Chapter 16
When Peter stepped into his glass-walled Boston office that evening, there were at least ten phone messages on his desk, all marked ‘urgent’ in red. It was just what he’d expected, his penance for being away from the project. It was late when he called Mayor Fleming’s office, and Bill Torres answered after the third ring.
“Bill, it’s Peter. I’m sorry to call so late. I’m surprised to catch you at the office on Sunday. I thought I’d get your answering machine.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re going to know each other’s numbers by heart. I needed to let you know: you’ve got a press meeting first thing in the morning. The media is bursting to interview you. This is going to be the biggest story Boston’s had in a long while, and I want to go over a few things before you’re in front of the reporters.”
“Tomorrow morning? Are you kidding? I’ve never done this before. What kind of questions? Building, zoning, architectural?”
“Actually, it’s going to be personal. You’re a celebrity now, Peter, at least to Boston and the architectural world in general. There were a lot of important people up for this job, people interested in our cityscape. They want it done right, and since this is all coming out of our taxpayers’ pockets they want to know who you are. Can you do the best job? Are you capable, being so young? The public wants to know answers. We’ve even gotten a call from Senator Kennedy’s office inquiring about dedicating a part of the historical wing to his brothers. According to his office, the Hyannis Museum has a few personal items they’re willing to part with in order to have a piece of our library. So this is big, Peter. Really big.”
“Bill, I’m not the kind of person who enjoys this sort of thing.”
“You’ll learn to. Just talk about your excitement, your vision, and—” Bill paused. “Believe it or not, they are interested in the wedding.”
“The wedding?”
“Aren’t you getting married soon? I hear it’s going to be a society page-turner. That will work really well. The newspapers will love it. It’ll give everyone a front seat in Peter Michaels’ life.”
Peter stopped breathing.
“The Mayor also moved up the date for breaking ground, so we need to finalize those permit applications ASAP. Get on top of it, okay? And tomorrow morning—”
“Yes?”
“Wear a tie. See you at eight.”
Peter’s take-out dinner still sat in its Styrofoam container on the top of his file cabinet. The stale smell of airplane was still on his clothing, and he sat back in his leather chair, exhausted, in desperate need of a shower, a shave, and a good night’s sleep.
“So I figured if I didn’t make the trip, I probably wouldn’t hear from you tonight.” Peter jumped when Tara appeared at his office door in her yoga tights with leg warmers bunched around her ankles.
He smiled wanly. “I’m sorry, Tara. I was swamped.”
“When were you going to call me? I’ve been waiting to hear what happened?”
“I literally just got off the plane and rushed over here. How are you?”
“How am I? Terrible, I must have caught some stomach bug. I can’t eat a thing.” She took a whiff of his take-out container, made a gagging noise, and tossed it in the garbage.
“Have you gone to the doctor?”
“I’m guessing by your greeting things did not go fab. Are you going to tell me?”
“Of course. I just wasn’t prepared to see you. I’m sorry, sit down.”
“I’m too hyper to sit.” She paced the room, then leaned on the corner of his desk and sucked her teeth, as she looked him over. “You know, Peter, I’m going to be your wife soon. I need to feel you’re comfortable with that and in all honesty, I’m not feeling it. I know it has to do with the woman you went to see, Madeline.”
“You’re right. I went there to figure some things out. I needed to find something that would give me closure with all this. I found the answers I was looking for, but they only left me with more questions. Madeline disappeared because her family took her where she could get the best treatment she needed at the time.” Peter paused. “She lost her sight. Madeline lost her sight. She is blind.”
“Blind?”
“But, Tara, she’s amazing. I wish you’d seen her at work. She’s this incredible teacher with these wonderful children. Oh and the school—if you’d only seen this school—”
“No doubt, Peter. So what does she want?”
“She doesn’t want anything.”
“Then it’s perfect. We can move on—”
“Tara, will you listen to me?” He reached for her hand, but she evaded him. “I wasn’t exactly honest with her. I realized she wasn’t prepared to open an old wound just like that—”
“What did you do to her? Kick her?”
“I didn’t tell her who I was.”
“You lied?”
“I swear, I had every intention of telling her the truth, but I needed time to talk to her and find out what really happened. Only I wasn’t able to tell her the way I’d planned. Her father found us and—”
“Freaked?”
“Exploded. He didn’t care what I had to say. Maddy was devastated, just humiliated and hurt. I had to explain. The next day I went to the Marsdens’ and—”
Tara shrugged and crossed the room. “Okay, okay. Enough. I don’t want to hear any more drama. It’s over.” She put her arms around him from behind and leaned her weight into him. “You’re my fiancée, in case you forgot. I’m the one you should be worrying about.”
He put his hands on his face. He could not erase from his mind the smell of Maddy’s skin or the taste of her lips. Those last terrible moments at her front door remained vividly in his head.”
“Peter!” Tara sniffed his neck and stopped. She grimaced.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m going to have to get you something mature and expensive-smelling tomorrow at Bloomingdale’s. The cologne you wear is awful.”
Peter gave a faint smile at the memory of Maddy’s smile in the school office. “I kind of like my cologne,” he said.
Tara kissed him brusquely. “Well, we have a wedding to plan, which, let me remind you, I’ve been planning all by myself. I had to make the seamstress do my dress again. I told her I want it to fit snug, for heaven’s sake. I’m a size two, not an elephant, oh and I had to pick our band all by myself.”
“You did?” Peter took her hands.
“You’re going to be so stoked. The lead singer’s a dead ringer for Wham!”
Tara looked at her watch.
“I have to get on the ball. We have dinner plans tonight with the caterers.”
He stood and turned, but she stepped back.
“I know. You won’t go with me. It figures. I’m taking my mother.” She reached around him to snap a piece of tape from the roll on his desk and removed a miniscule piece of lint from her thigh.
“Tara, listen to me.” Peter took the tape from her hand. “I’m sorry about this. It was something I had to do. Thank you for understanding.” He took her chin between his fingers.
She sighed impatiently. “Fine. I can be as understanding as my sister, but let’s be done with this. I want us to be married. I’m tired of waiting.” She kissed him and went to the door, and Peter stood still, watching her cross the lobby toward the elevator beyond the glass wall, her neon yoga tights blaring against the dignity of the old-fashioned paneling.
He shook his head. This couldn’t be his life. It couldn’t be like this.
“Thanks for coming, buddy.”
“Talk to me, bro.” Jake slid into the booth across from Peter at the Mason Street Café as he took off his jacket.
Peter put his head in his hands. “I was just with Tara. She assumes we’re moving on with the wedding.”
“Oh, man.” Jake smacked his lips as he glanced at the menu. “You’re a dead duck.”
“That’s not all. Bill Torres called.” Peter took a sip of his coffee and pulled on his collar. “I have a press conference tomorrow.”
“About the library?”
“Yes, but he said to be prepared for personal questions. Like about my life and Tara, my future plans. He wants—he wants me to invite the press to the wedding.” As Jake watched, Peter swallowed his coffee and poured more from the carafe on the table.
“Hey there, pal. Have a little coffee with your stress. Good grief. Take it easy.” Jake pulled the carafe away.
“Who can take it easy? I can’t.” Peter gazed out the window while the waitress set plates of apple pie between them. The voice of the television announcer over the counter droned in the background. His gaze turned back to Jake. “Here’s the thing, Jake. What does it mean if I’m not sick over whether Tara took the news well or not? What does it mean if I know that, if it weren’t for the Library Restoration Project, I’d be back on a plane to Colorado right this minute? Or, better yet, I’d still be there looking at rental ads for a place to live, without even knowing if Maddy ever wanted to see me again? What do you make of the fact that in that hour I spent sitting across from Maddy talking to her, listening to her, I felt more alive than I have in all the years since I lost her?” Peter leaned to take a bite of pie, hesitated, and pushed it away.
Jake scratched his forehead, squinting at Peter. “I don’t—”
“And, Jake, we kissed. I kissed Maddy, and she kissed me, and for those few seconds I felt more than all the times I have ever been with Tara.”
“So what’s the situation? Are you, what, together again? After all these years?”
Peter shook his head. “No. I ruined it.”
Jake whistled long and low between his teeth.
Peter was back in the Marsden living room again, with its drapes and ebony flooring, its clean lines and dim lighting. After Maddy had called out for her parents, Peter remained frozen on the carpet. The sounds of her parents’ feet running down the stairs excited Boxer, who began to bark ferociously. Peter held his hands out and slowly tucked his leg underneath him so he could stand. Before he could calm Boxer, Tom stood before him, and Ann was at Maddy’s side.
“Mother!” Maddy threw herself into Ann’s arms and hid her face in Ann’s neck. “I can’t mom, I just can’t. I’m so scared! He needs to go. Make him go!”
Ann stroked Maddy head, her face bent over the dark head.
“I believe you have overstayed your welcome, Mr. Michaels.” Tom pulled Peter to his feet. “I will help you to the door.”
“Mr. Marsden, Mrs. Marsden, please. I know Maddy’s upset, but it’s because we lost each other, we love each other so much—”
“Madeline is allowed to make up her mind about her own feelings in this house.” Tom took Peter by the arm.
“Tom,” Ann cried. “Don’t!”
“I don’t want to have to throw you out, son.” Tom’s voice was deadly serious. “But I’ll do it if you make me.”
“No.” Peter looked at Ann, who stood with her arms around Maddy and tears in her eyes. “It won’t be necessary. I wish I could tell you, to explain to you what I have been through. I can’t seem to make you understand. I’m so very sorry.” Peter nodded his head and turned to Maddy. “Maddy—”
“Mother,” Maddy whispered into Ann’s neck.
“Good-bye, Peter.” Ann met his eyes over Maddy’s bowed head. “I’m sure you meant well.” Ann turned and guided Maddy out of the room, away from Peter, around the corner into the hallway and out of his sight.
Peter sighed and looked at Tom. Their eyes locked, Tom’s chilling glare full of sorrow that Peter knew he had never be able to express: the pain in his daughter’s voice, the tragedy of what had happened to her, the endless remorse. Peter nodded once softly and walked alone to the foyer. He felt Tom’s stare on his back. It was a lonely feeling.
Peter opened the heavy door and paused, one hand on the knob. It seemed like a decision he couldn’t possibly make, but he had to. After a long minute, Peter shut the heavy door behind him and went down the steep brick front steps.
“Peter.” Jake’s voice startled him.
Peter glanced up.
“What, dude? Where have you been?”
“I’ll tell you where.” Peter leaned forward over the cafe table. “With Maddy. I’m still in love with Maddy.”
Jake sat for a minute looking into Peter’s eyes, and when he spoke his voice was quiet. “When Amanda told me she was pregnant for the first time, you know what I did? I never told you this.”
Peter put down his coffee cup and waited.
“I ran.”
Peter frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I freaked the heck out. I hadn’t even been a husband more than a few months, and now I was a father? She called me from the doctor’s office. I could tell she was as blown-away as I was, so I acted as if I was surprised and happy, but inside I completely lost it. I packed my stuff and left.”
“What the hell?” Peter stared at him. “What did she do?”
Jake shrugged. “She never found out. I drove about two blocks and parked on the side of the curb, and I was sitting there thinking about Amanda, about the baby, about my life and our future and the fact that I didn’t know where I thought I was going. Then something inside me just snapped. You know the feeling when you’ve been running so much you get a pain in your side, and you can’t take a deep-enough breath, and you sort of lose your head? You don’t know where you are for a second? I realized without Amanda in my life that’s how I’d feel—as if I couldn’t breathe.”
Peter’s eyes widened.
“The reason I’m telling you this is because we all have moments in life where we’re standing at the edge of a cliff, knowing the avalanche is on its way. We panic, sweat, freak out. Then, just before we’re about to give up and jump off, something happens. Something changes everything. For me it was a simple image, a vision of Amanda by herself, afraid and crying. I realized I could never leave her. Her world is my world. Amanda is my life.”
Peter gripped Jake’s hand across the table. “Jake, that’s how I feel. Ever since you found the shoebox, I’ve felt that longing, that need to be with Maddy again. It was as if I hadn’t thought of her or found the shoebox before because it was the wrong time, and now was the right time to find it. God knows I’d searched and made phone calls and tried and tried, and it was never successful. I’ve even toyed with the idea of fate and free will and destiny, how God fits in all of this.
“Then when I sat outside that school office and heard Maddy coming down the stairs, my heart was beating so hard, my chest felt so heavy, I knew something life-altering was about to happen. I saw her, and in that second I realized it had to have been some traumatic event in her life that separated us. There had to have been something out of our control that came between us. Nothing—but nothing—could have interfered with how we felt about each other. She passed by me, she smiled, and before she uttered a word I was back on the beach holding her in my arms again.” Peter wiped his face with the palm of his hand. “I’m going to tell Tara I can’t marry her. I can’t be the person she wants. For the first time in my life, I have clarity, and I know exactly what I want, and it isn’t Tara, it isn’t even to be the best architect. I want Maddy.”
Jake tapped the tabletop nervously. “Are you prepared for the possibility that Maddy might not want you?”
“I’m not breaking up with Tara because of Maddy, Jake. I’m breaking up with her because I’ve never been in love with her. I knew I cared for her, I wanted us to all be best friends forever, but I never felt the way a man should feel in order to spend his life with a woman. If Maddy doesn’t want me, that’s her decision. I’ll stay a bachelor. But I will not marry anyone else.”
“Peter.” Jake sat back. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give Maddy time. I’m going to let her know somehow what I’ve been feeling. She can take it from there. I know, I know—I realize it’s too much to say on an answering machine, if she even has one. I thought maybe I could send a letter to the school, where one of the teachers could read it to her, but I don’t know who she’s closest to or if that would embarrass her.” Peter smiled sheepishly. “I’m actually kind of at a loss. I need to think this one through.”
Jake leaned forward on his elbows. “You know what, Peter? I’m proud of you. I always wondered what would make you happy, I mean truly happy. I never understood why, even given the best news, it never appeared to make you ecstatic, the way you are now. Now I understand it all. I totally do. There’s just one thing.”
“Yeah?”
“What are you going to tell the press in the morning?”