Caroline smiled that smile I knew very well, the one of self-satisfaction, of a job well done. “You know, I realized that work makes me happy. It really does.” She shrugged. “Plus, it’s like shopping, but instead of buying stuff for me, I get to buy lots and lots of stuff for other people.”
“But not on my credit card,” James interjected with a smile.
“I never really realized how hard Mom’s job was,” Caroline said. “I sort of thought she played around with fabric samples and went to High Point Market, but it’s no joke.”
“Let’s talk about how I’m going to sell more paintings at the LA opening than Caroline did at the New York one,” I chimed in.
“Oh, yeah?” Caroline said. “You’re on.”
“I like this,” Sloane said. “It’s excellent for my wallet. But I won’t continue to do this unless you two take a cut of the earnings.”
“No,” Caroline said definitively.
“Not a chance,” I seconded. “You are our sister. Making you famous is our top priority. You will eventually pay us back with exclusive dinner reservations.”
“Exactly,” Caroline said.
“It’s a good thing I have a rental storage unit full of paintings,” Sloane said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have time to eat over the next few months.”
Caroline gave Sloane the up and down. “This might come as a shock to you, but I’ll allow it.”
We all laughed again, but my mind was somewhere else, out in this great, wide city, with Mark. Although I was thrilled about the store, I knew already that I might have to let it go. Marriage was a compromise, and I knew I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain by spending more time in LA. I could only hope that wherever he was, Mark could forgive me.
SEVENTEEN
ansley: the only answer
When I look back on the months of my life during and after conceiving Sloane, only one word comes to mind:consumed. Not by thoughts of my baby, of the person I wanted to create, but by thoughts of Jack. I counted down the moments until I could sneak away and call him, simply hear his voice. And those days we got to be together... well, there were never enough of those. Twenty times an hour, it seemed, I would decide, breathlessly, recklessly, that I couldn’t live without Jack. I would leave Carter for him. I had to.
Then I would see my husband, really look at him, kiss him, watch the way he was with Caroline. And I would know that he was my family. He was the one I was meant to be with, and I would never leave him, never want to lose him. And so on and so forth, until I thought—no, assumed—that I was crazy.
For months, I convinced myself that what I was doing was not having an affair. My husband knew about it, for heaven’s sake. If I got caught, then this was what he had asked me to do. Well, maybe notthisexactly. But if those months taught me something, it was that the human mind can rationalize absolutely anything. Even how it was OK to be in love with more than one person and to know that no matter what you did or how you tried, you would most likely be in love with both of them for the rest of your life.
As bad as it was for me, I knew it was worse for Jack. In some ways, I wondered why he didn’t call the whole thing off. In other ways, I knew why. He, like me, felt addicted to this life. To the secret meetings, the sneaking around, the wanting to be together out in the open but knowing it could never be. But I’d like to think that it was more than that. The affair wasn’t so hard because of the longing, the lust, the wanting something you may never fully have. It was hard because of the love.
If I thought it then, I knew it now. Because all these years later, sitting on the steps of the Plaza hotel, my heart still raced for Jack like it had all those years ago. I still couldn’t bear to be away from his arms. I still longed to sneak away to him to share those particular moments of passion that I had never quite experienced with anyone else.
As I leaned into him that night, the hot summer day giving way to a warm, pleasant evening, he kissed my forehead. “Can I take you somewhere?” he asked.
It was only then that I realized how tired I was, how much I wanted to slip underneath the crisp, high-thread-count sheets upstairs and fall asleep beside the man I had waited to fall asleep beside for what seemed like a lifetime.
“Upstairs?” I replied.
He lifted my chin and kissed me. “No,” he whispered. “Somewhere else. Somewhere I think you’ll like.”
I sat up and peered at him. “I told you, I amnotgoing to have sex with you in Central Park. I’m sorry that’s your lifelong fantasy, but you might have to put that one aside if you’re going to be with me.”
He laughed and stood up, reaching his hand out to me. “First of all,you’remy lifelong fantasy. Second of all, we’re not going to the park.”
We walked hand in hand down the street. When Jack stopped and held open a door for me, I didn’t recognize where we were at first. But then I walked in and gasped for the second time that night. Two things hit me right at the same time. One, this old wooden bar was completely empty, save for one bartender and the most beautiful arrangement of flowers and candles I had ever seen. Two, I hadn’t been here in more than thirty-seven years.
“Jack!” I said. “This is the bar!”
“This is the bar,” he repeated, kissing me.
I guess the flowers and the candles should have been a dead giveaway. But still, I heard yet another gasp escape my throat when Jack got down on his knee.
“Ans,” he said, “I sat at that booth across from you thirty-seven years ago, and I asked you to come back to Georgia with me. I didn’t get to say all that I wanted to say then, but I’m going to say it now. I love you, Ansley. I’m pretty sure that I have only ever loved you. I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life not saying what I meant or doing what I felt. I’ve spent a lot of time pushing aside what was right in front of me. What I wanted to say to you that night was that I wanted you to come back to Georgia with me as my wife. And that’s what I want now. I want to marry you, Ansley. I want to spend every day and every night with you. I want to breathe every breath I have left in my body with you. So will you, Ansley? Will you marry me?”
