Everything to Gain and a Secret Affair (44 page)

“Thanks,” I said, then filled the glasses. “Let's go to the small den. It's cozy there. Sarah lit a fire a while ago, since it's turned so chilly tonight.”

Once we were settled in front of the blazing fire, Richard lifted his glass and toasted the two of us.

“Cheers,” Sarah and I said in unison, and then we all settled back in our chairs and fell silent.

It was Richard who spoke first. Later I came to realize that he was very good at breaking the ice, making people feel comfortable. Perhaps that was part of his great success as a journalist.

Looking at me, he said, “What a fantastic success you've made of Indian Meadows. It's great for us all, none of us knows how we could manage without it now.”

“Oh, so you do use the shops, do you?” Sarah said, a brow lifting.

“Certainly do. I bought all of my Christmas gifts here last year, and I fully intend to do the same again. I'm frequently over here browsing around.”

“Funny, we've never seen you,” Sarah murmured.

I said, “It's nice to meet a satisfied customer. You are, aren't you?”

“Very much so,” Richard assured me, smiling. He took a swallow of wine and went on, “And I love Nora and her
cooking. To tell you the truth, I don't know what I'd do without her. I buy most of my meals from the café takeout—her soups, her salads, and that delicious cottage pie.”

Sarah and I exchanged dismayed glances, and before I could say a word, she exclaimed, “It's a good thing you
do
like it, because that's what you're getting for dinner tonight. Nora's chicken soup and cottage pie.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that's great.
Great.
As I said, I am her biggest fan.”

“I could make something else, spaghetti primavera, if you like!” I suggested swiftly, feeling embarrassed.

“No, don't be silly. The cottage pie's wonderful.”

“Bet you had that last night?” Sarah said, making it sound like a question.

“No, I didn't!” Richard protested, and then he broke off. His mouth twitched and he started to laugh. Glancing at me he shrugged. “But honestly, I don't mind eating it again.”

The expression on his face was so comical I found myself laughing with him. Between chuckles, I said to Sarah, “We're going to have to start cooking again. We don't have much choice.”

“You're right, Mally,” she replied, gazing at me for the longest moment.

Richard asked me more questions about Indian Meadows, how I had come to start the shops, and I told him.

He mentioned the Lettice diary and confided how fascinating he had found it.

Sarah listened to us talking, occasionally joined in, went and got the bottle of wine from the kitchen, and kept filling our glasses.

At one moment she came back from the kitchen and said, “I've put the cottage pie in the oven,” and pulled a funny face. We all laughed.

Later, when I went into the kitchen myself to check on things, Sarah followed me. “I can do it, really I can,” I said. “Go and keep Richard company.”

“He's all right, he's looking at the books on the bookshelves. Listen, I want to tell you something.”

She sounded so peculiar, I turned around to face her. “What is it?”

“It's lovely to hear you laugh again, Mal. I haven't heard you laugh in years. That's all I wanted to say.”

I stood there returning her loving gaze, and I realized that she had spoken the truth.

As it turned out, laughter was the keynote of the evening.

Richard Markson had a quick wit and a good sense of humor, as did Sarah, and their repartee was fast and furious. At one moment they were so amusing I found myself chortling yet again, and so much so I had to stop serving the cottage pie for fear of spilling it.

I sat down at the table for a second, letting my laughter subside, and I looked from one to the other, thinking how well matched they seemed. It struck me that he was the nicest man Sarah had brought around in a long time, and it was quite apparent that he liked her a lot. And why wouldn't he? My Sashy was beautiful and smart, kind and loving, and quite irresistible at times, like tonight. She was inimitable.

Rising, I went back to the oven and brought out the cottage pie again.

Sarah said, “Why don't you put the dish in the middle of table, Mal? We'll help ourselves.”

“Good idea,” Richard agreed.

I did as Sarah suggested and sat down.

After taking a sip of wine, I watched as Richard served
himself, then stuck his fork into the pie on his plate. How awful that Sash and I hadn't been more inventive with the dinner. But how could we have known that he was a regular customer of the take-out kitchen? I began to eat, and a bit later, when I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was relishing the pie.

It was over the Brie cheese and green salad that Sarah zeroed in on him. Leaning back in her chair, she asked in an offhand way, “How long have you had a weekend place up here, Richard?”

“Just over a year.”

“Your Cape Cod looks very charming from the outside. Do you own it?”

He shook his head. “No, it's a rental. Kathy Sands found it for me, and she's—”

“Kathy was our real estate broker for Indian Meadows,” I cut in. “She's a terrific woman, don't you think?”

He smiled. “Yes, she is, and I started to say that she's been looking for a house for me to buy, but the houses are all far too big for me.”

“Oh, so you live alone then, do you?” Sarah asked, throwing him a quizzical look.

“I'm single,” he said. “And I certainly don't want a large house to roam around in alone.”

“That's understandable,” Sarah murmured. “I'd feel the same. But of course I come here every weekend to be with Mal.” There was a little pause before she said, “I've never been married, have you?”

“No, I haven't,” he said. “I've roamed the world as a journalist, been a foreign correspondent until recently, and I guess I was always too involved with my job to think of settling down. I came back to the States three years ago and took a job with
Newsweek
.” He pursed his lips, gave a half shrug. “I decided I'd had enough of foreign places. I wanted to come back home to little old New York.”

“Are you a New Yorker?” I asked.

“Born and bred. You are too, aren't you, Mal? And you, Sarah?”

“Yes,” I answered. “We are.”

“We've been friends since we were babies,” Sarah informed him, laughing. “Actually, you could say we've been inseparable since our prams. Anyway, what brought you up to this neck of the woods for weekends?”

“I was a boarder at the Kent School before I went to Yale, and I've always loved it up here. To my way of thinking, the northwestern highlands of Connecticut are God's own country.”

T
he night I met Richard I was quite certain it was Sarah he was interested in, not me. But within a few weeks of knowing him, he had made it absolutely clear he was drawn to me. He liked Sarah as a person, he said, found her delightful, in fact, but that was as far as it went.

I was so taken aback, I found myself stuttering that she was going to be hurt and upset. Richard assured me otherwise; he pointed out that she had no interest in him either.

This, too, had amazed me; after all, she was my oldest and dearest friend. I knew her intimately, as well as I knew myself. I was quite convinced he was wrong in his reading of her.

But he was right.

When I asked Sarah about Richard, she admitted he was not her type. “A nice man, too nice, Mal,” were her words. “I've got a horrible feeling I always fall for the rats like Tommy Preston.”

Once I recovered from my surprise, I found myself agreeing to go on seeing him. But I did so cautiously. I realized it would take a long time for me to allow him into my life. I had been alone for four years now, and I saw no reason to change the situation.

But as Sarah said, Richard was a nice man, warm, kind,
and thoughtful, and he did make me laugh. That dry humor of his constantly brought a smile to my face, and I discovered I looked forward to seeing him on Friday or Saturday, or sometimes Sunday, when he came up for weekends. And yet, for all that, I did withhold part of myself.

I think he knew it, of course. He was too astute not to understand that I was afraid of a relationship, in many ways.

He knew all about me and what had happened to my family. He had never come out and said so, had merely alluded to it. But he was a newspaperman, and a very good one, and he had been living in London in December of 1988. The murders of my husband and children had made headlines there, as well as here.

One of the things I liked about Richard was his sensitivity. On a Saturday evening in January, when I had known him for about three months, I came across him in the sunroom, looking at a framed photograph of Jamie and Lissa.

He held it in both of his hands and was gazing at it intently; there was such a tender look on his face I was touched.

I came in on him unawares, and he looked startled and embarrassed when he saw me. Swiftly he put the photograph back on the table, and still looking uncomfortable, he gave me a small, almost shy smile. He seemed about to say something, then he stopped.

“Say it,” I said, walking over to him. “It's all right, really. Say what you're thinking, Richard.”

“How beautiful they were . . .”

“Yes, they were. I used to call them my little Botticelli angels, and they were just that. They were adorable, mischievous, naturally, at times, but very bright and funny and . . . just great. They were
great
, Richard.”

He reached out, put a hand on my arm gently. “It must
have been . . . hard for you, heartbreaking . . . I'm sure it still is.”

“Excruciating at times, and I suppose it always will be. But I've learned to go on living somehow.”

A troubled expression flickered in his eyes as he said, “Look, I'm sorry, Mal, sorry you caught me staring at their picture. The last thing I want to do is cause you pain by making you talk about them.”

“Oh, but it doesn't cause me pain,” I said quickly. “I love to talk about them. Actually, most people think like you do, and they avoid mentioning Jamie and Lissa. But I want to reminisce about them, because by doing so it helps to keep them both alive. My children were born, they existed on this planet for six years. And they were such joyous little beings, gave me so much love and pleasure, I want to keep on remembering them, sharing my memories with my family and friends. I know I always will.”

“I understand, and I'm glad you've confided in me, Mal,” he said, “that you've shared this. It's important to me. I want to get to know you better.”

“I've been very damaged,” I murmured and went and sat on the sofa.

He took the chair facing me and said, “You're very brave.”

“I'm very fragile. There are parts of me that are breakable, Richard.”

“I know that, Mal. I'll be careful . . . I'll handle with care, I promise.”

It seemed to me that after this discussion we drew a bit closer, but not that much, because
I
would not permit it. Deep down I was afraid of getting involved with him on an emotional level, if indeed I was capable of such a thing. I wasn't sure that I was.

But as the weeks passed and we continued to see each
other when he came up on the weekends, the relationship did develop, and we kept discovering new things we had in common.

He had seen the grave under the old maple tree down by my studio, although I had never shown it to him. Perhaps Sarah had. In any case, one lovely April day he brought me a bunch of violets and asked me to put them on the grave. “For Andrew and the children,” he said.

This was yet another thoughtful gesture on his part, and it moved me enormously.

After this I began to relax a little, to trust him even more, at least on a certain level. But the barriers I had erected were hard to scale, even harder to break down. As I found myself more and more drawn to him physically, I discovered I was still unable to open up my heart to him.

It was Sarah who pointed out to me how involved with me Richard was, but I pooh-poohed the idea.

“We like each other, we find each other attractive, we enjoy being together. In lots of ways. But that's all there is to it, Sash. We're just good friends.”

She gave me a skeptical look and changed the subject, drew me into a discussion about the catalogue and some of the new items we were including.

Much later on that particular April Saturday, as I got ready for bed, I thought about her words again. And I was convinced she was wrong about him, that she was exaggerating. Loving me as she did, Sarah wanted me to be happy, and in her opinion Richard Markson was part of the answer to that. But she was off track. He
was
a lovely man, I was the first to say so, but I know I could never care for him in the way he deserved. It just wasn't possible.

* * *

In May Richard came to see me on the morning of my thirty-eighth birthday, and I was very surprised to see him. It fell on a Tuesday this year, and he was the last person I expected to see strolling over to join me on the wrought-iron seat under the apple tree at eight o'clock in the morning.

“Why aren't you in New York? At work?” I exclaimed as he came and sat down next to me.

“Because I've taken the week off to prepare an outline for a book.”

“You're going to write the Great American Novel?”

“No, a nonfiction book.” He smiled at me. “Anyway, Mal, this is for you. Happy birthday.” He leaned closer and kissed me. “I hope you like it.”

“I'm sure I will.” I looked at him and smiled, and opened my gift. “Oh, Richard how lovely of you to think of this!” I exclaimed. “Thank you so much.” I sat staring at the dark red leather binding of
Collected Poems
by Rupert Brooke. Opening it, I looked inside, slowly turning the pages. “What a beautiful volume. Where on earth did you find it?”