Precious Gifts (14 page)

The subject of Sophie Marnier and her mother didn't come up until halfway through dinner, when Joy asked Véronique if she was going to meet her. Juliette had made an appointment with them at ten o'clock the next morning, before they went to the château.

“You can meet us after that, Mom,” Juliette said gently, “and go straight to the château. You don't have to meet them.” The girls felt they had no other choice. They owned a piece of property with Sophie now, and she was their half-sister, they wanted to lay eyes on her. And they had promised to relate everything to Timmie, who was dying to know how it went.

“I don't know. I don't think I want to meet the mother, and then when I think that, I realize it was such a long time ago, maybe I should. To satisfy my curiosity if nothing else. And I should be there for you two girls.” She still felt torn.

“You can decide in the morning,” Joy said easily, and then she told her about the new manager she'd hired. She had liked what he'd said, and he had a great reputation as an up-and-coming talent manager, even though he was only thirty-two years old. His name was Ron Maguire. And he had recommended her new agent. The agent was already turning up better acting parts for her, and Ron, the manager, had great contacts for national ad campaigns, through ad agencies he worked with. She was excited about what she was doing, and about the fact that her father had opened new doors for her so she could pursue her dream. It was something that Véronique had never done, given how she felt about Joy's acting career. She felt a little guilty about it now, listening to Joy, but at least Paul had finally done something for her. She could see how much it meant to Joy, so maybe he was right. It started her thinking that she needed to be more accepting and supportive of all of their careers. They were old enough to make good decisions even if different from her own.

They stayed at the table for a long time, talking. Juliette hadn't opened the sandwich shop again since her father's death, and didn't intend to until after Labor Day, but she had decided to hire the people she needed so that she could travel a little more, and she wanted to make some improvements to the bakery, as her father had suggested. And although she was still angry at him herself, Véronique was touched by what he'd done for the girls, helping to fulfill their dreams. It had mellowed her a little about Joy's acting career, and maybe being a baker really did suit Juliette, even if that was hard for Véronique to understand. And Joy looked happier and more relaxed than she had in years. She was auditioning for better parts, and was excited about it. Timmie hadn't even thought about opening her own shelter yet, but both girls said they thought she would in time, and would be happier when she did than she was in her current job.

And as they walked back to their rooms in the adjacent building, Véronique thought about the Marniers again. She didn't want to meet Elisabeth, Sophie's mother, but she was curious about the girl. She would sleep on it, as Joy had suggested, and decide in the morning. And when she got back to her room after saying goodnight to the girls, Aidan called her. He had just stopped for the night in Stuttgart, on the way to Berlin. He had been driving for many hours and hadn't even stopped for dinner. And every step of the way, he said he had thought about her.

“I've been thinking about you, too,” Véronique said softly. “I miss you.” She was sitting on the balcony in the moonlight as they talked. And it was nice knowing they had made love in her bed before he left. It made him part of all this now, despite his hesitations. And she would remember him too in the bathtub whenever she bathed.

“How are the girls?” He sounded as though he knew them.

“They're fine. Everyone is nervous about tomorrow. It's a big deal meeting a half-sister you never knew you had.”

“I'll say it is. What did you decide to do? Are you going, or just meeting them at the château?”

“I'll figure it out in the morning, depending on how I feel.” She still had mixed emotions about all of it, even seeing the château again that she had once loved.

“I'll be sending you good thoughts,” he said warmly, and sounded tired. She knew he was anxious to get to Berlin the next day, and start setting up his show.

They chatted for a few more minutes and hung up. She sat there thinking about him afterward, looking at the view, and then slowly lowered the electric shutters over the windows that made the room completely dark so you could sleep late in the morning.

She lay in bed, remembering their lovemaking the night before and that day at the hotel. Their relationship had a surrealistic quality to it, from the way they had met, their meeting again in Venice, their travels afterward, and his bringing her to the Eden Roc that day. It had all happened so suddenly that sometimes it was hard to believe he was real. And yet he was, he had just called her, he had said he loved her, and she believed him, and he was waiting for her to meet him in Berlin. She loved his dignity and integrity, his pride, his intelligence, his tenderness and kindness. She remembered special moments with him in the last weeks, and whatever happened in the future, she knew with her entire being that for now, however remarkable and amazing it seemed, in all the ways that mattered, this was real.

R
ight up until the moment Joy and Juliette left for St. Paul de Vence for their meeting with Sophie Marnier and her mother, Véronique was still of two minds about going with them. The three of them had breakfast on her terrace, with birds fluttering in and out, and the delicious breakfast the hotel served. She decided not to join them, and then when she saw them leaving, she changed her mind at the last minute.

“I'll come!” Véronique said hastily, grabbed her handbag, and ran out the door with them. She was wearing white jeans, a white blouse, and flat pink shoes for their exploration of the château after the meeting. And she jumped into the car with the two girls. They had a driver and they knew that St. Paul de Vence was half an hour away, and the little town where the château was was just a few minutes farther.

Véronique sat in the back of the car next to Juliette, looked out the window, and said not a word. Joy was in the front seat, chatting with the driver. And Véronique was thinking back to the day she'd bought the château at Paul's insistence. He had even talked about their moving there at first. He had been in love with the beautiful old eighteenth-century château. Véronique had loved it, too, but restoring it and then maintaining it was a lot of work. The project had been expensive, but Paul had been crazy about the place, so Véronique thought it was worth it. She and the girls stopped going there when she gave it to him in the divorce, and Paul never took the children there again. He spent time there in the summer with friends, and eventually stopped going entirely, particularly once the house needed to be maintained. He just boarded it up, and hired local caretakers to keep an eye on it for him and do minor repairs. The house had been the victim of deferred maintenance for twenty years, and now it had become the responsibility of the girls, or whoever bought it from them. For their sake, Véronique hoped they would put it on the market soon, to avoid it becoming a burden on them. It made no sense in any of their lives. It hadn't made much sense in her and Paul's life, even as a family, but even less now in theirs. And Véronique didn't want to invest in maintaining or repairing it for them. The Château de Brize was a money pit and always had been.

They drove slowly through St. Paul de Vence and saw the main square. Old people were sitting under the trees and talking, in front of the local restaurant. And Véronique could see the familiar stone path that wended its way up a steep hill to the church. It was a few feet wide and only open to foot traffic in the medieval town. And then they drove through it to Biot, a few kilometers away. It still had old fortifications, and was a pretty little town. They had the Marniers' address and were meeting them at Elisabeth's medical office, which she said was a few feet from their home. Sophie lived with her. And a few minutes later the Mercedes stopped in front of a small picturesque stone cottage. It looked like a mouse house in a fairy tale. There was a shingle outside with Elisabeth Marnier's name on it, with the words “Médecine Générale” underneath it. She was the local GP.

All three women got out of the car. There was no one around. Juliette and Véronique followed Joy to the front door, where she rang a bell they could hear, and no one came to the door for a minute. And then a thin, spare blond woman opened the door, wearing a wrinkled gray linen dress, with her blond hair pulled back. She was wearing flat shoes and a man's watch on her wrist, and her eyes were serious as she looked from one of the women to the other. She had intense blue eyes, and a lined face, as though she had taken too much sun in her youth, and she wore no makeup. She had glasses pushed up on her head. She looked like a country doctor, there were no frills about her, and she smiled cautiously, as Véronique and Juliette walked up the few steps to the porch.

“I'm Elisabeth Marnier,” she said simply, and they could smell the disinfectant from her small, spare medical office. She looked straight at Véronique as she introduced herself and held out her hand. “I owe you an apology,” Elisabeth said quietly in reasonable English. “I never wanted to trouble you, or for you to know. It was a terrible mistake.” Véronique hadn't expected the directness of her words, and they took her by surprise. Tears filled her eyes as she nodded and shook Elisabeth's hand. There was a faded quality to her, as though she must have been pretty once but no longer was. And although she was five years younger than Véronique, she looked a decade older or more. Véronique still had something youthful in her face, and perfect skin. Elisabeth was a different kind of woman, hadn't had an easy life, worked hard, kept long hours tending to her patients, and it showed. There was nothing frivolous about her, and it was difficult to imagine Paul in love with her, even if she had been pretty as a young girl. Their affair must have been born of boredom, one summer at the château. And Sophie's date of birth nine months after the summer, in May, suggested that was the case. He had never denied himself anything he wanted, particularly if there were women involved. She suddenly felt sorry for this woman, if she had found herself pregnant as a young girl, by a man who didn't care. Or not for long. Véronique wondered if having another child had fed his ego, or if he had simply been careless, while dallying with a country girl. If so, Elisabeth had paid a high price for his self-indulgence by bearing a child he almost never saw.

“Won't you come in?” she said politely after shaking hands with Joy and Juliette, and led them into her office, where everything looked old and threadbare but was immaculately clean. A nurse was sterilizing instruments when they walked in, and disappeared the moment they sat down in the chairs across from Elisabeth's desk. She put her glasses on then, and addressed the two girls, while Véronique tried to compose herself after their emotional greeting.

“I know this must have been very hard for all of you. And I'm so sorry about that. Sophie and I never expected anything from your father. He hadn't seen her since she was a little girl, and I hadn't heard from him in ten years. This whole business about the château came as a shock to us as well. Sophie is pursuing her studies in Grenoble. She hopes to do her training in Paris one day and work there, or come back here to join me in my practice. She has no desire to keep the château.” As her mother spoke for her, they wondered where Sophie was, and if she had decided not to meet them after all. “I think she would be more than happy to concede her share of it to you, for a small price, whatever is fair. It would help her with living expenses during her studies, but she has no intention of taking advantage of you in any way. The faster she can get out of this, the better for us all.”

Elisabeth didn't mention the rest of the bequest, but after what Paul had left his legitimate daughters, Arnold had said it would be very small. Particularly after the share he had left Timmie to establish her homeless facility, there was going to be barely enough for the others, and just a pittance for his child in France.

“Are you planning to sell the château?” Elisabeth asked the two young women, who nodded. They were impressed by her. She seemed like a nice woman and everything she said was fair. They had been prepared to hate her and their newly discovered half-sister, but there was nothing to hate about her yet.

“We don't want to undertake the work repairing it,” Joy explained to her. “None of us live here. We don't come to France in the summer anymore, except for a week with our mother. My sisters live in New York, and I live in L.A. It just doesn't make sense.” Véronique said not a word, and just listened to the exchange.

“Have you seen it yet?” Elisabeth asked sympathetically, and both girls shook their heads. “I hear it's in very poor condition. I believe your father stopped maintaining it a long time ago. I don't think he'd even seen it in about thirteen years, since the last time he saw Sophie when she was ten. He never came back again.” She said it without reproach or accusation. She seemed to have nothing good or bad to say about him. And they all remembered the detective's report that said that she had lived with another man for twenty years, who had died two years before, her partner in her medical office. And he had acted as Sophie's father, far more than Paul, whom she had only seen a few times.

“We're going there today,” Juliette chimed in, as Elisabeth nodded. And as she said it, a young girl appeared in the doorway. She looked like she was in her teens. She was very slight and had a childlike, innocent face, and huge green eyes. The girls thought she might be Sophie's younger sister, but the moment Véronique saw her, she knew exactly who she was. She was a tiny, delicate miniature of Paul. She looked just like him, and could have been Timmie's child, too, since she looked so much like her father. And she had a strong resemblance to Juliette as well, in a diminutive version. She looked nothing like Véronique or Joy. She was totally Paul. She had similar coloring to her mother, who was blond, too, but there was no denying who her father was. It took Véronique's breath away to see her. The girl smiled shyly at them all, as she walked into the room and stood near her mother. She was graceful and light on her feet, with blond hair that hung down her back. She looked like Alice in Wonderland, with a sweet face.

“This is Sophie,” her mother introduced her. “She's very nervous about meeting you.” Elisabeth smiled at them. “So was I. We had no idea how you felt about us. I appreciate how kind you've been.” And then she smiled at her daughter and spoke to her in French, which only Véronique understood fully. She was reassuring her that they were not angry and they were very nice. And then Elisabeth turned to them again. “Her English is not so good.” Sophie nodded when she said it, with a shy smile, and it was hard to imagine her as a medical student—she looked about fifteen. “She's studying to be a pediatrician.” Sophie nodded then, she understood what her mother was saying, but was too shy to speak to them, as Joy held out a hand to her with a warm smile. There was nothing threatening about this girl. She looked young and shy and scared, and both of her half-sisters felt sorry for her.

“Hi, Sophie, I'm Joy. I'm the youngest, I'm three years older than you are. I live in L.A.” Sophie smiled at her and nodded.

“I go to medical school,” she said in careful English. “I want to be a doctor, and be like my mother.”

“And I'm a cook,” Juliette said with a smile. “I live in New York and make sandwiches and cookies—
gateaux,
” she added, patting her hips, and they all laughed. “I have a sandwich shop and patisserie. I'm twenty-eight. And our older sister Timmie works with homeless people.” She wasn't sure if Sophie would understand the term, and Elisabeth added, “SDF,” the French term for homeless. “She's twenty-nine and lives in New York, too. And none of us are married.” It seemed like all the pertinent initial information, and then Juliette added, “You look just like our father, and like Timmie…and I guess like me.” She sounded sad as she said it. “Except Timmie is very tall.”

They chatted for a few more minutes and Elisabeth offered them all tea, but no one wanted any, and finally Véronique spoke up and asked Elisabeth if she and Sophie would like to come to the château to see it with them.

“Sophie should see it,” she said quietly, and Elisabeth agreed. Sophie addressed her sisters then, vehemently shaking her head.

“I do not want the Château de Brize,” she said clearly. “Too much expensive for me.”

“It's too much expensive for us, too,” Joy said to her, smiling. “We want to sell it, but we want to see it first, to see how bad it looks.” Sophie nodded, she understood and agreed, and a few minutes later, they all went outside. Elisabeth agreed to come with them, and the girls invited Sophie to ride between them in the backseat. Elisabeth followed in her car, and as they drove the few miles down a familiar back road, Véronique felt as if she were in some kind of dream. She had just met one of her ex-husband's mistresses, and they were riding to their old château, with his illegitimate child between two of her daughters. It was surreal. But they seemed to be nice women, and Sophie was very sweet. She was young in her demeanor, but she seemed bright. And her mother was dignified and respectful of the awkward situation they were all in. She had been no older than Sophie when she got involved with Paul Parker, and maybe just as naïve. And it had been so wrong of him to pursue her and start an affair with her. They were all in agreement on that.

They rounded the last bend, and the château came into sight. For a moment, it took Véronique's breath away. It looked no different than it had thirty years before, when she'd bought it for him. It stood elegant and noble against the summer sky, surrounded by beautiful old trees. It was made of stone, and there were a number of outbuildings, which they could already see were in bad shape. The hedges around the property had been recently trimmed, and there were rosebushes outside the guardian's cottage that looked like something in a fairy tale. As they got out of the car, a big friendly dog bounded up to them, wagging his tail. And the ancient guardian and his wife came out of the cottage shortly after to greet them. They were so old that it was hard to believe they could take care of anything, but the husband still seemed pretty spry.

Véronique explained to them in French who they were and why they had come. She said that these were the children of Monsieur Parker, and they had come to tour the house. The guardian said he had expected them, and that Monsieur Parker's lawyer had sent them a letter advising them that the family would come soon. He didn't recognize Véronique, and had been hired after she left.

He went to get the keys, which were the original keys on a huge ring. And then he went to open the enormous doors and let them in. Véronique could see the stables in the distance, where she had kept horses for the children. She and Paul had been good horsemen and had gone riding across the fields and in the woods.