Danielle Steel - Family Ties

“Pattie, don’t…,” he said hoarsely.

“I will, and you’d better know it.” It was more of a threat than a plea for him not to leave her. It was a promise to destroy his life, her own, and her children’s if he ever left her. They had been together for six weeks, and Pattie had him in a death grip. And worse yet, the life she was threatening was her own. And if she meant anything to him at all, he had to respect it. He couldn’t just sleep with her night after night and day after day, and have sex with her, and leave her. Who knew if she really would kill herself? But he didn’t want to take the chance. Ted was shaking when she walked out of the kitchen and back into the living room to her kids. Her message to him had been delivered and was even more powerful than his respect for his aunt. Pattie had won this round. Again.

And back in her apartment, after she came home from the farmers’ market, Annie was thinking about them. She had no idea who the woman was, or what she meant to Ted. She could see how engaged he was with them, but she hadn’t seen love in his eyes when she looked at him, she had seen terror. She wanted to know why, and what he was going to do about it. Everywhere she turned now, the children she loved had put themselves in difficult situations and were at risk. And she was helpless to stop them or even help them. All she could do was watch as they took chances, and they would ultimately have to learn from their own mistakes, just as Whitney had said. She walked back into the living room on her crutches and sat down on the couch. There wasn’t even anyone she could talk to about it. All she could do was worry and hope that in the end they made wise choices and everything came out all right. She had never been so sad or felt so useless in her life.

Annie didn’t have to call Ted this time. He called her himself the next morning and asked to have lunch with her that day. He had stayed at Pattie’s the night before, so he hadn’t called her. He couldn’t. The kids had gone to their father’s for the night, and Pattie had threatened Ted with suicide again, and then made love to him as never before. The sex just got better and better, but there was something so intense and frantic about it that sometimes it frightened him. The hook she used to keep him close to her was sex. It was addictive, but the threat she had made the night before woke him up. He never wanted to have her suicide on his hands. And she sounded like she meant it. She had said it several times.

Ted looked somber when he met Annie at Bread, which she knew he liked. And when Annie saw him walk toward her, her heart ached for him. He didn’t have to say a word to her. She could see that he was in way, way over his head, and he knew it whether he admitted it to her or not. Annie was worried sick about him.

They talked about school and her ankle for a few minutes to break the ice, and then Annie got straight to the point.

“How involved are you with this woman? And what does she want from you? She must be close to forty, and you’re just a kid.” It was what he had expected her to say.

“She’s thirty-six. It happened right after Thanksgiving. She teaches my contracts class, and I got a shit grade on a quiz. She offered to have me come over so she could help me, and the next thing I knew I was in bed with her. I’ve been there ever since.” He was as honest as he always was. He never mentioned love. “But I got straight A’s in contracts,” he said with a rueful grin. And he tried to make light of the situation he was in. And didn’t mention that he was barely passing his other classes. He couldn’t cope with Pattie and the demands of law school too.

“Is this serious? Are you in love with her?” Annie looked at him intently. He didn’t look in love to her. He looked worried.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, and then he told Annie about Pattie’s threat the night before, to kill herself if he ever left her. He hadn’t planned to tell Annie, but Pattie had shaken him badly and he trusted his aunt’s advice. She was wise, and had always been there for him. Pattie was new to him and seemed a little unstable.

“That’s a terrible thing to say to you. She can’t hold on to you by terror and guilt. That’s blackmail, not love,” Annie said, looking outraged.

“She doesn’t want to lose me. I think she’s already been through too much, with the divorce.” Ted tried to be understanding about it.

“Lots of people are divorced, Ted. They don’t go around threatening to kill themselves if their new relationships don’t work out. That’s sick.”

“I know.” He looked upset, and she didn’t want to criticize him for the mess he was in, he was rattled enough, and justifiably so.

“What can I do to help?” Annie said quietly. “Maybe you should try getting a little space from her now, before this gets any worse, or she gets more dependent on you than she already is. Are the kids aware of all this?” Ted shook his head.

“They’re sweet kids and I like them. They’re at their father’s whenever I stay over. They have joint custody. And he’s a pretty good dad. I want to be with her, Annie. I just don’t want it to be this intense.”

“Maybe that’s all she knows how to do. People like that worry me too. Try to take a little distance from her, for your own sake. Tell her you need it.”

“She goes insane when I do.” Annie was at a loss to tell him what to do. She had never dealt with anyone as unbalanced as that, and she was sad that Ted had gotten as deeply into it as he had. She had a strong sense that Pattie had manipulated him into it and knew exactly what she was doing. He was an innocent, and Pattie knew it too.

They talked about the relationship all through lunch, and Ted felt a little better when he went back to his own apartment, instead of Pattie’s. Annie had given him good advice. He called and told Pattie he was going to stay at his place that night. He said he had some things to do, and some papers to write. Annie had given him the courage to do that.

“You’re cheating on me, aren’t you?” Pattie accused him over the phone, and his heart sank.

“Of course not. I just have some stuff to do here.”

“Is it your aunt? Is that it? What did she do? Bribe you to stay away from me?” She sounded desperate and on the verge of hysterics. In a short time she had taken possession of his life. He had become her willing slave, and now in the face of her threats and accusations, he felt trapped.

“My aunt wouldn’t do something like that,” Ted said calmly. “She’s a wonderful woman. She’s concerned about us, but she respects my right to make my own choices and decisions. She’s not crazy, and she wouldn’t bribe me.”

“Are you suggesting I’m crazy?” she said, sounding very wound up. “Well, I’m not. I’m crazy about you, and I don’t want anyone interfering with us.”

“No one is. Just give it a rest. I’ll come over tomorrow. We can take the kids to the park.”

“They’re going to be with their father for the weekend.” There was a hopeful note in her voice when she said it, and he knew what that meant. Sexual acrobatics worthy of the Olympics for two days. He suddenly felt exhausted thinking about it, and yet he was instantly aroused when she said things like that. It was as though his body were betraying him and wanted her more than he did, and he no longer had a choice in the matter. His penis was addicted to her and taking orders from her.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised, and lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He had no idea what he was going to do, or even what he wanted to do. He belonged to her now. He felt possessed. Everything Annie had said to him at lunch made sense. But Pattie was in control, and he wasn’t. It felt like there was nothing he or Annie could do. Pattie was running the show.

A week after their first lunch, Tom Jefferson called Annie at her office again. He said he was in the neighborhood for a meeting, and he wondered if she wanted to have an impromptu lunch before he had to go back to the office. It sounded like fun to her, and he met her at the Café Cluny, which was one of her favorite haunts. He was waiting for her out front, and they walked in together. He was in good spirits. She was still on crutches, and his arm was still in a cast, but neither of them was hurting from their injuries anymore. He told her about a big story he was working on, and that he might have to go to California to spend time with the governor. She loved hearing about his work, and his old war stories. And when he talked about his experiences in the Middle East, she told him that Kate was dating a boy from Iran, and was in love with him.

He saw the tenderness in her eyes when she mentioned Katie, and it struck him that her nieces and nephew seemed to add a dimension in her life that was unfamiliar to him since he’d never had children. He could sense how much she loved them, and he had the feeling that her nieces and nephew had lives and opinions of their own.

“He’s a very nice boy,” she said about Paul. “Polite, kind, intelligent, thoughtful, good values, respectful. He’s every mother’s dream. But I’ve been concerned about her going out with someone whose background and culture are so different from her own, even if he’s very American and he’s lived here since he was fourteen. Ultimately their ideas might be very divergent. She’s a very liberated young woman. And her ideas can be very extreme at times. He seems a lot more conservative and traditional than she is. That might not work later, if there is a ‘later.’ And I get the feeling they’re very serious about each other.”

“What do his parents think?” Tom asked sensibly.

“I don’t know. I haven’t met them. Kate’s pretty New Age, with a dozen pierced earrings and a couple of tattoos. She’s working in a tattoo parlor right now. If his parents are surviving that, they must be more liberal than I am. I almost had a heart attack when she told me about her job. She considers it an internship in graphic arts.” Tom laughed at the idea and could imagine what she looked like.