Chapter 16

The day after Milagra was born, the boys took her home and settled her in the pink bassinet in her nursery and looked at her in awe. Justin had sent dozens of pictures of their daughter to Alana, and all their friends and family. And everyone wrote back that she was the prettiest baby they had ever seen.

Kate was staring at one of the photographs as she sat in her office, trying to absorb the fact that she was now a grandmother. She was still shocked by the idea, although she was relieved that the baby was healthy and everything had gone well. Her cellphone rang as she looked at the photo of Milagra, and when she answered, she could barely hear what was being said to her. She finally understood that it was from the concierge of a hotel in Beijing, and it was about her mother. Her heart nearly stopped as she listened.

“What?…What?…I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.” But worse, she couldn’t understand him. “Yes, yes, this is Louise Smith’s daughter. Is something wrong?” They were telling her that Louise was in a hospital, but she couldn’t understand the name of the hospital they gave her. She was panicked. “Is there someone there who speaks English?…Yes, yes…I know you do. But I’m having trouble understanding. Is she all right? What happened?” And why hadn’t Frances called her? He was saying something about Louise’s foot, but she still had no idea what had happened. “I’m sorry…say again…” A woman finally came on the line as Jessica stood in the doorway. They could hear her shouting halfway across the store, and even customers had noticed. Kate sounded frantic. She was speaking to the woman now. “Yes, Louise Smith is my mother. Where is she? May I speak to her?” She enunciated each word in an exaggerated way so the woman would understand her, and finally she was able to convey to Kate that Louise had injured her ankle, and she would be on a plane to New York the next day at four P.M. But why hadn’t her mother called her? Or Frances? The woman at the hotel gave Kate their flight number, and as soon as they hung up, Kate called her mother on her cell, but it didn’t even ring. And Frances’s didn’t either. What exactly had happened was a mystery, but at least they were coming home, and weren’t stuck in Beijing. It reminded Kate that despite her mother’s independence, she was of a certain age, and something bad could happen to her far from home.

Kate was desperately anxious that night and the next day, but didn’t say anything to her children. Julie had driven to Vermont to see the baby, and Kate told her she couldn’t get away and had a business crisis to deal with, and to tell Justin she’d come up in the next week.

It was an agonizing wait at the airport the following day, and at first she thought they hadn’t made the flight, as she watched passengers collect their baggage and go through customs, and Frances and her mother were nowhere to be seen. Kate was standing on an upper level observation deck, looking down through glass windows, growing increasingly panicked, and then at last she saw them. Frances had her arm in a cast with a sling, and her mother was on crutches. They looked like they’d been through the wars, but they still managed to get their luggage on a cart and head toward Customs and Immigration. They passed out of sight, and as soon as they did, Kate raced downstairs as fast as she could to be there when they came out. They finally emerged twenty minutes later. The two women were chatting animatedly and Louise looked surprised to see her.

“I told you she’d be here,” Frances said, smiling at Kate. “We told the concierge at the hotel to call you to tell you we were coming home early. But no one at the hotel spoke decent English.”

“What happened to you both?” Kate asked as she took over the cart with their luggage and asked her mother if she wanted a wheelchair.

“Of course not!” she said, looking insulted. “I’m fine. I sprained my ankle at the Forbidden City. And Frances fell in the bathroom at the hotel and broke her arm. I broke my cellphone and Frances lost hers.”

“You two are a mess.” Kate grinned, relieved to see how feisty her mother was. “You had me worried sick when they called.”

“We are not.” Louise looked even more offended, and then Kate thought of something. Since they didn’t have their cellphones, they obviously hadn’t heard the news.

“Justin had his baby two days ago. She weighed almost ten pounds. Milagra. You’re a great-grandmother!” Louise looked mollified when she heard it.

“Is the baby all right and did the woman sign the papers?” Louise asked anxiously.

“Apparently she did, and everything is fine,” Kate reassured her.

“I want to see her,” Louise said as she hobbled toward the exit on her crutches, looking pleased about the baby, and refusing any help.

Louise talked about the trip on the way into the city, and Kate was relieved to know that she was all right. Frances was looking out the window as though she were grateful to be back.

“I don’t think I’d go back to Beijing,” Louise said conversationally as her daughter smiled. “But I would definitely revisit Shanghai and Hong Kong. They’re just more sophisticated and civilized.”

“They were nice to us at the hospital,” Frances added meekly.

“We’re not looking for a Red Cross tour,” Louise said tartly, and Kate tried not to laugh.

“Are you sure your ankle’s not broken, Mom?” Kate asked her.

“Of course it’s not. How are the others? What are they up to?”

“I haven’t seen much of Izzie, she’s been busy working, as usual. Julie is still crazy about Mr. Perfect, and Willie is as elusive as ever. I never know what he’s doing. He’s been out of town a lot this month.” Louise nodded, satisfied with the reports, and then Kate spoke of her new granddaughter again.

“Justin said he sent you pictures, but I guess you didn’t get them if you broke your cellphone,” Kate commented.

“I have to get a new one tomorrow,” she said matter-of-factly.

They dropped Frances off first, and then Kate took her mother home. She wanted to help her unpack but Louise insisted she didn’t need assistance and wanted to go through her mail. She kissed her daughter and sent her on her way, and Kate went back to the store. And as soon as she got to her desk, she had an email from Bernard. She hadn’t heard from him in almost four weeks and she was furious over it. Relations had cooled between them but neither of them had said it was over. And ever since he’d left for Sardinia with his wife and family, he’d gone quiet on her. It made his claims about how much he supposedly loved her no longer credible. He had canceled his June trip to New York, and said he had pressing meetings in London in July, which precluded his coming to New York. And he had been in Italy for most of August with his children and wife. Kate hadn’t seen him since he left New York in late May, exactly three months before. It made their passionate affair seem like a farce. And suddenly he was reappearing now and said he was coming to New York. She couldn’t avoid him entirely since he had invested in her business, but she was no longer a willing participant in their alleged love story. She just hadn’t said it to him yet.

She didn’t answer him till the next day, and then sent him a brief email reporting only on the sales figures of her online business. She said nothing personal to him about the past few months. But it was depressing to realize that his claims of having an “arrangement” with his wife had been a lie. It just made him a player and a cheater and not the person he had pretended to be with her. And he was a fool if he thought she’d ever trust him again. For Kate, it was over. It had been a miserable summer.

Louise called Kate the next morning, wanting to go to Vermont to see the baby in the next few days, and Kate realized that she had some problems to deal with at the store and couldn’t get away as soon as she thought.

“I’m not sure I can do it this week. Let me call Justin and see what works for them.” She called him shortly after, and he said Richard was feeding the baby when he answered the phone. They were taking turns so the baby would bond equally with both of them, and they were sleeping with a Moses basket between them, so they could hear her and watch her all night. They had an intercom with a video screen in the nursery, but they loved having her close to them. They were completely enamored with their daughter.

“How’s Grandma Lou?” he asked her immediately.

“They came off the plane looking like a pilgrimage from Lourdes,” Kate said as she laughed. “Your grandmother sprained her ankle, and Frances broke her arm at the hotel. Grandma Lou is on crutches, but as feisty as ever. She wants to go back to Shanghai,” she reported, “but not Beijing. She’d like to come up and see the baby, but to be honest, I don’t think I can do it this week. Things are crazy here at the store.” And Bernard was coming after Labor Day, in a week, and she needed to have her latest figures and progress reports in order for him. Whatever else was or wasn’t happening between them, she wanted her business dealings with him to be professional and clean. That was an entirely separate matter.

“Why don’t you two relax?” Justin suggested. “We want to bring her to New York in a few weeks anyway. You can see her then. We’re all kind of adjusting to each other right now.” It really made more sense than dragging his grandmother to Vermont, and Kate rushing up and back to drive her. He and Richard wanted to get the knack of fatherhood, at least for a few weeks, before they traveled with her. For now, they were barely getting time to shower and dress between diapers, feedings, changing her bedding and clothes, doing laundry, figuring out why she was crying, and getting up every two or three hours during the night. She was a big baby, so she was hungry, and neither of the two men had had more than a few hours of sleep a night since she’d been born. They had had illusions of dressing her like a little doll in pretty dresses. Instead they barely got her into one set of pajamas before she threw up, or had a wet diaper, and they had to change her again. They did laundry all day long, and ran the sterilizer night and day for her bottles.

“I wonder if it’s easier when women breast-feed them,” Richard said as he washed a load of bottles, after Justin hung up the phone. His mother had agreed to convince Grandma Lou to wait to meet the baby until they came to New York.

“You still have to dress them and feed them even if they’re breast-fed,” Justin said practically.

They were discovering that babies were a lot of work, a lot more than they thought. They had called Shirley to make sure she was all right. She was struggling with her milk coming in, and they had given her a shot at the hospital to help dry it up. But she sounded in decent spirits, although a little worn-out from the delivery and busy with her kids. She said she was happy to have her body back, and was looking forward to spending more time with her children. The pregnancy had taken over for a while. They were incredibly grateful to her, and they sent her flowers to thank her again.

Justin looked at Richard as they lay in bed that night with the baby between them. Richard thought she should sleep in the crib they had set up for her in the room that had been Justin’s study before she was born. But Justin liked having her close to them, so he could see her during the night.

“So is it different than you thought?” he asked his partner, since there was no one to hear them and they could be honest with each other, as they always were. He had noticed that Richard looked overwhelmed, but she wasn’t even a week old, and it was all brand-new to them.

“To be honest, it’s harder and takes more organizing. We don’t get time to do anything else now, and it’s all about her.” Justin laughed at what he said.

“Well, yes, it would be right now. Did you think it was going to be about us?” Justin seemed amused at that.

“I don’t know if I thought about it before. I just figured she’d be cute and cuddly and pink and clean all the time.” Half the time, she was making messes at both ends, and Justin was decidedly better with diapers and made less of a fuss about it than Richard, who said the smell of her poopy diapers made him feel sick, so Justin changed most of them. They weren’t doing much else, and hadn’t been since she was born. “It’ll probably be more fun when she can talk,” Richard added.

“And even more work than it is now,” Justin said with a smile. “We’ll have to watch her so she doesn’t get hurt.”

“How do people get anything done? Do you realize I haven’t had time to return a phone call since she was born?” Richard complained.

“Neither have I,” Justin agreed, but he didn’t seem to mind. He liked being a hands-on parent, although he couldn’t figure out how he was going to write now, especially when Richard went back to work in a month. He was on paternity leave until then. It would be a juggling act for sure when he started teaching again. And Justin would have to write at night. He figured he wouldn’t get back to his novel for many months, until they had the baby on some kind of schedule, and they weren’t even close to that yet. Alana had called several times to see how they were doing, and Julie had too, but they had no time to talk on the phone. They hadn’t even cooked a meal since they got home. They were living on takeout and frozen pizza, and they both were unhappy that they were gaining weight from the fattening foods they were eating, and neither of them had had time to go to the gym. But they weren’t sorry. It still seemed worthwhile to them, and she was as much a miracle as her name.

“Can you imagine what it would be like if we’d had twins?” Justin said as he changed another poopy diaper. She seemed to produce them all the time. “I don’t know how my mother did it, with four of us.”

“Wash your mouth out with soap. I couldn’t handle twins,” Richard said with fervor. Realizing that that could have happened easily almost made him shudder. One baby was plenty to cope with, and Milagra was keeping two grown men running night and day. They had never been so busy or so tired in their lives.

Bernard called Kate from the hotel when he arrived, the day after Labor Day. He sounded as sexy and charming as ever when she answered the phone. The hotel number had come up and she didn’t recognize it, which was why he had called her from the phone in his suite. He was afraid she wouldn’t answer if she knew it was him.

“How are you, Kate?” he asked her, as though they were old friends and nothing more. He was feeling out the terrain, as the French said. He had hardly heard from her all summer, after their last meeting in New York, when she had made such an issue about his going on vacation with his wife. He had decided to let her cool off for a while after that. The time had stretched longer than he had intended, and it felt awkward now, after three months.

“I’m fine. Did you have a pleasant summer?” she asked coolly. “How was Sardinia?”

“Very agreeable.” He kept his comments vague and subdued so as not to antagonize her further. He was still hoping to rekindle the flame of their relationship. The past three months had just been an intermission, as far as he was concerned, not the final act. “The online business is doing well?” He hadn’t checked their figures recently, but her business had been booming until now.

“Incredibly.” She warmed up when he asked, she was so happy about it. They had tripled the profits to the shop, and he was doing well from it too. “I can hardly keep up with the demand. And sometimes I truly can’t.”

“That’s wonderful news. Will you be there this afternoon?” he asked in a relaxed tone. “I have a meeting on Wall Street and could stop in to see you on my way uptown.” She was unhappy and angry at the thought, but she couldn’t refuse him access, since his investment in her business was an important one.

“I don’t think I’ll be here,” she said vaguely.

“Tomorrow, then? Or would you prefer tonight?” He decided to risk it, but she rebuffed him immediately.

“I’m busy. If you’d like the latest figures, I can email them to you. We just finished them for last month. We had an amazing summer.”

“I’d rather meet with you myself,” he said, sounding seductive and sexy. He was very French. Six months before it had enchanted her. Now she knew better. He was just another married man cheating on his wife, and she didn’t find that sexy at all. In fact, it revolted her, but he hadn’t understood that yet. He was expecting her to fall into his arms again. She could hear it in his voice.

“What do we need to meet about?” she inquired, sounding businesslike. “The figures speak for themselves.”

“I’d enjoy seeing you. It’s been too long.” And then he lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “I’ve missed you terribly, Kate.” He sounded convincing, but she knew him better now, and the many masks he wore. Devoted father, brilliant businessman, practiced lover, adoring boyfriend, and now he had added dutiful husband to the list. It was the last one that had spoiled everything for her. The other roles he played had made him appealing to her. But she had discovered that you were never too old to be played for a fool. “Will you have a drink with me?” he asked, sounding dogged and humble, and she sighed.

“I don’t see the point,” she said honestly.

“For old times’ sake?” Although their affair had been white-hot only three months before. Very little time had elapsed, but everything had changed for her.

“You can stop by the store if you want,” she conceded. She didn’t want him to accuse her of obstructing his access to the business.

“How are your children, by the way?” he asked her, trying to rebuild the bridge he had burned by going to Sardinia with his wife.

“Fine, thank you,” she said coldly. She didn’t tell him about Justin’s baby. Her personal life was none of his business anymore.

Bernard showed up at four o’clock that afternoon, looking as handsome as ever, and she felt a flutter in her stomach when she saw him. She didn’t want him to affect her, and was upset that he did, but it didn’t show. She kept the door to her office open when he was with her. She had a set of their figures already printed out for him, and when he tried to kiss her on both cheeks, she shifted slightly and he found himself kissing air. She kept everything on a professional level, and he finally looked at her sadly, and she had to steel herself not to be affected by him, when he lowered his voice.

“Why are you doing this, Kate? I love you. I’m sorry you were upset about my summer plans.”

“I’m sorry I misunderstood the ‘arrangement’ you have with your wife. I didn’t realize it included monthlong vacations with her, or I would never have gotten involved. I don’t need that kind of heartbreak in my life, Bernard. And I assume you spend the Christmas holidays with her too. That’s not the kind of relationship I want with someone else’s husband,” she said firmly, and he raised an eyebrow, which made him look even more handsome, much to her chagrin.

“Do you always make decisions about your heart? Why don’t you let your heart decide for itself? We loved each other three months ago. That doesn’t disappear in an instant, or even in a few months.” He was very convincing, and he wasn’t wrong, but Kate was determined not to let him sway her. She had made up her mind.

“I didn’t know who you were then. I thought I did. But it turned out I was mistaken. When you make discoveries like that, it changes everything. You don’t play by the same rules I do. I want an honest, loving relationship, if I have one. I thought that’s what we had. It wasn’t. I’m not interested in stealing someone’s husband, or even borrowing you part-time.”

“I’m not in love with my wife, Kate.” He looked sincere when he said it, and maybe he was.

“That doesn’t make you a free man. Not in my world anyway.”

“You’re making a terrible mistake if you throw this away.”

“I don’t think I am. We have a business relationship that’s important for both of us. I’d like to preserve that, if we can. But as far as anything else, I’m returning you to your wife, whether you love her or not.” There was ice in her eyes when she said it to him, and he looked taken aback. No one had ever been that honest with him before. He could see that she meant it, and the door to her heart was closed.

“You’re a hard woman, Kate. I never realized that before.” She didn’t answer him, as he picked up the printout of the sales figures from the desk and put it in his briefcase.

“Let me know if you have any questions,” she said, indicating the financial report he had just put away. “I’ll be happy to answer them for you.” He nodded, and without saying another word, he walked out of the store. A piece of her heart went with him, but he didn’t know it. She walked back into her office and closed the door behind her. She was shaking and there was a lump in her throat. He sent her a text a few minutes later, and she read it as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Je t’aime” was all it said. And as she held her phone in her trembling hand, she spoke out loud.

“No, you don’t.” And then she erased his message and put her phone away. Liam had been right about married men.