The headwaiter greeted Finn warmly, and obviously knew him well. He led them to a quiet corner table amid well-dressed diners from a variety of countries. She could hear people speaking Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, German, and French as well as English. And Finn ordered a martini as soon as they sat down. Hope ordered a glass of champagne, as she looked around. The same cartoons were on the walls. Nothing had changed since the last time she’d been there with Paul. It had been years.
“Tell me how you got started taking pictures,” Finn asked as their drinks were served, and Hope took a sip of her champagne.
She laughed at the question. “I fell in love with cameras when I was nine. My father was a professor at Dartmouth, and my mother was an artist. My grandmother gave me a camera for my birthday, and it was love at first sight. I was an only child, so I was good at entertaining myself. And life was pretty quiet in New Hampshire when I was growing up. As long as I had a camera in my hands, I was never bored. What about you?” she asked him. “When did you start writing?”
“Just like you. When I was a boy. I was an only child too, so I read all the time. It was my escape.”
“From what?” she asked with interest. Their art forms were different, but their creative talents were nonetheless a bond.
“A lonely childhood. My parents were very close, and I think I felt left out a lot of the time. There wasn’t a lot of room for a child in their lives. They were older. My father was a doctor, and my mother had been a famous beauty in Ireland. She was fascinated by his work, and a lot less interested in me. So I developed a rich fantasy life, and spent all my time reading. I always knew I wanted to write. I wrote my first book at eighteen.”
“Was it published?” she asked, impressed. And he laughed as he shook his head.
“No, it wasn’t. I wrote three that were never published. I finally got published with my fourth. I had just graduated from college by then.” She knew he had gone to Columbia and then later Oxford. “Success didn’t come till a lot later.”
“What did you do until you were published?”
“Studied, read, kept writing. Drank a lot.” He laughed. “Chased women. I got married fairly young. I was twenty-five, it was right after my second book came out. I worked as a waiter and a carpenter too. Michael’s mother was a model in New York.” He smiled sheepishly at Hope. “I’ve always had a fatal weakness for beautiful women. She was a terrific-looking girl. Spoiled, difficult, narcissistic, but she was one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen. She was young too, and things fell apart very quickly when we had Michael. I don’t think either of us was ready to have a child. She stopped modeling, and we partied a lot. I didn’t have a lot of money, and we were both miserable.”
“How did she die?” Hope asked gently. What he was describing sounded more like a divorce in the making than a tragic loss for him, and she wasn’t far off the mark.
“She was hit by a drunk driver, coming back from a party in the Hamptons late one night. We’d been separated off and on before, and thank God, she always left Michael with me when she went somewhere like that. She was twenty-eight years old, and I was thirty-three. We probably would have gotten divorced eventually. But I still felt awful about it when she died. And suddenly I was alone with my son. They weren’t easy years. But fortunately, he’s a great kid, and he seems to have forgiven me most of the mistakes I made, and there were quite a few along the way. I’d lost my own parents by then, so there was no one to help us, but we managed. I took care of him myself. It made us both grow up.” He smiled the smile that was half-boy, half-handsome prince that had been melting women’s hearts for years. It was easy to see why. There was something so honest and open and ingenuous about him. He didn’t try to hide his flaws or his fears.
“You never remarried?” Hope was fascinated by his life story.
“I was too busy with my son. And now I feel like it’s too late. I’m too selfish and too set in my ways. And since Michael has been gone, it’s the first time I’ve been on my own. I wanted to savor it for a bit. And being married to a writer isn’t much fun. I’m chained to my desk most of the time. Sometimes I don’t leave the house for months. I couldn’t ask anyone to take that on, and it’s what I love to do.”
“I feel that way about my work too,” she agreed. “It’s all-consuming at times. My husband was very good about it, and very supportive. And he was busy too. Very busy, at the height of his career. Being a doctor’s wife can be lonely too. But it wasn’t for me.” She hesitated for a minute and looked away, and then smiled wist fully at Finn. “I had other things to do.” He assumed that she meant her work, which made sense to him. She had produced an enormous amount of work over the years.
“What did he do after he had to retire?”
“He taught, at Harvard. The academic world was familiar to me, because of my father, although Harvard was more competitive than Dartmouth, loftier maybe, and a little more cutthroat. Teaching wasn’t enough for Paul, so he helped to start two companies that made surgical equipment. He got very involved in that, and he did very well with it. I think it’s what saved him for the first few years, when he couldn’t practice anymore. It took some of the sting out of being sick, for a while anyway, to succeed at something else. And then he got worse. And a lot of things changed. It’s hard to see him so sick at his age. He’s still a relatively young man.” She looked sad as she said it, remembering how he had looked at lunch the day before, having trouble walking and feeding himself, and he was still so dignified and strong, even if he was frail.
“What does he do now? Do you miss him?”
“Yes. But he didn’t want me taking care of him. He’s very proud. And everything changed for us, after he was sick… and other things that happened. Life sweeps you away at times, and even if you love someone, you can’t find your way back again. He bought a sailboat three years ago, and lives on it a lot of the time now. The rest of the time, he’s in London, and he goes to Boston for treatment, and then to New York for a few days. It’s getting harder for him to get around on his own. Being on the boat is easier for him. His crew takes good care of him. He left for the Caribbean today.”
“How sad,” Finn said pensively. It was hard for him to understand why Paul had let Hope get away. And from the way she talked about him, Finn could tell that she still loved her ex-husband and cared about what happened to him. “I guess it wouldn’t be a bad life for a healthy man. I suppose if you’re sick, nothing is much fun anymore.”
“No, it’s not,” Hope said softly. “He’s part of an experimental program treating Parkinson’s at Harvard. He’s been doing fairly well until recently.”
“And now?”
“Not so well.” She didn’t offer the details, and Finn nodded.
“So what about you, when you’re not running off to Tibet and India and living in monasteries?” He smiled as he asked the question. They had both finished their drinks by then.
“I’m based in New York. I travel a lot for my work. And I go to Cape Cod when I have time, which isn’t often. Most of the time, I’m flying around taking photographs, or working on museum shows of my work.”
“Why Cape Cod?”
“My parents left me a house there. It’s where we spent summers when I was a child, and I love it. It’s in Wellfleet, which is a charming, sleepy little town. There’s nothing fancy or fashionable about it. The house is very simple, but it suits me, and I’m comfortable there. It has a beautiful view of the ocean. We used to go there for summers, when I was married. We lived in Boston then. I moved to New York two years ago. I have a very nice loft there, in SoHo.”
“And no one to share it with?”