one another. “I need you, Jocey.”

Confused, a little pleased, Jocelyn nodded her head. “Okay.”

It was a start.

The morning had been hectic. That in itself was unusual. As a rule, Tuesdays at the gallery were rather peaceful. It was as if the gods generously gave him a respite after the frantic pace that Mondays always seemed to demand. But today there was no respite. The gods might be sleeping, but clients weren’t. Patrons had come and gone all morning. And then there had been Bruce to deal with.

Bruce Cantrell, the artist whose show was going to open this week, who Joshua had managed to calm and soothe more than once without the aid of the man’s ever-present flask of alcoholic solace, was having an especially vicious attack of nerves. It wasn’t the first time. The show was scheduled for Thursday evening. Joshua doubted if Bruce Cantrell would live that long, not the way he was wearing himself out. The tall, rangy, long-faced artist vacillated between sheer contempt for his future audience and absolute terror that no one would come to see the fruit of his blood, sweat and agony. He paced around the gallery, conjuring up the image of the Ancient Mariner for Joshua. Right down to the mad, glittering eyes.

Running an art gallery had its moments, Joshua thought as he poured Bruce a thick cup of coffee, his third. This wasn’t one of them.

Joshua handed the mug to Bruce who curled his paint-splattered fingers around the mug, holding on as if this was a vital transfusion and he would die without it. Joshua pressed a firm hand to his shoulder and forced the man to sit down in the bright, royal blue canvas-back director’s chair that was off to the side. He wanted him out of the way of the patrons. People tended to be frightened off by wild-eyed artists.

Letting out a breath, Joshua looked around the spacious gallery. It was big and bright and most important, his. Who would have thought, fifteen year ago, as he held his degree in his hand, eager to take the world by storm, that he would wind up on the other side of the easel? Then he had wanted nothing more than to paint, to create. It was food, water, air, the very life itself to him.

Well, almost, he thought ruefully, his mind drifting over the rough cobblestone of memories. There had been something more, something that had been his inspiration, his driving force. But he had lost that. Lost her. And when that happened, he lost his need to express himself on canvas in wild, passionate colors that drew out bits and pieces of his soul for the world to see. There had been no more soul left to give.

Losing her had been, he thought, his own fault. But he hadn’t anything to fight with, nothing to offer, and so he had lost his inspiration. He had lost Johanna before he had ever had her.

He smiled to himself now. Across the room, his secretary caught his enigmatic smile and wondered at it. Since he had returned from his business trip abroad, she had noticed that her boss tended to drift off, daydreaming. She couldn’t help wondering what had happened in London to bring about this change. Usually, he was a very sensible, straightforward type of man. Maybe, she mused, it involved a woman.

And Johanna never even knew, Joshua thought. Never even suspected. To her, they had been just friends, sharing everything, sharing dreams, feelings, hopes. All save one. He hadn’t told her. He hadn’t been able to tell her what he felt. And when he finally could, she was gone, married to that man who put stars in her eyes and promised her the world.

Because he felt she deserved it and that Harry could give it to her far better than he, Joshua had let her go without a word.

How odd that he should run into her in the Tate Gallery of all places after all these years. When he had heard her voice, when he had seen her again, the years seemed to have been stripped away from him. Fifteen years, gone in a flash.

And yet they weren’t gone. They had left their stamp in her eyes. The soft innocence he had always loved wasn’t there any more. She had a woman’s well-formed figure and a woman’s maturity in her eyes, a maturity that had brought pain and sorrow with it. She had smiled at him beneath that brilliant painting of Turner’s in the gallery and had talked animatedly of old times. But he had seen instantly that she wasn’t happy, even though she was in her element, in an art gallery.

He had wondered about the man she was with and who he was in her life. The lunch they shared hadn’t yielded enough information on that score. But for the most part, he had only thought of her. He had pressed his card into her hand, but he had little hopes that she would even keep it, much less seek him out someday. Her life, such as it was, was in Los Angeles. His was here now, nurturing frail artistic egos and immersing himself in the art community.

Joshua realized that Bruce had stopped his rambling, edgy monologue and was looking up at him with his huge, hangdog eyes. Now they made him think a little of Rasputin, the mad Russian monk who had brought down the Russian monarchy. Bruce was a little mad himself, but harmless. Except, perhaps, to himself.

“My advice to you,” Joshua began, not knowing what Bruce had just finished saying but guessing it had something to do with having to depend on ignorant yuppies standing around, eating cheese, drinking wine and making comments about his so-called visionary work, “is for you to go home and sleep until Thursday afternoon.” Joshua put a fatherly hand on the man’s shoulder. “Frankly, Bruce, you really look like hell.”

Bruce flinched, then shrugged off the hand. “Looks aren’t important.”

“Maybe not,” Joshua agreed amiably, “but smell is. Take a shower, okay?”

Bruce put down the mug on the black onyx top table with a thud. Coffee sloshed over the sides and onto the table. “Hey, I—“

Easily, Joshua covered the wet spot with a napkin and wiped it away, grateful that the spilled coffee was the only damage to the table. “Do it for me, okay?” Joshua urged as he took the reed
-
thin man by the arm and raised him to his feet.

Long legs clad in dirty brown cords unfolded. Beat-up moccasins made contact with the floor. Bruce ran a hand through hair that touched his shoulders and desperately needed to be shampooed. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”

Joshua grinned easily as he patted Bruce’s back. Bones met his touch. The man needed to consume something more substantial than paint fumes, Joshua thought. “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you and I thank you.”

“Huh?”

“An old line from a movie,” Joshua said, waving away both the line and the puzzled look on Bruce’s face. It had been from Yankee Doodle Dandy, a movie he had seen with Johanna. Next to art, she had loved old movies, most particularly nonsensical things where people sang their way into happily ever after.

He couldn’t seem to get her out of his mind. Since he had seen her in London two weeks ago, she seemed to haunt his thoughts every time he let his guard down. The scandal involving Harry hadn’t helped matters any either. He had read about it last week and had been tempted to call her and offer his help. Going with impulse, he had called, but his call hadn’t been put through. The lines to the hotel were jammed. She was fodder for reporters, the six o’clock news and rag mongers.

He wished he could help.