Look to the Rainbow (29 page)

     He smiled down at her and she remembered that she had a story to file herself. “I have to go do my report,” she said.

     “And after that?”

      “We’re already going to be tomorrow’s trending story, Kel. We should just leave at this for tonight.”

     His smile vanished. “I want you to spend some time thinking about us. About what you want from whatever this is that we’ve started.  I love you, but I can’t keep this up. Either we decide to do this forever, or we have to end it. I’d personally rather have forever. But it’s completely up to you now.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek and went back to his family and she went to find her camera crew, and prayed she would be able to hold it together to do her report.

     As she had expected, photographs of the two of them kissing graced the covers of every newspaper she saw. And she was pursued by the press with a vengeance, everyone wanting to know if she was going to marry Kel. There was nowhere she went that she wasn’t photographed; going to work, the grocery store, a book store. She visited Evan and Mary Katherine and hated that photographers camped out outside their house until she left. She was called in to an editorial meeting and told that the media hype was out of control and that they saw her as a liability, not an asset. They had no choice, they said, but to let her go. She was quickly assured that it was not the quality of her work or any other reason and that she would be given the highest recommendations and three months’ salary as severance pay.

            She went home, still stunned by the afternoon’s events. She walked through her apartment, her head spinning with everything that had been happening. For the second time in a month she found herself without a job. She had her expenses paid through the election, she thought, and then what? She supposed that her father would help her find something in Atlanta and maybe that was what she needed to do. Forget all this had happened, chalk it up to her fifteen minutes of fame, and just go home. But how could she forget her time with Kel? How could she pretend she had never fallen in love with him, and not just because he was so gorgeous and had the bluest eyes she had ever seen? She loved the person behind that handsome face, who he was and what he wanted and what he dreamed. She loved all of him, but she didn’t know how to make herself a part of his life.

            She kicked off her shoes, pulled out her cell phone and called Julia.

Chapter Twenty Six

     Evan groaned as he pulled into the driveway. His mother-in-law’s car was also parked there and he went inside the house preparing himself for the confrontation that would surely come before she left. As he opened the door, the smell of roses assaulted him and he saw a huge vase of pink and red ones on the table. He searched his memory to think of some event a Thursday in early October that would warrant flowers, but came up short. As he came into the room, he also saw several photo albums and scrapbooks scattered on the sofa. Mary Katherine’s cell rang and before she could greet him she said “Oh I need to take this in the studio,” and raced up the stairs, living him alone with Margaret. Had she been crying? Or was he imagining that as he watched her go?

     “So what’s up with the flowers?” he asked.

     “I knew it would be a difficult day for Mary Katherine.” Margaret shifted on the sofa and turned a page in one of the albums.

     “Oh, really. Why?”

     She gave him a withering look. “You wouldn’t understand, Evan.”

     “Why don’t you try and explain it to me, Margaret. I’m not nearly as stupid as you give me credit for.”

     “It’s Harry’s birthday. He would have been forty today.”

     “You know, Margaret, Harry
is
dead. He has been for over twenty years.”

     “I know that, obviously, Evan. But Mary Katherine just can’t forget the days that were important.” It suddenly dawned on him why she couldn’t forget. She had never been allowed to forget. There had probably always been a call or a text , an email or a card or flowers to remind her of every day that might dredge up painful memories. His mother-in-law had turned her house into a shrine to Harry Thurston. The photographs everywhere, the high school corsages still tacked to the dresser mirror in Mary Katherine’s bedroom, the constant conversations about him. Evan doubted Harry’s own parents had as many objects in their house to memorialize him.

    “And you’ve done everything you can to make sure she doesn’t, haven’t you? What kind of mother makes sure her daughter is crippled by grief for over twenty years?  You bring her flowers on a dead boyfriend’s birthday but you can’t come and help out when she’s had chemo?”

    “Evan, you are over reacting.”

     He should have done what he always did, just kept quiet. But he couldn’t seem to do that today. “Am I? Why have you done everything in your power to try and make sure she was unhappy with me? I know I’m not the son in law you wanted, Margaret, but maybe instead of constant harping on who I wasn’t maybe you should have seen what I am. Contrary to what you’ve always had everyone in your family think, I wasn’t some ignorant peasant Mary Katherine picked up from the gutter and did a Pygmalion turnaround on. My father was a high ranking naval officer with a prestigious post. I learned social graces from my mother, not from Mary Katherine, I was an Olympic athlete, and I graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. And I have loved your daughter unconditionally for twenty years and will until the day she dies. Don’t
ever
send her flowers to commemorate anything regarding Harry again. Don’t call her about him, don’t show up with photos and scrapbooks. And don’t expect us for holidays unless you take down the shrines all over your house.
Am  I making myself clear
?”

    Margaret stared at him. “Very.” She gathered up the albums and her purse and swept toward the door before they both realized that Mary Katherine was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Darling, I’m going since your
husband
doesn’t want me here.”

    “And neither  do I, Mom, if you can’t be nice to my
husband
. Just so you know, we’ll be out of town for the weekend. We’re going to Janet O’Brien’s wedding.”

     Margaret looked from Mary Katherine to Evan and turned to leave. Normally Evan would have been a gentleman and opened the door for her. Tonight he didn’t.

     Evan stood rooted to the spot where he had been standing and didn’t speak. Mary Katherine could see all kinds of emotions just under the surface that were close to erupting, but he kept them in check and finally moved toward the stairs. She stepped aside and he started up, but then as if the effort was suddenly just too much sank down on a step and put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.

     She sat on the step below him and drew her knees up to her chest and wondered if they were going to fight or if everything was going to be okay.

    “We’re never going to be rid of him, are we?” he whispered.

     “Probably not.”

    “I’m going for a run.”

     “You ran this morning.” She knew that didn’t matter. That was how Evan released stress.

     “I know that. I just…need to run.”

     “Evan, I hadn’t even thought about it until she showed up after lunch.  I was working on my next exhibit and packing for the weekend. And then she was at the door.”

     He nodded. This time it wasn’t her fault. Maybe it never had been. As he started back up the stairs again he asked, “While I’m gone do you think you can get rid of the roses?”

     “Of course. You don’t need to look at them, and neither do I.”

     “It’s not so much looking at them as it’s that the way they smell makes me sick. It always has, ever since my parents’ funeral. Everybody knew my mother loved pink roses and the chapel was filled with them. The scent of them was overpowering.” He went upstairs to change and she took the flowers and put them in the outside garbage can. Twenty years he had showered her with flowers, sometimes for no reason, and as she thought of it now, not one time had any of the arrangements contained even so much as a single rose. They had so many ghosts to deal with, she and Evan. But somehow they had managed to make it this far together, mostly due to Evan’s extreme patience and understanding.

     While he ran, she packed for both of them, ordered in dinner and set the table. She talked to him about her new exhibit and they went to bed early as they were planning an early start the next morning. The truth was, the day’s events had made them both tired. She was almost asleep when he said “Mary Katherine?”

   “Yes, darlin’?” she asked.

    “Did we even get Janet and Alan a wedding present?”

     She laughed and assured him they had and closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Chapter Twenty Seven

    
“How do I look?” Janet asked, as Casey and Sara surveyed their cousin in wedding day splendor. The dress was a sumptuous creation made especially for Janet and was a fantasy dress if ever there was one. It had a perfect silhouette, a twenty four foot train and beautiful embellishments.

     “You could have put a few more pick-ups and flowers on the skirt,” Sara said.

     “And maybe the train could have been a tiny bit longer,” Casey teased. “There’s probably going to be some aisle that isn’t covered.”

     “Seriously, what do you think?”

     “It’s beautiful,” Kel said from the doorway. “But not as beautiful as you are.” He came in the room and gave her a kiss. “And your bridesmaids are beautiful too.”

     “Thank you Daddy,” Janet said. “What’s that you’re holding?” She indicated the flat blue velvet box he had in his hand.

     “You asked for good memories of mother. What I’m about the give you are good memories.” He opened the box and she gasped as she saw what was inside. There was a necklace of three strands of pearls and diamonds woven together with an emerald and diamond pendant hanging from it and a bracelet and earrings to match.

     “Oh, they’re gorgeous,” Janet said, reaching for the bracelet and putting it on. She took of the pearl earrings she had been wearing for the emerald and diamond ones and Kel fastened the necklace around her neck.

     “I gave your mother the necklace the night before we got married,” Kel said, “and we bought the other pieces at Cartier in Paris on our honeymoon.”

     “She wore this in your wedding,” Janet said, touching the necklace.

     “She did. She looked incredibly beautiful that day.”  His expression was just a little bit sad.

     “Thank you for keeping them for me.”

     Mary Katherine came into the room to take some photographs of Janet and Kel, and then some of Janet alone, and then with her bridesmaids, who each wore the same style dress in different fall colors; Casey in apple green, Sara in gold, Odette in pumpkin and Catriona in rust. The flowers were lilies and mums in the same colors and the church itself was banked in the same flowers, with tall topiaries of the same flowers lining the aisles and nearly a thousand candles.