Marking Time (8 page)

“That’s my other grandson, Eric,” Betty said to Clare. “He’s almost eight and a handful.”

“He’s adorable.” Clare watched Maggie wrap an arm around Eric without missing a beat in her conversation with a friend of Kate’s.

Clare moved out of the fray to sit on one of the leather sofas. She watched Jack and Andi circulate through the room, noticing how they moved with the easy grace of a long-married couple. She was forced to look away when Jack put a hand on the small of Andi’s back to draw her closer to him. He did it so naturally and unconsciously that Clare ached when she remembered him touching her that way.

The room vibrated with music, voices, and the sound of ice striking crystal.

Frannie sat down next to Clare. “Hanging in?” she asked under her breath.

“By a thread,” Clare replied in the same tone.

“You look wonderful. You’re all recovered.”

“Except for this nagging limp I can’t seem to shake.”

“You will,” Frannie said with a glance across the room at Jamie, who held Olivia as he chatted with Jack and Andi.

“I finished the journal,” Clare said. “It was quite a story when Jack met Andi and you and Jamie got together.”

Frannie smiled. “That was one hell of a week.”

“Tell me about it, Frannie. I read about it, but I want you to tell me.”

Frannie raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really?”

Clare nodded. “This is the first time I’ve seen them together. It’s made me curious more than anything.”

Frannie took a deep breath. “Well, it was late August, and Andi came from Chicago to do a site visit in preparation for decorating the Newport hotel. At the time, she was the director of interior design for Infinity. Jack took her around to the mansions, Hammersmith Farm, and some of the other highlights. We went out on the boat and had a cookout at the house for all the designers. It was the first party we’d had at the house since everything happened, and it was fun.”

“Your journal said that’s when things between you and Jamie heated up, too.” Clare noticed Jack and Frannie’s parents, Madeline and John, had arrived, and Clare looked forward to visiting with her former in-laws.

Frannie waved to her parents. “That’s right. There’d been this thing between us
forever
, and neither of us ever admitted it to each other or anyone else.” Her gaze softened when it landed on her handsome husband.

Clare smiled. “I
always
wondered.”

“Did you? We were so surprised to discover we’d both had all these feelings for each other for
years
.” Frannie still seemed astounded by it, even more than two years later. “I guess when we saw Jack rejoining the land of the living, it felt like the time was right for us, too.”

“You guys seem so happy together.”

Frannie smiled. “We are.”

“So what happened with Jack and Andi?”

“You’re
sure
you want to hear this?”

“It’s okay,” Clare said with a wave to her mother who was across the room with Jill and Frannie’s son, Owen.

“Well, Jack said later it was love at first sight. It was quite overwhelming for him, because he’d only recently given up trying to find help for you and had just been back to work for a month or so at that point. I remember something he said to me that week. I never forgot it. He said, ‘I wasn’t expecting to meet someone who’d make me want more.’ There was this helplessness to him. He worried about what people would say, and he was concerned about the girls.” Frannie shrugged. “It was tough for him, Clare. He agonized over it. Don’t think he didn’t. But he’d suffered so much that I remember being relieved to see a spark of life back in his eyes.”

“She went back to Chicago, right?”

Frannie nodded. “But he talked her into coming back to visit for a weekend. They had a wonderful time, but she decided that because of the distance and all the complications it just wasn’t going to work out between them. We tried to be supportive and to give him some space, but it was awful. He was so sad again. Strangely enough, it was right around then that Jamie proposed.”

“I’m so sorry I missed that part.”

“I was, too. I needed you to be my matron of honor.”

Clare’s eyes filled as she hugged her. “Oh, Frannie.”

“The girls did a wonderful job as my bridesmaids, but I never missed you more than I did during the months before my wedding.” Frannie dabbed at her eyes and shook off the melancholy. “Anyway, Jack moped around for a week or so after Andi left. Then my mother apparently gave him a talking to about life being too short to miss out on a chance to be happy. The next thing we knew, he was on his way to Chicago. I never heard much about what happened out there, but whatever he did must’ve worked. They started spending weekends and holidays together. She came with Eric when Quinn got married,” Frannie said, referring to Jack’s longtime assistant at work. “Then we had a hurricane that kept them here for a week.”

“A bad one?” Clare asked.

“Not as bad as it could’ve been but enough to disrupt travel for days. Long story short, Jack asked her to move here, and Andi’s boss sweetened the pot by offering her the job managing the Newport hotel. She and Eric moved here the following February.”

“That was after your wedding, right?”

“Right. We got married on New Year’s Eve.”

“I’ve wondered about how the girls reacted when he told them she was moving in.”

“Well, they’d spent quite a bit of time with her by then, and Maggie, in particular, was just wild about Eric. Kate was very supportive. She said she wanted him to be happy. Jill was upset about it at first, but she came around in time.”

Clare glanced at Andi across the room. She had a baby in her arms as she visited with her guests. “She seems hard not to like.”

Frannie chuckled. “You’re right. She was good with the girls and respected the boundaries. I think that’s why it worked out so well.”

Jack walked over to them, holding the other baby. “Frannie, can I give Robby to you for a minute?”

She held out her arms. “Of course. Come see Auntie Frannie, big guy.”

“Clare, we probably should offer up a toast to our daughter. Are you game?” Jack held out a hand to help her up.

She took his hand. “Only if you do the talking. You’re better at that stuff than I am.”

Clare stood next to Jack by the fireplace as he clinked a spoon against his glass to quiet the room.

“I want to thank you all for coming tonight. We’re here to wish Kate a happy eighteenth birthday and to wish her well as she begins the next phase of her life.” He cleared his throat. “In Nashville,” he said, appearing to choke on the word as his guests chuckled. “Kate, I find it very hard to believe you’re already eighteen, and just to be sure, I got out your birth certificate today.” He reached into his pocket to retrieve a piece of paper.

Kate groaned and made a face at him.

Jack held up the birth certificate. “The dates don’t lie, so like it or not, it’s time for us to let you go. All we can do is hope that when you’re a big star you won’t forget to come home once in a while. Your mother and I are so proud of you, and we love you very much.” He raised his glass. “To Kate.”

Kate’s cheeks turned red as her guests saluted her. She walked over to hug her father, and Clare was once again startled to witness the new level of intimacy between Jack and the girls. While he’d always been a wonderful father, his relationship with his daughters had clearly grown and deepened during her long illness. Kate pulled back from him and reached for her mother.

“Will you play for us, Kate?” Clare asked as she hugged her daughter.

“I’d love to.” Kate looked at her father with a big grin on her face. “I have a song just for you.”

“Why am I afraid?” he asked.

“Oh, be
very
afraid,” Kate joked and went to find her guitar.

The room quieted again when Kate began to strum the opening notes of the song. “This is by someone I hope to meet someday—Martina McBride—and it’s for you, Dad.” She launched into the chorus for “Independence Day.”

Jack tossed his head back with laughter. “Very funny, Kate.”

She gave him a wicked grin as she finished the song. “This one’s for everyone else,” she said, launching into a haunting rendition of Sarah McLaughlin’s “I Will Remember You.”

“She sure is something, isn’t she?” Madeline Harrington asked Clare.

Clare had been so absorbed in Kate, she hadn’t seen Jack walk away. She glanced at her former mother-in-law. “She sure is. She’s going to get where she wants to be.”

“I’m not sure whether to hope
for
that or
against
it,” Madeline said with a sigh.

“You don’t approve.”

“It’s not about approval. I worry—no more or less than you and Jack, I’m sure.”

“I have a good feeling about it. I didn’t at first, but she inherited Jack’s ability to get things done. I don’t think I ever really saw that before now.”

“You’ve succeeded in making a doting old grandmother feel better,” Madeline said with a smile. “It’s so good to have you here with us. Sometimes I still can’t believe it. We wished for it for so long.”

Touched, Clare squeezed the older woman’s hand. “Thank you for all the phone calls and cards and visits. You’ve always been so good to me.”

“I love you, Clare, and I always will. For the rest of my life you
are
my daughter-in-law, and next summer I want to see you at Haven Hill, do you hear me?” Madeline referred to her home on Block Island where they’d summered together for years when the girls were younger.

“I promise,” Clare said as she hugged her. “I love you, too, Madeline.”

“Well, I told Betty I’d help her get the babies down. It’s going to take both grannies to settle those rascals.”

Clare chuckled. “Good luck.”

Jill walked up to them with a baby brother in one arm and the ice bucket in the other. She handed the baby to her grandmother. “I hear you’re on bedtime duty.”

“That’s right.” Madeline held her grandson up to gaze at him. “And which one are you, my love?”

“Robby,” Jill said. “I think.”

“Does that need a refill?” Clare asked, pointing to the ice bucket. When Jill nodded, Clare took it from her. “I’ll do it.”

“Thanks, Mom. Right through there,” Jill said, pointing the way.

“I’ll find it.” Clare wove through clusters of people on her way to the hallway off the great room. She pushed open the swinging kitchen door to find Jack resting his forehead against Andi’s. Her hands were on his face as she spoke softly to him.

Clare froze. “I’m sorry.”

A
s if she’d touched something hot, Andi’s hands fell from her husband’s face.

“Clare, come in,” Jack said.

Clare felt her cheeks heat with color. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“You didn’t,” Andi said graciously. “Do we need more ice?” She took the bucket from Clare. “It’s out in the garage. I’ll get it.”

When Clare turned to go back the way she’d come, Jack stopped her. “Clare.”

She turned to him and fought through her embarrassment at having witnessed a tender moment between her ex-husband and his new wife.

“I’m glad you came tonight. I know it means a lot to Kate that you’re here.”

She nodded. “We’re going soon. I still get tired far too easily, and you’ve got an early morning.”

He groaned. “She wants to leave at five.”

Clare smiled. “She’s not wasting a minute.”

“We’d be leaving at midnight if she’d had her way.”

“Your mother’s worried about Kate.”

“Believe me, I know. I’ve heard
all
about it.”

“Well, have a safe trip, and thanks again for taking her.”

“I promised I would.”

“Make sure she calls me when you get there.”

“Will do. When are you leaving for Vermont?”

“In the next few days. I’ve been so busy getting Kate ready that I haven’t packed a thing for myself yet.”

“Keep in touch while you’re there.”

“I will.”

Andi came back in with the refilled ice bucket.

Jack took it from her. “I’ve got it,” he said and went back out to the party.

Clare started to follow him but turned back. “Andi?” she said. “I want to thank you for giving this lovely party for Kate.”

“It was my pleasure,” Andi said with a warm smile.

“And for everything else, too. You’ve been so good to my girls. I just…well…thank you.”

“I love them.”

“Yes, I believe you do.”

“We’re glad you could be here tonight. Jack told me you’re planning to go away for a while. We’ll take good care of Maggie for you. Don’t worry about her.”

“I appreciate that. I know it’s an imposition with all you have going on.”

Andi’s eyes danced with amusement. “Are you
kidding
me? She’s the
biggest
help with the boys—all of them. I’m lost without her on the days she’s at your house.”

Clare smiled, imagining Maggie bossing everyone around. “I’m glad she’s a help to you.”

“Take care of yourself, Clare. We’ll take care of Maggie.”

“Thank you.”
God
, Clare thought,
that was awkward.
Yet she was oddly relieved to know that her daughter was well loved by the woman who’d be helping to care for her while Clare put her life back together.

“May I borrow the birthday girl?” Clare asked.

Kate took a last bite of cake and set her plate down on the table. “Excuse me,” she said to her friends.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“Come on upstairs.” Kate led her mother through a maze of boxes to the far end of the second floor.

Clare tried not to wonder which of the closed doors led to the bedroom Jack shared with Andi.

“Sorry about the mess,” Kate said. “We put all our energy into downstairs to get ready for tonight.”

“I can’t believe how much you’ve all gotten done in just over a month.”

In Kate’s room, one last suitcase lay open on the floor. Clare marveled at how quickly Kate had managed to put her unique stamp on the room.

“All ready?” Clare asked as it set in that she wouldn’t see her middle daughter again for some time.