“It’s okay, there’s nothing scary in it,” Alix reassured him and he looked embarrassed. He was planning to spend the night with them, which her mother thought was the least they could do, and leave the next day.
He went outside after their tea, and wandered around the garden and the neighborhood. Isabelle had an herb garden she was very proud of and showed it to him, and a large cage in the back where she kept chickens that she said laid eggs every day.
“My grandmother had chickens when I was a kid,” he said, amused. He felt like a child again, being there, and Alix took him into town to show it to him before the shops closed at seven, and then they came back and had dinner with her mother. He had bought an excellent bottle of wine in town, and Isabelle was very pleased with it. She liked him, and they sat at the table and talked until midnight. Alix was surprised to discover that he was very knowledgeable about French and Italian art, and Isabelle was impressed by him too. She said he was a nice boy when they cleaned the kitchen after dinner, and he went out for a stroll in the warm night air, when Isabelle wouldn’t let him help in the kitchen.
They all went upstairs to bed when he came back. The house had four comfortable bedrooms, and Alix’s mother had turned one of them into a sewing room. She did beautiful embroidered linens she gave away as gifts, “just to keep her hand in,” she said. She sent boxes of them to Alix and Faye.
Isabelle was already in the kitchen when Alix came downstairs the next morning, and Ben appeared a few minutes later, showered and freshly shaved, in jeans with a white shirt. She served them warm croissants with homemade jam, which Alix pointed out she had only learned to make recently. But Isabelle loved her home, and doing domestic things there. She had friends in to dinner regularly. She enjoyed a nice life. And there was a man, Gabriel, she spent time with, a local doctor she had known for many years. He had been widowed for as long as she had, and was a few years older. Alix had met him and liked him, and was happy to know her mother wasn’t alone, and had friends and a man in her life. She and Gabriel had discussed living together and decided not to, but often spent weekends together, and he kept a sailboat on the coast, an hour or two away.
Isabelle kissed Ben warmly on both cheeks when he left, and told him to call if he had any problem. He was coming back in three days after he went exploring. He was hoping to get down the coast all the way to Nice, and to stop at several châteaux Alix had mentioned to him. He was looking forward to the adventure, as much as she was to being with her mother. It was the most time off they’d had in a year.
“He’s a good man,” her mother commented after he drove away in the rented car, and she gazed searchingly at her daughter. “No romantic interest?” Alix shook her head in answer. She liked him, but she didn’t want to have a relationship with him. Who had time? And it would spoil things between them.
“I like him a lot, and we work well together. Why ruin that?” Alix said matter-of-factly.
“Has he ever been married?” Isabelle was curious about him.
“Yes, he’s divorced. No kids. Jobs like ours, and being a Navy SEAL, don’t give you time for romance.” Isabelle already knew that, and that Alix had no faith in men sticking around since her father had died when she was a child, and Faye’s father three months after they married. She was leery of forming permanent attachments, so had picked a line of work that didn’t allow them. Isabelle was afraid she’d regret it one day, and she suspected Alix used her work to fill the void now without Faye.
“Well, I like him, and he’s very attractive. It seems a waste to have someone like that so close at hand and not do anything about it.” Isabelle was mischievous as she said it.
“If it didn’t work out, it would be a mess at work. This is better, for both of us. He’s not interested either,” Alix assured her.
“You young people today don’t seem to want relationships. No one gets married, particularly if they have children. It’s all a little backward, isn’t it? And it must get lonely.”
“It does at times,” Alix admitted, and she smiled at the term “young people.” She was turning forty in a year, and Ben was three years older than she was. They were no longer kids, and the die had been cast for both of them. She couldn’t see herself getting married again and neither could he, from what he’d said. He always said that his marriage had ended badly, and hers had barely existed, except to legitimize Faye’s birth. She could hardly remember her husband now, nineteen years later. “Maybe my generation doesn’t have the faith in marriage yours did. We saw too many end badly, our parents’ and our own.”
“Your father and I had a very good marriage,” Isabelle said staunchly. She had always said that to Alix, but she had never remarried either, and didn’t seem to feel the need.
They had a lunch of bread and cheese and local salami with a bottle of wine at a table in the garden, and then they biked into town together, and Alix looked over at her mother and smiled. She loved being with her, it made her realize how seldom she had fun anymore, since she was always working. That was the difference in France. Quality of life was so important, and in the States, it was all about work and your career. There were merits to both, but it was so nice to be here and savor the moments together.
They talked and read at night, and her mother did her embroidery. Her friends dropped by to say hello to Alix and bring her little gifts, mostly things they had made or grown. Her mother’s friend Gabriel came by and invited them to dinner at an excellent restaurant, and she felt as though someone had fast-forwarded the film when she saw Ben drive up to the house on their last night. He looked tanned and relaxed and said he had had a wonderful time, eating at local restaurants and visiting churches and châteaux. Isabelle made a feast for them that night, and invited Gabriel to join them, and Alix loved seeing how well they got along and that they laughed a lot. They were good natured and funny. Gabriel had a great sense of humor and told amusing stories. He was still practicing medicine at sixty-four, and Isabelle said he was an excellent doctor. It was a perfect evening, and after Gabriel left and Ben had gone to bed, Alix told her mother how much she had enjoyed the time with her.
“You should try to come back more often. You always have a home here,” she said tenderly and hugged her daughter before they went upstairs arm in arm and Alix kissed her outside her bedroom. She knew she would remember this visit for a long time. Isabelle didn’t mention Ben again as a possible romance for her, if that wasn’t what Alix wanted, but Alix could see how much her mother liked him, and why. He was such a kind man, and away from work, he was funny and easygoing too. Isabelle had commented that it was odd that he’d never had children, when she talked to Alix about him, and she said that some people didn’t want them, and if not, it was just as well they didn’t have them. And if his marriage had ended badly, it was best that they hadn’t had kids, this way he didn’t have to see his ex-wife again, instead of battling with each other while a child grew up with parents who hated each other. Children weren’t for everyone.
It was painful saying goodbye to her mother the next day after they had breakfast in the kitchen. Ben carried their bags down and put them in the car, and came back to thank Isabelle for her hospitality, and she gave him a warm hug and kissed him on both cheeks. “Keep her out of trouble,” she said, glancing at Alix.
“Don’t worry, I do.” And then he went to wait for her in the car so she could be alone with her mother to say goodbye.
Alix found it hard to leave her, she always did. Her mother was just old enough now at sixty-two for Alix to worry about her.
“I’ll try to come back soon,” she promised, but they both knew it might not happen, given the demands of her career.
“I’ll be here whenever you want to come home. And Faye promised to come over this summer. She can stay as long as she wants,” and then she held Alix in her arms for a long moment, as tears rolled down their cheeks.
“I love you, Maman,” Alix whispered. Her mother nodded, unable to speak for a moment, and then s
miled through her tears and looked proudly at her daughter.
“I love you too, be safe,” she whispered as Alix kissed her again, hugged her one more time, and then tore herself away and ran to the car where Ben was waiting. She waved for as long as she could see her mother as they drove away, and tears were still running down her cheeks as they drove up the road, and Ben gently patted her hand.
“What a terrific woman,” he said, happy to have met her. It gave him new insights into the woman he worked with. Despite the insanity of their job, she was a whole person with a solid base, and a mother who loved her and knew her and accepted her, and allowed her to be herself. It seemed like a wonderful way to grow up, and he wished he had a mother like her. Alix was a lucky woman, and he hoped he’d see Isabelle again. “Thank you for introducing me to her, and letting me stay there. I didn’t want to intrude on your time with her.”
“She liked you,” Alix said, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose on a delicately embroidered handkerchief her mother had given her, with lily of the valley on it and her initials in fine silver thread. Her needlework was as beautiful as ever. “She couldn’t understand why we’re not involved with each other.” He didn’t tell her that sometimes he couldn’t either, but it was simpler this way, and like Alix, he didn’t want to screw up what they had.
“That sounds very French,” he said, smiling at her. “I liked her friend Gabriel. They’re cute together.” Alix nodded, and thought the same thing.
“French people are never too old for love. There’s a saying here, ‘Love has no age,’ L’amour n’a pas d’âge. Maybe they’re right. I think I’ll save that for when I’m old. I’m too busy now.” What she said was true, and he thought it was too bad that Alix felt that way. She had a lot to offer a man, if she was willing, and she deserved to have a full life. They both did. They just didn’t have time to devote to another person full-time.
“You’ll be as beautiful as she is at her age. You two look like sisters.”
“Thank you for that,” she said, and smiled at him.
Everything seemed more human here. It made her think she might want to come back to live in France one day, maybe when she retired, but that was light-years away.
They rode along in silence for a while, and when they got back to Paris, she was sorry to see the brief holiday end. It had been everything she had hoped it would be, and she was glad Ben had been there, and met her mother. It made them seem more like real friends now, not just two people assigned to a job as a team.
Chapter 8
When Tony came to have dinner with Olympia on Tuesday, her housekeeper stayed to serve them. And his Secret Service men ate in the kitchen. Tony and Olympia had crab salad, which she knew he loved, steak for him afterward, and they drank champagne. It always felt festive when he came to dine with her, and she tried to serve him what he liked to eat. He often complained that Megan wanted to go out every night, and hated staying home with him. If the cook was off, they went to a restaurant in Washington. That was the trouble with being married to a girl her age. Even having babies hadn’t slowed her down. So Olympia tried to provide a peaceful private haven for him when he came to New York, just as he tried to make her feel cared for and protected, like Bill used to do. But the two men were very different.
Bill had always encouraged her to overcome her natural shyness and step out into the world. Tony urged her to stay home, out of sight, away from prying eyes, and told her that after the trauma she’d experienced when Bill was shot standing next to her, he would understand if she never left the house again. It gave her permission not to, and after he had said it often enough, she hardly ever did. She was more comfortable at home anyway, with familiar things around her, and she couldn’t bear the curiosity of strangers, and sympathetic whispers once they recognized her, so she never went out anymore, even with him. She hadn’t even seen her brother in Connecticut and his family in a year. He was too busy to visit her, and she didn’t make the effort to see them, since they had never been close.
The result was that she existed in isolation, except for Tony’s visits to New York, when he came to dinner and sat by the fire with her afterward, telling her about what he was doing, and asking about her progress on the book. He entered her world like a secret garden, where she was hidden away. It was precisely what her children found so upsetting, and Olympia’s brother thought so too, although he never came to see her. Olympia’s children felt as though their mother had been kidnapped by aliens, and had no idea that Tony was convincing her to become a shut-in, and wanted her to himself. Even Jennifer was worried about her. Now that she was working on the second book, she never even left the house to take a walk and get some air. She stayed in her study with Bill’s photos and memorabilia around her, steeped in their lost world.
They had Grand Marnier soufflé for dessert that night, another of his favorites. Their evenings together were like a fantasy for him, and he always told her he loved her, and would never let anything bad happen to her again, as though he could protect her from real life. But she no longer had a life, except when she saw him. If he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want anyone else to either, not even her children. And when they pressed her to come out of her shell again, he assured her he thought she was still too fragile and it would be too traumatic for her, and she believed him.
Jennifer thought there was something sinister about his influence over her in total isolation, but she knew how fiercely Olympia trusted and respected him, and she was afraid to challenge what he’d said. She thought the worst possible thing for Olympia was staying shut away like an invalid, and what she needed was to get back in the world again, just as Darcy insisted. But Tony’s voice was stronger, closer, and more frequent, he saw Olympia more often than her children, who were too far away. Olympia believed every word he uttered, and accepted it as gospel.
“I’ll try to come back, maybe this weekend,” he promised when he left her. “Megan’s in a tennis tournament, and she’s having dinner with some of her women friends afterward. She won’t care if I come up here for dinner. I’ll let you know what works.” Not that it mattered, since she didn’t go out anyway. All she needed to do was ask the cook to stay to prepare dinner for them, and pick the menu. He kissed her gently on the forehead, put his arms around her, and held her before he left. Those were the moments she lived for now, knowing that someone cared about her, as she existed in an eternal winter, without human touch or even conversation for days on end, except with him on the phone or with Jennifer about the book. It made Tony even more important to her, and made her even more dependent on him than she might have been otherwise. And her children still thought him a godsend and their mother’s only savior and friend.
Darcy often said to Josh that she didn’t know what they’d do without him, since she refused to see any of her old friends. If they had been older, and closer to home, Jennifer would have talked to them about it, but she didn’t think they were mature enough to understand that their mother was being systematically isolated and controlled, and it was destroying her. She was becoming more disconnected from the world every day. And the key words Tony used when he talked to her were “fragile,” “frail,” and “traumatized” to reinforce the idea that she was. Hearing Olympia repeat it afterward about herself made her assistant want to scream. She didn’t know what Tony’s game was, or his purpose, but whatever it was, it was a dangerous one for Olympia. It reminded Jennifer of the old movie Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman, where her husband had convinced her she was insane. In this case, Tony had convinced Olympia that she was too damaged by her husband’s shocking death to face the world again, and it had worked. She believed every word he said, and there was no one to counter it. Jennifer didn’t dare say anything against him, and she knew her employer wouldn’t have tolerated it.
When he left her house that night, Olympia went back to her desk, to work on the book. She often sat there reminiscing about Bill and looking at old photographs until three or four A.M., and then sl
ept the next day until noon. Jennifer felt helpless to influence her or change it. It was Tony who subtly ruled her life now. She hadn’t married him, but instead he owned her. And not only had she lost Bill so shockingly, she’d lost herself as well, and didn’t even know it.
—
The day that Ben and Alix flew back from Paris after their brief vacation, another threat letter arrived for her at the network. Her assistant delivered it to Felix, and he called the CIA to inform them. It was similar to the first one, but slightly more vehement. The letter blamed her for inquiries about the lobbyists, which had continued. The CIA had been doing some digging to follow up on Felix’s tip, and someone had attributed the investigation to Alix. The National Clandestine Service officer asked to speak to her, and Felix explained again that she wouldn’t be back until the next day, and she had been out of the country for a week. They advised that she not stay at her apartment, and that she would need bodyguards. Felix sent both her and Ben a text, which they received when they landed, urging her to stay with Ben or someone else until further notice. He said the officers were coming to see her again the next day at work. And the FBI had been told to provide protection for her, starting the next day as well.
“Welcome home,” she said, looking unhappy as soon as she read Felix’s text. They hadn’t even gone through baggage claim yet, and she was already being faced with another threat letter, and couldn’t go back to her own apartment. “I’m really sorry,” she said to Ben. “I’ll talk to them tomorrow. They’ve got to let me go home.” He had offered to let her stay with him again.
“Not if it’s not safe for you,” he said sensibly. “What’s the big deal? I’m happy to have you. It’s company for me.” But she wanted to sleep in her own bed, surrounded by her own things, not camp out with him.
Dangerous Games Page 11
