14. In a Faraway Land of Thorny Memories
IN A FARAWAY LAND OF THORNY MEMORIES
C hiara Conti’s life bore some resemblance to a fairytale. For one, she always tried very hard to be good at a lot of things. And she could honestly say that she thought she was successful. You name it; she was told she was fabulous at that particular thing.
Supermodel? You bet. After all, her name was spoken in the same breath as Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista.
The talent behind a multi-million dollar empire? Well, she had kept Lilien Haus in the top ten of the world’s fashion brands for two decades—whether it was public knowledge or not.
And for two, there was that thing she thought she excelled at most—being somebody’s wife… Just like in a fairytale, in a crushing blow, it turned out she hadn’t been all that good at that , after all. If her own, now former, wife was to be believed…
In fact, the déjà vu of trying exceedingly hard to be very good and not succeeding, even by a long shot, was massive.
It was both shocking and not at all. After all, it mirrored her childhood all over again.
Her mother working herself to the bone to send her to university, only to realize that Chiara would never be graduating.
Not from her village school. And not from anywhere else, for that matter.
“I’m not even going to offer any pennies for those thoughts.”
Aoife swaggered in, a spring in her step, arms full of ivory satin and lace, and Chiara looked up from the sketch at her workstation.
The paper was full of doodles instead of any actual designs, and she had no idea when she’d lost her train of thought and gone down the rabbit hole of her own memories.
The light blue sticky note on her desk seemed to frown at her.
She had missed her second daily dose of her medication.
Again. The morning dose was easy. The afternoon one? Forget it. Or, well, Chiara always did.
Aoife didn’t blink as Chiara reached into the small dispenser by the post-it and dry swallowed the pill. For exactly the fifth time this week, Chiara had the distinct thought that she should stop doing that. It was Friday, after all.
“It’s been five years. Maybe it’s time to let go of some things?” Chiara smiled at her friend’s perceptiveness and tact in sidestepping the medication issue. However, Aoife’s predilection for dredging up the past wasn’t a preferred avenue to go down. At least not now.
“Maybe. And perhaps some things are never meant to be let go off?” She took a step back and gave the cat loaf on the windowsill a gentle ear scratch.
Binoche pretended not to notice the caress and then pretended even harder not to enjoy it.
Both Chiara and the cat acted as though the chocolate ball of fluff wasn’t purring.
“And speaking of letting go of things. In all these years, from Paris, to your year-long hiatus in Milan, and to our relocation to Manhattan, I still don’t understand why you took the cat.”
Chiara was about to answer when a set of heels clicked on the dark oaken floors of the atelier and Renate stepped into the light.
“As if the cat is somehow at fault for the fact that a Courtenay ended up being a Courtenay, despite all the signs pointing at her bucking that family trend. But then I told you so from the beginning. I even hired Zizou to keep watch… Too bad he couldn’t also look out for some of your softer hearts… ”
With a particularly exaggerated roll of her eyes and words that Chiara had heard many times in the past five years during her spats with Aoife, Renate leaned on the doorframe.
The overhead skylights bathed her in brightness, and Chiara’s fingers twitched with the desire to reach for a pencil. This was progress.
No, she had not been terribly creative lately, an uncharacteristic malaise taking over after almost three years of non-stop, intense productivity. So this impetus to draw was a good thing. It wasn’t the medication. It was creativity. Or so she told herself.
She reached for the sketchpad, reluctant to deny the impulse, and the severe lines of Renate’s face slowly made their way from Chiara’s fingers to the page as the surrounding conversation went on.
“I don’t know why I’m the voice of reason on this or any issue this afternoon.
The time to let go of things has long come and passed.
Five years, for Christ’s sake. So I was wrong.
I have been sorry for it for a long time.
” Aoife’s voice turned grumpy, as it always did when the subject turned to Vi Courtenay and Renate rubbing in the truth.
Chiara could sympathize. After all, wasn't it Aoife who, on so many occasions, had encouraged her protégé to stand on her own two feet and grab any chance with both hands? And then, when she did, Aoife was the one left broken-hearted.
No matter how many times and how vocally she professed not to care, Aoife had fallen for the lanky, clumsy, and perpetually little bit sad redhead. And when all was said and done, Chiara herself had fared no better.
She could only sigh again. Neither Aoife nor Renate were aware that her entanglement with Vi went deeper than a simple breach of trust. The lines both of them had crossed, lines that should have never even been seen, let alone touched…
Vi had fallen for a married woman, and said married woman had reciprocated.
Except, Vi had also betrayed her at the very first opportunity, and Chiara…
Well, Chiara had known better even then.
To have used that infatuation, that adoration to somehow mend her own broken heart after years of a loveless marriage?
Some seams should never be exposed, nor rent.
“Haven’t we all been sor—” She caught herself, realizing that she had spoken out loud and both pairs of eyes were on her.
Chiara ducked back to the sketch on her pad, and Renate’s eyes were just as displeased on it as on the person now glaring thunderously.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly parched.
“It is what it is, and Aoife is right. Time heals all wounds, and we’ve all had plenty of time—”
“Does that mean you’ll go out with Livia Sabran-McMillan?” Renate’s bull in the china shop tactic was spot on, as usual.
“Why would I?” Chiara busied herself with putting the finishing touches on the sketch.
“Because she asked? And because she is one of the most eligible bachelorettes in this entire breadless, tealess country?”
Renate tsked and Aoife snickered. Both she and Chiara knew full well what was to follow. Chiara sat back down on her stool and put the pad down, preparing to enjoy herself.
“The coffee is atrocious, tea is warmed in a microwave, and the bread is like that yellow underwater cartoon character that wears square pants!”
Aoife and Chiara laughed, to Renate’s great displeasure.
“And yet here you are with us, among coffee- and tea-heathens. Bestowing high wedding fashion on these very heathens, I might add.” Aoife snickered again and peered over Chiara’s shoulder to look at the sketch of the disgruntled Renate before giving her a wink.
“I’m here because Chiara chose to be here.” And with one sentence, Renate had deflated the balloon of levity that had filled the room.
Yes, Renate Lilienfeld was in New York because, after taking a year off to simply stop her thoughts from bleeding on paper every time she as much as opened her eyes in the morning, Chiara had decided that it was time to move on.
From Paris, from her acrimonious divorce, from her painfully loud and inappropriate-in-public wife, who’d refused to facilitate said divorce and had in fact made it as difficult as she possibly could.
* * *
A year to the day after her attorney filed the paperwork, Chiara had been declared a free woman.
As she’d collected her belongings and attempted to place the cat in the carrier—thankful that Frankie was absent from Rue Saint-Honoré, as she’d been through most of the year—she turned around to see Renate watching her from the doorway.
“Milan?” Her now-former sister-in-law’s voice was quiet, uncharacteristically so. Or chances were it was simply hoarse from all the shouting, since Frankie had deigned to show her face within the white marbled corridors the day before—even if she no longer climbed up to the fifth floor.
“To begin with. Or perchance to end, too?” Binoche refused to budge from her bed and gave the dreaded carrier a disgusted look. Chiara was about to snap her fingers—the absolute last resort in her exasperated state—when Renate came closer, holding a cat treat. The cat sphinx unfolded with interest.
When she placed the treat into the carrier, Binoche gave both of them a dirty look and reluctantly entered the confines of her temporary prison.
She meowed with enough venom, letting the humans know how absolutely unacceptable any of this was.
Chiara could sympathize. She looked around the studio.
So beloved, so familiar. Twenty years was a very long time to love something. Even if it was a prison.
“I saw the attorney leave. It’s done then.” It wasn’t a question, and so Chiara didn’t answer. “What will you do? In Milan. Other than end whatever cycle you need to end? I still remember when the two of you met at Milan Fashion Week.”
Suddenly, there was a lump in Chiara’s throat, and she lifted her eyes from the cat, now settled in a neat and precise loaf-like position, little paws tucked under her body in the carrier.
She would miss this woman. Severe, cantankerous, and difficult as she was. Renate had been one of her only friends for twenty years, and in the last months, Chiara was hard-pressed to say who was more hurt by Frankie’s betrayal.