Four Seasons of Romance (10 page)

Leo arrived in Philadelphia the following afternoon. The
city was abuzz with activity—street vendors hawking wares, cars tooting horns,
and children marching home from school by their mothers. After receiving
directions from a newspaper seller, Leo took the city bus to Catherine’s
address. Once outside her front door, he took a deep breath, straightened his
jacket, and knocked, his knock echoing through emptiness.

“She moved out nearly a year ago,” the superintendent told
Leo.

“Did she leave a forwarding address?”

The super shrugged. “I’m afraid she didn’t. Lovely girl,
though.” Leo couldn’t agree more.

After a tasty cheese steak at a nearby café, Leo mulled over
his options. He was determined to find her, but couldn’t think of anything
better than hiring a cab and driving around town, looking for Catherine on
every street.

On every corner, his heart nearly leaped out of his chest
when he saw someone that reminded him of her. After realizing it would take
more than just enthusiasm to find her in Philadelphia, he had the cabbie drive
him to the nearest library.

For hours, he scoured the telephone book's pages for a sign
of Catherine to no avail. Of course, she no longer went by the name Woods;
after her father disowned
her,
she’d begun to use her
middle name, Delaney, as her surname.

That night, Leo headed to the Old City and courted his old
friend, Johnnie Walker, well into the night. He had come so far and gotten so close…
  only
to be thwarted now? Drunk and brooding, he
headed to a motel room, deciding to stay in Philly for however long it took to
find the one woman he cared about.

The next morning, he remembered something else Samantha had
said—Catherine's work had to do with insurance, the only other clue he had.

Going through the business pages at the library an hour
later, he called every insurance company, a daunting task because Philadelphia
had no shortage of insurance, from automotive to life. If only Samantha could
have told him more…

But with intensity and determination, Leo showed more
organization than he ever had in school, drawing charts and making careful
notations of the numbers he had called. Leo introduced himself to the
receptionist and asked to speak to Catherine, mentioning her last name. If that
did not succeed, he’d ask if there was a Catherine—any Catherine—working there
that matched his description. Leo’s natural charm made the female receptionists
a little more eager to help than would normally be the case.

At times, the receptionist refused to help; other times, he
talked to a Catherine who had nothing to do with his Catherine. Once, he was
transferred to an office in New Jersey, then an office in St. Louis where
Catherine had supposedly been transferred. Leo’s heart was in his mouth when he
was put on hold, only to plummet when a woman with the voice of a crone picked
up the other end of the line. Unless Catherine had aged forty years over a
decade, this was not the woman he was searching for.

By the end of his second week, he was three-quarters of the
way through his list and still no Catherine. Then, one sunny summer afternoon
at the end of August, he called a large insurance company with an office
downtown. “May I speak to Catherine, please?” he asked.

“Catherine Delaney?” the receptionist chirped. “Let me see
whether she’s here.”

The click of the receptionist putting Leo on hold might as
well have been the sound of his destiny clicking into place.
Catherine is
using her middle name instead of Woods? She must have had a falling out with
her father.
Leo felt optimistic, seeing that Josiah’s version of
Catherine’s life seemed like an utter lie.

So, she was just a few miles away, Catherine Delaney Woods.
His Catherine.

Too elated to wait, Leo hung up and then burst through his
hotel room into the crisp summer air. Twenty minutes later, he darted inside
the office building with the bravado of a racecar driver—which he had been—and
the fervor of a schoolboy in love, which he also had been, just a few years
ago.

“I’m Catherine Delaney’s boyfriend, and I’m here to see
her,” he told the receptionist talking to a man in a gray suit.

She raised one eyebrow in response. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Catherine’s not here.”

“Catherine’s on a little vacation this week,” the man in the
gray suit said, eyeing Leo up and down. “She’ll be back next Monday.”

“Thanks,” Leo answered and left without leaving his name.

 “What was that about?” the man in a gray suit asked
the receptionist. “Did I hear him say he was her boyfriend?”

“That’s what he said, all right,” the receptionist said,
relishing the opportunity for gossip. “If he hadn’t left so fast, we could have
told him, of course, that Catherine’s off on vacation… with her fiancé!”

The man let out a low whistle. “Oh, boy,” he said, “could be
trouble.”

“Guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Back in the street, Leo kicked a mailbox. Again, he was so
agonizingly close, yet would have to wait another week to see her.

A week is worth the rest of your life
, he reminded
himself. And suddenly, the anger gave way to bliss as reality sunk in—soon they
would reunite, Judge Josiah Woods be damned.

*

The following Monday, Leo woke early and borrowed an iron from
the motel clerk to press his pants and steam his shirt until he looked crisp
and fresh, just as they taught in the military. He headed outside for a walk
and plodded down the cobblestones of narrow Quince Street, savoring the morning
air.

Philadelphia was different from eclectic, free-spirited
Paris—more Puritan in its structure and mood—but he liked the buildings and the
sculptures he discovered on his walks. Unwillingly, he’d done a bit of
sightseeing, and was particularly smitten with the Liberty Bell in Independence
Hall, which seemed appropriate because soon both Catherine and he would have
their liberty in love as well as their independence.

About noon, he stopped at a corner flower shop outside
Catherine’s building and bought a bouquet of her favorite flowers—wild lilies
and black-eyed
Susans
picked fresh from the summer
fields. Leo stood quietly in the foyer, cradling the bouquet in his arms and
waiting for Catherine’s return from lunch hour.

She was running late, hurrying to make it back in time for a
one o’clock meeting after lunch with Walter when she waltzed into the office…
  and
saw her Leo, very much alive.

Catherine stopped where she stood, unable to move or feel
anything but the frenzied beat of her heart, her business papers, along with
her composure, fluttering to the floor.

“Leo,” she said, the only sound she could make, and that
barely, the name slipping from her lips like an incantation. “Leo,” she said
again.

“Catherine,” he said, but his voice choked, preventing him
from saying anything more.

To his surprise, Catherine stepped back, her head shaking,
lips trembling. “Is this s-s-some kind of j-joke?” she stuttered. This man
looked like Leo¬—her Leo—but she hadn’t seen him in nearly ten years. The Leo
she remembered was lithe and boyish; here standing before her was a muscular,
handsome man.

“It’s not a joke,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s me.”

She glimpsed the old Leo in his fine hazel eyes, but how
could it be? Hadn’t he died in Normandy? “They told me you were dead…” She
couldn’t
finish,
her face ashen with shock. “I thought
you…”

“I know,” Leo said, “but I’m here. Right here, standing in
front of you, despite their lies.”

“I still can’t believe it,” she whispered. Could it be him,
after all those years? Every fiber of her being wanted to believe it, but
something—was it reason?
fear
?
love
?—held
her back.

Then, she saw the bouquet, the prettiest bouquet she’d seen
in ages—the lilies and
Susans
at the height of their
bloom. Lightheaded, she inhaled their scent, sweet and poignant as a love song,
the flowers Leo gave her in Woodsville and that still brought feelings as
intense as years ago. Then, Catherine knew, beyond any doubt, that this was no
apparition or joke.

“Catherine,” Leo said, rushing toward her.
“My darling.”

But it was too much; the moment she felt his hands around
her waist, her vision blurred, her knees buckled, and she slipped from
consciousness into Leo’s arms. Ten years later, they were reunited at last.

*

“He lied to me and now it all makes sense about our letters,”
Catherine said. “I knew I didn’t trust him. But I never imagined he would do
something so... so downright evil.”

She sat with Leo on a bench outside Independence Hall after
a walk to revive her senses. Overwhelmed with Leo’s sudden return, she’d left
with him immediately, leaving her papers on the floor, missing the one o’clock
meeting for the first time in her life. They’d spent hours catching up on
everything they’d missed for the last ten years before conversation returned to
Josiah.

“He lied to me,” Catherine said, holding back tears. “He
cheated me out of the life I wanted.” Leo nodded. “I have half a mind to...”
She interrupted herself to take a slow breath.

“No,” she said. “If I get angry now, he wins again. I’m done
with him. I’ve been done with him for a while, but this confirms my resolve.”

Leo tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t know
you’d stopped going by Woods.”

“That’s my father’s name, and I wanted nothing to do with
him. It was a way of cutting all ties with that life.”

“I can see why. But it did make it hard to find you!”

She laughed and begged him, for the third time, to recount
how he’d found her, looping his arm over her shoulders and nuzzling his neck
with her forehead. “We found each other, didn’t we?” she whispered.

“
I
found
you
.”

 “Well, I couldn’t very well find you, could I?
When I’ve thought you were dead for ten years.”

He lifted her chin and kissed both pink cheeks as an angry
flush rose to her face again. “Let it go,” Leo said, taking her hands in his. “The
important thing is that we’re together again. We have the rest of our lives in
front of us.
And no Josiah Woods to mess things up.”

A shadow passed over Catherine’s face; the day had passed in
a blur—she was too deliriously happy to think of much else beyond the fact that
Leo was alive. Now, for the first time since fainting into Leo’s arms, she
thought of Walter, remembering her promise to him, their engagement, their
whole life together, as the feeling of sickness took over.

“Leo,” she said, pulling her hand back and laying it in
carefully in her lap. “I’m afraid I’ve done a terrible thing.”

He glanced at her. “You’re not married, are you?”

“No,” she sighed, “but I’m engaged.”

Leo threw back his head and laughed, just as cocky as he
ever was. “Is that all?” he said. “That’s not a problem. Who is the guy? Some
chump you work with at the insurance company?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “He’s an accountant, nice guy, very
reliable, makes a good living...” She stopped, realizing she had run out of
things to say.

“But…” Leo said. “There’s always a ‘but’.”

“But he’s not like you. No one’s like you.” She stroked his
cheek. “He’s a decent man though, and I don’t want to hurt him.”

“You’ll only hurt him by pretending to be in love with him
when you’re not.” He picked up her hand again and kissed her fingertips one by
one, as she felt the familiar heat she’d missed for so many years sweep up her
spine.

“He’ll get over you,” Leo said.

“
You
didn’t,” Catherine said.

“I know, it’s different,” Leo said. “That’s us.” He rose,
taking her by the hand. “Spend the week with me,” he said. “Let’s get to know
each other again. Has it really been ten years? It’s hard to imagine it.”

Yet, as they faced each other, the sun beaming down on them,
they felt as if no time had passed at all.

For the next few days, they were inseparable, like the old
days. Leo was determined to give Catherine a taste of what life would be like
with him. Sure, he hadn’t had Walter’s checking account, but he made up for it
with ten times the spontaneity and charm.

He took Catherine to avant-garde museums, galleries, and
galas featuring the work of the more independent, eclectic artists Leo admired
and always wanted to see. Leo forged fast friendships at the events, turning
them into connections
who
could help him get the
needed resources for his work. In a matter of weeks, he was doing pieces in
clay and plaster with his paint-splattered bag full of sculpting tools.
Inspiration came easy—in
Catherine,
he’d recovered his
model and muse as she posed for him several times.

After they made love in the dappled afternoon light, they
lay naked on the bed as he traced the outline of her hips and breasts. “It’s
good,” Catherine said, nodding to the mounds of clay. “Just as good as the ones
you used to make me in fourth grade.”

“Not
just
like the ones I used to make,” he replied.
“You were wearing clothes then.”

“Here,” he said, leaning across the bed to pick up the
sculpture. She admired his smooth skin and the ripple of his muscles, his body
indeed different from when she’d last known it—the taut body of a strong man.

“You had many moments like this with Walter?” Leo asked,
jolting her out of her sensual reverie.

“Walter doesn’t like to see me naked,” she answered.

Leo ran his hand up her body. “Who wouldn’t like to see you
naked?”

“It’s not like that,” Catherine said. “It’s just... Walter
doesn’t believe in sex before marriage. He’s very respectable about that sort
of thing.”