Chapter 8 #3
They were still talking about it after dinner, the idea of Olivia wanting a baby. It had taken all of them by surprise, and Quinne sat down quietly next to Olivia while the others were talking, and cautiously brought up a subject, not wanting to upset Olivia.
“Have you had any contact with Francois Vernier?” she asked in a voice no one else could hear, sitting very close to Olivia’s chair.
He was the choreographer Olivia had been engaged to and madly in love with when she had the accident.
She had broken off the engagement so as not to be a burden to him, although he had still wanted to marry her.
“Not in a very long time,” Olivia answered quietly. “Five or six years.” It had been twelve since the accident. “I know he married about five years ago. He wrote to tell me.”
“Maybe you should talk to him,” Quinne said thoughtfully.
“And ask him to father a baby? He’s married, Quinne. It’s been over between us for a long, long time. I hope he’s happily married. He married a famous ballerina. He choreographed several ballets for her. That’s where he belongs.”
“If he married her five years ago, he waited seven years for you. Maybe they’re not even together anymore.”
“I hope they are. It’s over for us.”
“You should get in touch with him,” Quinne said with a determined look, and went to get another glass of wine.
She was alone with her sisters that night.
Cooper was coming out the next day to be at the birthday dinner, but Quinne had wanted to spend one night with just her sisters, and she was glad she had.
They all had important private things to talk about.
Charlotte slipped away to make a call while the others were talking after dinner. Andy answered on the second ring, as soon as he saw her name and number come up on his phone.
“Hello, Charlotte, how is the sisters’ weekend going?” He was happy to hear from her, and he liked knowing she was nearby.
“It’s been interesting, everyone seems to have something serious going on at the moment. Do you want to go for a walk?” she suggested, and he was surprised.
“Now? Sure. I’ll meet you up there in a few minutes.”
“I don’t mind walking down to you. I need some air. Listening to them all talking really made me miss my mother. She should be here giving them advice. I don’t know that I have any of the right answers for them. I made so many of my own mistakes.”
“That just makes you wiser and more human. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Andy said gently.
“I’ll walk down to meet you,” Charlotte said, happy to hear his voice. He was an empathetic person.
“I don’t want you walking alone in the dark. I’ll ride my bike up to meet you.”
“Do you want to come in for a drink?” It was cold outside.
“I don’t want to intrude on your sisters. It sounds like you’re having important girl time.”
“Will you come to dinner tomorrow night? My sister Quinne’s boyfriend is coming, he’ll be happy to have some male company,” and they were all comfortable with Andy. He felt like family now.
“If you’re sure it’s not an imposition, I’d love it.
See you in a minute. I’ll meet you outside your front door.
” She kept an eye out for him at a front window, grabbed her jacket, and slipped out the door when she saw him arrive on his bike.
They walked down the drive, with her hand tucked into his arm, while Andy held a flashlight for them.
“My sister who’s paraplegic told us tonight she wants to have a baby, if it’s possible.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“No. She was engaged when it happened, and broke it off so as not to be a weight on him. He wanted to marry her anyway, but she was adamant. He’s married now, he’s a choreographer.
She’s never had another man in her life since the accident.
She’s very independent and lives alone. I think she probably could manage a child, with some help at home.
She teaches ballet and designs costumes and scenery for a small ballet company and she’s involved in a bunch of charities. ”
“She sounds like an enterprising woman.” Andy smiled at Charlotte in the dark. “You all are. You’re a very impressive group. Strong, independent women. And beautiful.”
“We’re not all independent. One of my sisters sounds like she’s being held captive by a control freak.
She gave up her law career for him. She and my mother had terrible fights about it.
But she claims she’s happy and she loves him.
Their relationship sounds like a prison sentence to me.
” But most relationships looked that way to her now.
Andy was the first man she’d met in ages who genuinely appealed to her.
She felt safe with him and could be herself. He felt the same way about her.
Charlotte went back to the house half an hour later, and he rode home on his bike.
He had left his bicycle under a tree while he walked with her.
It was nice to be with him after the confessions of the night, about Anson and Ian and troubled relationships.
Seeing Isabelle’s grief broke her heart to watch.
“Where did you go?” Quinne asked her when she saw her come in. Charlotte’s cheeks were bright red from the cold, and she was smiling.
“I went for a walk with a friend,” Charlotte said with a peaceful expression.
“I think I can guess who that is.” Andy was the only man they knew there.
“He’s coming to dinner tomorrow night if that’s okay with all of you.”
“Coop will be relieved,” Quinne answered her. “He was a little nervous about joining our hen party and being the only man here.”
“As well he should be,” Charlotte said, and laughed. “Although Andy seems to have a calming effect on me.” She had been happy and mellower ever since she’d met him.
“I’ve noticed,” Quinne said, and they went back to the others. No one else had noticed Charlotte’s absence. They thought she had gone to her room for something.
It was two in the morning by the time they all went upstairs to bed, and Olivia slept in the ground-floor guest room.
They all liked the rooms they had chosen to stay in since they first saw the house.
It was as though Felicia had set up the house knowing they would be there one day.
The rooms were all decorated in soft pastels and soothing colors.
The farmhouse was a place to find peace, and they all commented the next morning on how well they had slept.
Isabelle looked like a new person when she came downstairs and ate a hearty breakfast. And afterward they all went on a long walk together around the lake.
It was their mother’s actual birthday, which had a certain magic to it.
They spent a relaxed, easy day. Coop arrived from the city after lunch, and Andy came to dinner. The two men got along well, and it was obvious that Andy was seriously smitten with Charlotte. He sat next to her at dinner, and they were deep in conversation all night.
“I think you’ve gotten yourself a really good guy this time,” Quinne commented to her the next day before they left. Charlotte smiled mysteriously when she said it.
“I have to admit, he seems pretty special. He’s sensible and kind and smart, and we have fun together. It’s still early days. He can still turn out to be a serial killer or an asshole, but so far everything checks out right.”
“Give him a chance, Char. There are good men out there, you just haven’t met the right one yet,” Quinne said.
And she hadn’t tried in a long time. Charlotte was deeply engaged in her business and had insisted it was enough for her.
But all of a sudden it wasn’t. When she was with Andy, everything felt right.
She wondered if her mother had felt that way about his father.
It was deeply satisfying being with a good man who shared the same values and common interests.
It was so easy, like floating or flying.
Before they left the farmhouse on Sunday, Isabelle, Olivia, and Veronica agreed to meet at their mother’s apartment in the city the next day.
They had to start cleaning it out. They were going to send all her books and antiques to the farmhouse, where the sisters could divide it up.
And they would send photographs to Quinne and Charlotte from the apartment by text to help make decisions.
The apartment was rented, Felicia hadn’t owned it, and they wanted to give it up.
They knew it would make them sad to take it apart, but it had to be done.
Felicia had been gone for almost three months, and they hadn’t had the heart to do it. They agreed to meet the next day.
They hugged each other before they left. The weekend had been a warm, comforting way to spend their mother’s birthday, and it had helped all five of them to be together. It was the first birthday without her, and it had been a gentle way to get through it.
Veronica drove Olivia back to the city, and she talked about the baby again.
“Do you think you’ll really do it?” Veronica asked her. Olivia’s announcement on Friday night had surprised them all.
“I’d like to talk to a doctor and see what’s possible. If I can’t carry it myself, I think I might like to adopt, or use a surrogate, I just don’t know yet, but it’s been gnawing at me for about a year, and when Mom died, I really knew it’s what I want.”
“Do you ever hear from Francois?” Veronica asked her hesitantly, and Olivia smiled.
“Quinne asked me the same thing the other night. No, I don’t, and the poor guy is married. I can’t call him and ask if he’d like to father a child, and would his wife mind. And even if he weren’t married, I wouldn’t. We agreed to close that door forever. It was only fair to him.”
“As I recall, he didn’t agree about that.
He tried to come back for a long time, and you wouldn’t let him.
” Olivia looked out the window, remembering.
Losing him had been the worst part of the accident.
Or leaving him. He had tried for years to get her back, and Olivia never relented.
She refused to saddle him with her limitations and be a burden to him.
He needed to be with a dancer, and now he was. It was right.
“No, I wouldn’t let him come back when he tried,” Olivia said softly, thinking back to that time.
They were painful memories she didn’t want to relive now.
She had made a decision to move ahead without looking back, and she had stuck to it for the past twelve years.
“It was the right decision. I’m sure he’s happy now,” she said, and turned on the radio so they didn’t have to talk.
Francois was a closed book in her mind, a beautiful love story that had ended.
Veronica dropped her off at her building when they got back to the city, and the doorman took her bag.
“I’ll see you at Mom’s apartment tomorrow,” she said, and Olivia smiled and waved as Veronica drove away.
She drove to her own apartment, not far from Olivia’s, and gave the doorman her car to take to the garage. She was in no rush to get home since she knew that Anson had meetings in Washington, D.C., in the morning, and wouldn’t be home until Monday night.
She let herself into the apartment, and saw that the lights were on in the living room, which seemed strange.
She wondered if the housekeeper had come in over the weekend and had forgotten to turn them off, and then she saw him, sitting stone-faced on the couch.
He looked almost like a statue. He didn’t say a word and she jumped when she saw him.
“Anson! What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming home till tomorrow.”
“And I thought you’d be here. My meeting tomorrow got canceled. I’ve been here for four hours, waiting for you.” She saw that he had a full glass of Scotch in his hand, and she wondered how many he’d had in four hours, but he had a high tolerance for alcohol. His gaze on her was glacial.
“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you call me and tell me?”
“That’s not part of the deal, is it? Or it never was before. I don’t have to advise you of my whereabouts or my plans. You’re supposed to be here whenever I come, waiting for me.”
“I told you I was seeing my sisters this weekend. It was my mother’s birthday and we wanted to spend it together.”
“At the ‘farm’ you inherited or whatever shack she left you. You seem to be spending a lot of time with your sisters these days,” he said icily, “if that’s true.” Anson looked at Veronica suspiciously and didn’t believe her.
“It’s been a hard adjustment.” She walked over to him and tried to kiss his cheek and he wouldn’t let her, turning his head away. “I’m sorry, I really am. It would have been a terrible weekend here alone.”
“You wouldn’t have been alone if you’d been here today.” He stood up then, and reached for his coat.
“Don’t leave. I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it won’t. You’re playing with fire, Veronica, and you know it. Are you cheating on me?” He got right to the point.
“Of course not. My mother died and I’ve been seeing a lot of my sisters. We’ve all had a hard time with her death.”
“So you’ve signed up at law school, you’re never here, and now you own some ramshackle farm with your sisters, and you’re not here when I want you. What part of that is supposed to work for me?”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m very sorry I wasn’t here today.” She looked crushed as she watched him leave. She had failed him.
“That doesn’t explain the classes at Columbia or weekends out of town.
Your life can change in an instant if I want it to.
You might want to keep that in mind,” Anson said, putting on his coat and walking to the door.
He turned to look at her once and she realized that she was shaking.
He had threatened her. She didn’t want to lose him, and he was a hard man if he wanted to be, or thought he had been betrayed.
She had no idea when she’d see him again.
She never knew, and she could sense that he was going to make her pay dearly for the hours she had kept him waiting.
She felt sick after he left, wondering what he would do to punish her.
And she had no doubt that he would. His silences and absences were punishment enough without threats.
Veronica suddenly felt as though she had grown wings that were too large for the small space that he had allotted her.
She had crossed a line for him, and she had the sick feeling that there was no turning back to the way things had been before.
She had grown bigger since her mother’s death, and Anson was not going to tolerate it.