Chapter 6 #2
“If you’re going to keep seeing her, you have to move out,” she said bravely. “I can’t do this, Ian. It’s only been weeks and it’s driven me crazy ever since I found out. I assume you’re with her whenever you’re not with me. And she works in your office, so you see her all the time.”
“That’s how it started,” he said unhappily. He felt guilty but that didn’t make him want Leila less.
“I would never trust you at work again,” which was no way to live, she knew.
“I’ll look for a place tomorrow,” he said, sounding decisive.
“So that means you’re going to keep seeing her?”
“For now, until I figure it out.” He looked almost as bad as she felt. “This isn’t easy for me either,” he said, feeling sorry for himself, but she didn’t.
“Let me know what you decide,” she said in a broken voice. She walked upstairs to their bedroom, went in, and locked the door. And then she lay on the bed and sobbed.
Ian slept in the guest room, and when she got up in the morning to wake the kids for school, he was gone.
She wondered if he was going to move in with Leila or get his own place.
He was too lazy to find an apartment, and she was sure he’d be staying with her.
It was like moving in with his drug dealer, from everything he had said.
For the rest of the day, she went through the motions of living and breathing, but every part of her felt dead.
—
Veronica didn’t fare much better with Anson.
It took him two days to come and see her after she got back after the New Year.
He was punishing her, and he finally showed up at six o’clock at night, with no warning.
He looked at her long and hard when he walked in and didn’t kiss her.
It was the first time she had seen him since before Christmas, but he didn’t look happy to see her, and kept his distance.
She was sitting on the couch, and he sat down across from her, with a glass of Scotch in his hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the farm?” he asked her in an ice-cold voice after his first sip of Scotch. He made no move to come near her. He was facing her and staring at her intently.
“Because it was a shock for all of us, in addition to losing her, and I needed time to digest it myself.”
“She left you a farm?” He sounded incredulous. “She didn’t sound like the type to have large investments no one knew about.”
“She’s been living there for twelve years. We had no idea. It’s a beautiful place. My sisters and I own it jointly,” she said simply.
“Are you going to sell it?”
“We don’t know yet. I think we want to keep it for a while, while we figure it out.”
“Is it worth anything?” he said skeptically. Her mother was just a little editor, and Veronica didn’t tell him otherwise. One thing at a time. This was a start.
“I think it’s probably worth a lot. I only own a fifth. It would be nice to spend time with my sisters there, when you’re busy or not around.”
“You’re not understanding, Veronica,” he said coldly.
“I give you all this, this lifestyle, all this luxury and comfort, so that you are here for me whenever I want, when I have time to come and see you. We’re not dating.
You’re my mistress.” He made her sound like an object he owned, which she realized was how he viewed her.
He had never been as blunt about it before, or seemed as cold. His eyes were like ice.
“I am here for you. I gave up my legal career for you, so that I would be available, in exchange for what you do for me. But I can’t sit here doing nothing forever except waiting for you.”
“That’s the deal. It’s not new.”
“I’m going to have some things to do for my mother’s estate. I want to take some law classes to brush up on my legal skills, so I can help my sisters.”
“Hire a lawyer to do it. And your mother’s estate can’t be that complicated. What did she have? A few stocks? Some savings? By the time you pay the taxes, and divide it by five, it won’t be worth your time. Forget the classes.”
“No,” she said, and felt as though she had just jumped out of an airplane and wasn’t sure if her parachute would open.
Anson had been her parachute, her safety net for ten years, but he expected her to pay the price now.
And the price was her freedom. He could do anything he wanted, but he wanted her in a locked box on a shelf, and he had the only key.
Just thinking about it was oppressive. She knew she couldn’t give into it.
He had never been as blunt about it before.
She felt like she couldn’t breathe. “I’d like to sign up for the classes.
I’m going to need them,” she said gently.
“I’m telling you not to.” It was a warning.
“They’re just refresher courses at Columbia, where I went to law school.”
“I don’t need a lawyer, Veronica. I need exactly what you’ve been for the past ten years.”
“I’m not twenty-six years old anymore. I don’t have children. At least I can put my education to good use for my family.” She was on the verge of tears when she said it, tears of anger, disappointment, and fear.
“You have some serious thinking to do,” he said, glancing at his watch.
“I have to go. I’ll call you. I hope you get your head on straight again.
We have a good thing, Veronica, for both of us.
You have security, and I have you. Don’t screw it up.
” He had been with his family for the past two weeks, and she would have spent Christmas alone if it weren’t for her sisters.
Her mother had been right yet again. It was a lonely life he was condemning her to, an eternal waiting game, hoping to see him for an hour or a night, whatever he wanted and had time for.
Veronica wondered how he’d react if he knew about the money her mother had left her.
She felt sure now that he wouldn’t like that either.
Anson didn’t want her to have any independence.
“Don’t make a big mistake, Veronica,” he said.
“You’ll regret it.” She didn’t say a word, as he set down his glass, looked at her, got up, and walked out the door, without speaking or kissing her goodbye.
Two months ago, Veronica would have run after him and told him she loved him, and not to go away angry at her.
But all of a sudden, she couldn’t do that anymore.
She picked up his glass, walked to the kitchen with it, and put it in the sink for the maid to wash the next day.
She lay on her bed for a long time after Anson left, thinking about what he had said and what she was going to do next.
The first thing she was going to do was sign up for the classes she wanted to take at Columbia.
He couldn’t stop her. Her mother had given her the power to resist him and to push back.
She didn’t even have to push. She just had to be herself and stand up for herself, for what she knew was right.
Veronica wondered if Anson was afraid she would cheat on him, but she wouldn’t think of doing that to him.
This wasn’t about other men, and she loved Anson.
This was about not being treated like an object by the man she loved, and about respecting herself.
He had made her feel cheap when he reminded her that she was his mistress in exchange for the apartment she lived in and the clothes he bought her.
He had never made the trade-off as obvious before.
Veronica wondered why he felt so threatened by her spending time at the farm with her sisters.
But it was all about control. Anson couldn’t tolerate her having free will or the right to make decisions for herself.
She could already guess that her having money of her own now would be the biggest threat of all and she could never tell him.
Just knowing that she owned a fifth of what he assumed was a rickety old farm had threatened him.
It would be even worse if he found out that her mother had left a large fortune to each of her daughters and that Veronica didn’t have to be his slave anymore.
—
Veronica had just finished signing up online for the intellectual property classes she wanted to take at Columbia when Robert Farr called her to tell her that the deal had closed for one of her mother’s books to be made into a series, on the terms the five sisters had agreed to, and Robert assured her it was a terrific deal and her mother would have been pleased.
“I’ll send all of you the contracts to sign.
They have to line up the cast now. They already have the producer and director.
They should be ready to start shooting principal photography in May.
” The contract was for a very respectable amount of money, even divided by five.
Quinne was particularly excited when he called her, and he told her he’d had an idea and wanted to check it out with her.
“Since you’re an experienced producer, would you be interested in being an executive producer?” She was stunned and pleased by the question.
“I’d love it.” And it meant additional money for her. “Do you suppose there would be a part in it for Cooper? He’s my partner, in life, I mean. I can send you his résumé with all his acting credits.”
“I don’t know who they’re using for casting, or what they have in mind, but send it to me, I’ll pass it on.
We can turn this into a family production,” Robert said, laughing.
He had enjoyed talking to all of Felicia’s daughters that morning, and he was relieved to hear that they were doing well and getting along.
They’d had a lot of surprises since their mother’s death, and sometimes good changes were even harder to adjust to than bad ones.
“Have you thought about starting a production house of your own?” he asked her. “You could now.”