“Make it three,” Nina said.
“I hope I’m not making a mistake,” Mrs. Paget said.
“You aren’t,” Nina answered. They said goodbye and hung up.
Chapter Twenty
When Olivia stopped talking, Kathy and Elise were silent, waiting for her to go on. But she said nothing.
“I want to know the rest of it,” Elise said.
Olivia blinked away tears. “We had six weeks of perfection. It’s a cliché to say that we had heaven on earth, but we did.” She took a breath. “My parents had an ulterior motive for leaving Kit and me alone in their house. They were proud about my Broadway role, but they really just wanted me to settle down and have babies. I didn’t know it, but after my dad met Kit, he did some checking and he liked what he heard. By leaving us there, my parents were matchmaking.”
“Did you and Kit stay there?” Elise asked. “In the house? Alone?”
Olivia gave a little smile. “If you’re asking about sex, the answer is yes, yes, and yes. Sweaty, exhausting, all-consuming, never-ending sex. At the end of three days I knew his body as well as my own.”
Kathy and Elise were smiling.
“When my mother called to tell us they were returning, Kit and I went back to Tattwell. No one made a big deal of it, but they were very glad to see us. And we felt the same way.”
Olivia had to pause, closing her eyes for a moment. “For weeks we were a very happy family. We were joyous that Uncle Freddy was alive, that Ace’s mother was hanging on, and Kit and I were...were full of laughter.” She gave a one-sided grin. “We used the well house as our private place. Kit bent some galvanized siding to make a sort of tunnel so we didn’t get torn up by the thorns, and he put lots of cracked corn by the entrance.”
“So the peacock would be your guard,” Elise said.
Olivia nodded. “It was a divinely happy time. All of us lived very well together. To this day, Kit thinks we didn’t know it, but dear little Ace started sleeping with him. The child knew what was coming and he needed comfort.”
“But it all ended,” Kathy said.
Olivia took several deep breaths. “My life changed because I went to Richmond. No, that’s not true. It changed because the day before, I said those words. ‘I love you.’ I hadn’t meant to, but it was just before I was to leave and they came out. Kit kissed me but he didn’t say the words back to me.”
She paused. “That afternoon he nearly killed himself clearing a half acre where Uncle Freddy’s swimming pool was going to be put in, and the next morning he slept late. I was so annoyed with him for not telling me he loved me that when Mr. Gates said he was taking Uncle Freddy into Richmond for his six-month checkup, I said I’d go with him.”
She was silent for a few moments. “As I was leaving, I tiptoed into Kit’s room and looked at him sleeping. He had scratches on his face and soft black whiskers. He looked so good that I almost stayed. But unfortunately, my anger overrode my passion. I bent over and kissed his forehead, then left the room.” She turned away and whispered, “I didn’t see him again for over forty years.”
She looked at Kathy and Elise. “When we got back, Kit wasn’t there. Clothes, books, records, everything. It was as though he’d vanished. Poof! The completeness of his disappearance almost made me doubt that he’d ever existed.”
“You thought he ran away because you told him you loved him,” Kathy said.
“I am ashamed to say yes, that’s exactly what I thought. The kids said that Kit’s father came to get him in a big black car. I thought that’s what Kit had told them. I was too upset, too angry, to realize that was their childish interpretation of what they’d seen. Man in a suit equals father.”
She paused. “I thought Kit had called his father and said, ‘Come and get me out of here’ and he came running. Uncle Freddy said he called Kit’s family and they said they didn’t know where he was, but I thought they were lying. None of them knew that I’d said those three little words, so how could they know anything?” Her voice was rising.
“What was the truth?” Elise asked softly.
Olivia took a few breaths. “The military came for him. That’s why he was there, hiding from his nosy family, and tanning all over. He was preparing to go on an undercover mission. They knew what he’d taken with him and they made sure they got it all. But he did manage to leave a message for me in the well house. Actually, it was a marriage proposal—along with his grandmother’s ring.”
Olivia held out her hand to show the beautiful ring. White gold lacework with a big round diamond in the center. “I didn’t see it because I was so angry that I refused to ever again enter the well house. I didn’t want to hear his name, to think about him. Or...” When she looked up, her face was white. “My stupidity still angers me, and regret eats at me.”
“Love is stupid.” There was venom in Elise’s voice. “Why does Kent love Carmen and not me? And why do I lust after—” She sighed. “There is no sense in love.”
“I agree,” Kathy said. “My husband is one gorgeous hunk but I wanted Andy, an ordinary-looking little man who has never so much as glanced at me.”
The three women were silent for a moment.
“You went to Broadway?” Kathy asked.
“Just days after Kit vanished, I was on a plane to New York.”