She saw that his five high-end restaurants in Chicago and in Palm Beach were called Masson, and the one in Las Vegas was called Chez Jacques. There was a photograph of him with a very young girl on his website, and she wondered if it was his daughter. He could have married and had a family in the last twenty years. He was handsome, slightly overweight, and looked like a teddy bear. Despite some gray in his thick mane of hair and the beard he still wore, he hadn’t changed much and had aged well. He was fifty-five now, and from the reviews on his website, his restaurants were a major success. He had done well.
She found Bob Holland on Google just as easily. The website said he was the founder of Holland, Hampstead, and Ahern, a venture capital firm in Boston specializing in high-tech investments. They’d both been very young when she went out with him. She was thirty and he was thirty-one, and had just graduated from Harvard Business School with his MBA. She was almost exclusively in fashion then, working furiously and taking care of her kids. They were barely old enough to remember him, and she doubted that they would, although she had gone out with him for two years. He had been a serious contender. He was originally from Boston, although he was working at Lehman Brothers in New York when she knew him. He was responsible and ambitious, and not as much fun as Jacques was when she met him later, but Bob was also steadier, and he wanted to make his mark in the world of high-tech investments. He’d had an offer from a firm in Silicon Valley, when everything was booming and starting to take off out there. He wanted her to move to California with him, but there was little fashion photography happening on the West Coast, and her career would have taken a major hit if she went. She had three children to support and didn’t want to be dependent on him. All of it had added up to staying in New York seeming like the right decision.
She remembered that he’d had a chip on his shoulder about not having enough money of his own to invest. He had gone to school with some heavy hitters, and wanted to be one of them. She’d always felt a little out of her league with him. She had no money then either, except what she made, and she spent all of it supporting three kids.
He hadn’t liked the people in her fashion world. The photograph on his website showed him looking a lot older at fifty-nine, and the list of companies his firm had funded was impressive. He had clearly made it to the big leagues and fulfilled his dreams. And as much as she loved him for a time, she could never see herself with him long term. She always had the feeling that he would clip her wings. Giving up New York and her career for him had been too much to ask. She couldn’t do it.
In the twenty-six years since, he had made his way back to Boston, and apparently started his own venture capital firm, so he’d obviously done well on the West Coast, before heading east again. She hadn’t had any regrets about him, although she had missed him at first, but Jacques had been a good distraction six years later, and different from Bob in every possible way. Jacques had seemed much less serious about his career at the time, but had done well anyway, probably not in the same league as Bob, but seven restaurants for a French chef from the provinces was a major coup for him. Both men appeared to have lived up to their dreams, and so had she.
* * *
—
It took her a little longer to locate Andy Wyatt, and there were several options that turned up in her search, and then she found him. He was still in Wyoming, listed as the founder of the Wyatt Ranch, and Sean Wyatt, his son, was listed as manager of the ranch. Sean was a year younger than Milagra, and had been a nice boy. Andy was widowed. He’d lost his wife to cancer not long after Sean was born. He’d been a good father and a good man. Maddie had met him at a ranch she took the children to one summer, and they fell head over heels in love. They were the perfect match, in a way she had never expected to find. Their values were so similar. She had waited until she was forty to find the love of her life. Everything about their time together was perfect, but geography was the one problem they couldn’t solve. She had a major career in New York by then, couldn’t afford to give it up and didn’t want to. It was part of her identity. She had two kids in college, and Milagra to get through high school and into college, and Andy couldn’t exist anywhere but on a ranch, close to his roots and in the world he had always known.
At forty-nine, there was no way he could transition into city life in New York, far from horses and mountains and wide-open spaces. He had come to visit her in New York once, and no matter how much he loved her, he couldn’t wait to leave. He had said that he felt like the air was being sucked out of his lungs. He was a cowboy to the very bottom of his soul, the way some men are sailors and can’t live far from the sea. She understood that about him, but she couldn’t give up her identity for him either. Her work was an integral part of her. She wasn’t sure she’d make the same decision now, but she thought she would. In the end, they had made the decision together, and knew they had to. The tension was beginning to poison their relationship, which was the last thing she wanted. They agreed that they had to end it, which had been the most painful choice she’d ever made.
They spoke a few times right after the breakup. She’d hoped that they could be friends, but neither of them were capable of it. They loved each other too passionately, and had to stop talking. She cried over him for two years afterwards, and she hadn’t had a serious relationship since then. They had ended it seventeen years ago, and it still felt like yesterday. She wondered if they’d be able to see each other now.
Having found the box of photographs and love letters had jogged her memories and her heart, and she suddenly had a longing to reach back into her past and see the people who had been important to her. She didn’t want anything from them, but she wanted to remind herself of what they had meant to her, and to see if she’d made the right decisions. She had always wondered about Andy. She could see that he had his own ranch now, and she was happy for him. She was at peace now too. Her children were each in a good place for them, and her work was satisfying, but she wanted to see the men she had loved, and reassure herself that she had made the right choices. She needed to contact them one more time, to validate the past, and who she had been then, with each one of them. She wondered if doing so was a sign of age, or a reminder that she was still alive and had been capable of great love, at least once. It was something she was beginning to feel she needed now in order to move forward in her life.
She didn’t think she wanted a man in her life again. It seemed too complicated to her now. But all the men she had looked up on Google had been more than just passing relationships for her, and she wanted to see where they were now. It seemed an important rite of passage to her. Especially with Deanna convincing her that her life was over. She was mildly afraid of seeing Andy again. He had meant so much to her, but maybe they were capable of friendship now, even if they hadn’t been then. The sting had gone out of it for her, and hopefully for him too. She wondered if he had married again. He wanted to marry her, and she would have if it hadn’t meant spending the rest of her life on a ranch in Wyoming. She couldn’t do that any more than he could have moved to New York for her. She wanted nothing from him now, except to know that he was all right, and confirm that they had loved each other. That seemed important, and perhaps it would be to him too. Maybe then, they could both go on in peace.