The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

wished.
    They kissed until her lips were swollen and the dizziness of the champagne had been exchanged for the dizziness of desire, and they lay down on the bed together and they didn’t stop kissing, and her hands were as bold on him as his were on her. They fell asleep together, their mouths close, hands claiming a confident intimacy, his body warming hers, her mind whirling with the fulfillment of all her romantic fantasies.
    In the morning when she woke, the dream was over. He was gone, and she didn’t see Robert Walsh again for almost five years.

three

MADELEINE
1999
    Phillip hadn’t stuck around to see how his threat had affected me. He had taken his drink and stalked off to the study. I stood in the kitchen, stunned, and then stumbled into the bedroom, grabbing for some antacids to calm my stomach.
    His side of the bed had stayed empty while I tossed and turned, unable to get warm despite the extra blankets I had wrapped myself in.
    Finally, I had drifted off to sleep in the gray gruel of morning, woke up groggy and disoriented. Padding across the condo, I quietly opened the door to the study, but Phillip was gone. His keys and wallet weren’t by the front door. It was a weekend, but maybe he had gone to the office. Maybe he had left just to avoid me.
    I had to talk to him, had to apologize, had to make it right again. No matter how much I complained, when it came down to it, I couldn’t actually get divorced. I couldn’t. It would be an admission that I was a failure, unlovable, that I hadn’t been good enough for him after all. I would be buried by the shame. My mother would be humiliated. I couldn’t.
    I dialed Phillip’s mobile number again and again. His office phone. Nothing.
    What if he had really meant it? What if it really were over? I lifted myhand to my throat as if I could physically unstop the breath that had caught there.
    And what would I do? If there were no more Phillip, who would I be? No one else would marry me. I’d have to leave the Stabler. I’d have to leave Chicago, leave the rows of art galleries in River North where I could stroll for hours and see a dozen pieces that changed everything. I’d have to go back to my hometown. Back to Magnolia, to my mother, to the Ladies Association and humid summers, to walk among my ruins and stew in my failures.
    Magnolia. The fight had eclipsed my dread over my impending peacekeeping trip to see my mother, but in three hours, I was supposed to be on a plane. But I couldn’t go now, could I? I had to stay and make things right with Phillip. Except he clearly didn’t want to see me. Didn’t want to talk to me.
    But maybe if I went, maybe if I went and left Phillip alone for a while, he’d calm down. I’d just been upset the night before, drunk on the foolish idea of painting again, trapped in a too-tight dress (Phillip had been right about the cookies, he was always right), irritated by Dimpy Stockton’s cheerful entitlement. And he’d calm down, just as I had. Phillip was endlessly mercurial, and horribly spoiled, and sometimes the best thing to do, I’d found, was to leave him to it. Eventually he got bored of his own drama and would emerge from it as though it had never happened. And I wouldn’t say a word of it to my mother. She and Phillip adored each other, and if she knew I had screwed this up . . .
    Well. I wasn’t going to think about that. Because it was going to be fine. Pulling my suitcase out of my closet, I packed in silence. I’d be gone for a week and by the time I came back, everything would be fine. He’d have forgotten all about a divorce. I’d have forgotten the anger that had swollen inside me, the resentment at the way he treated me, the sick certainty I felt when he pushed at the issue of a baby. The weather would be warm in Magnolia. I could take shorts, sleeveless shirts, not that anyonewanted to see my bare, chubby arms. There