Once in a Blue Moon (36 page)

“Not at all. Is there anything I can do?”

She shook her head. “No. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Sensing that she was holding back, he asked, “Would you like to talk about it?” It felt awkward reaching out to her; though she was closer to his age than her husband’s, he’d never thought of her as anything other than his father’s wife.

She gave a small, rueful smile. “You’re probably the last person I should confide in. Your father would be angry if he knew. But right now I’m too angry at
him
to care.”

“I kind of got that impression.” Randall set down the plates he was holding and leaned against the counter, watching as Victoria dried her eyes. “So what did he do that got you so angry?”

“I’ll give you a hint. She’s got blond hair, and she’s young enough to be his granddaughter.” She spoke bitterly, her tongue loosened by the wine she’d had with dinner.

Randall was surprised. It hadn’t occurred to him that the source of their difficulties might be another woman. Not that Lloyd was the faithful type—he had cheated on his first wife, Randall’s mother, after all. But the old man was well past his prime, and if anyone was going to stray, Randall would have guessed it would be the much younger and still fetching Victoria. He saw that he’d once more underestimated his father.

He grimaced in sympathy. “I get the picture.” He bit his tongue before he could add,
Now you know how my mom felt
.

She must have seen the accusation in his eyes, though. “You probably think I’m only getting my just desserts, and I suppose it’s true,” she said. “Back then I didn’t think about who I might be hurting. I was too much in love. What goes around comes around, huh?”

Randall felt compassion well up in him. She wasn’t a bad person, and she was hurting. “No one’s blaming you. It was a long time ago.” He paused before venturing, “So what are you going to do?”

“You mean am I going to divorce him?” She slowly shook her head, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. “I’m afraid he has me over a barrel. The prenup I signed would leave me practically penniless.”

“Not necessarily.” The wheels were turning in Randall’s head.

“What are you suggesting?”

“There may be a way out,” he ventured cautiously.

Before he could elaborate, Victoria shook her head in confusion, saying, “I don’t get it. Why do you want to help me? Anyone would think you’d be glad to be rid of me. I’m the evil stepmother, aren’t I? The home-wrecker responsible for your parents’ divorce?”

“Let’s just say it could be mutually beneficial.”

She nodded slowly, folding her arms over her chest. “I’m listening.”

The following day he had the distinct impression that Victoria was avoiding him. Another opportunity to be alone with her didn’t present itself until Sunday. The day dawned bright and clear, as predicted. They were all supposed to go horseback riding, but at the last minute Lloyd got an important phone call he had to take, so he waved them on without him. Randall was relieved as he followed Victoria out of the house. Now was his chance to find out if she had given any thought to what they’d talked about.

The stable where Victoria boarded her Thoroughbred was a short distance away by car. They arrived just before noon. While she saddled up, Randall was given one of the trail horses to ride, a docile chestnut mare. He hadn’t ridden in years, but it came back to him as soon as he eased into the saddle. Before long he and Victoria were cantering along the trail that wound its way through Huddart Park, sunlight filtering in a golden haze through the tall redwoods that crowded around them. They rode in companionable silence for a mile or more, Victoria leading the way. Randall waited for her to broach the subject of his father, but she didn’t.

Did she regret having confided in him? He realized it had been naive of him to take her at face value when she’d talked of divorce. She’d had too much to drink and had merely been venting. How could he have thought a pampered woman like her, who’d been living in the lap of luxury for the past twenty years, would chuck it all? For what? Revenge? A chance at a better life?

Still, he had to know for sure. He waited until they were back at the stables and she was brushing down her horse. “Have you given any more thought to what we talked about the other night?” he asked.

“As a matter of fact, I have.” She straightened and turned to face him.

“And?” Randall felt his nerves ratchet up.

“I still don’t know if it’ll work.” She sighed, resting a hand against her horse’s flank. “I’m not even sure if what you want exists.”

“I’m not sure, either. We won’t know unless you look for it.”

“How would I even know where to look?”

“You were his secretary at one time. You must know where he keeps everything.”

“That was years ago! My job now is to play the company wife. That, and stay in shape so I’ll look good on his arm when he’s not off screwing one of his mistresses.” The bitterness from the other night resurfaced. “Oh, yes, I’m sure there have been others. I just happened to find out about this one.”

Some instinct prompted Randall to ask, “How
did
you find out?”

The question stopped her short, and a sly smile peeked from behind her scowling mask, that of someone who’d just spied a possible way out. “The usual way—by reading his e-mail.”

Every Sunday afternoon Lindsay went walking on the beach. When the weather was sunny and warm, she was often joined by Miss Honi or Kerrie Ann. When it was gray, like today, she went with only her dog for company. The ocean in its many moods was the remedy for all that ailed. In the early years, when she was still getting over the trauma of having been torn from her sister, she had spent many restorative hours strolling along the shore, collecting shells and bits of sea glass with Arlene and stooping to examine tide pools with Ted.

“Every tide pool is its own little universe,” her dad had explained, poking gently with his finger at a purple sea anemone, Lindsay watching in wonder as its delicate fronds contracted. “Each of these creatures has a purpose, and they all need each other in order to survive. Take this little guy, for instance.” He picked up a small chambered shell scuttling across the rocks, seemingly of its own volition, and flipped it over so she could see the tiny claws wriggling underneath. “This hermit crab wouldn’t have a home if not for the mollusk who kindly left him this one. When he’s outgrown it, he’ll move to the next. They’re like people in that way—they learn to adapt.”

She could see Ted in her mind’s eye, his long, scholarly face with its neatly trimmed beard and warm brown eyes caught in nets of wrinkles. What would her life have been without him and Arlene? She recalled vividly the day they’d sat her down, after she’d been with them for about a year, and asked solemnly if she’d like to become their
real
daughter—in the eyes of the law, not just their own. She’d felt like the luckiest girl on earth.

Now she was like the hermit crab, faced with the choice of either clinging to the known and thus perishing. . . or moving on. In the days since the trial she’d thought of little else but was still no closer to a decision. If she continued her fight, she’d end up broke and would probably lose the house as well. Even if she could find another place nearby, it would be a loss. She would still have her Sunday ritual, but it wouldn’t be the same. Gone, too, would be the thousand little things that connected her to Ted and Arlene, like her morning jogs along the cliffs, with the ocean sprawled at her feet like the kingdom of some mercurial potentate, one that with a wave of the scepter could give way to stormy seas just as easily as to the nearly impenetrable fog presently swaddling the shoreline.

The fog was a match for her mood right now. As she strolled barefoot along the cold, damp sand, she felt like the last person left on earth. Whenever she thought about the days lay ahead, every muscle in her body contracted like the sea anemones her father used to poke. Her sister and Miss Honi had promised to help her look for another place, one big enough for all three of them. “Long as we still got each other, we’ll manage just fine. Ain’t nothing a pair of loving arms can’t cure,” Miss Honi had consoled her. While Kerrie Ann’s motto was “When life kicks you in the ass, kick it back.” But Lindsay, though she appreciated their efforts, knew this decision, and its consequences, was hers alone. Could she face what the future held? Was she brave enough?

The answer, she realized, lay not in the future but in the past. Her mind traveled back to the days when she’d been left to fend for herself and her little sister. She thought, too, of the business she had built from scratch and which she had somehow managed to keep afloat in these difficult times. And the David-and-Goliath battle she’d fought with all her might. The same person who had done all those things could do this, she told herself.

She was used to loss, after all. She’d lost all those years with her sister, and with the deaths of Ted and Arlene, the only parents she’d known. Randall, too—she felt a fresh stab at the thought and quickly pushed it away before she grew even more depressed. And more recently, and somehow less painfully, her boyfriend of three years. The day of the trial, when Grant had shown up belatedly with, as usual, a perfectly valid excuse for not making it in time, she’d realized, with a certainty that took her by surprise, that it was over and had been for some time.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she told him. They were sitting on the wrought-iron bench in the pocket park adjacent to the courthouse. Grant had pulled into the parking lot just as she was getting ready to pull out and had come rushing over, tie flapping, apologizing profusely—something about an emergency injunction he’d had to deal with.

Misunderstanding, he nodded, speaking in calm, lawyerly tones: “Well, no one can say you didn’t give it your best shot. It’s perfectly understandable if you don’t want to file an appeal.”

She was quick to set him straight. “I didn’t mean that. I meant
us.
”

“What?” He blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

She placed a hand over his. “I’m sorry, Grant. It’s not your fault. It’s just. . . . We can’t go on like this, with you always too busy to make time for me and me waiting for the day when it’ll all magically work itself out. That’s not going to happen—we might as well face facts.”

“That’s crazy. We can make it work. After all the time we’ve invested. . .”

“This isn’t a business partnership. And even if it were, at some point, if a business is failing, you cut your losses and walk away.”

“But I love you.” He spoke urgently, and she saw pain in his eyes. It left her curiously unmoved.

“Yes—in your own way,” she said. “But I’m afraid it’s not enough.”

“I thought we were going to be married someday.”

“I thought so, too. But that ‘someday’ never seemed to come, did it?”

He continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly. That was when it dawned on her that, for Grant, theirs
had
been a working relationship. They just had different ideas of what they wanted out of life. She rose to her feet, not without some regret. She would miss his company and the comfortable rhythms they’d established. He was a good person. He just wasn’t good for her.

“Good-bye, Grant.” With that, she walked away.

Change, however painful in the moment, didn’t necessarily have to be bad, she told herself now. Kerrie Ann had once accused her, in the heat of anger, of being a stick-in-the-mud. And Lindsay supposed it was true. But it wasn’t fear of the unknown that had made her this way; it was intimate knowledge of what the unknown could bring. But there was a price to being inflexible. In an earthquake, it was the seemingly indestructible buildings that were first to tumble down.

Now that it was over with Grant, maybe it was time for her to move on in other ways as well. . .

Walking with her head down, lost in thought, Lindsay didn’t notice that she wasn’t alone on the beach. It wasn’t until Chester began to bark excitedly that she looked up and saw the fuzzy outline of a figure making its way toward her through the dense fog. Just another lonely soul finding solace by the sea, she thought. Then, as it neared, the figure materialized into a man who looked startlingly familiar. She gave a gasp of recognition.