Chapter 12 #2
Mother Regina made a little speech about how fortunate they were that a talented artist from America had come to Arcangues and fallen in love with the village, and had created a gift that would stay with them forever.
They introduced Sabrina, who had formed a chain with all the children, holding hands in three rows.
They all took a bow together, and you could hardly distinguish Sabrina from the children, with her crown of lily of the valley, as Xavier smiled proudly at her.
One by one the tarps were unhooked by nuns standing on tall ladders, and the tarps fell to the floor as the ark and the animals came into view bit by bit, until all fifty feet of it was revealed.
The Arcangues Blue ark looked almost life-sized, and Noah and the animals looked just as real.
It was ten feet high and fifty feet long, an enormous piece of work, with every bit of Sabrina’s talent visible, and the children’s loving contributions to it.
She had had each of the children sign it with her, written under the ark.
There was a gasp in the crowd followed by silence once the full work was revealed, and for a minute, Sabrina was afraid they all hated it.
But they were awestruck by what they were seeing.
It looked like Noah and his craft were sailing past them.
The clouds directly overhead showed the storm, and the sky was blue in the distance, with a rainbow over the island where they were headed, and the faintest outline of the city of Biarritz where their journey would end happily. It was very symbolic.
Mother Regina took charge of the microphone they’d been using and had tears in her eyes when she announced the title of the work by the artist Sabrina Thompson.
Her voice trembled with emotion as she said it was called The Color of Hope, and then there was thunderous applause from the crowd.
Someone played an accordion and the children brought Sabrina a huge bouquet of roses to thank her, and she hugged and kissed them all.
Thanks to them, and the three living with her, it had turned into the best year of her life, or the best six months, starting from the worst one.
Xavier was standing mesmerized, admiring the mural, and went up close to it to study it in detail.
He could see the additions she had assigned to the children, which enhanced the texture, and some of it was actually a collage of textiles and little pieces of wood.
It was a remarkable work that belonged in a museum, and he was still stunned by it when he came to find her to tell her how beautiful it was.
It was a serious piece of art with the innocence of childhood woven through it.
“I thought this was just going to be a fun piece for the children. Sabrina, it’s magnificent.”
“Thank you,” she said modestly. “They all contributed something. No one got away from me,” she said with a laugh. “And I made each of the nuns do one brushstroke on the ark, so it is a truly collaborative piece of work created by all of us.”
“You’re a genius,” he said softly. “I want you to do one for Bonport, and the hotel!”
“Is that a commission?” she asked him.
“I am begging you.” She was pleased that he loved it.
He had never realized what a serious project it was until he saw it, and then he couldn’t stop looking at it.
And in the ensuing days, news teams came to show the mural she’d called The Color of Hope.
She had videos of the children helping her, which appeared as brief clips on the news.
Xavier made Pascal come to see it, and he wanted one for the hotel too.
People came in droves from Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
Sabrina had never expected it to cause such a fuss.
And Justin called her when he saw it on the news in London, as a human interest story. And he said how proud he was of her.
Arabella’s pregnancy was progressing nicely, and she was feeling well.
She and Justin had picked a date in August for their wedding at the end of the vacation, when both his sisters could be there, and Arabella’s parents were coming, and her siblings.
They would be ten in all, eleven with Xavier.
Sabrina had invited him and he’d accepted.
Sabrina hadn’t met Arabella’s family yet but she had corresponded with her parents and they didn’t seem bothered at all that their daughter was five months pregnant and so far unmarried.
Sabrina was not as at ease with the idea, but didn’t press them about it.
She had followed Xavier’s advice to let the couple make their own decisions about their lives.
Justin had gotten a job in the London office of an American firm, starting in September.
He and Arabella were both taking the summer off before the baby.
They were meandering toward the altar at their own pace, which unnerved Sabrina but no one else.
Coco and Lizzie thought it was great. What they didn’t understand was why their mother was fostering three children at the chateau, but Sabrina didn’t discuss it with them.
She was happy with what she was doing. It was a sacred mission to her, with Xavier’s grandmother as her inspiration and role model.
When she left Arcangues for Lizzie’s law school graduation at Columbia in mid-May, she left all three children at the monastery for the week she’d be gone.
There was room for them there now, but all three of them were benefiting from the individual attention they were getting from Sabrina.
They wanted to stay with her, and she was happy keeping them for as long as they wanted to be there, and the bishop had allowed it.
Geraldine and Elodie were going to be the flower girls at Justin and Arabella’s wedding, and Luc the ring bearer, so they each had their role to play.
Coco was the only bridesmaid and Lizzie the maid of honor.
Both of Arabella’s sisters would be heavily pregnant by then and had declined to be bridesmaids but were enthusiastic guests.
And her brother was the best man. Xavier had promised to be there.
Justin and Arabella hadn’t invited their friends from London, keeping it a family affair.
They were planning a big party in London after the baby was born.
—
Before she left for Lizzie’s graduation, Sabrina completed a project with Hallie in L.A.
It was a surprise for her children, one she knew would be meaningful to them.
Hallie had taken Malcolm’s sailboat, the Sabrina Fair, out of dry dock, and was shipping it to the harbor at Ciboure, half an hour from Biarritz, where Xavier had secured a berth.
Sabrina knew it would be a tender moment for the children when they saw their father’s boat that he had loved so much.
She wanted it there for them to use when they came to Arcangues in August for the vacation.
They were all good sailors and knew how to sail the Sabrina Fair.
They had spent happy hours on it with Malcolm.
Xavier and Sabrina had a quiet evening together before she left for Lizzie’s graduation from Columbia in May. Lizzie had secured a job at an important New York law firm, and was taking the bar before she came to Arcangues in August.
Sabrina had hardly seen Xavier in the past few months, he was so busy working on the hotel.
It looked like it was going to be an enormous success, and it was a huge amount of work.
After the graduation, she was going to concentrate on pulling the gallery together for him, and curating the work for the opening show.
But she had been busy herself with the mural until then.
“I don’t think I was this busy when I was running the agency,” he commented to her over dinner.
He had been going in so many directions that he was no longer mourning his lack of a job as CEO.
The hotel seemed to be giving him as much work and prestige as he had had before.
The international press were hounding them for interviews and paying attention to every detail of the opening.
They contacted Sabrina about the gallery too, and the artists that would be included in the show.
Xavier had done his marketing job well. Everyone was talking about the Empress Eugénie Hotel in Biarritz.
“I think the Empress is going to be the biggest thing that has hit this coast in a while,” she said to Xavier at dinner.
“I never thought we’d get this much attention,” he said, happily surprised.
“It’s all you,” she reminded him. “You did it. Pascal could never have done it without you.”
“I think we’re going to make some very decent money out of it.
We spent the afternoon with the accountants last week, going over projections, and we’re way ahead on bookings.
Our original projections were way below what they look like now.
” He was back in business, just not in the way he had expected to be.
This was turning into one of life’s good surprises.
They had both had more than enough of the other kind.
Xavier wondered if Brigitte was going to go after his partnership in the hotel, although he had gotten involved around the time they separated.
He still hadn’t taken a position on the divorce and her affair with the hospital medical director.
He was too busy to deal with it now, but had promised himself that after the opening he would talk to her about it.
He hadn’t spoken to her since February, when he walked in on them in the apartment.
He’d been told by gossips that the affair was continuing.
Philippe was still married, and Brigitte wasn’t living with him, but they were still involved.
And she had a new apartment Xavier was sure Philippe was paying for that she hadn’t told him about.
She was pretending to still live in the squalid one.
—
As planned, Sabrina went to New York in mid-May for Lizzie’s graduation, and Coco and Justin both flew in for it.
It was a beautiful ceremony and they had an impressive commencement speaker, a senator who challenged them to reach their full potential.
Lizzie had so far, and graduated magna cum laude.
Coco stayed for four days with her mother and sister.
Justin came alone and only stayed for twenty-four hours to attend the graduation.
They all stayed at the Carlyle, as they always did.
And Sabrina stayed three days longer than Coco.
She and Lizzie shopped and went out to lunch, and walked all over New York.
They looked at apartments for Lizzie. She wanted to move from her student apartment, but they didn’t see anything she loved.
They had lunch at the Mercer Hotel one day in Soho and Lizzie asked her about the children she was fostering, which still irked her, Coco a little less.
“Why, Mom?” her daughter asked her earnestly.
“It’s the only thing you’ve done this year that makes no sense to me.
You brought up three kids, and everyone is pretty much on track, relatively,” she said, referring to her brother, who she also thought was too young to have a baby.
“Why would you want to have the burden of three kids who aren’t going to stay with you and will end up with somebody else?
What’s the point of that? Don’t you want to be free now, to do whatever you want? ”
“I am doing what I want,” Sabrina said peacefully to Lizzie.
“And no one is ever going to give them the chance I can. Whether it’s their own families, if they can find them, foster parents, or adoptive ones, I can do things for them that no one will later.
I have the time, and maybe it will make the difference between their making something of themselves later, or believing in themselves, from being loved unconditionally for a few months.
How can I not give them that, when it’s so easy for me?
I have the time, the house, I have the love in my heart,” she explained to her, and Lizzie looked mystified.
“For someone else’s kids?”
“Why not?” Lizzie wasn’t maternal yet, and maybe never would be, and it made no sense to her.
“They’re not taking anything away from you,” Sabrina reassured her, “emotionally or financially. They’re getting the surplus I have to give.
Your dad is gone, you guys are busy, and they’re the little flowers I water with the extra water I’ve got.
And it might make a difference in their lives, without ever changing yours.
” She made it nonthreatening, but it still sounded crazy to Lizzie.
Everything else her mother had done made sense.
And Justin said that she was friends with the owner of the chateau, but that it wasn’t a romance and he was married.
So there wasn’t a man in her life, according to their brother.
Lizzie couldn’t imagine her mother in love with another man anyway, she’d been too much in love with their father to ever replace him. They all agreed on that.
Sabrina had a nice time with her daughters in New York, but sometimes she marveled at how little they knew her.
They knew her as their mother and all she did for them, but they didn’t really know her as a whole person.
They only saw one part of her. She told Lizzie about Xavier’s grandmother during the war and she found that amazing.
Sabrina flew back to Paris and connected to a flight to Biarritz, and went straight to work with Xavier on the gallery at the hotel.
She was helping to train the gallery manager and her assistant, who were cataloguing the art and picking pieces for the opening show.
Both women had worked for galleries in Paris, but they were young and didn’t have as much experience as Sabrina.
She went to London for three days in June for Justin’s graduation from the London School of Economics.
He and Arabella were getting ready for the baby, and Sabrina was planning their wedding in August. And once she got back to Arcangues after Justin’s graduation, she turned her full attention to the opening of the hotel, and Xavier was grateful for her help.
No one worked as hard as she did. She was moving at full speed whenever he saw her, which wasn’t often enough for him.
They were both too busy for their casual brunches and dinners, and he missed them.
But he was always happy to see her at the hotel.