Chapter 24
Peter sat on the couch with Tara asleep on his lap, staring at a small picture on a side table near his elbow. It was another photo of Tara. He had never noticed before how he was surrounded by photos of Tara all over her home. This one of her as a cheerleader in college, her feet perfectly placed on the shoulders of the center of three boys on the squad, her arms in a V position over her head, her smile confident and strong as she held her form.
Peter sighed. It had been a long and arduous morning. They had been to the funeral of her father. After the burial, Peter had taken Tara, chattering nervously, back to her apartment, where he listened patiently until she calmed down enough to lie down in his lap and fall asleep. Peter had remained still on the couch as she slept, his left arm under her gradually going numb.
It wasn’t exactly the photograph that bothered Peter, or the fact that she stood on the shoulders of the young athletic men as though she owned them. It was something else. It hurt him to think of Maddy and what she had missed. How different she was from Tara, how one had everything and the other had been stripped of her confidence in life.
Tara moved in his lap. “How long was I sleeping?” she whispered.
“A little over an hour.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly.” Peter slid his arm cautiously out from under her.
Tara sat upright abruptly and looked around. “Listen, I have to power out of here.” She staggered to her feet and began to pace the room, locating her things. “My mother needs me.”
“Of course.” He flexed his arm unobtrusively, the blood returning.
“But—I don’t really know how to say this without sounding—”
“Say what, Tara?”
“We have to postpone the wedding.”
“What?” Peter stared in disbelief.
Tara became mechanical as she paced. “I understand we’re going to take a hit, we’re going to lose our down payment on the hall and our reservation at the restaurant. However, I just can’t be thinking about a wedding right now. I have to focus on my family.”
“I understand completely. Would you like me to take care of the cancellations?” Peter loosened his collar, his breath short.
“No. It’ll keep my mind off things. But you should go to your office while I hop in the shower. I told my mother I’d be back ASAP.” She snapped her fingers. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, Tara.”
Peter came out of the elevator and passed five people trying to get his attention in the lobby. He nodded to the secretary, stepped inside his office and closed the door. He sat down with his coffee at his desk and, after a moment, signaled to his assistant through the glass wall to get Bill Torres on the phone.
He stayed late in the office that evening until the Library Compound plans were approved, the contract signed, the permits in order. He knew his work had begun to suffer lately, and he needed to apply himself. After a few hours he began to feel the old adrenaline flowing, and by dusk he was exhausted. This was what he needed. He wanted to forget for as long as he could. He imagined Jake’s voice: “Procrastination only prolongs the inevitable.”
It felt comforting to work. Therapeutic.
Yawning, he finally leaned across his desk and checked his calendar. He was scheduled for a breakfast meeting at the Governor’s Office and then had to oversee the contractors at the demolition site all day. Clearing of the site had begun that morning while he was at the funeral, and he knew this was just the beginning of many months ahead. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. He felt peace for the first time in weeks.
The phone rang. “I hope you don’t mind me calling, honey.”
“Hey, Mom. No, it’s fine. I’ve been meaning to call. Is everything all right?”
“We’re just worried. How are you?”
“I’m okay. You know.” Peter leaned back in his leather chair and dragged his hand through his hair. “I guess.”
“And Tara? How was she at the funeral?”
“It was hard, but she’s trying to be strong for her mother. She has Amanda. Also, I should tell you—” Peter picked up a pen and spun it between his fingers. “She postponed the wedding.”
Sheila took a quick breath. “You told her?”
“No, I couldn’t because of her father.” He couldn’t stop staring at the pen as it spun.
“Well! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Mom, you know what I want.” Peter dropped the pen and buried his face in his hands. “I want to turn back time. I want to be with Maddy, to have been with her all these years. To never have met Tara, not to feel responsible for her feelings and have to comfort and be with her, not to have to find a way to resolve this with her under these circumstances, when what I really want is to hop on a plane and go straight to Colorado.” Peter ran his hand over his head, his face crumpling. “That’s what I want.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. After a moment, Sheila’s voice came through thinly. “Peter, I have something I want to say to you. I don’t know how you’re going to take it or if you’re going to understand. I know I’m going to regret the pain it causes you. But your father and I have agreed it’s time.”
“What is it?” Peter brushed his hair back and wrapped his fingers through the curling phone cord.
“It’s not easy being a parent, making decisions and trying to protect your children. You’ll see someday when you have kids of your own.”
“Mom, you’re scaring me. Could you just say it? Please.”
“Ann Marsden wrote to us.”
Peter dropped the phone cord and sat up. “Just now? After all these years?”
“In 1966. A few months after they moved away.”
“What?” His hand trembled on the phone.
“She told me what had happened to Maddy. That she’d had some kind of tumor in her eyes that left her blind and there was a strong possibility she might never see again.”
Peter gripped the edge of his desk. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did they tell you not to?”
“No. But she did say Madeline didn’t know she was writing. According to her, Maddy didn’t want you to know.”
“What are you talking about?” Peter’s face was covered with sweat. “Why wouldn’t she want me to know?”
“I guess she was scared.”
“Of what? Why didn’t you say something?”
“Your father and I—”
“ ‘Your father and I’ what?” Peter stared wildly around the room, at the glass walls, at the exposed industrial pipes and ducts overhead, at the great, shadowy space with its dignity and grandeur and unspoken history. “What could possibly be a good enough reason to keep something so important from me? About the woman I loved?”
“We didn’t want you to be hurt.”
Peter exhaled hard, his hand flat on his desk. He paused, breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling. “How would I have gotten hurt?”
“We were worried you would follow her to Colorado and get lost in it. That you would forget everything else, being an architect, grad school. If you had dropped out of school you could have been drafted. Honey, it was the middle of the Vietnam War! We would have died if anything had happened to you.”
“What are you talking about?” Peter stood to pace and kicked his chair backward into the wall. He dragged the phone cord after him as he strode back and forth behind his desk. “It was my life, my decision! It wasn’t for you to make—”
“I know that, son.”
“All the times I spent thinking what could I have possibly done to lose the greatest thing I’d ever had—” He stopped, clenching his fist helplessly on the desktop.
“It was the decision we made.”
“Oh, my God,” Peter groaned from the depths of his chest. “Who gave you that right? I wasn’t a boy who didn’t know what I wanted. I was a man. Maddy was a woman.”
“You had dreams of being an architect, sweetheart and look what you’ve accomplished now.”
“Maddy had dreams, too! She wanted to be an artist. We had dreams together—”
“Believe me, I know it’s hard.” Sheila’s voice was small. “And we do regret it. We kept waiting for the right time to tell you, and it just never came. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s all you can say? ‘I’m sorry’?” Peter tried to turn and sat unexpectedly in his chair where he had run into it directly behind his knees. He pulled it away from the wall and rested his elbows on his desk, the phone tight in both hands. “Why now, Mom—why are you telling me this now?”
“Because we’ve lived with it long enough.” Sheila took a shuddering breath. “I realized we were partially to blame, but not completely. Peter, Madeline didn’t want you to know. She wanted a clean break and you were out of control. You must realize that. We tried for months, but we couldn’t reason with you. You nearly flunked out of school.”
“I understand, but if I’d been told—”
“I know you felt that way at the time, honey. That’s why I’m telling you now. I’m saying go after Madeline. Tell Tara the truth.”
“It’s too late. Peter gripped the phone tightly. “Maddy never wants to see me again. I waited to long and how could I tell Tara? She’s too vulnerable.”
“Peter, it’s not your fault Tara’s father passed away, you can’t bring him back for her. Maybe you’ve been sent to Madeline now for a reason. Maybe you both needed the patience and strength—the maturity—that only time could bring.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“Peter, I’m so sorry. We never meant to hurt you or to keep you from being happy. I don’t expect you to forgive us. We know this can’t be easy for you.” Sheila’s voice broke.
“It’s too late,” Peter heard himself repeating uncontrollably. “It’s too late. It’s too late.” He sat holding the phone long after Sheila hung up.
Everyone had known all along.