Chapter 17
Seventeen
Susan packed her clothes in a small suitcase.
Not her elaborate, designer trousseau, befitting an Abbott But her jeans and shorts and khakis, her T-shirts and sweaters and hiking shoes.
She had no idea where she was going, but it didn’t matter.
She’d spent her life in Connecticut in the small, circumscribed world of the Abbotts, afraid to listen to her heart and soul.
It was time for her to strike out on her own.
She didn’t bother to take off the wedding dress as she moved around her room. It was oddly comfortable—the rich satin flowing over her body, and she hummed beneath her breath, trying not to think of anything but the limitless future.
She was making coffee when the car pulled in the driveway, and she looked up, and froze. It was Jake, alone, in a fast little sports car she’d never seen before.
She had no intention of answering the front door, but it was unlocked, and he slammed it open, looking furious. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he greeted her.
Considering that the last time she’d looked into his eyes they’d been wrapped around each other, and he’d been deep inside her, the greeting left something to be desired.
“Making coffee,” she said.
“Why are you wearing that dress? Why did you leave the garage without a word? Didn’t you see my note?”
She shrugged. So he’d left a note, one she hadn’t bothered to look for, so certain she’d been abandoned. It didn’t matter. It was now or later, and the sooner she got past the pain, the sooner she could get on with her life.
“I’m getting married this afternoon, remember?” It was a lie, but he didn’t know that.
He didn’t move, but he turned pale beneath his golden tan. “After last night?”
“Today usually comes after the night before, doesn’t it?” She concentrated on watching the dark coffee drip through the filter.
“I thought you were going to many me.”
“I didn’t think you were serious. You’re hardly the marrying kind. Did you mean it?”
There was no reading the expression on his face. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her. “What do you think?”
Susan lifted her head and smiled coolly. “I think you’re not looking for a wife, or any kind of commitment. So that settles it.”
“What about Edward? How will he feel when he finds out...?”
“I already told him. Edward forgives me.”
“Big of him,” Jake snarled.
“So you’re off the hook. You can go back to Timbuktu or wherever you came from and never have to think of me again.
I imagine you got any transitory lust out of your system last night I know I did.
” It was a lie, of course. Just looking at him made her stomach clench in longing, her knees weak.
But she couldn’t have him. She knew it She couldn’t change the past and she couldn’t change the future either. At least not into what she wanted.
He just stared at her. “Pier 18, 37th and 12th,” he said. “Eight-thirty.”
She jerked her head up in shock, but he was already gone, slamming the door behind him.
She wasted precious moments, frozen, and by the time she moved, racing out the door after him, he was already gone.
She took a cup of coffee, carried it out onto the back terrace and set it down, promptly forgetting about it How had he known? Fifty years ago Lou Abbott had run to the man she loved, at that very place. Though he had the time wrong—Lou had found Jack at three-thirty.
She closed her eyes, weary beyond belief. Time and truth had faded, and all she wanted to do was run away. Run away with the man she loved.
“What are you doing out here?” Her mother stood in the terrace door, her voice soft and strained. Susan turned to look at her, and a fierce pain went through her heart.
For the first time in her life her mother looked old. Broken, beaten, lost Susan rose swiftly, pulling her mother’s slight figure into her arms. “He’s left you again, hasn’t he?” she said, furious anger in her voice. “He’s abandoned you once more.”
“I sent him away.”
Susan put her at arm’s length, staring down at her. “Why?”
Mary pulled away, running a delicate hand through her soft hair. “I was afraid,” she said simply. “I didn’t think I could stand losing him again.”
Pain and triumph swept through Susan. “If he left once there’s a good chance he’ll leave again. You made the wise decision, even if it hurts....”
“I made a cowardly decision, just as I did thirty years ago,” Mary said bitterly.
“I sent him away in the first place. I kept him out of our life, because he drank too much. He’s been sober ever since, for more than twenty-five years, and yet I’m afraid to trust him.
Afraid to go against my parents’ wishes, even .
though they’ve been dead for more than twenty years.
I wanted him to come back, but there was no way I could ask him.
Not after refusing to talk with him for years. ”
“So why not now? Why send him away now?”
“Because I’m afraid. I’m not like your aunt Lou,” she said. “I don’t have the nerve to throw everything away for love. And I’m afraid you’re just like me.”
“But Aunt Lou didn’t throw everything away for love, did she?” Susan demanded. “You told me she married Ned Marsden and died. Didn’t she?”
Mary didn’t answer. “I’m going to lie down for a while. I don’t want to think about...”
“When did he leave?”
Mary shook her head. “His flight left this morning. He begged me to let him stay but I told him no.”
“You could go after him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I made the wise decision.”
“You made the stupid decision,” Susan said flatly.
“Your sister would be ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of you.
Go after him. Catch the next flight to wherever it is he lives, show up on his doorstep wrapped in Saran Wrap and beg his forgiveness.
Tell him you made a mistake, and if he still loves you you’ll never leave him again. ”
An odd expression came into Mary’s eyes. “What’s gotten into you? You’ve always been so careful, so determined to make the wise decision.”
“I’m making the wise decision. I’m not marrying Edward.”
“Thank God,” Mary breathed.
“And I’m sending you after the man you love. Once you get there it’s up to you not to screw it up, but I’m not letting you use me as an excuse. Go after him. Don’t waste the rest of your life.”
Mary stood stock-still, watching her. And suddenly twenty years fell off her, like a blanket, and she smiled a dazzling smile. She threw her arms around Susan with an exuberance almost foreign to her nature. A moment later she was racing out the front door.
The house grew still and quiet around her.
She turned off the telephone, locked the doors and stretched out on the living room sofa, Tallulah’s satin gown draped around her.
She could only hope Edward had done something about canceling the wedding.
Otherwise four hundred guests were converging on St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, and there’d be no bride.
Like her mother before her, she’d sent away the right man. And there was nothing she could do about it.
She watched the hands on the grandfather clock move inexorably onward. The clock had come from the old house, as well—she remembered Ridley setting it. It moved past five, then five-thirty, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Wondering, why she still felt so empty inside.
It was after six when she heard the rumble of the car in the driveway.
It sounded like the little sports car that Jake had been driving, and she froze, until she heard the key in the door.
She didn’t move from her spot on the sofa.
Only her mother had a key to. the house—she must have chickened out at the last minute.
Maybe the two of them could be tiresome old maids together, sharing a house and an empty life.
But it wasn’t her mother’s footsteps in the hall, moving with slow, stately care toward the living room. A figure appeared in the shadows at the entranceway, tall, stooped with age but still graceful, and Susan stared at her in shock.
“So I travel halfway around the world just for the chance of disrupting another wedding at St Anne’s, and it’s all for nothing,” the old lady said in a tart, deep voice.
“Obviously you have more sense than your mother gave you credit for.” She moved into the room, an ebony cane in one gnarled hand, and went straight to the huge leather chair, sinking down with a faint grunt.
“I always hated this chair,” she said in a conversational voice.
Susan stared at her, unable to move. She was a very old woman, her silvery hair piled high on her aristocratic head, her dark eyes bright with intelligence and the wisdom of age.
“Who are you?” Susan’s voice came out in a shocked croak But she already knew the answer.
The old lady let out a bark of laughter. “That dress looks almost as good on you as it did on me. Though some might call it unlucky. This is the second wedding that didn’t go through. Make sure your mother doesn’t want to borrow it when she remarries your father, or she might be doomed.”
Susan sat up, staring in shock. “Aunt Lou?”
“Of course. Or your godmother Louisa, if you prefer.”
“But you’re dead. You died in a train crash the day you married Neddie Marsden.”
“I never married Neddie. I took off in the middle of the service and went after the man I loved. Of course the family covered it all up with a bunch of lies, and after fifty years not too many people know or care about the truth. Your uncle Jack and I were married on board the Lizzie B. and we never spent a night apart for the last forty-eight years until he died.”
“I’m sorry,” Susan murmured.
“Hell, we wanted to spend those nights together,” Lou said with a deep laugh.
“Oh, you mean you’re sorry he’s dead. So am I, love.
More than I can say. But he lived a good, full life and he went very fast, so you can’t ask for much more.
I miss him every day. But Jake looks after me, and I’m old enough to know you can’t live forever. ”