Chapter 19
19
Thursday at twelve noon in the limousine outside the steakhouse, and Deedee was wired. She’d had a restless night, unable to sleep and had relocated from her bed to the rooftop to do a sunrise yoga session, in an attempt to unravel her thoughts about everything that had happened and decide what to do next.
She knew she couldn’t avoid Yiannis forever and needed to have a proper conversation with him. At her lowest point, around four in the morning, when she had been awake with her thoughts racing wildly, she had convinced herself the friendship was ruined, and he would never talk to her again. And who would blame him after the way she treated him last night? He had called again, and she had been a coward and simply let him go to voicemail and leave a message that she hadn’t managed to bring herself to listen to yet. She thought too of the beautiful beach house and how she had repaid Joe for his kind gift by going on a date with his close friend and letting her feelings flow from friendship to romance. The mystery woman and what meeting her might reveal was on her mind too. She still wasn’t convinced the woman’s impromptu visit to the beach house was linked to the surprise party as Yiannis had suggested.
But… the kiss. Oh the kiss! The incredibly sexy and perfectly classic kiss that she had melted into and if she closed her eyes could conjure up the sensual sensation all over again. The heady, hot, burning desire that had transported her back to the twenty-something person she used to be and not the seventy-year-old woman she was soon to become. Tomorrow. It had been liberating to live in the moment again and she wanted to feel more of it. She couldn’t deny it. And she knew full well this was the real reason that she was avoiding Yiannis. She didn’t trust herself not to let the physical attraction that had been reignited take over again and completely damage the friendship beyond repair. Or maybe the friendship had finally run its course; it was possible when one kiss had created this much complication… there may not even be a way back from it. The prospect of losing Yiannis as well was too much to contemplate.
She forced her thoughts onto something more mundane, the travel agency. She felt relieved she had a plan and so the concerns she had had before coming on holiday were allayed for now, although there was much work to do with Rosie and Molly to make the changes to the business. Maybe this was a good thing! Something to focus her mind on and stop it straying to Yiannis and if she really had ruined their friendship forever, as she had feared might happen if the line was crossed again, like it was last night. If only she had said something, brought up the ‘flame’ and not let the evening flow on until it was too late. But then hindsight was always a wonderful thing.
Inhaling sharply to shift her thoughts, she pretended to be engrossed in typing a text message to Molly as Rosie, Gina and Anthony chatted. They were checking the time – fifteen minutes until their reservation so they had decided they might as well wait outside in the comfort of the limo. Mikey’s cousin, Bobby, knowing Anthony’s antagonism over parking, had reserved them a space and so the limousine purred to a halt and Anthony turned the key to switch off the engine. Deedee lifted her head to smile at her friends before looking back to the screen on her phone. She had purposefully been avoiding talking about what happened with Yiannis on the date and so far had achieved this. Gina and Rosie had been out when she got back to the house last night and then they had all been busy with showers and getting ready for coming here today so she had managed to keep the conversation light and centred around how nice the restaurant had been last night. And since being in the limo, Anthony had made sure Rosie knew he’d beaten her in the race to find the mystery woman, so they had all been talking about that too. Anthony hadn’t said a word about the date, the one that definitely should not have turned into an actual date -date, as she knew now. But he was so focused on winding Rosie up, which could explain why he hadn’t asked about it yet. Or maybe Yiannis had bumped into Karl on his run again and already told him the date had turned into a disaster, when she had kissed him right back, before running away leaving him stranded in the rain. Maybe they were all sore that their plan had backfired. And Anthony had never been one for facing awkwardness head on.
‘Are you OK, Deedee?’ Gina asked, scooting along the seat by the back window so she was sitting closer to Deedee.
‘Yes, sure, I’m fine, thanks.’ She managed a smile. ‘And sorry I’ve been, um… preoccupied,’ she settled on.
‘Perfectly understandable,’ Rosie joined in, shifting along the seat that ran the length of the side of the car, so she was sitting closer too. ‘We don’t know who this woman is… or what she wanted to talk to Joe about. Or why she ran away…’ Her voice tailed off and she looked away, but the implication was palpable there in the air. Deedee hadn’t said anything to them yet about the surprise party and opened her mouth to moot the idea of the woman being linked to this, but Anthony yelled out, ‘OK, time to go ladies!’
Rosie clasped Deedee’s hand and added, ‘It’ll be fine, I’m sure. Whoever she is and whatever she says, just remember we are in this together. And know that if it comes to it, then Gina and I have already decided to take care of her with a big frothy chocolate milkshake poured over her head.’ Gina nodded in agreement and Deedee smiled, knowing her friends would never actually tip a milkshake over another woman’s head, that they were just saying all this in solidarity and to lighten the mood. Though she was grateful for the distraction and their assumption that her silence was down to meeting the mystery woman and discovering the truth of who she was and how she was connected to Joe.
Settled in a booth with poster-sized menus propped up in front of their faces, the four friends huddled together covertly like a cohort of cold war spies in a low budget movie. Anthony had even come in full CIA costume, wearing a black suit with a matching baseball hat and shades.
‘Shuuuuuush,’ he said, popping his head over the top of his menu like a meerkat before ducking back down and whispering, ‘we don’t want to scare her off and make her run away again.’
‘Darling, she’s not even here,’ Deedee said, pulling the menu away from his face. She had scanned the whole restaurant, and the mystery woman was nowhere to be seen. ‘Are you sure you got this right, Anthony? Is this the right place?’
‘Yes, Anthony? Did you get it right?’ Rosie chimed, giving him a quizzical look. ‘Because my own search turned up another option you know… a steak place in Staten Island that also has a cartoon cow head logo!’ She sat back and took another sip of the iced peach tea she had ordered on account of feeling a little bit fragile from having too many cocktails with Gina last night in a place near Times Square.
‘Yes I’m sure!’ he hissed. ‘For crying out loud, did you not see the cow head logo right there above the door on the way in? It’s exactly the same as the one on the card we found on the beach. And we are not schlepping over to Staten Island, so just sip your tea and give the goddam mystery woman a moment to show herself.’ He flicked his menu back up before batting it back down to take a large swallow from the bottle of zero beer he had ordered, on account of being the driver. ‘Plus we have already placed the food order so if you want to tell Bobby we are leaving before it arrives, then go ahead and be my guest. But be warned… he doesn’t like being messed around!’ Anthony let out a big puff of fully-frustrated air before pulling a face, shaking his head and shoving the menu back in the holder on the side of the table.
‘OK, that’s enough!’ Deedee reached across the table to rub his arm. ‘What’s got into you, darling?’
‘Sorry, sweetie,’ Anthony promptly said to Rosie, flashing her a look, before explaining, ‘I guess I’m just getting wound up wondering who this woman is. Dee, do you really think she messed around with Joe? Because you didn’t deserve that, doll. And Joe was never that guy so she must have worked damn hard to break him down and wriggle her way into his—’ He lifted his shades to show a fuming glare.
‘No!’ Gina jumped in, shooting a glance in Deedee’s direction from where she was seated across the table next to Anthony. ‘We don’t think that!’ she paused, and then added, ‘Look, let’s just keep an open mind and not jump to any conclusions. There is probably a perfectly innocent explanation.’
‘Yes,’ Deedee agreed and was just about to tell them about Joe’s surprise birthday party plan when the wooden double doors from the kitchen over on the very far side of the restaurant swung open, and the mystery woman appeared with a large tray expertly balanced in her hands held up at chest height. ‘It’s her!’ Deedee said with urgency. ‘And I think she is heading this way.’
‘Really?’ Rosie whisper-yelled.
‘Yes, really.’ Anthony gave Rosie a satisfied grin, whipped his shades off and then swivelled in his seat to get a good look.
‘OK, please… let me handle this,’ Deedee quickly said, then ‘I’m going to pop to the bathroom…’
‘But why?’ the three of them chorused.
‘Because I’m the only one she might recognise, and I don’t want to scare her off again and she ends up doing another runner.’
‘She can hardly do that if she works here,’ Anthony puffed.
‘I’m not taking the chance. I will chat to her when it’s appropriate too, ideally somewhere a little more private and not in the middle of a busy restaurant. Now, let her settle the plates down on the table and don’t say a word. Get started on your meals, as I might be some time – I don’t think I can eat anyway – so please don’t say anything to her. Promise me?’ Deedee stood up and looked for confirmation from her friends as she just couldn’t face a confrontation at the table in front of them all. Especially with Anthony being so snippy. She knew he was being protective but still, there was no need for things to get out of hand. No, she was going to go to the bathroom to gather herself and then see if she could go over to the kitchen area and have a quiet word with the mystery woman on her own. Deedee was even more convinced now that this woman wasn’t anything to do with the surprise party because it was tomorrow evening, so surely she wouldn’t have time to be working the lunch shift in a steakhouse, when she most likely would need to be all the way over in Haven Harbor getting things set up.
‘Sure, if that’s what you want,’ Gina said first, quickly followed by a nod from Rosie and a shrug from Anthony.
‘Thank you. I’ll be back,’ she told them, reckoning it wouldn’t take long to know if the woman had been involved with Joe. One look should tell her everything, Deedee reckoned. Best to ask her outright and see the reaction. But Deedee had no intention of ambushing the woman and embarrassing her, what was the point in that?
After tidying her hair in the mirror on the bathroom wall, Deedee ran cold water over her wrists to slow her pounding pulse and turned to go back into the restaurant and look for the woman.
And stopped.
The door had opened, and the mystery woman was standing right in front of Deedee with a clipboard clasped in a folded arm across her chest and her head down as if busy checking something written on a piece of paper on the clipboard.
‘Excuse me… housekeeping!’ the woman said politely, bustling into the bathroom but not looking up. She then walked over to a hand-wash dispenser on the first sink in the row of four, picked it up to check it before putting it back down and moving to the next sink to repeat the process. Deedee didn’t move. She opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come out. It was extraordinary as she had the same feeling all over again… she recognised the woman. Deedee busied herself by pretending to fix her hair in a mirror again, as she studied the woman, wondering where she could possibly know her from.
The woman looked up.
Deedee flicked her gaze away, but it was too late… the woman saw her in the adjacent mirror.
‘Oh, err…’ the woman said, and Deedee could see she instantly remembered her.
‘Please, don’t go.’ Deedee reached out to the woman, but she shrank back.
‘Why are you here? How did you find me?’ The woman’s eyes darted from side to side, like a rabbit caught in a trap.
‘Can we just chat for a second?’ Deedee asked, her mind working overtime as the woman looked like she was about to cry. Her forehead creased and her bottom lip quivered. ‘It’s Lara, isn’t it?’ Deedee said gently, seeing this confirmed on the name badge the woman was wearing, with instinct telling her to tread carefully. The woman looked petrified now.
‘What do you want?’ Lara asked, clutching the clipboard close to her body like a shield. ‘I’m sorry, OK. I don’t want any trouble…’ She glanced at the door as if scoping out her escape.
‘Neither do I,’ Deedee started. ‘Please, can we just talk?’ Lara nodded, but still looked uncomfortable. ‘OK… So we met at the beach house in Haven Harbor…’ Deedee nodded too, feeling her way, bracing herself for what she was about to hear as there was no denying it, the look was there… This woman definitely had some kind of connection with Joe. Deedee felt a wave of nausea work its way through her. She took a deep breath to centre herself and decided to get it over with and ask Lara straight. ‘Did you have an affair with my husband?’
Silence followed.
The two women stared at each other.
Deedee reached a hand out to the edge of the nearest sink to steady herself, the gamut of emotions she had experienced since being here in New York finally catching up with her. She stumbled slightly, before straightening and gaining control of herself. ‘Please just be honest with me,’ she said, hating the pleading in her voice and wishing she hadn’t come here. What did it matter? What purpose would it serve knowing the truth? Joe was gone. It would only ruin all the wonderful memories. And that was all she had left of him now. ‘Sorry,’ Deedee said, changing her mind. ‘I shouldn’t have come here; I need to go.’ And she pulled her handbag further on to her shoulder and stepped sideways, intending to leave.
‘STOP!’ Lara blurted out, moving too so she was practically blocking Deedee’s exit. ‘I… um, I’m glad you came here.’ Deedee stopped moving. There was a different tone to Lara’s voice now, an urgency. ‘Please. You’re my only chance…’ Lara’s voice drifted off and she stared at the floor.
‘What do you mean?’ Deedee asked, utterly baffled. ‘Only chance?’
‘I can’t talk here… someone might come in and this isn’t easy,’ Lara said. ‘Please will you come outside with me? I’ve been here since breakfast time and I’m due to go on a break now.’ Lara looked up and straight at Deedee who nodded again and followed as Lara left the bathroom, walked along a corridor, pushed open an exit door and brought them out into an alleyway at the back of the kitchen. Deedee’s heart raced in anticipation. And for a wild moment she wondered if she was safe out here, in a secluded alleyway, with a woman she didn’t know, but thought she recognised – where had she seen her before? What if the woman had been on the news, a mugshot, one of those true crime documentaries and was some kind of crazy criminal and had lured her out here intending to harm her? Deedee gripped the handle of her bag tighter, figuring she could use it to take a swing at Lara’s head, if she tried to attack her. But then all the wild, improbable thoughts vanished. Lara had pulled her phone from a pocket in her apron and was holding it up in front of Deedee’s face. The beach house surrounded by grassy sand dunes. It was there on the screen in a black-and-white photo. But the house looked different. Newer and neater. With frilly old-fashioned net curtains at the windows. And a couple of teenagers sitting on the same driftwood log near the front door where Anthony discovered Joe had carved his name.
‘Can I see?’ Deedee asked, reaching out to the phone to take a closer look. Lara handed her the phone.
Deedee’s heart stopped.
She held her breath.
It was Joe. A very young Joe, maybe seventeen or eighteen, but there was no mistake. The same sweep of light-coloured hair and wide, open smile. Deedee was certain it was Joe right there in the picture on Lara’s phone.
‘What is this? Why do you have a picture of my husband when he was a teenager?’
Another silence followed.
Lara stared at Deedee.
‘Because he’s my father!’
Deedee felt her face go numb. Her legs buckled but she managed to steady herself by leaning against a wall. This was worse than she had imagined. Far worse. A secret love child. Oh God.
‘What do you mean?’ Deedee found herself asking but once again wishing she had never come here. She knew instantly that it was true… Joe was Lara’s father. She could see it now. The same blonde hair and wide smile. The same sparkling denim-blue eyes. No wonder Lara looked familiar; she was a part of Joe. Deedee’s eyes filled with tears. Bittersweet tears, as a flood of absolute joy surged through her knowing a part of Joe was standing here right in front of her. But also sorrow and fear too, because why had Joe had kept this from her? He had a beautiful grown-up daughter.
As if reading Deedee’s mind, Lara said, ‘My mom never told him!’
Lara took her phone back and gestured to a low wall by the kitchen door for them to sit on. Side by side, Lara held the phone out, with the picture still on the screen to show Deedee. ‘The woman in the picture is my mother, Gill – she died about a year ago?—’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Deedee said, the words floating from her mouth as if someone else was saying them. Shock, she thought it must be, as a weird, surrealness surrounded her. Out of body almost. She swallowed hard and tried to focus on what Lara was telling her.
‘It was a release in a way, as she suffered with dementia for many years,’ Lara paused, and Deedee found herself patting Lara’s arm in comfort and mutual understanding as she remembered the grief and anguish of her own father going the same way. ‘But it made it even harder to discover the truth.’ Lara inhaled before carrying on, ‘I grew up assuming my dad was my biological father, I never had any reason to doubt this – he’s gone now, too, and never knew the truth either, which I’m glad of actually as we were very close, and I think it would have hurt him immensely. But I discovered the truth when I was going through Mom’s things in preparation for moving her to the care facility. I came across an old diary from when she was a teenager, just turned eighteen I worked out, and it was all there… how she had met a boy on holiday in the Hamptons around the same age as her and how handsome he was, and one thing led to another, and they had a holiday romance. She writes about that time with such passion and emotion that it led me to believe they fell in love over that summer… if that’s even possible.’
‘I do believe it can happen,’ Deedee said quietly, thinking about her first love with Yiannis when they were young. It had been a whirlwind summer affair too.
‘Mom discovered she was pregnant a little while later. But by then she was already engaged to be married to her high school sweetheart and says in the diary that she did manage to go back by herself to Haven Harbor to look for Joe, but couldn’t find him. He didn’t live in the beach house where the photo was taken any more, and she had never known his second name. It was different in those days in the seventies… and she writes about the shame of being pregnant but not married and also being terrified of telling anyone the truth and so went along with the wedding to keep my dad and both sets of their parents happy. She let them all think that dad was my biological father, because not doing so might have meant having to give me up and she couldn’t bear to. And there was no internet or social media back then and so no way of finding Joe.
‘Of course, when I tried to find out more about it from Mom, she had no idea what I was talking about. She didn’t even know who I was by that stage, but there was a moment of clarity one day and so I showed her the photo that I had found in the diary, and she told me as clear as anything that the boy in the picture sitting beside her was Joe and he lived in the beach house at the end of the row in Haven Harbor. And she smiled and traced a finger over the driftwood log on the deck and told me he had carved his name there and had intended on adding her name too, but his mom had caught him and told him off for damaging the bark. So I went there, and I found the beach house with the driftwood log with his name on and…’ She stopped talking. ‘It sounds so ridiculous now, the house was empty, abandoned, that was clear, so I don’t know what I was thinking, but I kept visiting and then you were there and you said you were Joe’s wife, I guess I panicked. I hadn’t ever got that far… You know, actually worked out what to say if I ever did find Joe or someone connected to him. I did come close one time about four and a half years ago. It was soon after I first found the diary and when I got to the beach house there were two men sitting on the log and I waved as I walked near to the house, and they waved back politely before one of the guys put his arm around the other man’s shoulders. It looked like they were talking about something really serious, sad even, and so I didn’t think it was appropriate to ask if one of them was called Joe and if he remembered having a holiday romance with a woman over fifty years earlier.’
Deedee stifled an involuntary gasp and bit down hard on her bottom lip so as not to cry out loud as she knew exactly who the two men were. Joe and Yiannis. On the day they went there after Joe filmed the codicil. And it was heartbreaking to know that Joe had met Lara without ever knowing who she was, as he would have adored discovering he had a daughter. Joe had never been one for blame or for holding grudges and so she knew there wouldn’t have been any feelings of recrimination towards Gill. It was hardly her fault that Joe and his mom had to leave the beach house so abruptly and she had no way of tracking him down. But thank goodness she’d had the moment of clarity and told her daughter about the beach house with the driftwood log on the deck, and that Joe had managed to buy the house and gift it to Deedee all these years later. It seemed like fate… the beach house bringing a part of Joe back to Deedee. Because if she hadn’t been there on that day then she might never have discovered he had a daughter.
The feeling of joy was swiftly followed by sorrow though, as Deedee knew absolutely that Joe would have cherished every moment he could have had with Lara. How cruel for him to have never had the chance to get to know her. Or for Lara to have known what a wonderful man he was. Deedee allowed herself a moment of hope that she might be welcome in Lara’s life, to have an opportunity to tell her all about Joe, after the difficulty of gently telling her that he had died of course, and not knowing how she might react. Deedee steeled herself to break the news. She turned to face Lara and was just about to do it when the kitchen door flew open and a young man in his twenties, perhaps, appeared.
‘Mom? What’s going on? I called by to see you and Bobby said you hadn’t come back from your break.’
Deedee stared, stunned, speechless. The young man standing in front of her was the spitting image of Joe from all those years ago, when she had auditioned to be a Bond girl back in the seventies and he was first starting his career as a movie casting director. The likeness was surreal. Breathtaking. Deedee stood up and couldn’t help herself now as emotion took over and tears tumbled down her face.
‘You look so like him,’ she murmured, reaching a hand towards Lara’s son, Joe’s grandson, it was clear. He kindly touched the back of her hand momentarily with a look of concern followed by bafflement as he turned to his mom for some kind of explanation. Lara stood beside him. The three of them lost for words. ‘Lara…’ Deedee started. ‘I have something I must te?—’
‘It’s OK… you don’t need to, I know.’ Lara nodded solemnly. ‘I was there at the beach house again yesterday, I went back. It really helps me feel close to my mom again, sitting on the driftwood knowing she was there, happy and enjoying her summer of love,’ she hesitated. ‘Sorry, I hope you don’t mind?’
Deedee shook her head and smiled. ‘Of course not,’ she reassured.
‘I also thought you might still be there, and I had gone properly prepared to talk to you and not run away this time. I also hoped Joe would be there. But I know that’s never going to happen now.’ Deedee creased her forehead in concern but stayed silent as she waited for Lara to continue. ‘There was another woman there, a party planner I think, she was unloading lanterns and hanging a garland of gorgeous blue forget-me-not flowers around the wooden balustrade of the deck at the front of the house.’ Deedee felt something catch in her throat. ‘I asked the woman if she knew Joe, and she told me that he had died.’
‘Oh, Lara,’ Deedee said, ‘I’m so sorry you had to find out that way, it must have been hard.’
‘She was kind.’ Lara looked at the ground before lifting her head and stepping closer to Deedee. ‘I’d like us to get to know each other if you’d like that too. I don’t have any family left now… it’s just me and Nate.’ She indicated to her son. ‘And I would love to find out who Joe was, the kind of person he was.’
‘I’d like that very much,’ Deedee said softly. ‘Joe would have loved you,’ she added, her voice full of melancholy. ‘I have no doubt about that and so I will do my very best to share him, the memories, to show you the wonderful man he was so you might come to love him too.’ Soon the two women were gathered into a hug. Deedee felt her pulse quicken and her heart soar. They say things happen for a reason and Joe had always loved surprising her and now he had gifted her the greatest and most special surprise of all. A part of him. A family that neither of them had when he was still here.