Chapter 15
There was safety in numbers, and all three of Sabrina’s children arrived on the same day.
It was allegedly a coincidence, but she wasn’t so sure.
Coco and Lizzie spoke to each other almost every day, and were very close, and one or the other was in regular contact with Justin, especially if they were worried about something.
They counted on him as the oldest and the only son to weigh heavily with their mother.
There were only three years between them from oldest to youngest, and sometimes they felt more like triplets, or a three-headed monster, as she called them when they ganged up on her, or even disagreed with her.
It was too much to hope for that there would be no controversial issues during their two-week stay.
And as much as she was looking forward to spending two weeks with them, Sabrina was also dreading the problems she might have to confront, and in-laws she didn’t know.
Arabella’s parents seemed to be very nice and polite, but houseguests were always a challenge, particularly if the houseguests were in-laws and the parents of the bride.
Arabella was a bright, easygoing, no-nonsense girl, which Sabrina liked about her.
She hated hysterics and drama queens, but however reasonable Arabella was, that didn’t mean her parents were.
Sabrina was nervous about meeting them and having them stay with her at the chateau.
By the night before they were all arriving, Sabrina was tense, as she shared a last civilized glass of wine with Xavier.
He was assuring her it would be fine, without being totally convinced of it himself.
But he felt it his duty to reassure her.
He didn’t know her children and how they could get on tangents or if they whipped each other up, and none of them knew Arabella’s parents, who were the total unknown element in the crowd.
Her mother had already emailed to ask for separate bedrooms because her husband snored.
Sabrina didn’t mind, she had plenty of rooms at the chateau.
Lizzie was the first to arrive, on a flight from New York. She was exuberant and ecstatic to see her mother, but with Lizzie, excessive enthusiasm usually thinly concealed an agenda of some kind.
She was warm and affectionate with her mother when she arrived, exclaimed over the beauty of her bedroom, and completely ignored the three children who lived there, as though they were invisible.
They had made her welcome cards and taped them to her door, and Lizzie breezed past the cards without noticing them, or the artists who had drawn them and put them there.
The children looked shocked and disappointed when she ignored them and seemed possessive with her mother.
It annoyed Sabrina that Lizzie felt a need to compete with a five-, a seven-, and a ten-year-old.
Sabrina made a point of including her foster children in any activity and conversation, which annoyed Lizzie even more than the fact that clearly her mother had a certain loyalty to them.
For all the eight months that her mother had spent in France so far, Lizzie could never understand why her mother had involved herself to that degree with three local children.
And without putting words to them, she made her feelings known.
Her message to her mother was clear. She didn’t approve of the foster children, and had no intention of interacting with them, to the point of being rude.
It was perfectly obvious to Sabrina that Lizzie was jealous of them, absurd as that seemed to her.
Coco’s flight from Milan was a short hop, and she timed it so she landed within an hour of Lizzie’s flight from New York.
With an entirely different disposition, she arrived with candy and little gifts for the children, which they loved and which touched Sabrina.
Elodie, Luc, and Geraldine adopted her immediately, hung out in her bedroom, and watched her unpack.
Geraldine stared with wonder at all of Coco’s trendy clothes.
As soon as Lizzie entered the room, she asked the children to leave, and Coco whispered to them that they could come back later.
They giggled as they left, and their verdict was unanimous: Coco was the nicest and Lizzie not so much.
Justin and Arabella showed up two hours later by train, which Arabella’s doctor preferred to flying if she insisted on traveling at eight months pregnant.
And while she was unpacking and settling in, Justin went to check in with his sisters, and inevitably, they closed the door to gossip, while Lizzie went on a rant that it was completely weird that their mother had “those children” living there.
Was she trying to look young and pretend they were hers?
Coco was always more generous in her assessment of their mother and said that she had a charitable nature, and was trying to help them.
“To do what? Ruin our vacation?” Lizzie said, steaming. “They’re like little ferrets sneaking around corners, staring at us.”
It was definitely the identified bête noire of the vacation at the outset, Lizzie vs.
the kids. Coco also thought the chateau was gorgeous.
Lizzie wasn’t so sure about that either.
She thought it looked threadbare and battle-weary.
She was clearly resentful of her mother’s new life.
Coco wasn’t. Justin liked the chateau a lot, and the owner, whom his sisters hadn’t met yet.
Sabrina could sense from the atmosphere that something was up when she served iced tea and lemonade and cookies on the terrace.
The children joined them and drank several glasses of lemonade and ate some of the cookies, while Lizzie rolled her eyes and begrudged them every crumb, and Sabrina offered them the plate of cookies again to make sure they got what they wanted.
The atmosphere didn’t improve by dinnertime, and Sabrina sat the children as far away as she could from Lizzie, who criticized them loudly at the dinner table, and said you could tell they’d grown up in an orphanage.
Sabrina stepped in immediately in their defense.
“In the first place, Lizzie, it’s a monastery, not an orphanage. Their placement there is recent, and temporary. They’ve all grown up in nice homes, just as nice as yours and ours. And they’ve been here at the chateau with me for six months, so maybe you don’t approve of my manners either.”
“I just want to be sure they know the rules,” Lizzie said piously, in full passive-aggressive mode.
“Ahh, the rules,” Sabrina said, fully annoyed by then.
“In that case, please get your elbows off the table. And the rules, then, that you want to make them aware of are that it’s okay to be rude and nasty if you’re bigger, stronger, taller, or more of a bully than the person you are talking to.
Well, now we are clear on that. And now, Lizzie, you can work on being more pleasant to our guests.
” Lizzie was silent and steaming after that.
It was obvious to her that her mother’s loyalties were to the intruders, not her family.
—
By breakfast the next morning, Lizzie’s attitude had not improved and she was so harsh she made Geraldine cry, which made Sabrina furious, and she had a showdown with Lizzie after breakfast.
“This has to stop.” She put her foot down.
“These are children, you’re all adults. These three children are here because I want them to be.
It’s not an accident, no one forced them on me.
I volunteered. They’re children who have suffered and are still suffering, either from Covid-related situations or abuse within their families, and I have chosen to have them here, purely out of compassion to see if I could help them.
You have no right to bully and terrorize them because you’re jealous of a bunch of children.
You have tremendous advantages in life, all of you, all of us, and you need to stop punishing them for being here.
They’ve already been punished enough before you got here.
I’m ashamed of you for behaving this way,” she said directly to Lizzie, who stormed out of the room.
That night, Xavier came to dinner and met the girls for the first time. Lizzie was chilly with him, and Coco ignored him. It was obvious that they both had a problem with him.
“You said she didn’t have a boyfriend, and he’s married. He mentioned his wife.” Coco accused Justin of misreporting the situation. “Are you fucking joking? Of course he’s her boyfriend, they can’t keep their hands off each other. That’s why she’s been here for seven months.”
Justin said he hadn’t noticed their hands on each other when he had met him six months ago, and he was a nice guy, and he thought he might be separated.
Justin’s sisters didn’t agree with him, and another battle ensued as soon as Xavier left.
The atmosphere toward him had been hostile, and he removed himself almost as soon as dinner was over.
He didn’t want to upset Sabrina, or her family.