Deanna only lingered for a few minutes, her mission not having been accomplished. And Maddie was sure Deanna would try again about the benefit at the firehouse before she gave up. She hobbled around her desk, keeping the weight off her left foot, to kiss Deanna goodbye. Deanna didn’t waste time on a hug, kissed the air near her mother’s face, and left a minute later. Penny walked in as soon as she heard the front door close behind Deanna.
“What did the Ice Queen want today?” Penny asked, and sat down across from Maddie’s desk.
“The firehouse for her charity event, as the first matter of business. After that, she thinks I should invest in a facility with assisted living.”
“Now?” Penny looked horrified. “Is she crazy?”
“Maybe not now but soon. She thinks it makes perfect sense, since I’ll need it someday. That’s not how I see my future,” Maddie said bleakly. Nor did anyone else who knew her.
“That’s ridiculous, you seem and act younger than I do.”
“No, I don’t, and even if I appear young, you are young. There’s a difference. And who knows, maybe she’s right. If my health fails, it will all go down the tubes, my work, the firehouse, my freedom. No one can predict that.”
“There’s some woman in Florida who’s a hundred and twelve and still going strong,” Penny said stubbornly, wanting to keep Deanna’s demons away from Maddie. She was so toxic.
“More power to her. I’m not sure I want to live that long. God knows what she looks like. But I’ll settle for ninety-something, and still working. Deanna is predicting a rapid decline in the near future, with my ankle as the first sign. She’s trying to convince me of it.”
“Don’t believe it,” Penny said, wishing she could strangle Deanna for the things she said to her mother. She was hateful.
“I’m trying not to. I think my worst nightmare would be if my children ganged up on me and forced me to live in a way I don’t want to. That’s the kind of thing that breaks people’s spirits. What if they take control of my life one day?” It was one of her greatest fears, although she didn’t think of it often, but it gave her shivers when she did.
“I won’t let them,” Penny said staunchly.
“You won’t be able to stop them, if it comes to that,” Maddie said sadly, “and neither will I. I hope I get run over by a bus before that. It’s the kind of thing you think will never happen to you, but sometimes it does. I would hate that, sitting in a chair, staring out a window, remembering the past, with nothing to look forward to. I’d rather be dead.”
“Don’t say that.”
Maddie nodded, but thinking about it made her feel like she wanted to run away, seize life by the horns again, and not just sit there. She didn’t want to be helpless, waiting for what Deanna said was inevitable.
She wanted to live her life to the fullest, and she knew she hadn’t for a while. She was wrapped up in her work, always running to the next assignment. She wasn’t taking much time to smell the roses anymore. With no partner to share it with, she hardly ever took time off now. She just worked, day and night, and now and then she saw her kids. But not often. She hadn’t seen Ben in six months and Milagra in almost nine. But Milagra had been working on two books for months, and Ben and Laura just hadn’t been able to figure out a good time for her to visit. She hadn’t seen her New York granddaughters, Kendra and Lily, in more than two months, almost three. Heads of state of some nations weren’t as busy as all of them, and Maddie had a heavy schedule too.
She had a shoot coming up in Shanghai in six weeks, and she had two important shoots in New York in the next week. One on Thursday, and another one the following Monday. She had five weeks free before Shanghai after that, but Maddie knew that other bookings would come in on short notice. They always did. Art directors and editors called her all the time. There was no particular world event she wanted to shoot at the moment. She’d been working for months on projects back to back. And now, she suspected her ankle would slow her down. She was amazed by how tired she was after her first day at work with a cast and on crutches. She had to go back to the hospital on Friday, to get a walking cast. She hoped she would be less tired with that. Using only one foot and the crutches was exhausting.
Penny didn’t leave until after she had seen Maddie get up to her room, on her bottom on the stairs. And then she waited until Maddie’s dinner had been delivered by a nearby restaurant and brought it to her in her bedroom on a tray. Maddie had her laptop set up on the bed and was reading emails. She had work to do that night. Her ankle was hurting, but she didn’t want to take a pain pill and blitz herself. She needed to focus and concentrate on her work.
After Penny left, she nibbled at her dinner on a tray between emails, and when she finished responding to all of them, which took well over an hour, she thought of the box of letters again. On a whim, she decided to follow Penny’s suggestion to look the three men up on the internet. Why not? It couldn’t do any harm. Curiosity had been gnawing at her since she had opened Pandora’s box, once she got it out of the closet.
She started with Jacques Masson, and typed in his name for a Google search. It came up immediately as the owner of a string of restaurants in the Chicago area, one in Palm Beach, and another in Las Vegas. He had seven restaurants in all. She studied his website carefully, and his CV, which had lengthened considerably since she’d last seen him. He was only a simple chef then, fresh from France. Their affair had been twenty years before, when he first arrived from Paris with a green card he’d won in the lottery. She went out with him for six months. She was thirty-eight and Jacques had been thirty-five.
They had had a great time together. She fell prey to his French charm and took him seriously for a brief time. He was one of the most entertaining men she’d ever gone out with. She was crazy about him, until she discovered he was a cheater like Stephane. He kept promising her he’d stop, but he never did. Because they only went out for six months, she’d often wondered if she had given up on him too soon, and what would have happened if she’d stuck it out for longer and given him a chance. But he had slept with everyone: sous chefs he worked with, waitresses in the restaurants where he cooked, and two of Maddie’s friends, which had destroyed the friendships. It was untenable, and she knew she’d never trust him. She knew it was Stephane all over again, once she had discovered his affairs. Jacques was a much nicer human being than her ex-husband, and he had insisted that he genuinely loved her, but some woman always came along and provided a distraction and a lure he couldn’t resist. He was a man who loved women, every size, every color, every type, every age. He tried to tell her that he was a “collector of beautiful women,” like men who loved art or fine wine. But his passion for women made it impossible to take him seriously for the long haul. At the time, she had still wanted to remarry eventually. He wasn’t a viable option, and she had ended the relationship without bitterness. Eventually he drifted away and they lost touch. He had been thinking about moving to Chicago already by then. He had a job opportunity there, and she didn’t want to uproot her kids to move with him.