Second Chance (18 page)

“You talked about it with them before you talked about it with me?” She looked like a child who had been abandoned on the street, which was what he was about to do to her. Except that she wasn't a child, she was a woman. And he had a right to leave.

“I'll fire Jamal. You can have all my closets. I'll throw away my clothes. Your kids can move in. And I'll never let another photographer stay here again.” She was pleading with him. She didn't want to lose him. The thought of losing him made her feel desperate and sick.

“It would never work. And the bottom line is that I don't want to lose my kids. I will if I stay with you.” Even if they'd been horrible to her, they were still his children, and he loved them. More than he loved her. And under Mrs. Westerman's ever evil influence they had been pressuring him, and blackmailing him emotionally to leave her. And with everything so difficult between him and Fiona it provided fertile ground for the forces against them to dig their heels in. It had worked. They had finally won him over. Fiona had to go.

“They don't have a right to do this. And neither do you.” She was sobbing. She couldn't believe what had happened. Even in her anguish, she knew that some of it was her fault. Maybe even a lot of it. But some of it was his. And he had made a deal with his kids. In the end, they had won. She was going to lose the one man she had really loved. Adrian was right. She hadn't compromised enough. She had felt so safe that she had ignored all the warnings. And now he was going to divorce her, in order to please his kids. But she had made more than her share of mistakes too.

He never came back to her house. The first set of papers arrived two weeks later. The whole affair had lasted eleven months from beginning to end. Almost a year. Not quite. Just long enough to really love him, and have it cost her soul when he left. They had been married for nearly six months. They would be divorced by Christmas. It was all unthinkable. He had promised. He had loved her. They were married. It meant nothing. Marriage was the one thing she had never wanted. And now it was all she wanted. It was all a cruel trick.

Two weeks after she got the papers notifying her that he had filed the papers, she left for Paris for the haute couture.

As he always did, Adrian came with her. He kept her company this time, instead of John. He dragged her from place to place. She was like a ghost. She was so out of it, you could almost see right through her. And Adrian was desperately worried about her. It was as though Fiona, the woman he had known and loved and laughed with and worked with, had entirely disappeared.

Chapter 12

Fiona did not go
to the Hamptons all summer. She stayed at home, nursed her wounds, sat home alone at night, went to the office, and cried often. It was as though all the life had gone out of her, all the joy and excitement and passion. She felt as though she were in a dark tunnel, lost in the darkness. Everything she had hoped for and loved and trusted had been taken from her. And every time she saw Jamal cavorting through the house, she berated herself again for the mistakes she'd made. Right or wrong, she entirely blamed herself. John had shown her all she had ever wanted, and never let herself hope for, and when she failed to understand, he took it all away again. Nothing in her life had ever hurt so much, not even when her mother died, or she lost men later on. The loss of the marriage she had shared with John was the death of hope for her. She was like a naughty child who had been punished. For her poor judgment and foolish ways, she had been given an adult sentence, and put to death, or so she felt. She didn't deserve either the punishment he meted out to her, nor the abuse she heaped on herself afterward, and nothing anyone could do or say made it right for her again. As she dragged through the summer toward September, she could barely work. And on the Labor Day weekend, in crushing heat, disaster struck again. Sir Winston had a heart attack and was on life support for two weeks.

She visited him twice daily, before and after work, stroked his face, kissed his paws, and just sat quietly beside him. And finally, with a snore and a peaceful look at her, he closed his eyes one afternoon and went quietly to sleep for good. It was a peaceful death. And yet one more blow to her. He had been a beloved faithful friend.

Two days later, they had a major meeting with their ad agency, and there was no way she could avoid it. She discussed it with Adrian beforehand, and he said she absolutely had to go, no matter how hard it was for her. She hadn't heard a word from John all summer. When he ended it, he did so for good. The clock was running, and the divorce would be final in three months. After such a short marriage, it shouldn't have been the deathblow it was to her, but even Adrian knew now that it was.

She had opened places in herself to him that had never seen light and air and love before, and had never known human touch. And when he shut the door on them, and on her, he created wounds that she had been trying to shield herself from all her life. Worse yet, he had reopened every wound she'd ever had, while creating more. It was a blow of total devastation, and there was no way she could sit through a meeting with him. On the morning it was scheduled to happen, she picked up the phone to call in sick, and then thought better of it. Adrian was right. If only out of self-respect and dignity, she had to go. And what was worse, she wanted to see him, and did.

John Anderson strode into the meeting, looking tanned and handsome and athletic. He was wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit, a crisp white shirt that fit him to perfection, one of his classic navy blue Hermès ties with tiny red dots, and a white handkerchief in his pocket. He looked like a million dollars. And Fiona felt like two cents.

To all who saw her in the meeting, she looked competent, quiet, as elegant as ever. She was every inch in command and control, and she was pleasant and polite when she addressed him. But no one had any idea what it cost her just to be there, or to chat with him for a few minutes on the way out.

“You're looking well, Fiona,” he said politely. But when she looked at him, she saw that there was a self-protective wall all around him, and a shield of ice just behind his eyes. He was not letting her in again, and no one who saw them could have guessed that they'd been married, or that either or both of them were still in love. They both maintained an entirely professional demeanor, although he did notice how thin she'd gotten, and how pale she was. She was wearing a narrow black linen Yohji Yamamoto dress that accentuated her extreme slimness, and her face was the color of snow when they spoke. “Did you get away at all this summer?” She didn't look it, and if she had, she must have been hiding under a rock. Her skin looked almost translucent it was so white.

“I've been working on this ad campaign,” she said, looking distracted, “and we always close the December book in August. I've been pretty much working all month,” and in fact, since he left, she felt as dry as a bone, creatively, and hadn't come up with a decent idea in months. She felt washed up, and was. “How are the girls?”

“Terrific. Hilary is a senior, and Courtenay is doing her junior year abroad. She's in Florence, so I'll be going over to see her whenever I can.” They spoke like two old acquaintances who hadn't met in a long time, instead of two people who had been married and in love. He had completely shut her out. And a moment later, they both moved on.

Adrian had been watching, and spoke to her in a quiet voice as they left the room side by side. “How was it?” he asked, looking worried.

“How was what?” she asked, pretending not to know what he was talking about.

“I saw you talking to John.”

“It was fine,” she said, turning away to speak to someone else, and then she went back to her office, and successfully avoided him for the rest of the afternoon. Every time Adrian came to her office to discuss something, she pretended to be busy or on the phone. She couldn't speak to anyone, not even him. She was distraught.

It took another month after that for her to make up her mind, after several small disasters in the office, which were a warning signal to her that she could no longer handle not only her life but her job. On all fronts, and in all venues of her life, she was barely hanging on. She didn't even have Sir Winston to go home to at night. She had no one, and nothing, and the funny, crazy, zany free-spirited life she had once loved no longer held any appeal to her. She hated going to work every day, and even more than that she hated coming home.

She handed in her resignation to
Chic
magazine on the first of October, and she knew it was time. She gave them a month's notice, which wasn't long, and in a private letter to the head of the board, she strongly recommended Adrian for her job. She said that she was resigning due to health and personal reasons, and had made a decision to take a year or two off, and move abroad, which wasn't entirely a lie. She was so deeply depressed that she could no longer function, and she had decided to rent her house, and move to Paris for a few months. When she felt better, she wanted to try and write a book.

Adrian stormed into her office the moment it was announced. “You didn't tell me!” he said, looking hurt and heartbroken. “Fiona, what have you done?”

“I had to do it,” she said quietly. “I can't do my job anymore. I think I've lost it. It just doesn't mean anything. I don't give a damn about the people, the parties, the look, or the clothes. I don't care if I never go to a single couture show again, in fact I hope I don't.”

“You could have at least told me before you did it. We could have talked about it. Why didn't you take six months off?” But they both knew that she couldn't do that in her job. She couldn't leave the magazine without a rudder, in fact when she went away for a week, all hell broke loose, and everything got out of control. Two days later he learned that she had recommended him for her job. It was the right decision, and a wise recommendation, and within two weeks of her resignation, Adrian was named editor-in-chief of
Chic
magazine, and they told her that within another week, when the dust had settled, she was free to go. Everything had moved very fast.

She left her office quietly, without a glance over her shoulder. There were tears in her eyes when she walked out, carrying a box of books and a single plant her mentor had given her years before. Adrian was crying openly as he took the box from her. They both knew that the waters closed rapidly over old editors, and they were soon forgotten, but there was no denying that Fiona Monaghan had made her mark, and she had trained him well. They had wanted to give her a party when she left, but she had declined it. She just wasn't in the mood. Five minutes after she left her office, Adrian put her in a cab and handed her the box he'd been carrying for her.

“I love you,” she whispered as she smiled sadly, and their eyes met and held.

“You're the best friend I ever had.” There were tears in his eyes.

“You too. See you tomorrow.” He was coming to the house in the morning to help her pack. She had already rented her house, and was sending all her furniture to storage. She was taking almost nothing to Paris. She had rented a small room at the Ritz, at a discount they'd offered her, till she found an apartment. Thanks to wise investments over the years, she was in good shape, and wouldn't have to work for a long time. She was going to find an apartment and, if she felt up to it, write a book. Maybe in the spring. Before that she was going to take long walks, sleep a lot, and try to heal. The good news was that she would never have to see John Anderson again. She was going to miss the magazine, she knew, but not nearly as much as she missed him. And she had to forget them both. They were part of the past. The future was unknown and didn't look hopeful to her. And the present was intolerably painful.

Adrian came, as promised, the next morning. It took them all day to empty her closets into wardrobe boxes. She was amazed at what she found there, and at the mountain of once-meaningful out-of-date treasures she gave away.

“You could start a fashion museum with all this stuff,” Adrian said as he dumped another armload on the pile she was giving to Goodwill.

“If I'd done this while John was here, he could have had more than half the closets,” she said ruefully. There was almost nothing left in the closets that had once been crammed full.

“Forget about it,” Adrian said wisely. “It wasn't about closets. It was about a lot of things. Your lifestyles were too different. He'd been married all his life, you never had been. He had kids, you didn't. His kids hated you, his housekeeper hated you, his dog tried to kill you. Twice. And the people you hung out with drove him insane.” They both knew, as had John eventually, that although he loved her and found her fabulous and exciting, she had been like a hot chili pepper stuck in his windpipe, and a mouthful of wasabi that made his eyes water in terror most of the time. Adrian firmly believed that John had loved her. He had just bitten off more than he could chew. He needed someone a lot more bland than Fiona Monaghan would ever be. But it nonetheless broke Adrian's heart that John had left her so suddenly. It seemed terribly unfair to him. She didn't deserve that, no matter how chaotic her life was.

“Did you tell him about Sir Winston?” Adrian asked, curious, as he dropped fifty pairs of old Manolos into one of the boxes for Goodwill. The heels were too high even for Jamal. The flat ones she was giving to him. She didn't want to encourage him to wear high heels.

“I didn't think it was any of his business,” she said in answer to Adrian's question about the dog. “I didn't want to sound pathetic. ‘thanks for divorcing me, oh and by the way, my dog died too.’ ” She had paid five thousand dollars to bury him in a pet cemetery, and for a heart-shaped black granite tombstone, which she had never seen. She couldn't bear to go out and visit him.

Adrian came back to help her again on Sunday. And she spent the rest of the following week disposing of her things. In honor of her own sense of the ridiculous, she left for Paris on Halloween.

Adrian took her to the airport, and they stood looking at each other for a long moment before she went through security.