Gone Too Far (25 page)

Evan pouted, looking over at the pool in his backyard where his brother, who was the best swimmer in his age set at the country club, waded while tossing a ball in the air.

“Then he has to get out.”

“Daniel can swim as long as he wants.” Kimberly walked around the lounge chair to the other side and picked up the blanket. “You keep this on or you go back inside.”

“I don't need it.” Evan pushed at the blanket as Kimberly tried to place it over him. “I'm not cold. I'm not a baby and I don't—”

“Listen to your mother,” Michael said as he stepped onto the back patio.

Kimberly found herself smiling at the sight of Michael because of the timing of his appearance. She had been thinking about him, because he was the missing link. She was sitting on her back porch, smiling at one son in the pool and thankful to God for the other sitting next to her. The only thing missing was her husband, and, God help her, she wanted him there. And now he was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I need to talk to you.” As he approached her, Michael made an attempt to read her face but decided not to bother. She was a different woman now. He just didn't know her well enough anymore to be able to predict her mood.

Evan turned around in his chair. “Daddy, can I swim?”

“No.” Michael leaned over and kissed his son on the forehead. “Mommy will know when it's time to swim again.”

As his son moaned his displeasure, Michael turned to Kimberly. “Can we have a little privacy?”

“Marisol isn't here tonight.” Kimberly looked toward the pool. “I don't want to leave them unattended.”

“You don't have to.” Michael walked toward the house and stood in the patio doorway. He looked back and waved Kimberly over.

Kimberly walked over cautiously. “What is going on, Michael?”

Before she could think, Michael took her in his arms and kissed her desperately on the lips. When he pulled away, the look of her, breathless, filled him with the confidence he needed. “I understand why you wouldn't want to be with me anymore.”

“Michael, I—”

“Please,” he said, “let me tell you why. Everything has been my fault.”

“That isn't necessary,” Kimberly said. “I told you that I've let go of my anger and have forgiven you for everything.”

“But that doesn't mean you want to be with me.”

Kimberly was uncertain how to respond, but from the way he was looking at her, she had to say something. “Forgetting is different from forgiving, but—”

“I know,” Michael said. “I can see that. Instead of being willing to stand by you and everything about you to my parents, I started our relationship off with a lie, and when it came back to me, you were the one who got hurt.”

“I should have told you about David.”

Michael shook his head. “No, Kimberly. I gave you every reason not to. You were right. I put my father ahead of my family, our marriage, and I gave you no choice but to try and keep it from me. I shouldn't have put the burden of my father's approval on your shoulders.”

“But I put you in that position,” Kimberly said. “After what I tried to do to Janet by bringing Paul to L.A., that was what led to her so-called overdose and rehab stint, and it hurt you in your father's eyes.”

“How can someone so beautiful be so stupid?” Michael smiled as Kimberly seemed uncertain whether to be angry or confused. “First of all, you didn't make my mom take those pills with her wine. We all know her issue with prescription drugs started well before Paul came to town.”

“I made it worse,” Kimberly said.

“So did Leigh's decision to blame Mother for Richard's death and cut her out of her life. So did Haley's decision to date that asshole of a club owner. So did her decision to keep from Dad what had happened with Paul in Paris and the abortion.”

“Why are you doing this?” Kimberly asked. “Why are you saying these things?”

“I can't say exactly,” Michael said.

It was the truth. He had come there to confess his undying love and to proclaim the sacrifice he had made for his family, but he realized once he'd gotten there that it wasn't enough.

“What I can say is that what happened between you and Mother back then was my fault. If I had listened to you and put our family first, we would have moved out of Chase Mansion years before.”

Kimberly was stricken with an unexplained joy at hearing him say the words that had kept her sane all this time. Despite the fact that her life had been falling apart ever since David had come back to L.A., the only thing that kept her from hating herself for all her mistakes is that she wasn't completely to blame. But Michael had never believed that. He had only told her how much she had ruined his life, how this was all her fault. He had said it so many times that she had almost believed it.

“I know,” Michael said. “I know it's too much to ask you to just settle back into my life, and I know I have no right to ask to settle back into your life, but what if we did neither?”

“How could that happen?” Kimberly asked. She couldn't believe it, but she found herself really wanting to know. Was she crazy?

Michael reached down and took her hands in his. “We start a new one.”

“A new what?”

“A new life,” he whispered. “I left Chase Beauty, Kimberly. For good. You and I can take the kids and move to another state. Fuck that, we can move to another country. As far away from Chase Beauty and my parents as you want.”

“Do you really think that would work?” Kimberly could feel her heart beating wildly.

“Think about it,” Michael said. “Besides these last couple years, our marriage was great, wasn't it?”

“It was like a dream come true,” Kimberly answered.

“We were so happy,” he said. “And that was with all the bullshit I made you deal with. Just think, if we started over without Chase Beauty or Dad or Mom, what we could have.”

Kimberly turned to her sons, trying to stay grounded in reality for their sake. “It can't be real if its safeguarded from the rest of the world. We could go to another continent, but you're still Michael Chase and the boys are still Chases. That company will still be your destiny and your right.”

“I only want my family, this family.”

“You don't get it,” Kimberly said. “You just told me how none of this was my fault, but your solution is to leave everything behind for me. That would be my fault.”

This was what Michael had feared. He had offered everything and it wasn't enough.

“We can't do that,” Kimberly said. “But—”

“But?” Michael's head shot up.

“This time,” Kimberly demanded, “I'm building our house from scratch.”

“What?”

“And I'm going to college,” Kimberly added. “I'm getting a bachelor's degree and probably a master's. Or a JD. And I decide which family events we go to and that includes the children.”

Michael was too busy laughing to interrupt as Kimberly went down a list of demands signifying the way things would be from now on.

“Regarding money,” she added, “I have my own accounts, and I don't have to ask permission to do anything. If you even so much as—”

“Can I make one request?” Michael interrupted.

Kimberly placed both hands on her hips and looked him up and down. “I'll consider it.”

“A daughter.”

 

“I've been meaning to ask you about your storage space, Mr. Chase.”

Patrick Cello, the work manager in Carter's condo building, led Carter down the hallway of the basement, where all the storage units for the condos were located. It was a dimly lit warehouse-style place with tall cages, each about fiteen by fifteen and stocked with shelves and flood guards around the bottom edges. All but two cages. At the very end of the hall were the storage units for the two penthouse apartments, one belonging to Carter. They were twice the size of the others.

Carter stopped as they reached his unit. “I'm sorry about needing you to let me in. I just can't find my key.”

“No problem.” Patrick, a cordial, cushiony Italian man in his midforties, with salt-and-pepper hair and large, dark-rimmed glasses, unlocked the unit. “Did you vote in favor of electronic locks?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The condo committee put out a vote to upgrade all the storage unit locks to—” Patrick stopped, realizing Carter didn't care. “Anyway, you can always get your spare in my office.”

“Thank you.” Carter stepped inside, looking around.

“I was saying,” Patrick continued, “you have a lot of space now that…well…”

“Ms. Hall took her things,” Carter finished for him. “It's okay.”

Patrick shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, anyway, I have some residents who need more storage room and will pay to rent some of your shelves. Of course, they would have to go through me to get access and—”

“Patrick.” Carter stopped him from going on. “Sorry, but, no, and I'll be fine from here.”

“Okay.” Patrick seemed disappointed as he turned and left.

Carter looked around his unit, which was full of discarded items and pieces of furniture that didn't fit with a design or no longer appealed to him but he was too lazy to get rid of. It wasn't junk. There was a sofa from India. The pool table was bought at a luxury movie studio auction. There was the sculpture from Greece that he actually liked, but Julia said it frightened her so he put it in storage.

When Julia left, she had taken her things, and the place seemed a little empty. Only a little. It was odd to Carter that Julia, who had been so eager to move in once they were engaged, had not made that much of an impression on his home. In contrast, Avery had changed it significantly. Carter offered very little protest as she did her redesign. Once he had passed the fear of making such a permanent commitment, he easily acquiesced to her demands.

When Avery left, Carter made no changes because he assumed she would be back soon. Once he realized that wasn't happening, he became enraged and destroyed some of her things. He went through phases over the six months she was gone, fluctuating between doing anything it took to find her and bring her back and claiming to hate her and wishing she would get run over by a truck. In one of his latter phases, he had sent what was left of Avery's things to her parents, which he'd immediately regretted during one of his former phases.

The place looked very empty after Avery's things were gone, and it only worsened Carter's depression. On the other hand, Julia's absence was purely superficial. Despite how angry she had been when he told her the engagement was off—all the screaming and pleading and yelling—she had done little to lay claim to his place while she'd been there. Luckily for Carter, the majority of the items she smashed and destroyed in her fit following the breakup were hers.

There was one exception: the wall in the hallway between the entrance to the condo and the living room. The wall on both sides was painted a dark blood red. After a coat closet, the left side was adorned with an oversized, ornately detailed, three-panel antique Camilla mirror positioned above an English console table. A few feet away was a pair of hanging handcrafted leather tapestries on brackets, which Carter had purchased while visiting Paris.

On the right side, there was nothing now. It had always been bare before Avery moved in. She had placed one of her mother's large paintings on the wall, and Carter had sent it back to her parents. When Julia moved in, she had replaced it with an iron and tole wall medallion that Carter found archaic and dull. Julia would only remind him that it was very expensive.

For some reason Carter couldn't explain, now that the wall was bare again, he needed to cover it. He figured it was possibly just an excuse to preoccupy his Sunday with something other than thoughts of Avery's kiss and the painful tears in her eyes as she proclaimed her love for him. Since then, he had been sleepwalking, figuring out how he could coexist with Avery as a parent to Connor but forget what she had told him.

He grunted as he pushed a stone-carved sundial pedestal out of the way to reach the collection of paintings that were leaning against the wall. He quickly flipped through the group of mainly abstract paintings he had purchased during the course of trying to be more cultured, mostly while visiting Europe. None of it was too expensive, nothing more than $5,000. He would have to pick one with streaks of color that didn't stand out or clash with everything else, and he wasn't good at that.

“This is what you pay decorators for,” he said to himself. “They all look the same….”

Carter stopped in his tracks as he reached the last painting against the wall. He thought he was seeing things, so he removed the plastic covering and tossed it aside. He wasn't.

He was certain he had sent this painting back to Avery's parents, but clearly he hadn't. As he looked at the large painting on white canvas, Carter felt himself getting emotional again. Damn her!

The familiar hand-painted oil image of black, white, and silver tones flowed violently together in what Nikki Jackson had titled
The Night Storm.
Before she started Hue, Nikki had been a somewhat successful local artist, and although Carter would never admit it, she had done great work.

Looking at this painting now brought back memories Carter would rather forget. He thought of the day Avery brought the painting to his house unexpectedly. She stood at the door, invisible behind this block of canvas that had to weigh almost as much as she did. Carter told her there was nowhere to put it, but she pointed to the wall behind him and asked him to go get a hammer.

After about five minutes of teasing Carter for being an elitist who didn't own a hammer, Avery told him the story behind the painting and won him over. He had always been so affected by how easily she showed her emotions. It was a sign of trust that she hid nothing from him, and even then, he had only wished he could offer the same.