Entry-Level Mistress (20 page)

Then we arrived.

Barrows Farm was half working farm, half woodland and altogether gorgeous. I spent the first day stunned and excited about my new situation. My bedroom, a room in the main residence hall, was nothing to speak of. However my work studio was a huge cabin a quarter mile down a winding leaf-strewn path. My supplies had arrived already and someone had deposited the packages just inside the door.

I met the other residents, learned about the communal dinner and the biweekly open studios during which the public could visit. Every day I had a choice of coming back to the main residence hall for lunch or having a basket delivered. It was half camp and half spa, and while the days were filled with creating art, the evenings were filled with ping-pong, singing, drinking, and games.

I loved it.

I hated it.

Surprisingly it was easier during the day. I immersed myself in work, taking a deep satisfaction in being back in the thick of it. Though I’d taken two months off, I’d learned so much about life, had gained so much perspective, that it affected my mythology project in a good way. I could see that this series would be altogether more mature than anything I had done so far.

At night, however, the conversation ventured into places I didn’t want to go. Especially when a new resident arrived, one who read the gossip pages.

“So,” the woman, a short story writer, asked, drawing out the vowels slowly. “Daniel Hartmann?”

That caught everyone’s attention at dinner. Especially the screenwriter, Don, who had apparently decided I was the perfect person on which to practice his flirting skills.

I needed to say something that satisfied their curiosity yet brooked no other questions. I tried to imagine what Daniel would have said if he were there.

“He’s a very attractive man,” I finally said, making it sound like an intimate confession. Then I flashed my “actress” smile, with what I hoped was a side of “Don’t you wish you were me?”

Unfortunately, my confession seemed to make Don even more interested.

I was tempted. Or rather, I might have been tempted to do something completely stupid just to finally get Daniel out of my head, except I knew it wouldn’t work.

I’d come to terms with the fact that Daniel would haunt my dreams no matter how wrong, in the best of circumstances, a continued relationship with be. I simply hoped that one day I’d wake up and realize that, like a bad cold, those thoughts were gone.

If people would let me.

Leanna consistently reminded me of the chance Daniel would be a more permanent presence in my life. But I refused to believe it, refused to know, even as one week turned into three. I was stressed, depressed and my life had been full of changes. There were any number of reasons my period could be late.

My mother as well seemed to have gotten the memo that Daniel Hartmann should be mentioned at all costs. Every telephone conversation devolved, with my mom digging for more information as if she needed desperately to hear the intimate details of my sex life just to feel close to me. At the same time, she didn’t hide that she felt I was making all the same mistakes she had made. My father, however, didn’t mention Daniel and perhaps that was only because there was just so much one could say in emails and voice mail messages. I still couldn’t forgive him. For lying to me, for doing something he had to lie about in the first place. There was really only one person responsible for the mess that had been my early teens and that was my father.

And yet, I still felt guilty about how my affair had affected him. I couldn’t even gather the energy to be angry with Daniel anymore, because none of this could have happened if I hadn’t been an immature, irresponsible idiot.

Who might be pregnant.

Finally, one day I went into town with some of the other residents and came back with a two-pack of pregnancy tests.

I stood there with the box, still in its cellophane wrapping, clutched in one hand and the telephone in the other. Because there was one other person whose actions had deeply affected my childhood.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell dad when you found out you were pregnant?”

It was a conversation we’d had before but I was no longer listening as a child blaming my mother. Now I simply wanted to understand. I wanted advice, in case I tore those wrappers open and my world fell apart.

“Sweetheart, I told you. He’d broken my heart. It was one thing to be devastated but another to find out I was pregnant. I didn’t want him to think it was some ploy to get him back, to get him to marry me. And worse, I didn’t know what I’d do if he told me to … get rid of it. Of you. And then … then he was dating someone else, and that was that.”

“Would you do it again, knowing how upset dad was?”

Silence answered my question. I almost hung up the phone, terrified that my mother was reading between the lines.

“Is there something you want to tell me, Emily?”

No. There wasn’t anything I wanted to tell her and there wasn’t anything that I wanted to tell myself. I continued on as if everything were normal, as if this were simply the conversation of a daughter wanting to know more about her origins.

“Would you?”

“I don’t know. Who knows what your father’s reaction would have been if he’d known five years earlier. We can’t change the past anyway.”

“Right.”

“I hate to hear you so sad, baby.” And I equally hated to hear my mom worry about me.

“I’ll get over it,” I said dismissively, quickly moving the conversation away from emotions that I did not want to share with my mother. I’d learned years ago that anything I shared from deep in my heart could and would be used against me in some future conversation. I loved my mom, but I knew the limits of our relationship.

When I finally flipped the cell phone shut, I started unwrapping the box. No matter what happened, not knowing wouldn’t change anything.

On the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, the first windy hint of the incipient fall tempered the lingering heat. I sat on the wooden bench outside my studio for a brief “lemonade and chat” break with Lila and Lila’s new med school roommate, Taneasha.

As another visitor wandered up the path, I smiled, welcomed her, and gestured past her into the studio, invited her to take one of the artist statements I’d carefully letter-pressed on thick cotton paper. In the weeks that I had been at Barrows Farm, I’d made excellent progress on the mythology project. I wouldn’t start on the actual sculptures for likely a few more weeks, but my studies for the first four pieces hung on the walls of the studio and, combined with the small models carefully arranged around the room, gave a good sense to anyone looking of what I hoped to do with texture, the concept of masks and the stories of gods and goddesses.

“So how long will it take you to complete everything?” Lila asked.

“Longer than five months,” I answered with a laugh. “Hopefully, I can show what I do have somewhere in New York.”

“That can’t be easy,” Taneasha interjected.

“No, but I’ve been lucky and made some great contacts.” Edward Ainsley had surprised me a few days earlier when he’d shown up unannounced at the farm. Even though it hadn’t been a day open to the public, he’d stayed for dinner, mingled with everyone. He’d grilled me about my future as well, intimated that he’d liked what he saw and would be happy to act as something of a mentor for me.

It had been a bittersweet triumph because all I could think about the whole time Ainsley visited were those few days in the Hamptons. I’d come to think of that weekend as
The Idyll Before the Storm
and I saw it in a wash of pastel colors with short brush strokes, as a seaside resort with clouds on the horizons. It was easy to lose myself in those thoughts, to linger on the beauty of Daniel’s naked body, on the tenderness of his touch. In my mind there was a fantasy of what could have been, what might have been, if he hadn’t made the game we had played real.

It was even harder to not think of Daniel when Ainsley mentioned running into him at the opening for the
Picasso and the Future
exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts. Ainsley’s expression had been sympathetic, as if he knew about the breakup—surely everyone did—but he wanted me to know I had his support.

I would very likely need that support. I would need to make a successful life for myself as soon as possible after leaving Barrows Farm. I could no longer live off murals and CD cover art.

The bright sunlight turned to afternoon shadows and eventually we all stood. Lila hugged me tightly.

“Well, I know it’s selfish of me, but I can’t wait until you move to the city.”

“Hah,” I said with a laugh, stepping back. “You’ll be way too busy with all your classes.”

“It’s pretty intense already,” Taneasha agreed.

“But I wouldn’t have missed this! You’re so talented. I had no idea.”

My friendship with Lila was another one of the many positive outcomes of the summer affair. In fact, as time passed, I found it more difficult to hold onto anger. Sadness, longing, all those wistful emotions remained, but my relationship with Daniel had changed me irrevocably. For the most part, I liked this new version of myself.

And slowly, I was coming to terms with everything else.

I said goodbye to my friend and returned inside, asked the few people who peered at my sketches if they had any questions.

I was explaining my plans for Aphrodite when the room darkened slightly. I looked to the door, the daylight blocked by a tall, achingly familiar figure.

As if conjured up from my daydreams,
he
stood there, perfect in his usual suit, accessorized with a dark purple tie today. He looked like a buyer or maybe a Manhattan gallery owner, because who else would be at the colony dressed like that on open studios days. It hurt to see him, but at the same time it was a pleasurable pain. He had come to see me.

Of course, I was also suspicious.

I excused myself, strode toward him, and then past him, knowing he would follow me back outside. I rounded the corner of the studio until, under the shade of one of the maple trees, I turned and faced him.

There was that expression on his face, so similar to the way he had looked when I first met him, only, with something else there.

Julian had said Daniel missed me. Maybe he did.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to apologize.”

I softened inside at the words, just as I had at the very sight of him. But I couldn’t be soft. As much as I’d missed him too, I’d also made a decision, one that didn’t involve him. And if he was here wanting to be back in my life—

“No need,” I said, shrugging, forcing the insidious, traitorous thoughts away. “It’s not like you did anything that needs apologizing for. Unless you did know about my father’s deal—”

“No,” he protested.

I continued quickly, not wanting to analyze the relief that flooded through me. “So what then? You hired me? Oh, you slept with me? Gave me an expensive bracelet? Yeah, you’re a real villain, Hartmann.” I started to turn away. Only, he
was
here. And he wouldn’t be apologizing just to assuage his guilt.

“I knew we’d be photographed.”

I laughed. “Seriously, Daniel? You’re famous. I should have thought about that. You even warned me.”

His lips curved, and I lowered my lashes, desperate to deny how that smile still made me feel. I almost didn’t see him step forward. Almost lost my chance to step back.

“And I’m the one who leaked your name to the press. Or rather, asked Janine to.”

My gaze flitted back to his face in disbelief.

“Are you trying to convince me that I should be angrier with you?” I asked with a laugh, attempting to cover the confusion his admission created. Did it change anything? “If not you, then someone else would have. But … why?” If not to hurt my father, then why?

He didn’t answer right away.

Or maybe it had been to hurt my father indirectly, to show off that Daniel could have anything he wanted, including me.

“I’ve missed you,” he said again, in that way that made me melt inside my skin, not answering my question and yet saying the words that I wanted to hear. Saying almost enough. “Emily.”

“Daniel, we’re standing here right now because I had some crazy idea I could get back at you for what you had done to my family. Instead … instead I learned that everything I thought I knew was a half-truth. That my father really is a criminal.”

“I’m sorry.” He reached for me but I shrugged him off, shrugged away the sound of concern in his voice.

“That you—”

“That I was a coward?”

I stared at him. Startled.

“You were,” I whispered in agreement, trying desperately to make sense of my swirling emotions, to find steady ground. I missed him, too, but I couldn’t go back. The summer had been wonderful and horrifying and for the first time I finally knew who I really wanted to be. And it wasn’t his mistress.

“I can’t be your girlfriend, living in your house, in clothes bought by you, with your billions.”

He smiled slightly, but I was serious. He needed to understand that. I didn’t need the fabulously wealthy life. When Daniel took that away from my family all those years ago, I’d come down to the ground, grown up like every other normal American teenager with a dysfunctional home life.