smiled quietly at Ward now, and glanced at her watch. She would have to interrupt him soon. And as though he had sensed her in the room, he turned and smiled at her, their eyes met and held, in the way that people still envied them after all these years. There was something very special about Ward and Faye Thayer, a love which still burned brightly and was the envy of all their friends. Their life hadn't been without pain. But there had been rich rewards too.
“Thanks, Angela, we can finish the rest this afternoon.” He stood up and came around the desk to kiss his wife. “Time to go?” He pecked Faye on the cheek and she smiled up at him. He still wore the same after-shave after all these years, and it was always like an announcement that Ward had been in the room. If she closed her eyes, it still conjured up the same romantic images of long before, but there was no time for that today. Lionel was graduating from Beverly Hills High. They had to be there in half an hour, and the other children were waiting to be picked up at home.
Faye glanced at the handsome sapphire and gold Piaget watch he had given her the year before. “I think we should go, sweetheart. The troops are probably hysterical by now.”
“No,” he grinned at her, as he grabbed his jacket and followed her out, “only Valerie.” They both laughed. They knew the children well, or thought they did. Valerie was by far the most high strung, ebullient, excitable, with the worst temper coupled with the most strident demands. She lived up to her red hair, most of the time, in sharp contrast to her subdued twin. And Greg had lots of energy too, but he used it differently, all he thought about were sports, and lately girls. And then there was Anne, their “invisible child,” as Faye referred to her sometimes. She spent most of her time in her room, reading, or writing poetry. She always seemed separate from the rest. She always had. And it was only when she was with Lionel that a different side of her came out, that she laughed and joked and teased, but if the others pushed her too hard, she would retreat again. It seemed to Faye that she was always saying to the others “Where's Anne?” and sometimes they even forgot to ask. It was difficult to know the child, and she was never quite sure she did, which seemed an odd thing to say about one's own child, but it truly seemed to apply to Anne.
Ward and Faye waited for the elevator at MGM. They had their own complex of offices now, handsomely decorated all in white and bright blue and chrome. Faye had redone it all herself two years before, when Thayer Productions Inc. officially established permanent offices at MGM. In the early days they had had temporary offices there, and then they had set up shop halfway across town, and as a result, spent half their life in cars driving to meetings with the MGM staff. But now they were both independent and at the same time part of MGM, subcontracting to them for two years at a time, working on their own projects as well as those they undertook for MGM. It was an ideal position to be in, and Ward was satisfied with the way things had worked out, although he privately thought it was all because of Faye. He told himself that, and once confessed it to her, although she disagreed violently with him, insisting that he didn't appreciate his own worth. And he didn't of course. She had always been so much more the star, so much more in control of everything. She had known everyone in the industry for years and they respected her. But they respected him too now, whether he admitted it to himself or not, and Faye wished he would. It was difficult to convince him of how important he was. Somehow he was never quite sure. But in another way, that was part of his charm, the boyish ingenuousness that had followed him into middle age, and still gave him the appearance and the sweetness of youth.
Their car was parked in the parking lot, a black convertible Cadillac they'd had for two years. They kept a huge station wagon at home for when they went out with the kids, and Faye had a small