Tilting at Windmills (29 page)

“Let’s just say that I hope it was Maddie who came to her senses—not just before you kicked her out of the company but before you kicked her out of your bed.

“Oh, and Justin? You didn’t strike out. You got sacked.”

That was when I took my leave, following not far behind Dominick Voltaire, but unlike the powerful business executive, who’d left angry and feeling cheated, I left with elation and a spring in my step.

It felt liberating to finally tell Justin the truth. Now I had one more mess to clean up. I had to have one last conversation with the woman I once thought I’d be spending the rest of my life with.

“
I
’m here to see Madison Chasen.”

“Your name, sir?”

“Duncan. Brian Duncan.”

“I’ll call up,” he said. His nametag read EDGAR, and he was probably around sixty years old, had probably been a doorman for years. You get a cushy union job like doorman, you keep it. He picked up the intercom and held up a finger to indicate each passing ring. On five, he spoke.

“Miss Chasen, a Mr. Duncan is here to see you. Shall I send him up?”

This, of course, was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, and apparently I came up a winner. His fingers folded in his hand, all but one, the thumb, which he left up, like a movie critic’s.

“That was easy,” I said, as he hung up.

“Twenty-one oh one,” he instructed me, and gave me a smile.

The thing about being a doorman, you get a sense of your tenants and of their guests, and I guess he detected some sort of history between Maddie and me. Perhaps he believed in love. Or perhaps he was just a nice guy. He waved me over to the elevator, and in seconds I was speeding up to the twenty-first floor.

Maddie, John had told me, had moved, two months after she’d gotten the promotion at Beckford Warfield, into this posh building on the Upper West Side that had amazing views of Central Park. As I soon discovered, there were only two apartments on this floor, and they must be decent-sized—and expensive. For a second, I wondered if Maddie would still be able to afford it. Then the door opened.

Maddie was dressed in shorts and a halter top. Her silky hair was neat, as were her makeup and her smile. Her eyes—those were another story, one I was familiar with. I saw in them much sadness and regret.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said back.

“I heard you’d come back. To the city.”

“John looking out for both of us again?”

She shook her head. “Nope, someone at the office. She e-mailed me, said you’d been by to see Justin this morning.”

I checked my watch. “A mere three hours ago.”

“So then you heard.”

My head bowed slightly, as though I’d heard someone had died. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, that’s about all you can say.”

“Look, Maddie, can I come in? Maybe, we could—”

“Talk?”

“We need to, don’t you think?”

She opened the door fully, letting me in. “Yes,” she said simply.

Once inside, Maddie closed the door and escorted me through a vestibule and into the living room. The place was spacious, tastefully decorated with all-new furnishings and artwork. I recognized none of it from her previous place; clearly she’d taken to her new position at Beckford Warfield with zeal, elevating her lifestyle to one that befitted a corporate executive making a nice six-figure salary.

“Wow,” I said. “Nice digs.”

She settled down on the plush sofa and folded her feet beneath her. I took a seat opposite her, in a fancy wing-back chair. For a second, I looked out the window, saw her fabulous view of the park and beyond. Airplanes were approaching LaGuardia.

“How’s Annie?” she asked.

“Okay, I guess. We’re, uh . . . let’s just say we’re taking a break,” I said, perhaps a bit too defensively, but glad, too, that she’d broached the subject. This was a meeting in which nothing could be held back, not feelings, not emotions, and not the truth. Wounds healed, and in time you needed to remove the bandages. Sometimes with one swift pull, the pain fierce but ultimately short-lived. This conversation would probably be like that.

“I’m sorry, Brian. What I did—well, it was unforgivable.”

“Maddie, it’s okay . . . now. When I was still in Linden Corners, I was mad and I couldn’t understand how you could be so destructive. To make Annie think I’d cheated, betrayed her. I didn’t know you had it in you to be so cruel.” I paused, and the only sound in the apartment came from the central air-conditioning system.

“It’s not over, Brian, between you and Annie—I can feel it,” she said, and then, somewhat to herself, added, “I never should have listened to that jerk.”

“What jerk?”

“That guy—at the bar. He’s the one who told me how to screw things up with you and Annie. ‘Just make her think he’s sleeping with you again,’ that’s what he said.”

Chuck. It had to be Chuck, because only he knew the kind of reaction a cheating lover would have on Annie. At least I now knew what Chuck and Maddie had talked about at the bar. I squelched any anger I felt toward him, realizing now was not the time.

“He manipulated you, Maddie. But don’t expend any more energy on him now. Besides, one situation at a time, okay?”

“Is that what I am—a situation?”

“I think what you are—what we are—is unfinished business. You’ve apologized to me for, well, for screwing up my relationship with Annie. I’ve come to apologize, too, for leaving you without any explanation.”

“Brian, we don’t have to go there . . .”

“Actually, we do. Because I can’t move forward until I settle all the issues of the past. I can’t let New York City go until I come clean.”

“Sounds final. You mean—”

I nodded. “I’m not staying. John’s taken over the lease on the apartment and he’s busy selling my stuff—the old furniture, things I put in storage back in March. I’m just here to close this chapter on my life. I have to. Before I can go home.”

“To Linden Corners?”

I smiled, ever so tentatively. “Yes.”

“If it will help, I’ll talk with Annie, tell her—”

“Maddie, it’s not necessary, really,” I said, and then I asked her about the job. “What happened?”

She let out of a sigh of exasperation that only slightly masked her bitterness. “Simple. We were going to lose the Voltaire account, which meant millions of lost revenue for Justin. They wanted you on the account, not me, and so I was given an ultimatum—get you back . . . or else. If I succeeded, Justin would pawn me off on another account and you’d be the sole executive on Voltaire. But, what he didn’t say—though, knowing Justin, it was easy to guess—was that if I failed in my mission to bring you back, then I’d be out on my ass. I had no doubt that was what would happen and that Justin would do his best to blackball me in the industry. So I did what I could to get you to come back to work. I think I must have been deluding myself—it wasn’t Justin who said ‘any way possible.’ That was my own thinking. I was trying to hold on to everything I’d worked hard for—the job, this apartment. God, it all seems so irrelevant now. But at the time, it was all I lived for, and it meant ruining the life you’d worked so hard to create. The . . . love you found with Annie. Brian, I’ve been foolish . . .”

“Maddie, you’re not the first person to get so wrapped up in your job. Hell, a year ago, I would have been right there with you. Ambition attracted us both. But Maddie, I want you to know that I don’t blame you, not for anything that’s happened. That’s what I came here to say. It’s time to bury the past, so we can move on.”

“Separately,” she stated, with a slight hint of a question mark on the last syllable of the word. As though maybe there was some possibility of our reclaiming what we’d lost. But I nodded my head, confirming that what we had was gone, that yes, we were moving on separately.

“Brian, there’s one thing about this whole mess you never knew—”

I cut her off, quickly. “The past, Maddie. Leave it there.”

She realized then what she should have guessed all along. That I knew about Justin and her. Tears sprang from her eyes and she tried her best to wipe them away, but others followed. She covered her mouth with her hand. “That’s why you left—oh, God . . . but . . . how, Brian? We thought we were being so smart, so . . . God, I felt disgusting after it happened. But I couldn’t stop it, not without jeopardizing all I’d worked for . . . you do know that, Brian, don’t you?”

I went to her and I held her and soothed her, assuring her it was good to have everything out in the open so we could both move on. After a few minutes, she regained her composure and wiped the last of her tears away. I got up to leave, and she didn’t try to stop me. At the door, I turned to her and found her standing right in front of me. I stared into those lovely blue eyes of hers, saw in them the spark that had once drawn me to her. That was when I knew she’d be fine, that she’d survive and go on and find another job and another love and a new life. I told her so, and that’s when she leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. Our kiss held, and it was almost as if each passing second represented each month we’d spent together, until finally we’d run out of time and our lips parted.

I turned to leave and I heard my name.

“Go find happiness,” Maddie said, then managed a smile that could only be called bittersweet. “Go back to the windmill.”

I
’d been so busy repairing the wounds to my heart in all these past months that I’d forgotten about the hepatitis that had started this whole thing. So I took advantage of being in the city to drop by the doctor’s office for an examination and blood test, hoping for the prognosis I’d sensed anyway—that I was healed.

Three days after my appointment, the phone rang. I was busy amidst a sea of packed cartons; I was nearly fully packed and ready to finally move out of my apartment. I was fully expecting it to be my doctor. It wasn’t.

“Hello?”

“Brian?”

“Yes, this is Brian.”

“Brian Duncan?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Brian, dear . . . it’s Gerta. Gerta Connors.”

My heart swelled as I recognized her voice, at the rush of memories it brought back. George and the porch and Sunday dinners with sweet strawberry pies for dessert.

“Oh, Gerta, how are you?”

“Fine, dear, simply fine. Folks in town, though, they’re awfully thirsty. Linden Corners without the tavern, well, it’s not the same. Brian, are you coming back?”

I looked at the packed cartons, at the empty walls, heard the silence within those four walls. “Yes, Gerta, I’m coming back.”

“Goodness, that’s wonderful to hear. Because I need your help. See, I’ve come up with this idea for the Labor Day weekend. You know, most folks are off on Friday and Monday, and they’re eager for the long four-day weekend. So here’s what I’ve been thinking. You remember First Friday?”

“And Second Saturday, sure.”

“Well, we’re having a Third Thursday, and I need you here, to help behind the bar.”

The Thursday before Labor Day, that was only a week away. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to see Gerta again—and the other fine folks of the town I missed so much. But most of all, I longed to return to Annie’s world, the quiet mornings at the farmhouse, the tender nights in her arms, of finding again the joy that Janey instilled within me. And of course, the windmill. There was no way I could resist the call of Linden Corners.

“I’ll be there, Gerta, you can count on it.”

We made a date to meet for lunch on that Thursday to finalize plans for the night’s festivities. I resisted, though, asking about Annie. What Annie and I had to say to each other, well, the phone wasn’t the way to do it. It had to be face-to-face, open and honest. So instead, I simply said good-bye to Gerta and set down the phone. I needed to get on with my packing.

Finalizing my plans to leave New York took four more days, which flew by, and before long, it was Wednesday morning, late August, and I was saying my good-byes to John, my best friend, my sole support through this tough time.

“Come to Linden Corners, John. Come visit.”

“As long as you don’t make me get up early to milk cows,” he said.

“Jerk. I’m not a farmer.”

He showed me a smile and said, “I’ll see you soon, farmer boy.”

A belly laugh filled my car as I pulled it out of the garage and headed off. There was one last stop to make before I left the city limits.

On 47th Street, I parked the car, got out, and walked down the street to Eli’s Jewelers. And it was there that I pulled from my pocket the engagement ring I’d bought for Maddie those many months ago. It was the last reminder I had of my previous life, and it was time to let it go.

Eli said he’d be right back and went, again, for his paperwork. Again I had the store to myself; there were no happy couples poring over rings; no reminders of what might have been. While the old man was in the back, I took the liberty of looking around. The old man returned, eyeing me carefully as I pointed to a diamond set between two aquamarines that were exactly the color of Janey Sullivan’s eyes. Our business together took longer than I expected, but that was fine. Some things are worth the time, the effort.

“A new start?”

I nodded. “Yeah. ’Cause you know what, Eli? Life goes on. You face your battles, and you win. You—”

And he interrupted me. “You tilt at windmills?”

He grinned at me, and I returned the grin. Then, vowing this was my last visit to his shop of dreams, I left with my future in my pocket—and my future before me.

I’d finally stopped running away.

T
HIRTEEN

I
remember my first time in Linden Corners. The way the windmill caught my eye and sparked my imagination—and how I had become transfixed. Time seemed to shift and the troubles of the past were no more. All that lay before me was the future, and where it lay was in the wondrous land of this windmill.

Today, though, with New York City hours away by car and millions more by mind, I approached Linden Corners. A dark, foreboding sky lay before me. It looked like a summer storm was imminent, and immediately George’s face came to me. He’d revered—and feared—these storms. Still, the rain couldn’t dampen my spirits, not when I was nearly home.