Double Exposure: From a Gift of Love Read online

  Corey felt faint with joy and relief, but she was wise enough to refrain from a display of too much exultation and risk suffocating him. “It’s very nice of you to offer.”

  “I’m on my way back to Dallas. You can tell me when I come home Christmas week if you want me to take you.”

  “Oh, I do,” Corey said quickly. “I can tell you right now. The dance is the twenty-first. Could you pick me up at seven?”

  “Sure. No problem. And if you get a better offer, just let me know.” He turned on the front step as he zipped up his jacket, and Corey said in a daring, grown-up way, “You’re a complete sweetheart, Spence.”

  In answer, he chucked her under the chin as if she were a six-year-old and left.

  Seven

  ON DECEMBER 21 AT SEVEN, WHEN COREY CAME DOWNSTAIRS in her gown of royal blue silk and matching blue high heels, she didn’t look or feel like a child. She was a woman, her eyes shining with love and anticipation; she was Cindirella on the way to her ball, watching for her Prince Charming at the living room window.

  Prince Charming was late.

  When he hadn’t arrived by seven forty-five Corey called his house. She knew his grandmother wasn’t planning to return from Scottsdale until the next day and that she’d given the servants some time off before Christmas, so when no one answered the phone at the Bradley’s, Corey was certain it was because Spence was on his way.

  When he still wasn’t there at eight fifteen, her father gently suggested that he go over to the house and see what was keeping Spence or if something was wrong over there. In an agony of suspense and foreboding, Corey waited for her father to return, certain that only death or injury would keep Spence from honoring his commitment.

  Twenty minutes later, Mr. Foster came back. Corey took one look at his angry eyes and hesitant expression, and she knew the news was bad. It was worse than bad; it was devastating: Her father had spoken with the family chauffeur, who lived in an apartment above the garage, and the chauffeur had told him that Spencer had decided not to come home for the holidays, after all. According to the chauffeur, Spencer’s mother, who’d been expected for Christmas, had decided to go to Paris instead, and as a result, Spencer’s grandmother had decided to extend her stay in Scottsdale until the New Year.

  Corey listened to that shattering recitation in anguished disbelief, fighting back tears. Unable to bear either symphathy or righteous indignation from her family, she went upstairs to her room and took off the beautiful gown she’d chosen with such care to dazzle and impress him. For the next week, she jumped every time the phone rang, convinced he would call to explain and apologize.

  On New Year’s Day, when he had not done either one, Corey calmly removed the blue gown from her closet and carefully packed it in a box, then she removed every single picture of him from all the walls, mirrors, and bulletin boards in her room.

  Afterward, she went downstairs and asked her family never to mention to Spencer that she had waited for him or had been disappointed in any way that he failed to show up. Still furious at the hurt Corey had suffered, Mr. Foster argued vehemently that Spencer was getting off much too lightly and deserved to be horsewhipped, at least verbally if not physically! Corey calmly replied that she didn’t want to give Spencer the satisfaction of knowing she’d waited and watched and worried. “Let him think I went to the dance with someone else,” she said firmly.

  When Mr. Foster still argued that, as Corey’s father, he was entitled to the satisfaction of “having a few words with that young man”, Corey’s mother had put her hand on his arm and said, “Corey’s pride is more important, and that’s what she’s saving with her plan.”

  Diana, who was aas angry with Spencer as her father was, nevertheless sided with Corey. “I’d love to give him a good swift kick, too, Daddy, but Corey’s right. We shouldn’t say anything to make him think he was ever that important to her.”

  The next day, Corey donated the beautiful blue gown to a charity resale shop.

  She burned the unmounted photographs.

  The photo albums she’d kept under her bed were too big and too handsome to burn, so she packed them into a large box along with the framed photographs she’d taken of him. She lugged them up to the attic, intending the remove the pictures some day and use the albums and frames for photographs of more worthy subjects than Spencer Addison.

  When she went to bed that night, Corey did not cry, nor did she let herself ever again fantasize about Spencer Addison. She had packed away more than his pictures that day; she had put away the last traces of adolescence with all its lovely, impossible dreams.

  After that, fate presented her with only two opportunities to see Spencer, had she wanted an excuse to talk to him . his grandmother’s funeral that spring and his wedding to a New York debutante that summer. Corey attended the funeral with her family, but when they went to talk to Spencer, she deliberately let herself be obscured by the crowd of mourners. With her gaze on the flower-strewn coffin, Corey paid her last respects to the elderly woman in silence, with a prayer, while tears of sorrow slid unnoticed down her cheeks. And then she left.

  She did not attend Spencer’s wedding with her family either, even though it took place in Houston, where the bride’s maternal grandparents lived, nor did she attend the reception. She spent his wedding night doing exactly what she knew he would be doing that night: she went to bed with Doug Hayward.

  Unfortunately the young man to whom she had chosen to surrender her virginity was a much better friend and confidant than he was a lover, and she ended up weeping her heart out in his awkward embrace.

  In time, she forgot about Spencer entirely. There were other, better, things to concentrate on, to anticipate and celebrate.

  For one thing, the Foster family was becoming quite famous. The family’s joint interest in gardening, cooking, and handiwork that had seemed like a lark to many had become something of a trend, popularized by Marge Crumbaker, who continued to give it glowing mentions in her column.

  During Corey’s freshman year at college, an editor at Better Homes and Gardens saw one of the columns, and after coming out to the house and attending a Fourth of July party, the editor decided to do a huge feature on what she dubbed “Entertaining – Foster Style.”

  When the magazine came out, there were pictures featuring tables set with Grandma’s hand-painted china and handmade place mats, with beautiful flower arrangements that Corey’s mother created from flowers taken from their own garden and their little greenhouse. Also included were pictures of some of the family’s favorite meals, beautifully photographed and described in detail, with recipes and directions for growing the fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables that were used for the family meals. But the most memorable part of the article came at the end, where Corey’s mother had tried to describe her feelings about what she and her family did and why they did it: “I think the real pleasure of having a party, or preparing a meal, or planning a garden, or creating a furnished room, comes from doing it with people you love. That way there’s satisfaction in the effort, no matter how that effort turns out.”

  The magazine dubbed that last sentence, “The Foster Ideal,” and the phrase stuck. After that, other magazines contacted the Fosters asking for articles and pictures, for which they were willing to pay. Corey’s mother and grandparents were only able to produce the raw material, so Diana wrote the articles and Corey took the photographs.

  In the beginning, it had all been a family hobby.

  Robert Foster died of a stroke five months after the stock market made its downward plunge in 1987. when his attorney and accountant gave the family the details of his dire financial situation, they understood why he’d been so tense and preoccupied during the last year, and why he had wanted to shield them. After that the family hobby became a business that enabled them to survive. Marge Crumbaker’s columns had already made Mary Foster into a celebrity hostess, but in the aftermath of Robert’s death, that no longer had any meaning to anyone, particularly hi