old, and no, I wasn’t there every minute when you were growing up. I wish I had been, but I wasn’t. There were other things I thought I had to do, and your father thought so too. Maybe we were wrong. I’ll always regret what I missed. But that’s over, Phillip. We can’t get those years back. I can’t undo it, no matter how sorry I am if it hurt you. And I have a right to some comfort in my life, whether you like it or not.”
“You’re seventy years old, for chrissake. You’re an old woman. What are you doing screwing around at your age?”
“I’m not ‘screwing around,’ as you put it. I’m sorry you see it that way. And it’s absolutely none of your concern what I do, as long as I run this business correctly, and don’t embarrass you or myself publicly, and I’m not. The rest is up to me, Phillip. There’s no vote on this issue. This isn’t a board meeting, it’s my life, and you don’t get a voice in this one.”
He stared at her in unbridled fury, and without another word, he turned on his heel and left the room. He was seething at everything she had said to him.
She was shaking when she sat down at her desk again when he had left. This wasn’t the way she had wanted Phillip to discover her affair with Peter. She hadn’t wanted anyone to find out at all. But he had, and she had to live with it now. It didn’t change anything, and Phillip would have to get over it. It reminded her suddenly of her own feelings when she had realized that her mother was Ansel Morris’s mistress. She had hated it, it seemed so wrong to her. She had thought her mother was “a fallen woman.” But she was thirteen years old, not forty-six. She had discovered her mother’s affair just as Phillip had. She had seen them kissing one day, and her mother had then admitted it to her. She said she was lonely, and he was a kind man. But she had never married him, even at the end when he was widowed, despite their obvious love for each other.
Olivia had never believed in married people having affairs. She believed in marriage and fidelity, but so had Maribelle. She had been faithful to a married man she loved and who loved her. There had never been anyone else, even after Ansel died. And Olivia had been faithful to the only two men in her life. Joe for their entire marriage, and now Peter for ten years. It was not a spotless life, but it was a good one, and a reasonable one, given the circumstances. She didn’t love it, but she could justify it to herself, and had. She had never told anyone about Peter, and hadn’t intended to, although she often had thought about telling her mother. Somewhere in her heart she knew she owed her mother an apology for what she had thought of her at thirteen. She hadn’t understood then how Ansel had protected her mother and how much he cared about her. Maribelle had needed him, just as she needed Peter, even though he was married to someone else and always would be.
She wondered why her mother had never married Ansel, even after his wife died, but she had never dared to ask. He had died so soon after, within the year—maybe they didn’t have time. But whatever her reasons, they had been her own. Maribelle was a good woman, and an honorable one. And so was she, whatever Phillip thought now. She felt sorry for him with his limited thinking, and harsh judgments, the resentments he had carried for years. He was unable to accept or believe that people did their best, even if they weren’t perfect. And he had settled for a wife who Olivia believed didn’t love him, and was incapable of it. It was a sad life for him. And she preferred her own compromises to his, the love of a married man who was kind to her and whom she respected. They didn’t need marriage and they loved each other. Olivia wasn’t going to let Phillip spoil that for her with his black-and-white ideas about what was right and what wasn’t. She had a right to decide that for herself about something as personal as this.
She called Peter’s cell phone with a shaking hand, and he answered immediately with a