I nodded.
“But when and if I do . . .”
“Okay,” I said, cutting him off. I didn’t want to hear any promises. Right now, they were like flowers thrown on the water and drifting out with the tide.
“I want you to believe that I really care about you, Roxy.”
I gave my best professional smile. Mrs. Brittany had actually taught me what that was.
“I . . .”
“Paul, please. Let’s just—”
“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I didn’t see you this week because this was the week I got formally engaged. My father actually bought the ring for me.”
I looked away. This would be the first and the very last time I would ever invest my emotions in a man, I vowed. From this day forward, I’d be the one who broke hearts. As God is my witness, I told myself.
“I’ll see you again. I swear,” Paul added.
Sure you will, I thought. But it will cost you.
17
Sheena went through a horrendous four months of chemo and radiation treatments. I didn’t think anything I would ever experience would be as painful to watch. Through it all, she never lost her wonderful joie de vivre. She wouldn’t permit me to feel sorry for her or be sad in her presence. On her good days, she wanted us to do “sisterly” things like shop and go to fun restaurants and movies. Mrs. Brittany arranged for everything. She didn’t have to come out and say it. I could see in her face that the prognosis was not good. I knew she was putting me on hold so I could be with her granddaughter for her final days.
But I wasn’t with her during the final days. Sheena was in and out of consciousness anyway, but as if she wanted to deny that it was happening herself, Mrs. Brittany had me remain at the estate, entertaining some of her important guests from Asia, CEOs of major companies.
“I know how upset you are,” she told me, “but this is a good test of your own abilities. Pleasing these guests is your first priority.”
I did what she asked. I hated it, but there was no question that the experience, the pain I had to hide, all of it, hardened me in ways that might otherwise have taken much longer. My first reaction was to hate her for forcing me to do it, especially when I thought Sheena needed me the most, but years later, I would find myself thanking her for showing me how to be stronger.
On the day after Sheena died, a day so heavy with gloom I thought we would all drown in shadows, I was surprised when Mrs. Brittany wanted to take a walk alone with me on the estate. Despite the heavy sadness we both carried, the sunshine gave us strength to talk about Sheena and rejoice in what we were able to share of her beauty and innocence. I realized that one other thing Sheena had done was to bring Mrs. Brittany and me closer, if only for a short while. I had the feeling that she was more revealing and intimate with me than she had been with anyone for some time, even her close companion, Mrs. Pratt. But she wasn’t one to accept sympathy or pity for very long. She practically took my head off when I said I felt sorry for her loss.
“Sorry for me. Don’t feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for Sheena. She’s the one who endured the pain and suffering all her life, thanks to my miserable daughter and her good-for-nothing husband. I’ll survive.”
“I just meant—”
“Never mind what you meant. Look, Roxy,” she said, stopping and turning that familiar hard, piercing gaze at me the way someone might aim a flashlight, “this is a very, very hard life for us, no matter how blessed we are with money or power. Turn everything into a life lesson. What you should understand is that you should never be ashamed of exploiting anything that will make life easier for you. I know that sounds bitter and cynical, but that’s what’s happening out there,” she said, nodding toward the world beyond her property.
“You don’t have to convince me of that anymore,” I told her, her hardness bringing back my own. “I didn’t exactly have the life of a little princess before I was brought to you.”
She smiled. “Good. I’m glad you haven’t lost your edge. It will keep you alive.” She straightened herself, pulling back those firm shoulders and becoming the Mrs. Brittany I had known and feared as much as respected.
“I hope so,” I said.
“I know so,” she replied. “You have wonderful instincts and qualities, strengths and insights, Roxy. You’re ready. I’m arranging for your apartment this week. Mr. Bob is on it all. I thought a great deal about your signature name, but in the end, it was Sheena who created it for you.”
“Really?”
“She wanted that to be her final gift to you.”
“What is it?”
“Fleur du Coeur, ‘flower of the heart,’?” she said.
I smiled, remembering that the fern-leaf bleeding heart was her favorite. “I’m proud to have that name, Mrs. Brittany,” I said.
She nodded, and we walked on in silence. In a few short moments, she had resurrected the wall she kept tightly around herself. For a while, I had been her granddaughter’s best and only friend. I was practically her surrogate granddaughter, but that had died with Sheena.