Birthday Girls (12 page)

The champagne
was one of their best bottles. Louis Roederer Cristal, 1985. But nothing was too good for Kris and Maddie, the friends who were going to help make her wish come true.

“More champagne?” Abigail asked and Kris nodded. Maddie declined. They were sitting in the library at Windsor-on-Hudson. Best of all, they were alone. Abigail had paid for Louisa to take a holiday at her sister’s in Phoenix; Edmund had left for the auction in Rome; and Sondra was scouting apartments in the city where, Abigail supposed, she would stay until—and if—she needed more money. The other servants had retired to their apartments above the stables.

They were alone, so no one would hear.

Abigail lit another cigarette and tried to stop her hand from trembling. She was nervous and jittery and … excited.
This is it
, she told herself over and over.
I am about to get what I want
. Her pulse quickened with every drag she inhaled.

Quickly she stubbed out the cigarette and picked up the champagne bottle. She leaned toward Kris’s glass and poured in the last of the light golden liquid. Then she held the bottle up to the light that glowed from the fireplace. “Well,” she said slowly, “all this bottle needs now is our wishes. Who wants to go first?”

Kris was silent.

Maddie grabbed her camera and stood up. “I think it’s time for a picture.”

Kris groaned. “I can’t believe you’re still using a camera to distract yourself.”

“Distract myself?”

“Sure. You’ve always done that. Even when we were young, you were always taking pictures of everyone else.”

The flash popped. “And it’s a good thing, too, or I’d never be able to make a living. I can’t write for crap, and the last place anyone would want to see this homely face is on my own syndicated show on TV.”

“Maddie the martyr,” Kris commented and sipped from her glass. “Don’t you ever get tired of feeling sorry for yourself, girl?”

Maddie’s face reddened. “We all weren’t blessed with looks and money.”

Every muscle in Abigail’s body tightened. She couldn’t have them bickering. She couldn’t jeopardize losing it all. “Girls,” she interjected, more loudly than she’d intended, “it sounds as if you’re both trying to avoid the subject. Our birthday wishes, remember?” She glanced from Maddie to Kris. Despite the champagne, neither woman looked pleased.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Kris said. “But for the life of me, I don’t know why. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it’s fairly ridiculous for me to make a wish. If there’s anything I want, I think I can take care of it myself.” She paused. “Not that there is anything, of course.”

The room grew silent.

“Abigail,” Maddie said, “why don’t you play the piano? Remember how you used to play?”

Abigail sighed. “I haven’t played in years. Not since Grandfather died.” She stood up. “But I’ll put on some music if it will help you two relax. God,” she added, walking toward the lacquered oriental cabinet that held the CD player, “one might think I’d asked you to witness an execution.”

Maddie
set down her camera and returned to the sofa. She slipped off her boots, tucked her feet under her, and covered her legs with her long denim skirt. The sounds of strings and French horns filled the room. She closed her eyes and let the music soothe the ache in her head, wondering why she and Kris were being so Abigail-edgy. She considered that Kris might be as hesitant as she was to talk about wishes that probably wouldn’t come true.

Still, they were here. And a promise was a promise.

Finally Maddie spoke. “Well,” she began, “Kris may believe there’s nothing she wants, but that’s not true for me. And what’s more, I’m not going to be too proud to admit it.”

Abigail moved toward the fireplace and leaned against the mantle. “Okay then, Maddie, you go first. What’s your wish?”

She opened her eyes. “What happened to writing them down and putting them in the bottle?”

“Because this time we need to share them if they’re going to come true. We need each other to help make them happen.”

Maddie laughed. “I really don’t think either of you can help.”

“We’ll determine that later,” Abigail said. “First we’ll each say our wishes. Then together we’ll work out our plans.”

“Okay, okay. There are lots of things I could wish for …” Her voice trailed off. “Remember the year Betty Ann wished for world peace?”

“Don’t change the subject,” Abigail said.

Maddie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s a little difficult to tell you what I want, because I know that if you never thought so before, you’ll probably now think I’m out of my mind.” She wished one of them would say something, reassure her of her sanity,
something
. But they said nothing.

“Okay, here goes. What I want, more than anything in the world, is that by the time I am fifty …” she paused, pushed the image of Sophie from her mind, then closed her eyes again. “By the time I am fifty, I want my ex-husband back.”

Her words hung in the air.

Kris moaned. “I can’t believe it. With everything in the world you do not have, I cannot believe you want that two-timing scum back in your life. Where’s your self-esteem, girl?”

The hangman’s noose constricted Maddie’s throat again. “I didn’t think we were going to judge each other,” she said, her voice cracking. “I thought we were supposed to be honest. Well, the honest truth is, I want Parker. I want my life back the way it was.” Quickly she wrote her wish on the paper Abigail had provided, and then, with a vengeance, stuffed it into the bottle.
There
, she thought.
Now it’s official
.

Abigail lowered her eyes. “Maddie is right, Kris. We agreed not to be judgmental. If that’s what she wants, we have to help her find a way to get him back.”

“Heaven help us,” Kris said. “The nineties are almost over and there’s still one woman on the face of the earth who thinks she can’t live without her man.”

Maddie felt like a fool. She untied and retied the yarn on the bow of her black crocheted vest, aware that this was
not the first time she’d sat in this room and felt inferior to her best friends.

“You’re next
, Kris,” Abigail announced.

“Why me? Why not you?”

Abigail smiled. “Because it’s my house.”

“Good old Abigail. Still as snatchy as ever.”

Only the music filled the dead air.

“Care for a cigarette?” Abigail asked with a grin.

“I gave that shit up years ago.”

“What else did you give up?”

“Nothing. I have everything I want.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why?”

“You said it yourself. You’re here.”

Kris rose and strolled across the wide room. She rubbed the soft wool sleeves of her tunic and wondered why she was letting Abigail get to her. Of course, Abigail was right. Kris had come. And yes, she had made a decision about the one thing she wanted more than anything in the world. But dreaming about it, safe in her penthouse, was one thing. Saying it out loud to her two childhood friends … 
God
, she thought, stopping in front of a wall at the far end of the library,
am I really prepared for my wish to come true?

Her eyes fell to the Persian rug on the polished oak floor. For some reason she remembered that it was called the Tree of Life and had over 22 million knots.

Then her gaze drifted to the massive tapestry that hung on the wall. She remembered learning that it had been cut up the middle during the Crusades, when the palace where it had hung came under siege. “It was too large to be transported to safety,” she had been told. “It was resewn nearly five hundred years later.” Abigail’s grandfather had shared this with Kris, one night, many years ago.

The Persian rug.

The tapestry.

Abigail’s grandfather.

It had not been easy to return to this house, to drive up the too-familiar drive, to walk through the too-familiar front door. It was as if nothing had changed, except she was older, taller. Oddly, the house had not seemed as big or as imposing as it once had.

She studied the faded threads of the fabric now and the scene it depicted: a wedding feast, a family in celebration.

A
family
, she thought, and wondered if the threads of her own life would ever come together in such graceful harmony, and why she had cheated herself for so long.

“Okay,” she said, keeping her eyes on the tapestry. “There is one thing I want, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”

“Maybe not,” Abigail said.

Kris laughed. “You haven’t heard what it is.”

“Try us,” Maddie said. “It can’t be any more stupid than mine.”

“Stupid? No, it’s probably not stupid. Just nearly impossible.” She turned from the tapestry and moved back to the sofa. “By the time I am fifty,” she said with deliberate urgency, as if the more quickly the words were spoken, the faster her wish would come true; “By the time I am fifty, I want the family I never had. I want to have a baby.”

A burst of champagne sprayed from Abigail’s mouth. “A baby?” she exclaimed, wiping her chin. “You want to have a baby?”

Kris laughed. “See? I told you it’s impossible.”

“Aren’t you in menopause?” Maddie asked. “Lately I get headaches and I’m dizzy and my mood swings are hideous. I figure it’s menopause. Don’t you have that?”

“Nope. My hormones are as raging as when I was thirteen. But let’s face it, next year I’ll be fifty. I must be practically eggless.”

“You could adopt,” Maddie said.

“I know. But first I’d rather give it a try myself.”

“It’s not impossible,” Maddie continued. “Did you hear about that sixty-three-year-old woman …”

Abigail cut her off. “Write it down,” she said. “Put it in the bottle. We’ll do our best.”

Kris wrote the words with a steady, sure hand, a grin on her face and a small glow beginning to shimmer deep in her heart.

“So that
leaves you, Abigail,” Kris said when she had finished writing. “Now that you know our deepest and darkest, what’s your secret? What on the face of this earth can Abigail Hardy possibly need—or want?”

Abigail picked up the bottle. She turned it and turned it, watching the two slips of paper tumble inside. Maddie’s wish, Kris’s wish. One for a man. One for a child. Compared with them, her wish seemed so … selfish. Selfish little Abigail. Is that what they would think?

But what did they know?

They weren’t the ones who lived her life. They weren’t the ones who suffered each day.

What did they know?

And what did she care?

“Come on,” Kris interrupted her thoughts. “This was all your idea, remember? For Betty Ann.”

She lit another cigarette and wondered if she really had the nerve. The nerve to tell them. The nerve to go through with it.

Then she thought about Edmund. And Sondra.

And Grandfather Hardy.

And about how all the trying in the world had not made her content. Or her life complete.

“We’re not going to judge one another, right?”

“Right,” both Maddie and Kris answered.

“And it’s just between us. No one else will never know.”

“No one.”

“Well,” she began, “whether the two of you choose to believe it or not, I’ve missed out on a lot of things in my life. Suffice it to say, I’m afraid of missing any more.”

She took another drag and blew the smoke toward the fireplace. The fireplace that had been designed and built for Great-Grandfather, who knew his responsibility as a Hardy.

“So my birthday wish is really quite simple.” Reaching into her pocket, she extracted the slip of paper she’d written on before Maddie and Kris had arrived. She held it a moment, then dropped it into the bottle. “By the time I am fifty,” Abigail said slowly, “I want to be somewhere else. And I want to be someone else. And I desperately need the two of you to help make it come true.”

“It would
be nice if one of you said something.”

Maddie realized she was staring at Abigail—the woman who had everything any woman in the world could possibly ever want, except, of course, kids; but then again, Kris hadn’t wanted any either but now she did and, oh God, this was all so confusing it made her head hurt. She blinked. “Maybe you should clarify.”

Kris laughed. “I think our queen of the kitchen is saying she wants out.”

“Out,”
Abigail said. “Yes, that’s a good word. All my life I’ve been trying to please others. First it was Grandfather. Then Edmund. Now the entire freaking world.”

Maddie watched as Abigail walked over to the fireplace, ran her finger across the carved marble mantle, then looked up to the portraits of her grandfather and his father before him. It struck her that this was not the same, unretouched woman who posed on the cover of
In the Rose Garden with Abigail
; this was not the same woman who
had always been in control. She was pale and drawn; she was … vulnerable. God, in all the years Maddie had known her, she’d never once thought of Abigail Hardy as vulnerable.

“I don’t even have a clue who I am,” Abigail said softly, “By the time I am fifty I need to find out. But I’m not going to learn it by pretending to be someone I no longer want to be.”