Nancy Atherton: Aunt Dimity and the Duke

“I’m sorry, Emma.” Rita’s voice trembled with outrage. “But when I think of Richard dumping you like that, after fifteen years—”

“We weren’t married,” Emma pointed out.

“But—”

“We lived in separate houses.”

“Still—”

“We were two independent adults.”

“You were a couple!” Rita marched back to stand before Emma’s desk. “For fifteen years you did everything together. You even planned your big trip together. Then he ... he ...” Tears welled in Rita’s eyes.

Without looking away from the computer screen, Emma reached for the half-empty box of Kleenex on the windowsill behind her and handed it to Rita, silently reminding herself to buy a fresh box on her way home. It seemed as though half the women in Boston had stopped by to commiserate since the wedding and each one had ended up in tears.

“Oh, Emma,” Rita managed, trying to stem the flow before it ruined her mascara, “how can you be so brave?”

Burying her face in a handful of tissues, Rita retreated to her own desk, just outside Emma’s office. When the other women in the department began to cluster around, Emma got up and closed the door firmly. The past six weeks had taught her that a firmly closed door was the only way to keep her sympathetic underlings at bay.

Sighing, Emma reached out to the vase on the file cabinet, plucked a fragrant blossom, and held it to her nose, wishing that her co-workers would mind their own business. It wasn’t as though she and Richard were facing a messy divorce. She’d had no more desire than he to be tied down by marriage vows. Theirs had been a practical relationship, separate but equal, and it had outlasted most conventional marriages. Richard had his town house in Newton; she, her Cape Cod cottage in Cambridge. He’d pursued his career in photography and she’d pursued hers in computer science. They’d been a couple for fifteen years and now they weren’t. That was all there was to it.

The light on her telephone began to blink, and Emma glanced at her watch. Time for Mother’s morning pep talk, she thought wryly. Returning to her desk, she tossed the freesia blossom into the wastebasket and reached for the phone.

“Hello, Mother.” Emma swiveled her chair to face the windows, where the bleak Boston skyline was etched against a lowering April sky.

“Hi, Emma. Heard from that rat yet?”

Emma’s gaze traveled up along the tangled strands of ivy framing the window. She reached for her pair of scissors. “No, Mother, I haven’t heard from Richard, and I don’t expect to.” Pinching the phone between her neck and shoulder, Emma stood and began pruning the tendrils of ivy. “I’m sure Richard is much too busy with his new life—”

Her mother snorted. “His new wife, you mean. I told you a thousand times to marry that rat.”

“And I’ve told you that I don’t see how marrying Richard would have changed the situation,” said Emma.

“It would have given you some leverage in court! As it is—”

“As it is, I own my own home, I have a very lucrative position as an executive at CompuTech, and I enjoy my freedom. I don’t think I have too much to complain about, Mother, do you?”

Her mother sighed. “Honestly, Emma, I never expected a daughter of mine to just sit back and take it.”

“What would you like me to do, Mother?”

“Get angry! Throw his picture against the wall! React! That’s what normal women do. But not my daughter. I mean, Emma, honey, I know you’re trying to put on a brave face, but did you really have to go to the rat’s wedding?”

“That had nothing to do with bravery,” Emma explained, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “It was simply a matter of facing reality.”

“I’ll tell you about facing reality,” her mother echoed scornfully. “When a thirty-nine-year-old woman gets dumped for a twenty-two-year-old ditz, she doesn’t just shrug it off. You’re going to have to deal with your anger, dear heart, or you’re going to come apart at the seams!”

“I’m sure you’re right, Mother.”

There was a pause, followed by: “Okay. Have it your way. But just tell me one thing, Emma. Did you love that rat?”

Emma winced as a long strand of ivy came away in her hand. “Mother, I’m afraid I have to go now. The Danbury project is due before I leave for England, and—”

“Uh-huh. I thought so.”

“Good-bye, Mother.” Emma hung up the phone and put the scissors away, afraid there’d be nothing left of the ivy if she continued to prune it in her present state of mind. Trust her mother to ask the most impossible questions. Emma was no starry-eyed idealist. She’d known from the start that her career would leave little room for a demanding emotional life. Marriage and motherhood were out of the question, and she’d given her heart to Richard, in part, because he’d understood that. Richard hadn’t been perfect—his twin passions for bad sci-fi movies and heavy-metal rock music were two reasons to be glad they’d lived apart—but he’d respected her self-sufficiency. Her mother could say what she liked; Emma had nothing—nothing—to complain about.

Taking a calming breath, Emma sat down, swiveled her chair to face the desk, and leaned her head on her hands. In two weeks she’d be in England. She couldn’t wait to leave.

Granted, she hadn’t counted on leaving alone. Emma pulled her long hair back into a pony tail, then bent down to retrieve the file of travel brochures that filled the bottom drawer of her desk. She leafed through them until she came to the map, which she spread over the installation specs for the Danbury project. Cupping her chin in her hand, she gazed at it eagerly.

There was Cornwall, protruding like a broken branch from the southwestern tip of England, a jagged, irregular peninsula with the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the English Channel to the south. Emma had been to England many times and toured many gardens, but she’d never seen the gardens of Cornwall. She ran a finger along her intended route, pausing at the circled names: Cotehele, Glendurgan, Killerton Park, and the rest, private estates given over to the National Trust and open now to the pound-paying public.

Richard had planned to close up the studio for the summer, to lay aside. fashion photography in favor of a more serious—some might say pretentious—pursuit: a black-and-white photo essay on the neolithic standing stones that dotted the Cornish landscape. Emma had been so absorbed in planning his trip as well as her own that she’d felt nothing but relief when he’d disappeared from her life for a few weeks.

She’d had no reason to worry. Theirs had been an open relationship, of course, and Richard had a long track record of short-lived flings. There’d been no reason on earth to suspect that this one would be any different.

Then the travel agent had called, informing her that Richard had canceled his airline tickets. Next,. Richard had telephoned, telling her that he’d met someone special. Finally, the wedding invitation had arrived, proof positive that Richard had disappeared from her life for good. Emma had shocked her friends and appalled her mother by attending the wedding, but she’d wanted to go. She’d needed to see the fairy princess with her own eyes.

Emma refolded the map, smiling faintly. The fairy princess—that’s what Rita had dubbed Richard’s bride, and Emma had to admit that it was an apt description. Graceful, slim, and twenty years Richard’s junior, with hair like silken sunlight and eyes like summer skies, the fairy princess hadn’t walked down the aisle, she’d floated. And Richard had been waiting for her, rotund in his cummerbund, a sheen of perspiration on his balding pate, beaming at his wife-to-be with a smile that was disturbingly paternal. Emma blushed at the memory. It had been pathetic to see her free-spirited Richard succumb to something as trite as a mid-life crisis.