Blessing in Disguise

by Danielle Steel

  Chapter Eight

  It was harder to adjust to Declan’s death than she had expected. They hadn’t been married long, but they had all come to depend on him in the two years they’d known him. He took care of everything, more than Isabelle realized, and suddenly they were all lost without him.

  Theo had been quieter than ever since her own father’s death almost exactly a year before, and with each passing year Xela got angrier and more argumentative and picked more fights with Theo. Declan had been the only one who could talk her out of it and be the peacemaker. And the ray of sunshine in their midst once she arrived was Oona. She was always happy, smiling, gurgling, and had everyone laughing from the moment she came home from the hospital.

  At thirty-nine, Declan hadn’t expected to die and had left no will. What he had went to Oona, but he had very little, just some meager savings. He owned no property. He made a decent living as an attorney, but spent it as quickly as he made it.

  The only one with real means and a substantial inheritance was Theo, and it was well safeguarded for her until she was old enough to manage it.

  Isabelle wanted to start her business as an art consultant, but waited almost a year after Oona’s birth to set it up. She was too upset by Declan’s death to do it before that. But once she established her business, it took off. She had solid clients, and the business grew exponentially over the years. She was one of the most respected art consultants in New York, just as Putnam had hoped when he left her the money in his will.

  Isabelle concentrated solely on work and her daughters while they were growing up. Each of them had so many traits of their respective fathers. They were almost like an experiment in genetics. Isabelle sometimes wondered if her genetic contribution had even mattered. Theo looked like Put and acted like him so much of the time, retreating to her room as a child, studying subjects that interested her. And a trip to India when she graduated from college changed her life forever. The world she had dreamed of had been waiting for her. In the years since, at thirty-seven, she had built villages, paid to construct dams and lay sewer pipes, brought electricity into the darkness, built hospitals and provided medical assistance, and good and fresh water for remote parts of India and Africa, although India was where she preferred to be most of the time. She lived in a bubble where only the people she was assisting mattered. She had observed surgeries, tended sick children in epidemics, and walked for miles carrying dying newborns to hospitals hoping to save them. Her family was of far less interest to her, given what she saw around her every day. She had put her father’s money to good use for the past fifteen years. Xela always said, with some irritation, that being with Theo was like being with a modern-day saint.

  Isabelle heard from her infrequently and admired what she was doing. As far as she knew there had been no serious romances in her life. She was astonishingly like Putnam, and although she was in the world, she was never really part of it, and had trouble connecting with anyone at a personal level. She came to New York once a year to see her mother, and her father’s bankers in Boston, but she had little in common with the rest of the family or her sisters, other than the fact that they had the same mother, which seemed like a very thin bond to her.

  Xela’s war with the human race and eternal anger, particularly with her older sister, had continued into her teen years and thereafter. She liked to say that Theo had dedicated herself to emptying the ocean of human misery with a thimble and was about as effective, dismissing all of Theo’s acts of compassion and kindness. For every hundred people she fed or saved, there were thousands more right behind them who were going to die anyway, no matter how much of her money she spent.

  Xela had nothing in common with Theo and found her fatally annoying. Xela felt that she rose above every comment and occasion, and poured money into a thirst she could never quench, instead of doing something more sensible with it.

  Xela had a remarkable head for business, with her father’s creativity and mother’s integrity, which was a winning combination. Isabelle’s passion for art didn’t interest her, but she had real entrepreneurial talent and a Harvard MBA. But she never had the money to fund her projects, and spent her life wrestling with venture capitalists who wanted majority control of her companies, which she didn’t want to relinquish. She knew she could make a fortune with some of her ideas, but she needed the investors first. She had never asked Theo to help her, and was sure she wouldn’t have anyway. She wasn’t saving lives, she was doing business and trying to take her latest venture public without giving up control to the VCs who wanted to invest. Her work life was a constant struggle, and her personal relationships were more of the same. She’d been involved with married men and narcissists, sociopaths like her father, or men who wanted to control her or dismissed her impressive talents as second rate.

  At almost thirty-two, she hadn’t had a successful relationship or business venture yet. She had announced at thirty that she was giving up on romance and focusing only on work. And she didn’t seem any happier for it. Isabelle was sorry for her and wished she could give her the money she needed, but she couldn’t afford the kind of funding the venture capitalists could give her. Theo could have, but she had no interest in business, and the two sisters had never been close, and even less so once they grew up.

  The one in their midst who was always happy, and had been all her life, was Oona, just like Declan. The glass was half full to her, or better. She made compromises, found the positive solutions, and made things work. She had no interest in business or art, and had none of Theo’s grandiose plans to improve the world. She had spent her junior year in Florence where she fell in love with an Italian aristocrat who owned a farm in Tuscany, near a town called Castellina in Chianti. She had left school and married Gregorio at twenty-one, despite Isabelle’s reservations. Five years later at twenty-six, nearly twenty-seven, she had three sons and was expecting twins.

  Oona loved Gregorio’s family, cooked lunch and dinner for her husband and children every day, from recipes her mother-in-law had taught her, and she loved living on their farm. Gregorio controlled everything in their world, and lived in the dark ages in terms of modern relationships, but Oona didn’t seem to mind. She loved everything about her life, including her charming, macho, old-world, domineering husband. There was no denying that she was happy and had the life she wanted. She hadn’t been back to New York since she’d married him. Isabelle visited her in Tuscany once or twice a year, where Gregorio’s father openly flirted with her in front of his wife. It was another culture and not what Isabelle would have wanted, but it suited Oona. She was undaunted by the prospect of having twins. She would soon be the mother of five at twenty-six. All she ever wanted was for everyone to be happy.

  Visiting her was always a joy, because she was so content with her children, her marriage, and her life. She had Declan’s easygoing disposition and positive view of the world. She loved both of her sisters, who she thought were talented and remarkable, although she hadn’t seen Theo in several years. Theo never went to Italy, and Africa and India were not in Oona’s travel plans. Gregorio would have had a fit if she went so far away to visit her sister.

  Neither Theo nor Xela seemed interested in marriage or having children of their own. Theo was too much of a dreamer and felt obligated to save the world. And Xela was somewhat self-centered, and wanted to make her mark in business before focusing on anything else.

  Isabelle couldn’t imagine three more different women, or three more different fathers. Each man had left a mark on his child, even though the girls had hardly known them, or didn’t remember them at all. Sadly neither Xela nor Oona remembered Putnam or Declan, who had been the good men in their mother’s life.

  Theo remembered some of her father’s words to her, though her memories of him were fading now, twenty-seven years after his death. But she was carrying out the mission he had given her, to use his money, once it was hers, to change the world, a
nd she had.

  Isabelle was the bridge between them and had her own regrets. She couldn’t boast a successful romantic life, from her own perspective. Having Theo had been a bold thing to do, with a man who was so unable to function in the world, and yet he had protected her in many ways, and she had loved him until his death.

  And Declan had been the joy in her life, the normalcy she had always longed for and never found until him. Luck had been cruel to them when he died. She wondered sometimes if she’d only been destined to be happy for a short time. A few months with Putnam, and with Declan. And Collin had remained a terrible mistake. She had told Xela the truth about him when she’d turned eighteen, that her father had been a criminal and had gone to prison. Xela had searched for stories about him on the Internet and had discovered that he had gone to prison for a second time, after he got out, for a major credit card scam. She was deeply ashamed of it, and had said she hated him for a while. She hadn’t mentioned him in years.

  * * *

  —

  Isabelle loved all of her daughters. She had tried to give each of them what they needed, and wasn’t sure if she had succeeded. She had attempted to give Theo a more realistic view of the world than her entirely altruistic one, working with people who had no intimate connection to her life. She didn’t want her to end up like her father, unable to function outside his own world, beyond his walls, even with his child for more than a few weeks a year. He had deprived himself of the love and bonding that might have made him happier. Theo had somehow taken the torch from his hand and was carrying it for him, trying to atone for what he thought of as his sins.

  Xela was always trying to scale tall walls and resented everyone for what they had and she didn’t, a father, a fortune, a birthright. She focused much of her bitterness and anger on her older sister. She had been jealous of Theo all her life, whether she admitted it or not.

  Only Oona was satisfied with the life she had chosen, but Isabelle wondered if it was enough, to be dictated to and controlled by Gregorio, as though she had no mind of her own and was incapable of thinking for herself.

  It led Isabelle to consider the men she had chosen, a recluse unable to take responsibility for their child, although he loved them both, a criminal who had duped her, and the kind man she should have met and married from the first, if she had waited for him to turn up. Instead she had fallen prey to the fascination Putnam represented to her, and the excitement of Collin, who was all glitter and flash, smoke and mirrors and nothing real. She had been leery of him at first, but not enough. Declan would have been worth the wait until he came along, but she was too young to know that then. She had tried to impart that to her girls, that exciting men were never the right ones in the end. The fireworks always burned out quickly.

  She had never tried again after Declan died. She was too shattered at first, and too busy with her children and her career after that. There was always something more important to do than trying to meet someone, or give them a chance when she did. She always had an excuse not to get involved, just as Theo and Xela were doing now. Only Oona had embraced love wholeheartedly, whether Isabelle fully approved of Gregorio or not. She just wished he would be more respectful of Oona’s intelligence. As a result, Oona assumed that she would be incapable of doing anything without him, even though she helped him run the farm, cooked his meals, brought up his children, and had loved him passionately for five years. As far as Isabelle was concerned, he was a lucky man. But her daughter thought she was the fortunate one, and Isabelle was willing to concede now that maybe that was enough. If you believed yourself lucky, maybe you were. And who was she to expect more for her daughter, or even herself?

  She often worried that she had somehow taught Theo and Xela to be afraid of love and the risk it represented, because her relationships with their fathers hadn’t worked out. And Xela’s harsh criticism of Theo bothered Isabelle too. Theo deserved their respect for the remarkable feats she had accomplished. She had carried out her father’s wishes more than he could ever have hoped, he would have been proud of her, and Isabelle was too.

  All Isabelle wanted was for her children to be happy. The only real happiness she had known as an adult was with Declan, but it was for so brief a time. She had been afraid she’d be disappointed if she tried to meet someone like him after he died. She had had no desire to try again for twenty-six years, and at fifty-eight, had decided that it was too late. She wasn’t old, and she didn’t look her age. Her business was thriving, but she was lonely now without the girls. With Theo in India, Oona in Tuscany, and Xela involved in her own life, she was alone almost all the time. Even that hadn’t given her the courage to try again. She just worked harder to fill the void. She went to exhibits and art auctions, met with new clients, and did research on paintings on the market until late at night, but her house was quiet, her weekends were deadly, and she went to bed alone. There were times, too many of them, when it didn’t seem like enough.

  She glanced at her watch just after two o’clock. She had an appointment downtown at three. She needed new glasses, and had finally admitted it to herself when she hadn’t noticed how close she was to the bookcase and banged her arm badly the week before. She still had a nasty bruise from it. Twice she had almost missed a step going down the stairs. It was time to get stronger glasses before she fell. And who would hear her or help her if she did? She lived alone. She wasn’t old enough to need assistance. All she needed were new glasses, she reminded herself. It wasn’t a tragedy, just a practical issue.

  At two-thirty, she put on her coat, picked up her bag, turned off the lights, set the alarm, and left the house. She was a self-sufficient woman and intended to stay that way for many years. The last thing her children needed was her becoming dependent on them or injuring herself in some foolish way.

  She was careful when she stepped off the curb as she waved an arm to hail a cab. When it stopped, she got in and gave the driver the address. She hoped the visit to the eye doctor wouldn’t take long. She had a new client coming to meet with her at six o’clock. He had been referred by another client. The new one wanted an entire art collection assembled, purchased, and installed in his new home and on his yacht. She was looking forward to meeting him. He was going to keep her busy for months.

  Her work was still her passion and brought her joy. She loved the people she met and the works of art she found for them. The new client would be fun. He was an innocent, admitted he knew little about art, and wanted her to educate him. He had lots of money to spend, as did most of her clients. She would help him build a collection tastefully, as they gathered the pieces he wanted to impress his friends and show off his wealth.

  * * *

  —

  The cab stopped at the address she had given him. It was a medical building with mostly dentists, X-ray labs, and a few physicians, her eye doctor among them. She hadn’t been to see him in three years, and her eyes had seemed fine until now. It was only in the last few months she had begun bumping into things.

  She gave her name to the receptionist, and thumbed through an art magazine she’d brought with her, still thinking about the man she was meeting at six. They’d only spoken over the phone and never met.

  Twenty minutes later, a nurse called her in, asked some questions to update her chart, same address, phone number, job, next of kin. She always listed Xela since she was the only one in New York, but hoped they’d never have reason to call her since she was the least nurturing of her children, and the least responsive.

  The doctor came in shortly after, Dr. Phillip Calvin, a pleasant-looking man with a nondescript face. He glanced at Isabelle’s chart and got started with the exam.

  She had read the eye charts that appeared in the machine that felt like looking through binoculars, and he asked her which was best, left or right, near or far. It was all routine. And then he asked her a number of other questions she didn’t recall his asking her before
, but they were all fairly mundane. He asked her about recent problems with her vision, and she told him matter-of-factly that she had bumped into a few things, which told her it was time to come in and get stronger glasses. She said she had missed a step once or twice on the stairs, and reminded him that she didn’t want bifocals, or even progressive lenses. She’d tried them before and she found them awkward, and they made her feel sick. He jotted some notes on her chart and continued the exam, and then looked at her carefully when he finished.

  “Ms. McAvoy,” she had reverted to her own name after her brief marriage to Declan, “we have a problem. It’s called macular degeneration, which can progressively dim your central vision and reduce it to a very narrow field. It can also affect your peripheral vision.”

  “Can or will?” She interrupted him with a sharp look.

  “That depends,” he said honestly, “on how severe it is, how rapidly it advances, and how responsive to treatment. We can slow it down considerably, although we can’t restore you to perfect vision. There are two kinds of macular degeneration, wet and dry. We can effect considerable improvement with treatment for wet. There’s nothing we can do for dry.” It sounded like a death sentence to her as she listened.

  “Which kind do I have?”

  “You’re lucky, you have wet macular degeneration, in both eyes.” It didn’t sound “lucky” to her.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye. She had never been cowardly about anything in her life, and met her challenges head-on.