Leaps and landings

21

Odette sat in her back garden under a shade sail, enjoying the warmth outside, her laptop in front of her, drinking glass of ice water. She'd just found a gardener and had had an automatic watering system installed to help her maintain the garden through the summer and she was now enjoying the greenery that lay in front of her - a L shaped raised bed full of bushes and shrubs, some flowering, some not. She had liked the idea when she'd bought the place - that there'd be a private outdoor space, a place for dinner parties and her kid to play in. But when it came to the actual gardening she didn't exactly have green thumbs, hence relying on outside help. She'd so far managed to maintain the four-story townhouse just by the help of a cleaning maid helping out once a week, who usually came when she was doing her pilates. Now there was another thing she needed outside help with. She'd never really thought that getting hired help would make her feel bad, but now it did - as if it was another thing to show how spoiled she was, and she was almost reluctant to tell Jess about it. She would of course, but she could see it being another one of these things that Jess didn't like about the neighbourhood - almost ever household applying help. She could see that Jess didn't fit in there, and among her ponderings - relating to everything and anything between the baby, them, her career, which didn't really require her to be in Manhattan these days, she'd begun considering whether the place really was the real her these days.

While she'd maintained some of the luxuries of life - her assortment of exercising possibilities, help around the house, eating healthy and fresh food along with some day spa treatments she allowed herself occasionally, she really didn't live very lavishly except for the house that was clearly too big for her alone. Her daily needs for designer outfits were scarce, and without the added pressure of comparing her appearance or wardrobe to the long row of society wives and cut throat business women, she actually didn't miss it. She also didn't go out a whole lot, especially to places that were on the fancier side, worrying she might run into someone. She didn't travel even much, or buy art or cars or other luxury items just based on whims. She'd definitely changed - and whether Jess had a part in that transformation, she didn't know, but what she did know was that she didn't miss what had been.

Odette browser through her news alerts, taking a sip of water. Thankfully the frenzy around Rory and Logan has settled, largely thanks to a senator getting caught in a sexual harassment scandal. She usually didn't really search it, but almost by accident she'd stumbled upon an insight story on her brother. Apparently Henri was taking over the family business. The story covered him, his wife and even details about their parent's having retired to their holiday home in Cannes. Things were changing even back home - if it could still be called that at all? There was no mention of Odette other than the following news article linking to the news of her and Logan's divorce months ago. She couldn't imagine her brother being proud of that stamp on the family name. Briefly she wondered whether any of them had attempted to contact her, to search for her - whether they had given up, were still furious and looking or just did not care? She was glad of course that even if they had looked, they hadn't succeeded. She just hoped the PI she'd hired to do a search on herself, had known what he was doing. And while she had in fact moved to New York for anonymity within a crowd, she realized that perhaps it hadn't been the brightest idea as Manhattan also had nearly 1 million millionaires which meant that it also contained likely more people that she had once known or who knew someone in her family than most places. But she wasn't going to jump - not now, when she had enough to worry about without having to think about moving.

Odette had spent most of the week in a haze, worrying about what was going in Jess' mind. She'd realized that her new life leaned on Jess a lot - and it had all happened so fast. The relationships she had with her friends or Logan and Rory were superficial in comparison to put it mildly. Maybe it wasn't entirely healthy that the potential loss of him scared her as much as it did? She'd tried pulling back a little, as a protection mechanism, attempting to spend some time apart - it wasn't too difficult as Jess seemed to have a lot of work that week, but it was at night when the longing crept in and it was at least every other night she'd still ended up either texting him to come over or just gone herself, or had he. Each time that happened it was like an automatic de-stress, they wouldn't even need to have sex, just being around him was enough. She had even begun considering that maybe she was willing to risk the wait, delay having the baby or finding some alternative paths to do what she wanted to do - maybe she could volunteer, work with kids in some way, maybe that would do it? She was trying to find compromises in her head, leverage - anything to give her reasons to not having to deal with the thought of parting from him.