Pandora's Box (previously Worth the Wait, a Zebra print best seller) (14 page)

She rolled onto her back and stared at the stark white ceiling. “You don’t know me at all. You have no idea what my childhood was like.”

“I have an idea.” He turned on his side and pulled the quilt over her. She seemed more relaxed with the psychological protection offered by the blanket. “When you want to talk about the rest—”

“Why? So that I can make you feel even guiltier than you already do? Or are you going to deny that all of this is about guilt?”

He thought to lie, then changed his mind. For all her confusion, she was very attuned to his moods. “Part of it is, I suppose. I can’t look at the things I have and not feel some of it should have been yours. I can’t stop wondering how I could have been so wrong about Peter. I don’t know what to say to my own mother anymore.”

“You see. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

“You missed the point When I kiss you, there isn’t one of those thoughts passing through my mind. Not one.”

“In other words, the only way to alleviate your sense of guilt is to be permanently lip-locked with me?”

Damian muttered a strangled oath and dropped his head. “Do you have to turn everything into a joke?”

“What do you want to know?” she asked wearily.

“I want to know all about you. I want you to be able to say whatever you want about anything without pausing first to wonder if I might be offended or feel guilty.”

Charlie continued to gaze at the ceiling. She bent her knees up and folded her hands behind her neck. “Did you know Peter had an aunt in Ohio?”

“No,” he lied. Only a half lie, he justified. Until the week before he’d had no idea.

“I don’t even know if she’s still alive. It’s been almost twenty years since I lived with her. It would have been so much better if Peter had just put me up for adoption. He didn’t want me. He had no intention of ever coming for me. And Aunt Grace didn’t let a day pass without reminding me of that fact. When he died and the checks stopped coming, she turned me over to the state and I was placed in foster care.”

She rolled over onto her side and propped her head up on her hand. “I don’t know. Maybe I asked for a lot of what I got. I didn’t try to adjust. It’s easy to tell, even at a young age, which families are doing it for the money. It builds a lot of resentment, being constantly reminded what a favor someone is doing you. After a while, I didn’t even care anymore.

“When I was fifteen, I was sent to live with a very wealthy family. I allowed myself to believe that they were people who must truly care, because they didn’t need the money. A rising state senator, his wife, and their two perfect children. Only, it wasn’t my welfare they were interested in. The wife thought it would be good press to offer a home to a poor orphan. They turned out to be worse than the rest and I ended up in a home for troubled teenagers.”

She looked exhausted. He reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You don’t have to go on.”

Charlie inhaled and continued. “I ran away and I don’t remember much of the next few years. I drifted from town to town, taking menial jobs and lying about my age. And then, one day, it was as if I woke up. I knew if I was ever going to do anything with my life, I had to have an education. I didn’t even have a high school diploma. No birth certificate, no school records. Nothing. The guidance counselor from the university managed to dig up my records from the last high school I attended and got me a copy of my birth certificate.”

A single tear slid down her cheek and she brushed it away angrily. “Do you want to hear something funny? The only picture I’ve ever seen of my mother is hanging in your mother’s living room. How’s that for poetic injustice? None of the works he painted of my mother in Algeria were ever photographed."

“Do you want to see some of them, Charlie?” She shot him a bewildered glance.

“Erik said all but the one in your mother’s house were sold to private collectors. I can’t imagine why she kept that one."

“Because it was the most valuable of them all. Until she met you, I don’t think she realized who the model in the portrait was. But my grandfather has two more of them. Peter gave them to the old man to save for Erik.”

“Maybe you could take a picture of them for me.”

Damian sat up and put his feet over the edge of the bed. “Why don’t we go now?”

Charlie bolted upright “I can’t go to your grandfather’s house. Are you crazy?”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I have to study.”

“Take your books. It’s a two-hour ride each way.”

“I can’t.” She slid off the bed.

“I think this is important for you. More important than if you get an A or a B on your exam. You know it already. You didn’t miss one question I asked you last night.”

“Be serious. What’s your grandfather going to say if you show up with me?”

Damian chuckled. “Probably that I’m the luckiest guy on earth. The old man loves beautiful ladies.”

She hissed at his deliberate misunderstanding. “That’s not what I mean.”

“He knows about you, Charlie.” He walked over to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I think I’m the only fool in the family who didn’t know about you. I know he wouldn’t mind if you took a look at the pictures.”

* * * *

Charlie closed her eyes to think. She wanted to see the pictures, hopefully to gain some insight into her mother’s short life. Years of wondering and dreaming might finally be resolved or, at the very least, be made less confusing. But she didn’t know if she was up to facing Damian’s grandfather.

“Everybody needs to know where they came from before they know where they’re going. If you begin to feel uncomfortable, we’ll leave, I promise.” Charlie nodded.

“All right. I have to call Erik first and tell him we’re going out for the day.”

“You get changed while I call him. If you promise to keep it to the speed limit, I’ll even let you drive.”

Charlie paused at the bathroom door and grinned. “If that car wasn’t meant to go one hundred miles an hour, the numbers shouldn’t go that high.”

“Never mind, I’ll drive.”

Half an hour later, against her better judgment, they were on the road. Leafy green willows lined the winding country roads. After twenty minutes of trying to study, Charlie tossed her books into the back seat and stretched out to enjoy the New England landscape. Damian took the back roads, traveling through the small towns of colonial and Victorian houses beautifully restored to their original splendor.

Damian didn’t talk much, which was just as well. Her mind was a bundle of confusion and she doubted she could have an intelligent conversation right now. Was she doing the right thing by taking this trip? She felt as if she were walking into the enemy camp; yet, with Damian, she knew she would be safe.

“That’s it.” He pulled the car into the long driveway and parked in front of a large colonial house.

An older man was out in the front yard, working on his prized roses. When he saw Damian he removed his gardening gloves and dropped them on the ground.

Charlie stayed in the car while Damian greeted the man. They exchanged a few words before Damian walked around to open her door for her. “You can come out. He promised not to bite you.”

She shot him an annoyed scowl and slipped out of the car. He put an arm around her shoulder and eased her forward. The last few steps, she dragged her feet and had to be pushed along by Damian.

“This is Charlotte.”

The old man smiled and offered his hand out to her. “You turned out even prettier than your mama.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled shyly. For lack of anything better to say, she added, “Your flowers are lovely.”

“They keep me busy.”

Charlie twisted her fingers together in front of her body. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to call you.”

The corners of his mouth lifted in the same devilish grin Damian usually flashed before he embarrassed her. “I’d like you to call me yours, but I think my grandson might take me to task.”

Damian chuckled. “You’re a dirty old man.”

“At my age, it’s all talk. You can call me John, or Pop. I answer to just about anything. Have you eaten?”

“Yes,” Damian said.

“Why don’t you take her up to see the pictures? I had them pulled out of the attic and put in the living room. It’s a shame to keep them locked up like that.”

“Are you ready, Charlie?”

She nodded.

He led her to the house and showed her to the living room, where the two large paintings stood propped against the far wall. She stopped at the doorway. “Would you mind if I looked at them alone?”

“If you want me, I’ll be outside with my grandfather.”

“Damian?”

“What?”

She stood on the tips of her toes and threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

He kissed the top of her head. “It’s nothing.”

He was wrong. It was something to her, but he left before she had the chance to tell him.

She stepped inside the room, her eyes fixed on the two framed pictures. The sun shining through the bay window cast a glare on the oil canvas, making clear focus impossible. She wiped her sweaty palms against the legs of her pants, suddenly afraid to cross the room. She felt like a child meeting a stranger for the first time. What was she like? Would the paintings introduce her to the mother she had never known?

She took a step forward, then another, slowly gathering her courage as she crossed the Oriental carpet. As she got closer the glare lifted and she came face to face with Marguerite Simone. The portraits were more detailed than the seascape she had seen in the Lawson house.

Something else was different, too. The unrestrained smile and laughing eyes were foreign to Charlie. Had her mother really been so happy and free? She couldn’t have been more than eighteen at the time. Since her mother had died at twenty, they must have been painted right before she came to America with Peter.

Charlie sat down on the floor in front of the paintings and took in every detail. The clear blue waters. Fishing boats off in the distance. And a starry-eyed girl, sitting cross-legged on a dock, dreaming of a perfect future.

“She looks exactly like you.”

At the sound of Damian’s voice, Charlie jumped. A glance at her watch told her she’d been studying the pictures for half an hour. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d been here so long.”

Damian joined her on the floor. He sat behind her and slipped his arms around her waist. She leaned back and allowed him to blanket her with much needed strength.

“Was it what you expected?”

What had she expected? What had she possibly hoped to learn from two old paintings of the stranger that was her mother? “No. I never once pictured her happy. Maybe I thought that her life began and ended with me. That sounds selfish, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. When you have no history to go on, that is the beginning.”

John walked in carrying a large manila envelope. The faded parcel was held together by a thin piece of twine. He sat down in a chair and handed it to Charlie.

“What’s this?” she asked.

His weary eyes clouded over with regret. “Peter gave it to me years ago. It holds some of your mother’s papers, I think. I don’t know for sure. I never opened it He knew Monica well enough to know she would have them destroyed if anything happened to him.”

Charlie held the envelope tightly against her chest. “Why wouldn’t you destroy them?”

“Because I agreed with Peter that if you ever came looking for answers, you should have them. I warned my daughter that one day Erik was going to find out and go looking for you. I never approved of what they did. Monica made Peter her whole life. She wouldn’t listen to anyone. But she was my only child and I had to stand by her.”

Charlie lowered her eyes. “My father gave me away without a second thought.”

John hunched his shoulders and leaned toward her. His faded green eyes reflected his sadness for her. “You’re wrong about that, Charlotte. It wasn’t without a second thought. I’m not defending what he did. He was weak. His only great passion was his work. With Monica, his work could come first. She was devoted to him, to his success. I think she convinced him that a baby would get in the way. But he agonized over his decision every day of his life.”

Charlie was uncomfortably aware of Damian sitting silently behind her. Every word of explanation designed to comfort her damned his mother even more. She didn’t want her peace to come at his expense. No matter what Monica had done, ultimately the choice had been her father’s to make.

“Damian. Why don’t you go see what happened to our coffee while I try to lure this beautiful woman away from you?” John said.

“You can try,” Damian said lightly. He stood up and went in search of the maid.

“He’s pretty cocky, that grandson of mine,” John joked to break the tension.

Charlie cast her eyes in the direction of the hall and grinned. “He sure is.”

“He’s very fond of you.”

“I know.”

“Monica is having a fit over it.”