Page 15 of Now & Forever
Chapter 5
Gwen
Gwen was jealous of women who hadpurpose.Like Kathryn and her endless charitable pursuits, or Charlotte and those tawdry stories she uploaded to Amazon under a pen name.
Not that Gwen didn’t generally enjoy her day-to-day life. Yet when Lady Ophelia Merange called Gwen to ask her to tea at the local country club that upcoming Friday afternoon, Gwen seriously wished she had a reason to get out of it.“Sorry, I have an important work meeting that day.” “Sorry, I’m donating my eggs to women in fertile need.” “Sorry, I’m rebuilding houses in Puerto Rico.” “Sorry, I’m baking pancakes for orphans.”Nope. The only thing Gwen had tentatively planned for Friday was hitting the gym with Charlotte. Gwen wasn’t an athlete, but she enjoyed spending a couple hours a day at the local members-only gym enjoying badminton with friends and the gab-fests that happened at spa days afterward.
Too bad that wasn’t good enough. Gwen agreed to meet with a sigh on her lips and a palpitation of her heart. While she didn’t dislike James’s mother, shewasher own special little trip to attend.
Gwen selected a long-sleeved navy-blue dress and pulled her hair into a tight ponytail that put only alittlebit of strain on her neck. It was a blander look than she preferred for her daily life, but the country club – let alone Ophelia’s company – asked for more traditional, stuffier looks that made Gwen feel like she was attending her own funeral. When she asked Rebecca to phone a taxi after lunch, Gwen decided she would go back up to her room and redo her makeup to darker shades instead of the sapphire blue she would normally wear with this dress.
She sat at her vanity, arms wrapped around her torso and forehead pointed down. Coming into this room, with its fresh memories of what she and James had accomplished over several years, was sometimes difficult to bear.
I almost fell in love with him all over again Monday night.Almost. Gwen had been cautious about sparing too many feelings for her partner until she knew for sure what outcome was best for their relationship. But being made love to like that reaffirmed that James still harbored much affection for her. The fact they woke up yesterday morning and spent an extra half hour in bed so they could fool around didn’t help, either.I told myself no more throwing my mouth at his cock, but there I was, chopping down the morning wood.Gwen needed to figure shit out, and quickly.
She supposed seeing Ophelia and perhaps asking her advice would help. Lady Merange had always been Gwen’s biggest ally in the Merange family, after James, of course.
The taxi pulled up before the gates. The guard asked to see her membership card, and while he scanned the chip, she leaned forward to pay her driver. “This is fine,” she asserted. Really, it wasn’t, since she would have to borrow a golf cart from the gatehouse to drive the rest of the way to the main country club house, but that was less of a hassle than dealing with a lost taxi driver running around aimlessly on private property.
“I’m supposed to meet Lady Ophelia Merange in the tearoom,” Gwen said to the guard after getting out of the taxi. “Do you know if she’s here yet?”
“Mr. Weathersby at the concierge desk will help you get situated with that, ma’am.” The guard handed back her card and motioned her toward the lineup of golf carts. “Do you require assistance?”
“No, thank you.” Gwen hopped into the closest cart. Her Prada heels were caught beneath the pedal, but she pretended nothing was amiss as she cheerily smiled at the guard and waved the taxi driver off. “Do let them know I’m on my way, though.” He would do that anyway. It was one of his primary functions!
Fifteen minutes later, after nearly mowing over the bushes lining the country club driveway and scaring a landscaper half to death when she took a corner too quickly, Gwen was inside the main house and led to the sunny tearoom on the second floor of the mansion.
Ophelia was already there, reading the paper and sipping her Bombay Breakfast and munching on her macarons. She stood up when Gwen entered the otherwise empty tearoom and offered to kiss her cheeks in greeting.
Ophelia had aged considerably since Gwen first met her. Gone was the soft auburn of her hair, replaced by strands of silver threads that now crowned her as a matriarch of an old and revered New England clan. Her hands had wrinkled and shook when she didn’t eat enough, which was often, since the Merange family doctor claimed Ophelia was now prone to “fits,” as he old-fashionedly put it. Gwen knew the signs of anxiety. Most of the bartenders she knew had loads of it.
Hard to believe Ophelia was barely in her sixties. She looked at least seventy, albeit sophisticatedly so.
“Do try the Appalachian Summer they just received,” Ophelia said with her wispy voice. Gwen looked up from the tea menu with a quizzical expression. “Tea, dear. They don’t get much of it, but it’s heavenly.”
They made the usual small talk while they had their tea and Gwen indulged in the excellent cucumber sandwiches the country club made on site. It made up for the light lunch she ate back home, which Ophelia was sure to ask about, since she adored the Colonial manor her son bought a few years ago.
“You should come by and see what your son has done with his home office,” Gwen said with a sigh. “Looks like one of Albert’s.”
“Then I don’t need to see. I already know what it will look like.” Ophelia gently brushed aside a silver lock of hair hanging in her face. “Let me guess. Brazenly dark oaken walls and floors, ebony black or forest green throw rugs, and enough amber-hued spirits to make you wonder how he gets any work done in there.”
“That about sums it up.” Ophelia had left out James’s obsession with christening the renovations with a hot and heavy copulation session on his leather couch, though. Then again, maybe she hadn’t, but had the manners to keep her speculations on her son’s sex life to herself.
“He takes too much after his father sometimes. Hopefully in only the right ways.”
Ophelia wouldn’t make eye contact when she said that, as if she were ashamed to think that her son might be too much like her husband. Most of the affluent matriarchs in Gwen’s circles would rather die than think they had begotten children nothing like their fathers. DNA testing may have been a readily available thing in the twenty-first century, but traditional mothers always feared their paranoid husbands would find outrageous grounds to divorce them.
What was Ophelia’s deal in her marriage? Anything she wanted, as long as she looked the other way while her husband conducted a clandestine affair with Madam Welsh over the span ofdecades?Some of the most disgusting things Gwen had heard over the past year were whispers that Cassandra was actually Albert’s daughter, meaning the child she had with James’s sperm was incest at its best.
Madam Welsh would have never, though. She would ensure her only child was her spouse’s andthenget freaky with another woman’s husband.
Gwen felt sorry for Ophelia. They were both black sheep, albeit for different reasons.
“Have you seen my grandson recently?” Ophelia asked during a lull in their conversation.
Gwen swallowed the last of her tea. “Can’t say I have, no.”
“He’s growingsobig. Reminds me of James at that age. Baby boys sprout up like little dandelions. Can be quite weedy like them as well.” Ophelia chuckled. “He’s such a cutie-pie. Makes me wish he had come into this world under better circumstances.”
