“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.
Yet there it was. A fifteen-year relationship had ended with neither bang nor whimper, but with the whispery sound of an envelope slipped through a mail slot.
She’d spent a long time in her garden after the wedding, raking over the compost and wondering why she felt so ... numb. Emma wasn’t given to expressing strong emotions, but even she had been surprised by the stillness that had settled over her. Was she in shock, as her mother insisted? Or was she merely going through a natural transition that would lead, ultimately, to a mature acceptance of her new situation? Emma preferred the latter explanation. She knew that there were some things in life she couldn’t change.
But there were some she could. She’d gone back into the house and spent the rest of the evening gathering up the odds and ends Richard had left behind—a worn bath-robe, a broken tripod, a stack of CDs and rock videos. As she dropped the garish video boxes in the Goodwill bin, she thought wryly that Richard’s taste in music had been as juvenile as his taste in brides, and the small joke had heartened her. It seemed to prove that she was ready to face the world without Richard.