Chapter 4
By the time Sean came home from Stanford for the holidays, Charlotte had bought the air tickets to Paris and reserved two rooms at the Ritz.
She and Julia could share. She wasn’t used to spending extravagantly and lived within her means, but with her new inheritance, she had decided to splurge, which surprised her children.
She could indulge any whim she wanted now, without thinking about her business first, and what she was spending on private school tuition for Julia and college for Sean.
Her business did well, but she was still careful.
She told them about the trip to Paris at breakfast on Sunday morning. Sean had been out late the night before with friends.
“I have a surprise for you both,” she said, and her children looked at each other with dread.
A surprise usually meant a new tutor she’d hired, or a class she wanted them to take to improve their grades.
She expected excellence from both of them and set the bar as high for them as she did for herself.
Sean was an excellent student and had been accepted at three Ivy League colleges.
He had turned down Princeton and Yale to go to Stanford, and was excited to be on the West Coast. He was in his sophomore year, and wanted to find a job in venture capital in San Francisco when he graduated, so he didn’t have to come back to New York.
He loved the casual outdoor life in California, wearing gym clothes to work, and the weather.
It was a plan he hadn’t told his mother yet, and he knew she wouldn’t like it.
He wanted to go to business school after he’d worked for a year or two in Silicon Valley.
Julia was struggling through her junior year in high school at sixteen, and her grades had slipped, which had won her two SAT tutors, since her college acceptances would depend on her junior grades and SAT scores.
But there were so many more interesting things to do after school in New York.
She and her brother had both been shocked and saddened by their grandmother’s death.
Charlotte thought her mother was a better grandmother than mother.
Felicia wasn’t as demanding, nor did she expect as much of her grandchildren as she had of her own children, and she always reminded them to be sure to have fun.
Felicia told Charlotte she was too hard on them and overscheduled them with extra classes.
She had been the champion of their causes and now she was gone.
“We’re going to Paris for Christmas!” Charlotte announced, and they both stared at her.
“Can we afford it?” Sean asked her. She usually complained about every penny he spent, and wouldn’t let him have a car, which was very limiting.
He always had to hitch a ride with friends, and take the train or a bus when he went into the city, even on a date, so he stayed on campus most weekends, and went to restaurants in Palo Alto on his dates.
“Yes, we can,” Charlotte answered simply without further explanation.
“What changed?” He scrutinized her carefully. They loved each other, but argued a lot.
“I think it would be a hard Christmas here this year without your grandmother, and we could all use some cheering up. Paris is beautifully decorated at Christmas, and we haven’t been to Europe in a long time, so why not?”
“I want to see my friends, Mom,” Julia said plaintively, and Sean nodded agreement.
“Me too,” Sean seconded his sister’s statement.
“We’ve already got the tickets. We leave next week. You’ll see, it will be fun,” their mother said firmly.
“Can we be home before New Year’s Eve? I have plans. I’m going to Sugarbush with friends,” Sean said, and she nodded agreement.
Julia added her voice to his. “And Kelly Martin is having a sleepover on New Year’s Eve and she invited me to stay for the whole weekend. I told her I could go. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Okay,” Charlotte agreed. For once she didn’t argue with them.
She wanted all three of them to enjoy the trip, not fight over details.
She had taken the reservations until the second of January, but they could be changed.
“We’ll come home on the thirtieth so it doesn’t screw up your New Year plans.
” She didn’t have plans of her own, but she didn’t care about New Year’s Eve.
It was Christmas at home she was trying to avoid.
It made her want to cry just thinking about Christmas Eve without her mother for the family dinner she hosted every year, with all of them crowded around her dining room table and the Christmas tree brightly lit in the living room beyond, their gifts piled high, each person’s gifts in a different paper so they knew at a glance what was for them.
She never disappointed them. She had a knack for picking the right gifts for each person.
It was going to be a sparse year without her for Julia and Sean, since Charlotte hated to shop.
She did as much as she could online, and hadn’t even started yet.
But now they could shop in Paris and pick what they wanted.
Sean and Julia were talking excitedly between themselves.
The idea of the trip had caught hold and had been an easy victory for Charlotte.
“We’re staying at the Ritz,” she added. “It’s a fabulous hotel.
” She hadn’t been to Paris in years either, and had taken the children when they were much younger.
Julia hardly remembered it. Charlotte had taken them to Disneyland Paris.
This was going to be a far more grown-up trip, and she could share some of her favorite haunts with them.
She loved the bistros in Paris, the art galleries and antique shops, the wonders of the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Musée d’Orsay, the Tuileries Gardens, and the little shops in the arcades of the Palais Royal, with its distinguished history, and the flea market on the weekend.
And the Christmas lights on the Champs-élysées and the Eiffel Tower were sure not to disappoint them.
Paris was a feast to the eye during the holidays.
She had been there with her mother several times as a child, with her sisters.
They had stayed at the Plaza Athénée, but Charlotte thought the Ritz would be more fun.
She was going all out. After everything that had happened in the past week, she could go with a clear conscience, without worrying what they spent.
Sean and Julia rushed off after breakfast to text their friends and tell them about the trip.
As she went to her own room to look over her wardrobe for what seemed suitable for a trip to Paris, Charlotte wondered how her children would like the farm in Connecticut, but she wasn’t ready to tell them about it yet.
She didn’t want them to think they had suddenly become rich overnight, and have them behave like spoiled brats, and she had no idea how to explain that their grandmother had owned an enormous estate that she had never told them about.
It was going to take some finesse to introduce the subject, and she wasn’t ready to deal with it yet.
She hadn’t adjusted to the idea herself.
—
Veronica didn’t mention the farm to Anson either when he came to visit her later that week.
As usual, he came on short notice, and sent her a text less than an hour before he arrived.
His cheeks were red from the cold, and he beamed the moment he saw her, as she hurried toward him in black velvet pajamas, with the diamond studs in her ears that he had given her several years before.
He had always been generous with her. He gave her beautiful gifts for her birthday and Christmas, and the apartment was in a small elegant building in the East Seventies between Fifth and Madison, a block away from Central Park.
From her high floor, she had a view of the park from her living room windows.
It was snowing the night he came to see her, and Central Park looked like a Christmas card.
She poured him a glass of his favorite red wine, Chateaux Margaux, and he put his arms around her and kissed her.
The world around them and all its problems always faded away as soon as he was there.
She forgot everything except Anson, and everything related to him.
And he loved having her full attention. She dropped everything the moment he arrived.
Their relationship was all about him, and always had been.
He had set her up in an extremely comfortable life so she could focus on him and be available whenever he wanted.
She never told him that she was busy or that it was an inconvenient time.
If she had other plans, she changed them or canceled them immediately.
She had never said no to a visit, and was ready at all times to receive him in the haven he had helped her create for him.
He said it was the only place on earth where he felt relaxed, safe, and unconditionally loved.
She never complained about his marriage, or even mentioned it, and he never talked about his wife.
When they were together, it was as though she didn’t exist. Only they did, in their safe little bubble in a magical world.