The Wedding Chapel (10 page)

“You don’t even know my middle name.”

“Alice?”

“No.”

“Jean?”

“No.”

“Drusilla?”

“No.” With a laugh and light swat on the head. “Jo.”

“Taylor Jo Branson, will you marry me?”

“Okay, Jack . . . whatever Forester—”

“Spratt.”

She grimaced. “Your name is Jack Spratt Forester?”

“Andrew. Jack Andrew Forester. But when I used Gillingham my initials were JAG, thus—”

“Your high school nickname.” Pictures became clear. Understanding enlightened.

He rose to his feet and cradled her against him. “What do you say? Marry me?”

“Yes, Jack Andrew Forester, I’ll leap. I’ll marry you.”

His lips against hers were thick and hungry, asking for her heart. And she responded, leaning against him, drifting away from the clouds of doubts stirring in her soul that told her love never lasted.

Popping up, Taylor dragged the blanket from the bed and tiptoed into the living room. “Jack?”

But he was asleep, his head resting on the back of the sofa, his breathing deep and even. The sandwich plate teetered precariously in his loose grip.

Taylor set it on the end table, then stepped over Jack’s outstretched legs and settled next to him on the couch, the room crisp and cool from the open balcony window.

When she’d phoned Mama announcing that she’d eloped with Jack Forester, she was not pleased. Nor was sister Emma.

“What in the world? Are you crazy?”

“Your sister is getting divorced and you eloped?”

Taylor endured an hour-long inquisition in which her longtime divorced mother and newly divorced sister tag-teamed her,
passing the phone back and forth, summing up all their sage wisdom with,
“Don’t put up with anything from him.”

Jack roused when Taylor fluffed the blanket over them, opening one eye. “Hey, babe—”

Babe. The smooth endearment dropped into her heart like coins in a jukebox and played a romantic melody. “Shh, go back to sleep.”

“Taylor?”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“You’re hot.” He cocked her a saucy, barely awake grin.

“Yeah? You’re
hot
too.” Jack was named Most Handsome in high school and he’d only improved with age.

But her idyllic views of romance were crushed when she was fifteen by her father and her parents’ subsequent divorce. So she didn’t dream of fairy tales and white wedding gowns.

Reaching for the remote, Taylor aimed to turn off the TV but paused when a young image of Aunt Colette walked across the screen.

“Did you know you landed on the soap channel? Look, it’s Colette in an old episode of
Always Tomorrow
.”

He peeked at the TV. “Looks like you.”

“Please, she’s so stunning.” Taylor had Granny Peg’s square face and sturdy features. Like Katharine Hepburn. Colette Greer was a genteel beauty with a girl-next-door face. The next Loretta Young, they’d called her.

Taylor pressed the remote’s guide button to see the show’s description.
“Vivica Spenser testifies in court about her CFO’s embezzling. Aired 1985.”

Colette sat on the witness stand with eighties big hair and lots of makup, her shoulders back, chin raised, giving life to Vivica. She answered the questions without faltering. Then when she was released from the stand, she walked to the defendant’s table, picked up a glass of water, and tossed it in his face.

“Ha-ha, way to go, Vivica.” Taylor shimmied Jack’s hip, trying to wake him. “Look, Jack, Colette, or rather Vivica, tossed water in a guy’s face. She was famous for doing that. Maybe you could get her for the FRESH account. She could start to throw a glass of FRESH water on someone but then stop and say, ‘No, wait, this bottle of FRESH is too good for you.’ Then she picks up a glass of
not
FRESH water or something and tosses it in their face. See? Brilliant.” Taylor settled down in the cushions. “Shoot, this advertising thing ain’t so hard.”

To which Jack replied with a deep, rolling snort.

She stared at him, sleeping, his bangs sticking up, his full lips pink and sweet. “There’s no Doug Voss, Jack. There’s only you.”

But confessing her heart to his awake-face never seemed to find space in their day. Even when he proposed, and again when they stood on the beach at sunset exchanging vows with matching platinum bands, the words “I love you” were oddly never said. As if they were both afraid to declare it. Or require it. But when they made love for the first time, and the second and third, she knew she was in love.

Then they came home, and gradually the waves of life washed away the shallow shore of their relationship and their expression to each other.

“Lord, if You can hear me, help us.”

She believed God cared about people, about her. Otherwise, the whole Jesus-on-the-cross thing made
no
sense. But all she had was her Sunday school faith.

And the heartbeat. The one she heard as a kid when she crawled in bed at night and said her prayers.

It’s why she left Doug. With him, she never heard the heartbeat, no matter how hard she tried. She knew the light within her was burning out.

But was leaping and eloping with Jack only more of the same?

Gently Taylor rose to her feet, rotating Jack so his long legs stretched the length of the sofa. “Night, Jack.”

“Tay?”

“Yeah?”

“The salami was good.”

“I’m glad. Go to sleep.”

Back in their room, she took another blanket from the linen cupboard and curled up on the bed. As she drifted to sleep, the clock flashed 2:30 a.m. and a childhood prayer whispered across her dreams.

. . . I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Chapter Eight

COLETTE

P
ARK
A
VENUE
W
EST
, M
ANHATTAN

S
ince the taping of the show ended, Colette had taken to staying in her robe until 10:00 a.m. But no later. She pushed the edge of decorum as it was by lounging around, and she couldn’t bear it much past midmorning.

Eighty-two or not, she had a life to live. Or so she hoped. Besides, some things were just too ingrained for her to change. Since the age of seven, she’d been waking up at 6:00 a.m. to do morning chores on the Morley farm. A time she did not care to remember or cherish.

A time of war. A time of death. Oh, the ache of missing Mamá and Papá.

Colette peered out the window of her bedroom suite. Central Park spread out below her, reminding her in some mystical way how small she was, how minute her success. In the vast scheme of things, she was nothing more than a speck. A gnat in the span of time.

But for the little girl who’d lost her parents, her innocence, her one true love, her sister, her . . . everything, not even the great park could contain her heartaches.

But yet I see you.

Colette pressed her hand to her chest, the pace of her pulse rapid.
I suppose You do.

She’d heard the internal voice of God before. He whispered past her from time to time, but she’d never paused long enough to ask Him what He wanted. Deep down, she knew. Her. He wanted her.

But she could not surrender. What if the Almighty broke her heart the way life had broken it? Then where would she be? In whom could she place her hope?

Stepping away from the window, the divine whisper, and the ridiculous travel down memory lane, Colette retired to her en suite to shower and dress.

By eleven she was in her office waiting for her coauthor, Justine Longoria, and feeling restless.

The whole retirement business was a rather nasty lot. She found it disagreeable. Eighty-two or not, she wanted to work. To
do
something, put her hand to a good deed. Empty space just gave her too much time. That’s when those old memories popped in for a visit.

No, thank you. Colette never understood the glory of reminiscing. Now with Peg gone, Colette imagined the past would be buried for good. All six feet under.

But she found herself mourning, wishing for someone to talk with about jolly old England, about Mamá and Papá, about the war years. About the joy and pain of Heart’s Bend.

Colette sank down to her chair. She supposed Justine’s lot would be to hear her out, hear what she had to say. Whether Colette let her write it or not was another matter.

Seeing Peg’s granddaughter had awakened a longing in Colette she’d not encountered in years. Decades, really. And more secrets pushed to the surface.

Peg had ruled Colette with an iron hand. She could not, would not, tell their secret.

They were sisters bound more by pain than by love.

Seventy years later, Colette was right. It wasn’t over. Did she have the courage to write about it? Peg was no longer around to protest.

Could Colette tell the truth? The one that sent her away from Heart’s Bend? Should she tell the story of how she never planned to stay in New York? How she longed to return to Heart’s Bend? How acting was a fluke, her fame a charade?

“Ms. Greer?” Zoë, her girl Friday, appeared in the door. “Would you care for some tea?”

Zoë, an industrious young woman, was educated and athletic. She bustled about her work as if trying to burn more calories. She was Colette’s recent replacement for Anna, her assistant for more than twenty years who resigned six months ago.

“At the moment, no. But when the writer arrives, we’ll have tea and sandwiches. Nothing fancy. And the library and the living room need a good cleaning. There are still newspapers in the media room.”

“I’ll take care of them today.” And young Zoë was gone, bouncing in such a way her ponytail swung up over her head. Colette must remember to inquire of Ford where in the world he had found the ball of energy called Zoë.

At one o’clock sharp, the writer rang and Zoë brought her to the study.

Justine was short and cute with her hair cropped in a wispy style that framed her features. She wore glasses that, oddly enough, were the single component that gave Colette confidence that the woman had any writing chops at all.

Writers should wear glasses.

“Ms. Greer. It’s an honor to work with you. I’m Justine Longoria.”

“Of course you are.” Colette shook her hand, then motioned to the chair by the coffee table. “Please, have a seat.”

Instead, Justine set her laptop down and roamed the room. “This place is incredible.” She leaned to see out the window, down to the busy avenue. “Have you been here long?”

“Fifty years,” Colette said.

“The park . . . wow. You can see the whole thing.” Justine faced the room, hands on her hips. “This feels so big. Like I could move in and you’d never know.”

“I suppose I’d find your little mouse droppings here and there.” Colette sat in her chair by the end table. This was the same spot where she drank her juice in the morning and tea in the afternoon, watching the clouds move over the city.

“Yes, but not for a
very
long time.” Justine settled down finally and reached for her laptop.

“So, how does this go?” Colette’s restlessness intensified now that she was on the mark for telling her story. “I ramble on and you record? Or shall we do this interview style?”

Justine opened a thin silver computer with an apple emblem. “I thought I’d record while we talk. You tell stories. I’ll ask questions. The publisher provided your basic bio and some older interview material, clips of the
Tonight Show
,
Dinah Shore
, and
Michael Douglas
. Your first soap opera,
Love of Life
, which I believe you got fired from, and your beginning days on
Always Tomorrow
.”

“I was replaced. Not fired.” In truth, she
had
been fired, but the network told the press Colette had been “replaced.” But if she was going to make this book a tell-all . . .

Justine tapped on her keyboard and asked about WiFi—at which time Colette called for Zoë—and after a few moments, Justine declared she was ready to go.

“The publisher would like a first draft by the beginning of the
year. Seems doable. Did they tell you it’s set to release around the anniversary of the first episode of
Always Tomorrow
? Next summer sometime, so we have to get busy. In the publishing world, we’re already behind.”

“Well then,” Colette said, leaning forward, evoking the courage of Vivica Spenser. “What would you like to know?”

Justine set an iPad on the coffee table for recording, then kicked off her shoes and curled her leg beneath her, balancing her laptop on her knees. “Tell me how you got to New York.”

“A truck.”

She laughed. “Just a truck? You woke up one morning and said, ‘I think I’ll get in a truck and drive to New York’?”

“How did you get to New York, Justine?”

She shrugged, thinking. “I came after college. My boyfriend was here and I wanted to work in an art gallery. But there were no art gallery jobs so I ended up blogging about art and city life. Next thing I know I’m writing other people’s stories. Found out I was a pretty good cowriter. And seven years later, I’m in your living room.”

Justine’s transparency challenged Colette. She answered honestly, without sarcasm.

From the end table, she picked up her father’s old cigarette lighter, the one treasure she brought from England—everything else was lost—and used it as a prop. She had vague memories of Papá cupping it in his hand as he lit a cigarette. “I came with Spice Keating.”

Justine nodded, tapping on her computer. “You came with the big guns.”

“He wasn’t a big gun in 1951. Just a young man looking for a break in show business. We had no idea he’d produce shows like
Go West
and
Mulberry Street
.”

“My mom loved
Mulberry Street
. But she was one of the lucky
ones where her family life was exactly like the show. Too bad she couldn’t find a husband to do the same for her own kids.”

“Same with Spice.
Mulberry Street
was a show about the family he always wanted. Not the one he experienced.” Colette’s first honest confession felt good. Even if it was about Spice.