“Catherine Parker, please,” Madison said. A few seconds passed. “This is Catherine,” he heard, the same sultry and seductive undertones permeating her voice.
“Catherine, Phil Madison.”
“Well, well, well. Phil Madison. You obviously got my message.”
“What prompted you to call, after all these years?”
“I’ve been following your story in the paper. It’s quite an ordeal, huh.”
An ordeal? “Yeah, it’s been tough. But, needless to say, I’m innocent, and my attorney and I are working hard to prove it. Jeffrey — Jeffrey Hellman’s my attorney.”
“How is Jeffrey?”
“Jeffrey is...Jeffrey. Fine. He’s doing fine.”
“Are you free for dinner sometime this week?”
He was taken aback by how forward she was. But that was Catherine. “When?”
“How about tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Sure, I guess that’d be okay.” There was nothing more pressing that he needed to do. And he always did have a difficult time turning her down.
“Great. I’m looking forward to it,” she said, her voice stimulating memories of fifteen years ago...a time with fewer complications, fewer restrictions, more passion.
They set the time and place. He would meet her in Vallejo, forty-five minutes away. The drive would do him good; give him time to think about happier times.
Then again, when it came to Catherine, he could rationalize anything.
CHAPTER 32
THE MINUTE MADISON LAID eyes on Catherine, he instantly felt fifteen years younger. They spent the first part of dinner laughing, hard at times, at some of the things they did when he was just finishing up his residency at the University of California, San Francisco and she was in her second year as an associate at an up-and-coming law firm in the city.
“Where have those years gone?” she asked.
“Gone, Catherine, they’re gone,” he said with regret in his voice, noticing that her left ring finger was bare.
“How are things with your wife?” she asked. “The paper reported that she left you.”
“You read that? In the newspaper?”
She nodded. “The Vallejo Times. A page three story.”
The irritation was no doubt evident on his face. “Guess my personal life is now public domain. Get accused of a crime and lose everything dear to you. Even your privacy. I stopped reading the paper weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, Leeza and I are separated. I don’t know if it’s temporary or permanent, but I do know one thing — it’s hell.”
“Such an ordeal.”
There’s that word again. Ordeal. Fuck the ordeal shit. It’s hell. I said HELL.
“How’ve things been with you?” he asked. “Fill me in.”
“Well,” Catherine said, “you remember Tom?”
Madison’s face hardened. He remembered Tom. It had taken Madison months to get over the bitterness before he was able to feel any pain...the hollow pain of a lost love.
“Tom was good for me at the time, Phil.”
“He stole you right from under my nose. Waved big bucks and jewelry in your face, and off you went. You left me in a heartbeat. You’ll excuse me if I didn’t think he was so good.”
“He wasn’t good for you, that’s for sure. For me, well, that’s another story.”
Madison smiled. “Maybe I’m being too hard on him. He was good for me. If it weren’t for him, you and I would’ve gotten married.”
“And that would have been bad?”
“That’s not what I meant. If he hadn’t ‘intervened,’ I wouldn’t have met Leeza.”
“I guess the jury’s still out on that one, huh?”
He gave her a stinging look.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean that.” She sighed. “Guess I’ve got some leftover bitterness too.”
“It’s okay,” he said, waving a hand. “We did have a good thing, though. I thought with all my heart that we were going to be together for all eternity.”
“So did I. Tom changed everything.” The waitress came over to fill her glass with more iced tea. “You weren’t very accessible. That was part of the problem. I know you want to think it was the money, but that was only part of it. A big part of it,” she said, smiling, “but it wasn’t the whole story.”
“I was finishing up my residency, Catherine, what was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t want to argue about it. I’m just saying that I hardly saw you, and we were tight financially. When a prince dressed in an Armani suit comes along and flashes the good life in your face, you jump at it. It was like falling in love all over again. I got taken in.”
“More like taken.”
“Well, that’s actually truer than not.”
“Why? What happened?”
She gave a mock laugh. “Too much of a good thing. Tom continued to play the market. Day trading, options, some other stuff I didn’t even understand. Did real well at it, too. But I kept telling him we should just put some in a different account, leave it alone for the long term, or at least put money into something safer, like real estate or muni bonds.” She gently moved a few strands of hair back with her fingers, out of her eyes. “But he didn’t listen. He made some bad bets, and it spiraled. Lost it all, even the money I had put away in a CD from the bonus I’d gotten for making partner. It was like he’d become a gambler. The more he lost, the riskier the stocks were that he picked, hoping to catch up by hitting it big.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“We were married for three years. It ended in disaster. We wound up suing each other, and the attorneys ended up with more than either of us.” She took a swig of wine. “It got so messy that I had to take time off the job. That kind of broke my partnership agreement, so they bought me out. I lost everything. Had to start over, with my own office. That failed, and now I’m in-house counsel for Energy Data Systems. It’s never quite been the same. I haven’t enjoyed law ever since. Kind of resent it, actually.”
“That’s really sad. You used to love it.” Now I’m doing it. Sad? Where the hell did that come from?
“It’s been lonely.” She smiled at him, the toothy smile that used to
