The Affair

by Danielle Steel

  “Then Mama must be very, very mad at Papa, if it takes so many of them to make her not mad.” Sylvie nodded and had nothing more to say.

  But they could both see that their mother looked happy when their aunt Athena arrived before lunch. They were all sitting on the terrace of the château, talking and laughing. Their mother poured wine for her sisters and helped herself to a glass. They were all wearing shorts, except Athena, who was wearing a big white dress to cover her size. Laure thought she was pretty anyway. She had a beautiful face and laughed a lot. Laure was disappointed to see that she hadn’t brought any of her dogs, not even the two tiny ones, which sometimes traveled with her. She said they hadn’t come this time because she wasn’t staying long, and it was too big a trip for them.

  They had lunch in an outdoor dining room they used in the summer, next to the pool, and after lunch they all went swimming. Then the grown-ups went for a walk, and the housekeeper kept an eye on Sylvie and Laure at a table near the pool.

  “Do you think they’re talking about how mad she is at Papa?” Laure whispered to Sylvie, as she scribbled in a coloring book, and Sylvie shrugged.

  “Don’t tell Mama I told you that, or she’ll get mad at me,” Sylvie told her, wishing that she hadn’t, but she knew that Laure was worried too. Their father seemed to be away a lot these days. He never did that except when he was helping to make a movie of one of his books, and he wasn’t doing that at the moment. He said he was going to start another book, but he never went anywhere and hardly left the house once he did, so they knew he wasn’t writing.

  “The girls seem to be doing okay,” Venetia commented as the four sisters walked down one of the tree-lined paths on the grounds. There were tall shade trees overhead. The women were relaxed after their lunch and a swim afterwards.

  “I think they feel that something is off, they just don’t know what it is,” Nadia said quietly. “Nicolas is gone most of the time now. I think Sylvie suspects something.”

  “He should be gone all the time,” Olivia said through pursed lips. “He should move out.”

  “That’s a big statement to the kids,” Venetia said cautiously. “I think you’re right to take it in stages,” she said moderately.

  “Why? Why drag it out?” Olivia countered, then turned to Nadia. “He’s involved with another woman, they’re having a baby. He doesn’t belong in your home anymore.”

  “Maybe not for me. But he’s still their father. It’s going to be a huge change for the girls when he moves out. Laure is only seven, and they worship him. And no matter what he’s done now, he’s still a wonderful father.”

  “They’ll have to get used to it.” Olivia wouldn’t temper her position. “They’re old enough to understand. They must have friends with divorced parents, even in France.”

  “I want to make this as easy as I can for them,” Nadia said, and Olivia looked at her sharply.

  “For them, or for yourself? Are you just trying to leave the door open so he can come back if he breaks up with the girl?”

  “He hasn’t even left yet,” Nadia said quietly.

  “That’s my point. You should have thrown his ass out after Cannes. What are you waiting for, Nadia? She’s having a baby, and it sounds like he’s almost living with her.”

  “I’m just not ready to take such huge steps. I need time to get used to this too.”

  “Do you want him back?” Athena interrupted both of them. It was probably the most important question of all.

  “I haven’t decided. He did a stupid thing once years ago. It was just a one-night stand. I was pregnant. I didn’t want to end our marriage, and he felt terrible about it. I stayed and he never did it again. This is different. He’s up to his neck in it. At first I just thought it was a horrible indiscretion, a moment of madness, and we could recover from it. I’m not so sure of that now. In fact, I’m sure we can’t. The whole world knows about it. The baby will tie him to Pascale forever, even if they don’t stay together. And even after spending half my life here, I don’t think I’m French enough to live with this and pick up where we left off. It’s just not possible. I loved him so much. Now I’m not sure what I think, or how I feel. It’s like there’s too much noise in my head to know what I want.”

  “You can’t love a man who has made a laughingstock of you,” Olivia said coldly. “That’s pathetic. You should hate him by now.”

  “I don’t,” Nadia said honestly. She was a gentle soul, and not given to extreme reactions like her sister.

  “I’d leave Harley in a hot minute if he cheated on me.” They could see she meant it. Olivia took no shit from anyone. She was a rigid, uncompromising person, even in matters of the heart. She was a colder person than her younger sister.

  “I’m not sure what I’d do,” Venetia said thoughtfully, as they turned back on the path and headed toward the château. Of all of them, she seemed to have the best marriage, although Nicolas and Nadia had seemed close to it. “I love Ben so much, it would break my heart. I’m not sure I’d go so far as to divorce him, maybe for the kids’ sake, but I don’t think I’d ever feel the same about him again.” She was trying to imagine herself in Nadia’s shoes, and had a hard time doing it. At the thought of it, a shiver ran down her spine. She hoped Ben would never cheat on her, and, in spite of all her exuberance and joie de vivre, she thought it would kill her and she’d go dead inside. The idea of losing the life and man she loved was unbearable, just as it was for Nadia now. Nadia still felt dazed and numb. She felt as though she’d been underwater since the Festival in Cannes. “What would you do?” Nadia asked Athena, who had just picked a wildflower from the side of the path and was twirling it in her hand.

  “That’s what my carving knives are for. That’s why I always keep them with me.” She had a professional set in a fancy case that was her prize possession. Her sisters laughed at her response, and then she grew serious.

  “I honestly don’t know what I’d do if Joe cheated on me and knocked someone up. We’re not married, but we might as well be. He’s not just my lover, he’s my best friend. We’re partners in everything we do, we give each other advice. We insist that we’re separate people because we’re not married, but I’m not sure that’s true. We’re so much in harmony with each other, sometimes we say the same thing at the same time, or come to the same conclusion about a project. Sometimes we even show up dressed alike, which is really weird. We love the same food, same people. It all works. I think if I found out he was cheating on me, it would destroy me. And the bitch of it is I love Nicolas. He’s part of our family now. I’d love to sit down with him and ask him what the fuck he’s doing. It sounds like he went nuts for a minute, and now he’s stuck with the massive consequences of it.”

  “He feels terrible about it,” Nadia said, grateful for Athena’s more temperate point of view.

  “He should have thought of that before he got into bed with her,” Olivia said harshly. Her brief time as a judge hadn’t made her any softer. In fact, she had gotten noticeably tougher since she’d been on the bench. Harley was a hardline guy too. He was older and politically conservative. Nadia didn’t know what Olivia’s excuse was. She definitely made her younger sister feel like a total failure because she wasn’t being harder on Nicolas and didn’t feel ready to rush into a divorce. Nadia had never been an indecisive person, but this was the biggest decision she had ever had to face, and she wanted to do the right thing for herself and her daughters. Their mother was leaning more in Olivia’s direction, Nadia knew, although Rose was more compassionate for all concerned.

  The three visitors went to their rooms to relax before dinner, since they were from different time zones and had only arrived that morning. Nadia went for a last swim with her girls, and had fun playing with them in the pool. They were just getting out of the pool when Nadia’s cellphone rang. It was Nicolas, asking to talk to Sylvie and Laure. He tried to talk to Nad
ia for a minute, but she handed the phone to Sylvie quickly, and walked away while they talked to their father. She was thinking of everything her sisters had said on their walk that afternoon.

  They had dinner at the château that night, cooked by Athena, who made some delicious dishes all with vegetables. She even made a pizza for the girls with a crust made of cauliflower. Nadia roasted two chickens to add to the meal. She set a pretty table, with small vases of flowers that Sylvie and Laure had gathered for her. Before dinner, they watched the sunset from the terrace and shared a bottle of excellent Chateau Margaux from Nicolas’s wine cellar.

  “We’ll go to the beach tomorrow,” Nadia promised, looking around at her sisters. It felt so good to be together, and however different their lives, their lifestyles, and their opinions, there was a bond that kept them close. They were bound by blood and history, their love for each other and their parents. She realized now how much all of that mattered. Their parents’ strong, loving marriage between two kind, intelligent, honorable people had served as a role model for them. Each of them had close, loving marriages and relationships, even Athena without the benefit of paperwork, which seemed insignificant to her. Nicolas’s parents had had a long marriage, but he had admitted to Nadia that early disappointments in their union and differences between them had led his father to have several mistresses and many affairs. His mother had turned a blind eye to it, as French women of their generation did, but she had never forgiven him for it. A chilly, polite, well-bred upper-class bitterness had set in. Nicolas said that he could always feel it when he was with them, and his mother hadn’t been a happy woman. Now he had created the same scenario, and provided an insurmountable obstacle for them that Nadia didn’t feel able to overcome.

  “Papa said he misses us,” Laure had said when she handed her mother the phone after talking to her father.

  “That’s nice,” Nadia said, forcing herself not to think about him, or who he was with. She didn’t want to spoil her four days with her sisters by thinking too much about him.

  Their first dinner together turned out to be a festive affair, with Venetia reminding them of some of their most outrageous adventures as young girls. Athena sneaking out of the house to go to parties their parents wouldn’t give her permission to attend, so she took matters into her own hands, Venetia getting drunk at senior prom, and the others helping to get her into the house, and running smack into their father in the kitchen at three a.m. He had carried her upstairs and put her to bed. Olivia had accidentally started a fire in her bedroom once, while hiding an ashtray with a cigarette in it under her sheets, and then forgetting it. Nadia dyed her hair blue. They talked about their good and bad boyfriends, their best friends at school, the parties they went to, and the ones they gave when their parents went away for a weekend and left them in the care of their trusted housekeeper, who let them get away with murder and was deaf anyway. They hadn’t done anything truly terrible, but had gotten up to plenty of mischief, and were partners in crime.

  Things had begun to change when Nadia decided to stay in Paris after junior year. Olivia went to law school then, Venetia had gone to Parsons to study design, got married, and pregnant almost immediately, and Athena moved to L.A. after dropping out of Connecticut College. It had been the slow unraveling of their tight-knit group. They were known everywhere in school and among their friends as the McCarthy Girls, a united front, the four musketeers. Wherever you found one, you rapidly noticed the others. There had been strength in numbers, and joy and fun, and unforgettable adventures. And even now, whenever they were together, there was that same feeling of allegiance and unity, of being allies and knowing that the others would always be there for them. Their mother had called them the four-headed monster whenever they banded together against her. Later, she admitted that they were a force to be reckoned with. There had always been honor codes between them. They never dated the same boys or stole men from each other. They never betrayed each other’s secrets. They never squealed to their parents, or got each other in trouble in school or at home. There had been plenty of papers for school that one of the others had written for them. Olivia had gotten the best English and history grades in high school, Athena had math and science nailed. Venetia was the most creative, and Nadia and Olivia got the best overall grades. If there was a stray dog in the neighborhood, it came home with Athena. She was still doing it. She told Sylvie and Laure all about her latest rescue dogs over dinner, and showed them pictures of the two tiny Chihuahuas, Chiquita and Juanita, riding on the back of Stanley, the mountain dog. The Chihuahuas were wearing little sparkling tutus and looked like dancers on horseback in the circus, which the girls loved.

  The girls were sorry that their aunt Venetia hadn’t brought her children with her. They always had a wild time with them, playing tag and hide-and-seek and running around outside. Olivia’s son acted like the elder statesman in the group, and was very circumspect. He was the same age as Venetia’s oldest son, Jack, who climbed trees and gave the younger ones piggyback rides, while Will, Olivia’s boy, would sit quietly and read a book. Venetia’s second son, Seth, and Will played chess sometimes, but her children preferred more athletic pursuits and contact sports, which Will didn’t indulge in. Just as the sisters were different from each other, their children reflected it, and the personalities of the next generation were just as varied. India, Venetia’s youngest, had the face of an angel, and took charge and ran them ragged wherever she was. She had her mother’s spirit, and her father’s irresistible charm. They all agreed that she would be a heartbreaker one day. Sophie and Laure were sweet, well-behaved little girls. And now there would be another child outside the circle, Nadia thought, Nicolas’s child with Pascale. She assumed that Sylvie and Laure would be spending time with him or her in the future, and they would be half sisters to a child none of their cousins would be related to or resemble. Until now, there was a family look among all of them. To some degree, they all looked like siblings, and there was a link between each of them, however slight.

  Nadia quietly went upstairs to put the girls to bed while the others were drinking coffee. When she returned, they poured themselves more wine. They exchanged more memories, and then Athena asked Olivia how she liked being on the bench.

  “I love it!” she said as her face lit up. “I’ve been jealous of Harley for years. I like it way better than just practicing law. It’s so three-dimensional, and I feel like I’m making a difference. It’s been really exciting.” They knew that Venetia was passionate about her job in fashion, and Athena had fun with her TV show and loved cooking, and Nadia had always loved her interior design work. She had important clients all over Europe, and had done two big apartments in New York and a spectacular vacation home in the Dominican Republic for one of her French clients recently, before the storm hit.

  Each of them had been lucky to find their chosen path early on, just as their mother had. Their father had had a distinguished career in investments and was respected in the financial community. Everyone knew and liked Wallace McCarthy. But none of the girls was drawn to the world of finance. He was the perfect balance to Rose, serious and grounded while she was creative. He had been a devoted father, interested in each of them, encouraging them at the start of their careers. He had died young, four years before, at seventy-two. Orphaned while he was in college, he made his family all-important to him once he married Rose and the girls were born. He was ten years older than their mother, and although old-school and traditional, he wasn’t stuffy. He had liked Ben and Nicolas immensely, and eventually got used to Joe and saw his merits, although he was somewhat unorthodox and informal, by their father’s standards. He had always worried that Harley was too old for Olivia, particularly since they married when Olivia was still in law school, and Harley was in his forties. Harley was closer to her parents’ age than to hers, but the marriage had proven solid, and her father had finally given up his objections, and had a good relationship with Harl
ey. As Rose pointed out to her husband, his concerns about his daughters’ choices of men wouldn’t change anything anyway. Olivia had always been headstrong and did what she wanted fearlessly. In Harley’s case, her instincts had been right. She was still happy with him fifteen years later, more now than ever.

  The girls had lived well growing up on the Upper East Side of New York in a brownstone their parents had bought before it cost a fortune to buy one. They didn’t live lavishly, but they were more than comfortable and had everything they wanted, went to private schools and the best colleges. They had all gone to Spence, a fancy venerable private girls’ school. Venetia had made her debut, after Athena had refused to. Venetia only did it so she could wear a fabulous white dress and have a Cinderella night at the cotillion. Olivia had objected to the whole concept, politically, at eighteen, and refused. Nadia had made her debut because she knew her parents wanted her to. She knew how much it meant to them, which hadn’t concerned Athena and Olivia.

  Nadia hated disappointing her parents, and tried hard not to. She was the most traditional of all of them. Olivia was extremely liberal politically in her teens, and was influential in women’s causes, but grew increasingly conservative with age, and under Harley’s influence. Athena had no politics, except where it affected dogs, and animal testing of any kind, and she was against capital punishment. Olivia was in favor of it now. Venetia got the news of the world filtered through the eyes of Women’s Wear Daily, the influential online trade publication of the fashion world, and the rest she read in Vogue and The Business of Fashion, also online. Nadia liked to read The New York Times, Le Figaro, and The Wall Street Journal when she had time to stay abreast of the news in the States. That way, she could talk intelligently with her clients and knew what was going on. Athena wrote articles for culinary magazines, and the readers loved them. She’d had a Q&A column for years in Gourmet magazine, but now wrote a blog on her website instead, and she posted beautiful photographs of food on her Instagram every day. They were happy, secure, stable women, who were each on the right path for them. And they had made good choices as adults, about their men, their careers, and their lives.