While We Were Watching Downton Abbey (6 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

B
ROOKE WAS HALF OUT OF HER CHURCH CLOTHES
Sunday when the doorbell rang. She was trying to yank the zipper of her dress back up when a key sounded in the lock. The girls’ shrieks of joy and the happy yips that Darcy began to emit explained the lack of a call from the security desk. Although Zachary no longer lived here, he had decided the fact that he paid the mortgage entitled him to keep and use his key. She didn’t like the idea that he could simply “pop in” any time he felt like it, but since his interest in the three of them hovered around zero this rarely happened. The key had become one more thing that wasn’t worth fighting for.

Unable to get the zipper back up or her one remaining shoe off, she limped out to the foyer with her arms clasped across her middle to keep her dress from falling down. He, of course, looked attractively windblown, which meant he’d come over in his new BMW convertible, and casually elegant in khakis and a polo she didn’t recognize, which probably meant his socialite girlfriend was now dressing him. Natalie, whose Sunday-school dress bore evidence of every crayon and snack she had touched that morning, had her arms around her father’s hips and her head buried in his stomach. Ava, who had managed to shed her Sunday dress and everything else except her underpants and one frilly sock, had had to settle for clasping her chubby arms around his thigh. Darcy rubbed her sausage body against his pant leg like a cat. Her long dachshund nose sniffed the air around him happily, despite the fact that Zachary had never wanted, fed, or cared for her.

The excitement on their faces made Brooke want to cry. So did the irritation on his.

“You didn’t answer my text.” He looked her up and down dismissively.

“We were in church,” she replied quietly and she hoped, with more dignity than her half-dressed state might indicate. “I had my phone off.”

“I guess you didn’t check messages on the house phone when you got home, either.” His words were clipped.

“We just walked in a minute ago,” she said although the truth was she probably wouldn’t have checked since there was so rarely a reason to. “What do you want?”

“I came to pick up the girls.” Given how little time he’d been spending with them, Brooke was not the only one who started in surprise at this. “If you can pack them each a small bag and their school uniform, we, I mean, I can drop them off in the morning.”

There were more shrieks of joy, but the girls didn’t let go. Which just went to show that while they both might have gotten her short, chunky build, red hair, and freckles, they had grasped certain truths about Zachary that she had not; namely that their father was someone they would have to make noise to attract and then cling tightly to hold on to.

He started to move toward the living room with the girls still attached, which produced a straight-legged, clunky, Frankenstein-monster sort of gait. The girls giggled as if he were playing the game he used to where he pretended to not even know they were there as he moved from room to room, but Brooke could feel the desperation in how tightly they’d locked their arms around him and the hysterical note of their laughter. She hurried after him, praying—as she hadn’t been able to find the energy to do in church—that he wouldn’t hurt their feelings or disappoint them yet again.

“So what made you decide on today?” Brooke asked as she pried first Natalie and then Ava off of him. Last weekend, which had been his scheduled weekend, he’d called barely ten minutes before she was supposed to have them waiting down in the lobby, to say that he wouldn’t be able to make it; something that had happened so many times in the last six months that she was more surprised when he showed up than when he didn’t.

Zachary hesitated and she could practically see his brain ducking and dodging, considering and rejecting possible answers. Which meant he feared the truth might prevent him from getting what he wanted.

“Go pack your bags, munchkins,” he said, spearing the girls with a false smile that matched the jolly tone. As if he actually expected a five – and seven-year-old to pack an overnight case with everything they might need without assistance.

“Yes,” Brooke added. “Go get started and I’ll be there in a minute to help you finish up.”

They raced to their rooms without further prompting, which was something that she’d often dreamed of but which was almost frightening when it actually happened.

“What’s going on?” she asked when the children were out of earshot. Her arms were growing tired from holding up her dress, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him for so simple a thing as a zip up.

He shrugged. “Sarah has her son for the weekend, so . . .” He shrugged again. Sarah Grant was a wealthy socialite who had started as a patient and become his best advertisement. Sometime before, during, or after the round of procedures that had perfected her facial features and enhanced many of her body parts, Zachary had started sleeping with her. Now Sarah was, as Zachary had told Brooke more than once, everything Brooke refused to be.

“So if you’re going to have one child cramping your style, you might as well have three?” Brooke asked.

The flush spreading across his face told her she’d hit the mark. Brooke didn’t know Sarah well, and she hoped to keep it that way. She didn’t feel at all good about the fact that the only reason her children were going to see their father was because his girlfriend was parenting.

“I hope you’re not planning to complain,” Zachary said. “You’re always wanting me to take them.”

Her mouth dropped open at the unfairness of the accusation; after all they’d been through, he only ever saw her in the worst possible light. “I want you to take them when you’re supposed to because you’re their father and they miss you,” she said. “Not because your girlfriend has her son so you might as well have your kids there, too.”

She stared up into the hard planes and angles of his face and into the emerald-colored eyes that had once glowed with enthusiasm for their life together. All they held now was the cold sharpness of his disdain for her; she who had stood and delivered in adversity and crumpled like a wadded-up piece of paper in the face of success.

“Can you hurry them along? Sarah and Trent are waiting in the car downstairs.” He took her by the shoulders, spun her around in much the same way you might move a sack of potatoes out of the way, and zipped up the back of her dress. “We’re taking them to Piedmont Park, so no dresses or Sunday-school shoes. I want them dressed appropriately.”

Brooke’s head jerked up at his tone. She couldn’t remember when he’d begun to talk to her in that hurtful condescending way. But years of writing off his shortcomings to the stress of medical school and the demands of his residency and then to avoid confrontations in front of the kids had allowed him to treat her like a doormat. She heard the girls calling her. With difficulty she swallowed back the retort that had sprung to her lips and hurried toward their bedrooms to help them pack.

* * *

AFTER A LEISURELY MORNING DAWDLING OVER
coffee and the
New York Times
, Claire spent Sunday afternoon rambling around the fifty-plus-acre Piedmont Park. She and Hailey had driven in from the suburbs for different festivals and events at the park over the years, but she’d never had the time or opportunity to explore it in earnest until now. It was an easy walk from the Alexander and throughout the week, she’d varied her route each time she went, entering the grounds from a different access point and covering a different quadrant. Today the breeze was warm, still tinged with summer and laden with humidity. The grass was green and lush from summer rain and the leaves had not yet begun to turn. As Claire walked and watched the families cavort, she pushed her brain toward the book she would start on in earnest tomorrow, but it resisted, preferring to skitter and float like the summer scents of jasmine and sunscreen that floated on the breeze.

Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket to answer it. “Hey, stranger,” she said, keeping her tone light. “Where have you been?” Hailey had sent the occasional text between classes or late at night, but it had been days since she’d heard her daughter’s voice—or any voice at all.

“I’ve been swamped,” Hailey said. “I’m not sure what made me think that taking an intensive writing class in my first semester was a good idea. And I got the part-time job in the library and had to go to orientation there twice this week.” Hailey had been awarded a good deal of scholarship money, but had insisted on working to help supplement her living expenses—her contribution to what she called Claire’s “grand year of writing.”

“You know you don’t have to . . .” Claire began.

“Yes, I do and I don’t want to talk about it again,” her daughter replied. “You’ve done enough. It’s my turn to step up for a while.”

Claire swallowed the automatic protest, not wanting to diminish Hailey’s pleasure in her contribution. “Okay. So tell me what’s going on there. I need some detail so I can picture what you’re doing.”

Claire walked and listened with pleasure as Hailey chattered on, describing her roommate’s borderline compulsive cleaning routines, her professors’ various quirks, and even the sharp spicy scent of the head librarian’s perfume, with an evocative economy of words that the writer in Claire envied. She kept the phone to her ear, enjoying the sound of Hailey’s voice, treasuring the connection.

“Where are you now?” Hailey asked.

“I’ve just left the park and I’m back on Piedmont walking west toward Peachtree.”

“Are you going home?” Both of them paused at the word.

“Yes.” When she reached the Alexander she put her key in the lock and stepped inside. The security guard nodded and smiled. “I’m in the lobby and headed for the elevator,” she said in the tone of a travelogue host. “Oh, and what is that I hear?” As she passed the fountain, she took the phone from her ear and held it out for a moment so that Hailey could hear the splash and spill of water.

“Is that the fountain?”

“Ding, ding, ding,” Claire said. “You got that one right.”

She kept up the travelogue as she stepped onto the elevator.

“I’m on the eighth floor now, nearing my front door.” She jiggled the key in the lock so that Hailey could hear it. The door creaked slightly as it opened.

“Phew.” She slammed the door and threw the dead bolt. “Thank God I made it in one piece.”

Hailey laughed. “So what do you have going on the rest of the day?”

“Oh, a little of this and a little of that,” Claire said evasively. Both of them had dreamed for so long about Claire’s new life that she didn’t want to spoil their vision with anything that even sounded like a complaint. “I picked up the Sunday
New York Times
and you know I can spend a full day on the crossword puzzle alone.”

“You’d be better off going out to a movie or to dinner with a friend,” Hailey said.

Claire did not want to point out the obvious—if she wanted to see any of her existing friends she was going to have to drive out to them. “I had emails from Susie and Karen.” She mentioned her online critique partners. One of them was at her vacation home in Florida, the other in Indiana. Typically they brainstormed by phone and critiqued online. Once a year they met up at a writers’ conference. Every other year they rented a mountain cabin where they wrote all day and drank wine, brainstormed, and watched movies each night.

“Emails and phone calls aren’t the same as having someone there to do things with,” Hailey pointed out.

“That’s true,” Claire conceded.

“I think this would be the perfect time to give online dating a try,” Hailey said, not for the first time. “You should post a profile and get started.”

Claire bit back a groan. “Oh, Hailey. There’s no way I’m doing that.” She wasn’t even sure what she’d do with a man at this point. “I really need to focus on my book. And it’s not like I’ve never dated.”

“Mom, you’ve had what—three or four dates in the last fifteen years? You haven’t been out with a man in this century!”

“I’m sure it’s like riding a bicycle . . .” Claire began.

“I hate to break it to you, Mom, but dating is
not
like riding a bicycle. Things have changed. One out of three people meet significant others now online.”

“Really?” Claire said, her tone dry. “And here I thought I could just mosey on into a bar, drink too much, pick up someone, and live happily ever after.”

“Isn’t that how you met Dad?”

There was a silence.

“There are some really great sites, Mom. I could set up your profile for you if you want.”

“No, Hailey,” she said as clearly as she could. “I appreciate you wanting to help, but no.”

“Well, then you at least have to try to make some friends there. Maybe you could join some sort of organization. Or do volunteer work. I bet there are some people in the building you’d like.”

“I appreciate your concern, Hailey, but I don’t need you to orchestrate my social life or find friends for me.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’ve only been here a week,” Claire protested. “And I don’t have any problem with my own company.”

Hailey gave her a teenaged version of “humpf.” “Have you seen anyone in the building who looks interesting?”