Danielle Steel - Matters of the Heart

The day she left for New Delhi, she called Mark Webber in New York and told him what had happened. He asked if she had called Robert Bartlett, and she said she was staying in his house and he had been wonderful to her. She didn’t tell him that he had been particularly helpful to her because he had had a sociopathic wife. But Mark was relieved to know she was in good hands. She told Mark she was going back to the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh, where she had been before, and he thought it was an excellent idea. The photographs she had taken there had been the most beautiful of her career, and being there had restored her before. He asked her to stay in touch, and she promised that she would.

And then, trembling from head to foot, she called Finn before she left. She had to say goodbye. She needed closure, and couldn’t leave without saying something to him, even if only that she loved him, and was sorry she couldn’t see him again. It seemed only fair. But fair was not an operative word for Finn.

“This is about the money, isn’t it?” he said, when she called him.

“No, it’s about everything else,” she said, feeling broken as she talked to him. Hearing his voice ripped out her heart and reminded her of the agony she’d been through at his hands. “It wasn’t right. I couldn’t do what you wanted me to. You frightened me with that story the last night.” He had intended to, to get out of her what he wanted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was just a story for a book, for chrissake. You knew that goddamn well. What the fuck is this all about?” It was about saving her life. She knew it then, and even when she heard his familiar voice, and his denials, she still knew it now.

“It wasn’t just a story, it was a threat,” she said, sounding more like herself.

“You’re sick. You’re frightened and paranoid and neurotic and you’re going to wind up all by yourself,” he threatened her.

“Possibly,” she admitted to him and herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, and he heard something in her voice that concerned him. He knew her well. It was how he did what he did, by knowing people’s underbellies and their weaknesses and how to play them. He could hear a note of apology in her voice.

“What are you doing about the house?”

“You have thirty days,” she said in a choked voice. “And then I’m putting it on the market. I’m going to sell it.” There was no other choice unless he wanted to buy it himself. And there was no way he could. All his plans to bilk her out of money had gone awry. He had shown his hand too early and played it too hard. He had been so sure of himself that he had blown all his Machiavellian schemes to smithereens. “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said again, and all she heard after that were two words.

“You bitch!” he said, and cut the line. The words were his final gift to her, and somehow made it easier to leave.

Robert drove her to the airport that night, and she thanked him again for everything he had done, including the use of his bed and his good advice.

“It was nice to meet you, Hope,” he said, looking at her kindly. He was a very decent man, and had been a good friend to her. He would never forget finding her in the woodshed in Blessington, and she would never forget looking into those gentle eyes. “I hope to see you again sometime. Maybe when we’re both back in New York. How long do you think you’ll stay in India?”

“As long as it takes. It took six months before. I don’t know if I’ll stay longer this time or not.” Right now, she never wanted to come back. And she never wanted to see Ireland again. For the rest of her life. She was afraid she would have nightmares about it for years.

“I think you’ll be fine.” He thought she had made remarkable progress in the past two days. From the broken woman she had seemed two days before, the shell of who she had been before was already beginning to emerge. She was stronger than she thought, and she had been through worse, but not much. Falling in love with a sociopath was one of those experiences you never forgot, if you were lucky enough to survive at all. And the worst was that they seemed so human, and sometimes acted so mortally wounded themselves, but when you reached down to help them on the ground, they pulled you into the swamp and drowned you if they could. Their killer instincts couldn’t be cured. Robert was glad she was going as far away as she could, and the place she had described sounded like heaven to him. He hoped it would be for her.

They hugged each other as he left her at security with her small bag, full of the clothes he had bought for her to wear.

“Take care, Hope,” he told her, feeling the way he had when he sent his daughters off to camp.

She thanked him again, and as he walked back to his car in the garage, he knew that whatever happened to her next, she would be all right. There was a spirit in her and a light that even a man like Finn O’Neill couldn’t kill.

He was in his house, sitting in front of the fire, thinking about her and his own experience with his wife, when the plane Hope was on lifted off the runway and headed for New Delhi. She closed her eyes, laid her head back against the seat, and thanked God that she was safe. And then she wondered how long it would take for her to stop loving Finn. She didn’t have the answer to that question, but knew she would one day. When the flight attendant handed her the newspaper, Hope took it and sat staring at the date. She had met him a year ago today. It had started exactly a year before, and now it was over. There was a symmetry to it, a perfect seamlessness. Like a bubble floating into space. The life that had been hers and Finn’s was over. It had been beautiful at first, and terrifying at the last. She sat staring at the sky as they burst through the clouds over Dublin, and she could see stars in the sky. And as she looked at them, she knew that however broken she still felt, her soul had reentered her body, and one day she would be whole again.

Chapter 22

The chaos in the New Delhi airport felt wonderful to Hope. She looked at the women in the familiar saris, some of them wearing bindis. The noises and smells and brightly colored costumes all around her were just what she needed. It was as far from Ireland as she had been able to come.

Robert’s secretary had hired a car and driver for her, and she traveled the three hours north to Rishikesh in comfort. And then they traveled a smaller road to the ashram where she had spent half a year before. It felt like coming home. She had requested a small room by herself. She had asked for time with the swamijis and monks so that she could continue the spiritual seeking she had pursued before. The Sivananda Ashram was a holy place.

She could feel her soul sing when she saw the River Ganga, and the Himalayan foothills where the ashram rested peacefully like a bird in its nest. The moment Hope stepped out of the car, it was as though everything that had happened to her in the past year faded into the mists. The last time she had come here, she had been heartbroken over Mimi, and devastated by the divorce from Paul. This time the pieces of her had felt so broken in Dublin, and the moment she walked into the ashram it was as though all else was stripped from her life and she could feel her essence come alive again like a brightly burning flame. It had been the right place to come.

They had passed several ancient temples on the way to the ashram, and just being there filled her soul. She fasted that night to purify herself, and did yoga in the early morning, and as she stood at the edge of the river afterward, she told her heart to let Finn go. She sent him with her love and prayers down the Holy River Ganga. She released him. And the following day she did the same with Paul, and she wasn’t afraid to be alone anymore.