“Why would he leave anything to me?” She was touched by his generosity as a friend, and much later, once she knew, Olivia wondered why she hadn’t suspected before then. Her mother had been a convincing liar.
“He was our friend,” Margaret said primly. Her own parents had died before that and had only seen Olivia a few times in her life, outraged by the fact that she was illegitimate, for which they blamed their only daughter. They remained at a distance from her, as though her immorality was contagious.
It took Olivia almost a year, till after she graduated from Columbia, to again ask her mother why George had left her a trust fund. It continued to puzzle her. Margaret finally told her the truth, that there had been no father who died in a car accident. George, the bestselling author and bestower of all gifts, was her father. Margaret had effectively robbed her daughter of the opportunity to speak to him, with the full knowledge that he was her father. It took Olivia a long time to forgive her mother. Margaret’s life had begun when she met George Lawrence and ended when he died. He left her a modest bequest, which she could live on, though not lavishly. She stopped all editing and retired once she could no longer work on his books. She rarely left the house, and continued to hang around her apartment, as though she thought he still might show up. She slept much of the time, self-medicated with tranquilizers, and began drinking heavily after he died.
Olivia hated visiting her. Liver disease and dementia had taken over in Margaret’s late fifties. She died at seventy, having given up on life twenty-two years before, when George died. She’d never really had a life. She had given up her soul, her dreams, and her youth to George Lawrence. Olivia had provided a nurse for her for the last few years, to make sure she didn’t injure herself when she drank too much, added to her dementia. She often forgot that George was dead and thought that she was waiting for him to come.
Looking around her mother’s apartment, Olivia felt anger rise in her like bile, thinking back to the years when her mother waited for George to show up, and all the holidays she and her mother had spent alone while he went on fabulous vacations with his wife and children. In the end, his wife outlived both George and Margaret, and was in good health. Margaret had wasted her life waiting for him, thinking that one day things would be different. She had let it happen, had signed on willingly for a life where all of his needs were met, and none of hers.
Two editors from the publisher came to Margaret’s funeral at Frank Campbell, her nurses, Olivia, and no one else. She had lived in hiding with no friends, always waiting for George, his willing slave.
Olivia started packing her mother’s things the day after her funeral, which had been a bleak affair. Olivia went alone and held her mother’s ashes in a wooden box at the brief service. She packed cartons full of clothes, to give away, and others with her books. Olivia wanted none of it, except for a few pieces of furniture she sent to storage. The lesson she had learned from watching her mother was not to fade away and die, but to live life fully, not give up, and be true to yourself. Margaret had rambled on sometimes when Olivia visited her, asking when George was coming, and if he’d arrived yet. She was a shadow person, a ghost, who had willingly surrendered herself to live with a man who never risked his marriage for her. His wife always had the priority, and Margaret spent half a lifetime waiting for him. He no longer seemed like a hero to Olivia, once she knew who he had been to her. He was a selfish man, willing to sacrifice the woman who had handed over her life to him. Olivia didn’t know who she resented more, her mother for her lies and weakness, or her father for what he had done to Margaret in the name of love, because she allowed it. Nothing about it seemed loving to Olivia, and she wanted to erase all trace of them from the apartment. She had emptied it in two days and put it on the market to sell it.
And she found herself doing the same thing in her own office shortly after.
Olivia had worked hard for the last ten years on a decorating magazine she’d started. She had used some of her trust fund money to set it up and put her heart and soul into it. The magazine had failed at the same time as her mother’s death. Olivia had to fold her business, let the employees go, and clear out her office, on the heels of her mother’s funeral. All she seemed to do now was pack up painful memories. She put all the photographs of her mother and herself as a child in one box, to put them in a storage facility with the furniture. The rest of her mother’s belongings she gave away, clothes, personal items. It all reeked of sadness. Her mother had a collection of all George’s books. Olivia had read them before she knew he was her father. She thought his massive ego was evident on every page. She put them in a box to store them, since he was her father.
A month after she’d emptied her mother’s apartment, put it on the market, and closed her business, she sat in her own small apartment, wondering what to do next. Her mother had left her some money. She’d been frugal, and hardly spent any after George died, since she didn’t know how long it would last. As a result, there was plenty left, enough for Olivia to buy herself a new apartment eventually or go away for a long time. She could leave without having to worry about her mother dying while she was gone, or her business failing. It already had. The worst had happened now. She was free at last, with all the lessons her mother had taught her about how not to live a life. It was ironic that while trying not to get attached to the wrong person, and not following in her mother’s footsteps, not surrendering herself to a married man, she had dedicated herself to her business as an alternative to marriage or a serious relationship. Like her mother, Olivia had few friends, and she was alone in the world now, and had lost her magazine after a decade of hard work. She didn’t have to worry about the business anymore either. She didn’t need to think about her mother. She could go where she wanted, do whatever she pleased. There was nothing holding her back, nobody to take care of, no business to grow, or think about. She had no parents, no husband, no children, no business, no job, and no boyfriend. And a small circle of friends she hardly saw anymore and hadn’t seen socially in years. She was always too busy working. At forty-three, Olivia had nothing and she was alone. She could go anywhere in the world she wanted and had no idea where that would be. She had been to Paris a number of times and loved it. She knew no one there, and didn’t speak French, but maybe it didn’t matter. She had never felt so alone in her life, or so liberated and free.
She turned on her computer and looked on the Internet. She looked up prices of airline tickets. She could afford them, and to take some time off, with the money her mother had left her. Her pride was hurt by the collapse of her magazine, but she had free time now. She wanted to use it well.
Feeling bold and wanting to make a strong statement, she booked a first-class one-way ticket to Paris. She picked a website that showed short-term apartments to rent on the Left Bank. She took one for a month. It looked bright and airy, with a view of the Seine. She had no idea what she was going to do when she got there, but one thing was for sure, she had learned the most important lesson of all. Nothing and no one lasts forever, and the one thing she wasn’t going to do was hide and let her life slip past her, like her mother had.
Whatever it took, and whatever it cost her, she was going to Paris. She would forget the magazine she had lost, and her mother’s morbidly depressing life. She was going to live! If she didn’t, she would have learned nothing from her mother, and Olivia’s whole life would have been a waste, spent on a failed magazine, watching her mother fade away. She had even cheated Olivia of the chance to have a real conversation with the man who had been her father, and neither he nor her mother were ever brave or honest enough to admit it to her. They were weak, frightened, selfish people who thought of no one but themselves, without courage or integrity. Their lives were defined by selfishness and cowardice.
Whatever the future brought, Olivia wasn’t going to waste it, or hide from it. She had only one mission now and that was to be fully alive and seize every m
inute that came her way. She had learned from her mother how not to be, and she was determined to use the lesson well, wherever it took her, whatever it taught her, even if it was frightening at times. She had a life to live, and nothing was going to stop her now.
Chapter 4
When Joachim’s plane from Buenos Aires landed in Paris, he went straight to his mother’s apartment. He had wanted her to get a better one for years, the neighborhood had become commercial, with shops and restaurants all around her, and the building was old and poorly maintained. But she said she liked where she was. It was where she had lived with Francois since she’d come to France twenty-five years before, and it was home for her. She had all her treasures and souvenirs there. It was orderly chaos, with clutter that she loved, although Joachim would have liked something better for her. He had offered to buy her an apartment from the savings he had invested well, and she always refused. She was happy where she was and had no desire for luxuries. She had learned how meaningless they were when her father lost everything he had.
She was still at work when Joachim got there, and he tried to tidy up some of the mess while he waited for her. He did her breakfast dishes and cleaned the kitchen. He had bought her a dishwasher, which she seldom used, and a washing machine she had grudgingly accepted, and conceded was practical. He vacuumed the living room when he finished in the kitchen, fluffed up the cushions on the couch, and made neat stacks of the art magazines she had everywhere. He was used to having other people do that kind of work in his job, but he liked doing it for his mother, and wished he could do more for her.
She arrived punctually at eight o’clock that night, after taking the metro home. She still worked a full day, from nine a.m. to seven-thirty in the evening, even at eighty-one. She didn’t mind the long hours and loved her work, playing art detective as she tracked down paintings, as well as the people she hoped would receive them after the appropriate identification. The work still thrilled her after all these years. She had no intention of retiring, and didn’t see why she should. She was blessed with good health and was agile and active for her age. Although her face was weathered, she still had a translucent beauty, and the same fair looks and piercing blue eyes as her father had had, and her sons.
She was startled to see Joachim sitting in her living room reading one of her art magazines when she got home. She knew he would be coming back from Buenos Aires soon, but wasn’t sure what day.
“Oh, you’re here,” she said, smiling at him. He stood up to kiss her. She had a straight back and good posture for a woman her age. She was wearing a simple black dress, and her snowy white hair was pulled back in a tight bun. There was a severe simplicity and beauty to her, and always warmth in her vibrant blue eyes whenever she saw her son. “When did you get in?”
“This morning.” She glanced around as he said it and smiled.
“I see you’ve been doing some housekeeping.” Her apartment always looked better when he was there. Housecleaning bored her and she didn’t mind a little friendly mess, as long as it was clean. She was immaculate, just messy.
“I was waiting for you to come home. You still keep such long hours, Mama,” he reproached her gently.
“I have a lot to do. I’m hot on the trail of a family for a beautiful Monet. I’m trying to find the heirs. Two of them survived Auschwitz but would be very old now. I’m hoping they had children. I think they might be in London, or Geneva, if they’re the right ones. They never came back to France.” She knew all the stories, and the heartbreaks that had happened, the tragedies where entire families had been wiped out. Many of the paintings she was able to trace and lay hands on went to museums, mostly the Louvre, because of her efforts. She preferred the outcomes where family members, even distant ones, received the artwork in the end. She loved the human side of what she did, and it was a joy to locate the paintings too. Some had remained hidden in storerooms for nearly eighty years. A few were damaged almost beyond repair, but most had been well preserved. Some were still being found in Germany, and a great many had traveled to South America when members of the Nazi High Command had been able to escape and take their concealed spoils of war with them.
She took some pâté and sausages out of the refrigerator for their dinner. Joachim made a salad, and she heated some artichoke soup she had had for dinner the night before. It was an adequate meal and suited them both. She waited until they sat down to ask him about the trip.
“So how was it?” she asked Joachim with a tender look. Buenos Aires felt like another lifetime, and it was for her. It was still the home of her childhood and youth, where she had lived with her father and first husband, and where her sons had been born. She had a million memories that she rarely allowed herself to think of now. She had twenty-five years of memories in France to balance them, but knowing he had been in the city she had loved so much touched her heart, and she always hoped for some news of Javier.
“It was even more beautiful than I remembered,” Joachim admitted. “I have such happy memories there as a boy. There’s an undercurrent of sadness there now. The economy isn’t good, and people are suffering because of it, but there’s no place like it.” He still felt Argentine in some ways, and had maintained his citizenship, although thanks to his stepfather he had a French passport too, and was a dual national, French and Argentine. He had only lived in Paris for his student years, and five aimless years after that, when he pined for his brother and felt lost without him. And he had lived in England now for almost half his life. He felt an allegiance to all three countries. But he had a particular nostalgia for Argentina, because of his boyhood there. It had been a time of innocence for him, and he remembered it as a happy, carefree time. Once he left Argentina, he had been separated from his twin, which had been painful for him for many years. He accepted that a part of his soul was linked to Javier forever, perhaps because they were twins, which was a special bond. Sometimes it was hard for him to know where he ended, and Javier began, they had been like one person for so long during the early part of their lives.
“I don’t think I’ll go back, but it was nice seeing old friends, and all our familiar haunts,” Joachim continued, and he knew what his mother was thinking.
“Did you have any news of Javier?” she asked him immediately. There was pain in her eyes the moment she spoke.
He sighed before he answered, not sure how much to tell her. But she was strong, and he felt he owed her the truth, as much of it as he knew. “Not much. Nothing we didn’t know or haven’t heard before. I contacted Felipe MacPherson,” one of his old friends from school, with a Scottish father and Argentine mother. “He’s high up with the police and has the right connections to find out. He said when last sighted, Javier was still in Colombia, working for some very bad people. I’m not sure how high Javier is in the organization, and Felipe said he moves around. We’ve heard it before, Mama. When he disappeared, he joined the dark forces that have poisoned life there. I think he’s lost to us. But at least he’s still alive.”
“I’ve always felt he was,” she said, her shoulders drooping as she said it. “I always knew he had this in him right from the beginning. He’s not like you. He makes me think of Cain and Abel. I’m almost glad you did not see him or find him. I don’t want him to hurt you.” He thought his mother was dramatizing the situation, but admittedly, Javier was hanging out with, and presumably working for, the worst element of Argentine society, and the drug cartels in Colombia.
“Our life is here now,” Joachim said. “There’s nothing for us to go back to there. And even if we tried, we couldn’t find him. If he is as deeply embedded in the drug business as Felipe says, he’s probably in hiding. We’ll never get to him, unless he wants to find us. And he won’t come here.”
“You’re right not to go back,” his mother confirmed. “I don’t want you to. Leave it alone now. Francois said that too before he died. The people Javier is involved with are too dang
erous. I was worried about your going this time, but I didn’t think it fair to stop you. I know you’ve missed it.”
“I needed to go back. I’ve wanted to for a long time. I’ve done it. I made my peace with it. It’s in the past for both of us.” She nodded agreement and had decided that for herself a long time before when she married Francois. She’d never gone back. The only remaining tie for her, like an unsevered umbilical cord, was the fact that her son was still there. But even that had slowly eroded with time, and was only a thin thread now, not strong enough to hold her fast. Her tie to Joachim was much stronger.
“So, what are you going to do now?” she asked him. “Go back to London?”
“Not yet. Don’t be so eager to get rid of me.” He smiled at her. “I’m in no hurry to go back. I’ve listed my details and qualifications with the best domestic agency there, and they say that there is very little demand for formal butlers now, very few houses that require one, or families that can afford them. I want to spend some time with you here.” There was a kind look in his eyes, and she sat up a little straighter, with a slightly acerbic glance at her son.
“I don’t need a babysitter, Joachim. I have a full life, and you must too. It’s not good to remain idle for long.”
“I could be your butler for a while.” He laughed at the thought. “You need one. I enjoy spending time with you, Mama.” His mother was reaching an age when he wanted to spend precious time with her. She had no health problems, but that could change in an instant, as he had seen with his long-term employers. He didn’t want to miss an opportunity to be with her and regret it later. She was the only relative he had, other than his long-absent brother, and he was now her only child.
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