The Girl in the Glass (13 page)

No one else calls Geoffrey that. It amazes me how they get along as business partners even though they are divorced.

She continued, “I think we should see if Meg can authenticate Ms. Borelli’s ancestral claims and then convince her to downplay the voice.
Then Meg can bring the manuscript back to us, and we can talk about it again.”

“I would never buy a book like this.” Geoffrey waved his hand across Sofia’s pages.

“You wouldn’t buy a book on destination weddings in Italy either, and we’re publishing one,” I said quickly, and Beatriz, who hardly ever laughs, guffawed loudly.

“I think it’s got a whole new vibe to it,” Gabe said from the far end of the table. “Meg’s right. We’ll be expanding our readership not only to people who like memoirs but also to those who wish they could see Florence but probably won’t have the opportunity.”

Beatriz turned to me. “When are you going?”

“Um. Maybe next month.” I hesitated. “My dad and I are finalizing the details.”

“Next month is in a couple weeks,” Geoffrey said. “You’re still finalizing the dates?”

“End of the month.” I forced myself to sound resolute.

“Don’t promise Ms. Borelli anything, but do see if you can authenticate this claim, hmm?” Beatriz placed the chapters I had given her in her folio, and Geoffrey sighed loudly and retrieved his. “And see if she has more chapters ready to send.”

Feeling rather triumphant, I headed back to my office after thanking Gabe for sticking up for me. I wanted to e-mail Sofia to ask for additional chapters while Beatriz was still interested. When I got back to my desk, I saw that I had two missed calls on my cell phone. One from my mother and one from Dad’s phone at home, not his cell phone. I quickly sent Sofia an e-mail asking for two more chapters, and then I punched the button on my phone to call my father on his landline.

On the fourth ring, the call was picked up. I was so certain it would be
him who answered, I nearly said “Dad” before realizing it was a woman’s voice who’d answered on the other end. Allison.

“You called back.” Her voice sounded odd.

“
You
called me?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice. Allison and I are not close. We are cordial to each other when I visit my dad at his and Allison’s home, but there is no wealth of affection between us. We never talk by phone. It hit me with a sickening force that something terrible must’ve happened and that is why she’d called me. Before I could summon the courage to ask her, she asked
me
a question.

“Are you going to tell me where he is or not?”

Allison didn’t sound worried or afraid. She sounded angry.

“What?”

“Are you going to tell me where he is?”

She didn’t know where my dad was, and she was darn sure that I did. “Allison, I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about.”

“So that’s the way it’s going to be?”

I had never heard her sound so incredibly ticked off. What on earth had my dad done?

“What has happened? Where’s my dad?” The second question was out of my mouth before I could yank it back in. She hadn’t the foggiest where my dad was. That’s why she’d called.

“I know he was planning a trip to Europe with you,” Allison snapped. “Is that where he is? Are you going to meet him there?”

“Allison, I haven’t heard from him in several days. I don’t know where he is! Are you sure he’s okay? Should we call the police?”

“Oh, I’m definitely calling the police! He stole fifty thousand dollars from me! And my car! And my jewelry. You can bet I am calling the police!”

Oh, Lord
.

Instantly I felt Florence slipping away from me. A thick ache spilled inside as four words seemed to strike up a dirge in my head.
Not going to Florence. Not going to Florence
. Dad has left Allison. He has left me. He has left all of us.

There is no trip to Florence.

A sound escaped me; a single, strangled moan.

Allison either did not hear it or just refused to acknowledge it. “His passport is gone. His clothes are gone. And fifty thousand dollars of my money is gone! And you were the last one to talk to him!”

“I swear to you, I don’t know where he is.”

“Sure you don’t.”

The line clicked dead.

I tossed my phone onto my desk, and I tried very hard to rein it in. But my resolve was crumbling. Years of little-girl disappointment flooded up from a deep place inside me.

The tears started to fall despite frantic attempts to rub them away.

The sound of my door closing made me snap my head up. Gabe.

He moved closer to me, concern etched in his face. “What’s happened?”

At first I couldn’t bring myself to say it, because saying something somehow makes it more real. I eked out the words “He left.”

And somehow Gabe knew exactly what I meant.

That terrible time when Giovanni died, my poor mother lost not only her favorite brother, a second brother, and her beloved mother all in less than a month, but she lost another baby as well.

I know what it is like to lose so much all at once. It’s as if you’ve been shattered into a million fragments. I wonder who she turned to then for solace. I do not mean who she took to her bed. I am not yet married, but I’m of the mind that balm for the soul is not found in the bedchamber. Physical relations, near as I can tell, can distract you from your troubles, but they do not solve any of them. I should like to be proven wrong about that in the days to come.

What does one do with a heart that has been broken? One might look for a bonding agent that will fuse the pieces back together. Or one might learn to live among the shards.

Or one might be tempted to sweep up the bits and toss them and be done with hearts.

11

The rest of my day was tedious and torturous. Right after I’d summoned the words to explain to Gabe my dad had run out on Allison—and me—Geoffrey appeared at my door, looking for Gabe.

There had been no time to fix my makeup or even blow my nose. It took all of half a second for Geoffrey to realize I’d been crying.

He frowned at Gabe. “What on earth did you say to her?”

Gabe opened his mouth to, no doubt, assure Geoffrey he’d said nothing, but he hesitated, and I filled the space.

“He didn’t say anything,” I said, sniffling.

Geoffrey swiveled his head back to stare at me. “Beatriz practically said yes to you. Didn’t you get that? It was more yes than no to those chapters, although I’m still trying to figure out why.”

“This has nothing to do with the meeting,” Gabe said gently. “Did you need something from me, Geoffrey?”

“Is something going on between the two of you?” Geoffrey looked from me to Gabe and back to me again.

“No.” I dabbed at my eyes with a crumpled napkin. “It’s nothing like that. I’m … I don’t …”

My voice fell away and Gabe stepped in. “You were looking for me, right?” He took a step toward Geoffrey.

“Is he giving you trouble?” Geoffrey jerked his head toward Gabe, creasing his brow line sternly and ignoring Gabe’s question completely.

Geoffrey’s gruff, paternal tone both amused me and raked against my father’s fresh wounding.

“Gabe’s been great,” I murmured. I blotted my nose. “It’s my dad who’s giving me trouble.”

“Why? What? What’s he done?”

I sighed heavily. “I’m not sure I’m going to Florence next month, after all. I think my dad might’ve skipped out on my stepmother. She doesn’t know where he is, and he apparently stole fifty thousand dollars from her.”

“What do you mean he stole fifty thousand dollars from her? They’re married. This is California. What’s hers is his.”

I shrugged. “That’s what she told me. And she thinks I know where he is. I don’t.”

Geoffrey stared at me. “He walked out on his wife, emptied their bank account, and left you hanging on to your suitcase? And this is the guy you want to go to Florence with?”

Gabe shot me a look of compassion.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“No it’s not,” Geoffrey replied. “The heck with him. You don’t need your father to go to Florence. Just go. Don’t waste another minute moaning over it.” He turned to Gabe. “I need that mock-up of the Machu Picchu cover.”

Geoffrey left my office, assuming Gabe would follow.

“You going to be okay?” Gabe said.

My phone began to ring before I could answer. On the screen I could see it was my mother, trying a second time to reach me. I nodded and he left.

I answered the phone.

Mom wasted no time getting right to the point. “Did you get a call from her?”

“You mean Allison?”

“Please tell me you’re not hiding him from her.”

“Mom.”

“I told her she was crazy to think you knew anything about this. I’m so sure.”

She sounded just like one of her junior-high students.

“So she called you thinking I was hiding him?” I asked.

“She actually thought
I
was hiding him. Can you imagine? He took a bunch of money. And some of her jewelry. And their nice car. She drives the nice car, if you’ll remember.”

I was suddenly very tired. I didn’t want to talk to my mother about what my father had done to his second wife or what he had taken that apparently didn’t belong to him. I just wanted to go home. To my little borrowed cottage and my borrowed cat and my quiet borrowed life.

“Was she rude to you?” my mother continued. “She was rude to me.”

“I don’t know. She hung up on me. I guess you could say that was rude.”

“I have to say I am floored that he just left her like that. Taking all that money and just up and leaving her. No note or anything. I’ll bet she thinks it’s another woman, because, you know, once upon a time she
was
the other woman. But I don’t think so this time. I think maybe he owed some money somewhere; that’s what I think. It’s about money this time.”

“I need to go, Mom.”

“Wait! I want to make sure you’re okay. Are you okay? I know he promised he’d take you to Florence this summer. That’s probably not going to happen now.”

My next words fell out of my mouth with crisp speed. Sharp as tacks. “He’s been promising that since I was a teenager, Mom. I’m used to it.”

A divot of silence hung between us as I recovered from the indictment of my own sentence and she processed it on the other end.

“So … so, you’re okay?”

Okay with what?
I wanted to say. What does
okay
really mean, anyway? Less than marvelous? Better than miserable? “I really need to go.”

“Do you want me to call Allison back and assure her you don’t know where he is? If she hung up on you, she probably thinks you know and aren’t telling. I could—”

“Don’t call her, Mom. She’s going to think what she wants. I’ve got to go.”

“Well, okay—”

I pressed the Off button while she was in midsentence. It was only a little after two, but I began to gather my things. I was going home. As I shuffled papers on my desk, my eyes met Sofia’s pages and a skewer of deep disappointment rippled through me. This was the closest we had ever come to taking the trip. It seemed like it was really going to happen this time. He practically had the tickets. I was so looking forward to meeting Sofia and letting her usher me into the heart of Florence to meet her talking statues and paintings. I knew just what I wanted to ask her.
Do you know the statue of a young maiden kneeling with her hand stretched out?
And I’d already imagined Sofia saying, “Yes. I know it.”

I stuffed her pages into my book bag and tapped out a quick e-mail to Geoffrey and Beatriz that I was leaving for the day with a massive headache. Geoffrey would know why I was really leaving, but he would also know magnificent disappointment can produce a magnificent headache.

Just as I hit Send, my cell phone began to vibrate. A Los Angeles area code shone in the screen. A number I didn’t know. I grabbed for it, hoping my dad was calling me from a pay phone somewhere in LA.

“Meg. This is Therese. I need to talk to you.”

It’d been at least six or seven years since I had spoken to my father’s oldest sister. The last time had been at a post-Christmas gathering when I had
driven up to spend some time with my dad over the holidays. Therese and her husband and three children were there when I arrived and stayed the better part of the day. The moment I heard Therese’s voice over the phone, I remembered that she actually got along with Allison. After my parents’ divorce, Allison was no longer the other woman, but my dad’s new wife, and then simply his wife. Therese liked Allison. Allison was a successful businesswoman who didn’t take bull from anyone, and she made smart investment decisions. Of course Therese liked her. They were two peas in a pod.