Daddy

He wanted to call her all day, but he forced himself not to. The papers were full of her that day, and for several days, but she never called him. And it was Thanksgiving before he could hear her name without flinching. He longed for her to leave for New York so he wouldn't be tempted to drive by her house, or stop by the studio to see her. She would be gone, to another life, far from his own. Forever.

Chapter 29

The day before Thanksgiving, Sarah arrived to take Mel and Sam to San Francisco with her to see friends. She had even agreed to take Aggie and Alex, and Benjamin was going to get in some early skiing at Squaw Valley. Sarah had finished her book a few weeks before, and Oliver thought she looked well. The odd thing was that when he kissed her on the cheek, she felt like a stranger. He never longed for her anymore, and now her perfume was an unfamiliar smell. The woman who haunted his dreams at night was Charlie. His heart still ached each time she came to mind or he saw her name in the papers.

“When are you getting married, Ollie?” Sarah asked as she held Alex on her knee the morning they left, and Oliver looked startled.

“I thought the children would have told you.” His voice was tense and quiet.

“Told me what?” She seemed surprised, as the baby drooled happily all over her clean shirt. Aggie had gone to get the children's things, and Sarah was waiting in the kitchen.

“Charlotte's doing a Broadway play. She should be leaving pretty soon, in fact. And, well … we decided that was a better move for her than marriage.” He smiled gamely, but Sarah wasn't fooled. She knew him too well. And she felt desperately sorry for the pain she knew he felt. It was different from what she had gone through with Jean-Pierre, but loss of any kind was painful. “Guess I just have a knack for falling for that kind of lady. The smart ones with ambitions of their own.”

“You'll find the right one, one of these days, Ollie, you deserve to.” And she really meant it.

“I'm not sure I'd have time for her, if I did,” he smiled to hide his sorrow, glancing at Alex, “this guy keeps us all on our toes all the time.” Benjamin took him from his mother then, and took him out to the car to put him in his car seat in Sarah's rented Pontiac wagon. He hated to leave the baby at all, but Oliver had insisted that the skiing would do him good. And he himself was happy that Sarah was taking the children. The punch of losing Charlie was still too great and Oliver felt anything but festive.

Sarah and the younger children left a little while later, and Benjamin's friends picked him up only moments later. Ollie was alone in the house, trying to get through a stack of bills and mail. It seemed strangely silent, and as Ollie leaned back in his chair, he sighed, as though trying to decide if he liked it. Too quickly, he found himself thinking of Charlie again, and even Sarah. He wondered if things could ever have been different, with either of them, but deep in his heart, he knew they couldn't. Maybe if they'd done things differently at first, Sarah wouldn't have bolted later, he thought to himself as he sat back at his desk, and then realized it was a foolish thought. She would have done what she'd done anyway. She was meant to be free, and live alone, and write her novels. As Charlie was, with her Broadway play. Megan, in her penthouse in New York. And even Daphne, with the man who would never leave his wife in Greenwich.

It only irked him that Charlie had made such an issue about marriage and children and “real life” being so important to her, and then in the end, she had made the same choices as the rest. Independence. Her play, New York. With a promise to commute that would never have happened, no matter how good her intentions.

It was late that afternoon before he left his desk again, and went to make himself a sandwich. And then he saw her standing there, hesitating, near her car in the driveway. It was Charlie, he realized, in a T-shirt and jeans, with her hair in the familiar pigtails that made her look more like one of Mel's friends, than the woman who had broken his heart and their engagement. She stood there for a long time, staring at him through the window, and he didn't know whether to open the door to her or not. He thought it was cruel of her to come to say good-bye if she had. And then finally, unable to resist the pull he still felt for her, he walked to the door and pulled it slowly open. And she walked up to him looking very nervous.

“I didn't know if you'd be here or not. … I was going to leave you a note …” He saw she held it in her hand, but he didn't want to read it. “I guess I should have called before I came by.”

“Mailing it might have been a lot simpler.” He had nothing left to say to her now. He had said it all. And cried too often.

She looked beyond him then, into the kitchen, as though hoping to see the children but the room was empty and silent.