The Affair Read online

  “I don’t know how you have time for that,” Olivia had commented to Athena while she was cutting and chopping things for their dinner that night. She was preparing tiny, delicate fraises des bois for dessert, with crème fraîche, which looked irresistible, and she photographed them for Instagram.

  “Social media is so time-consuming,” Nadia complained to her.

  “It’s an essential tool for communication today,” Athena said, and Venetia nodded. She and Athena followed each other’s Instagrams. Nadia did less of it. It wasn’t quite as popular in France, although she had gotten clients both as a result of her work being photographed frequently in decorating magazines and from her website, which was stylish and well done. Nicolas had helped her with it. He was much more familiar with social media and the internet than she was.

  They all went to bed early that night, and were looking forward to a day at the beach the next day. They were up bright and early, and arrived at the kitchen at the same time to make breakfast. Nadia had already fed the girls, who went back upstairs to dress while their aunts sat around eating croissants Athena had made, drinking coffee, and laughing. And then they all got ready to go to the beach.

  They felt like kids themselves swimming and playing with their nieces all day. And they had dinner at a fish restaurant in Trouville that night before coming back to the château. They ate bouillabaisse, sea urchins, and other local delicacies from the sea, and were happy and relaxed on the way home.

  They got home at eleven o’clock, as Nadia glanced at her watch. Sylvie and Laure went straight up to bed. “Mom must be on the plane by now,” Nadia said as she followed her sisters up the stairs. It had been a perfect day, and she hated to think their weekend was already half over. It restored her soul just being with them, and made her feel young and carefree again. They had all talked to their respective partners that day. Ben had taken the children to two barbecues and a picnic for the Fourth of July, and Harley and Will had placed third in the regatta, which was honorable. Joe had dutifully reported that the dogs were doing well.

  Nadia knew that the dynamic would change slightly the next day, once their mother was there. Rose was such a powerful, driving force. Even without Rose saying anything, there would be just a little less room for each of them. She didn’t mean to take over, and knew how not to overwhelm them, but they were each influenced by her and still wanted to please her. They cared about what she thought, and wanted her approval, which seemed childlike in a way. But she had stepped into the role of matriarch with natural grace while no one was looking, even before she lost her husband. It was the role she had at the magazine too. She was the matriarch of her family and the magazine, the person on whom all the decisions and responsibilities rested. In a sense, she wore a crown that no one could see but everyone knew was there. Along with it went the burdens. She never complained about what the role entailed or shirked her responsibilities. She was a living legend and had served as an example to all of them, each in a different way, according to their needs and perception of her. They had emulated her work ethic without hesitating for an instant, and for each, in their own field, success was a given, although hard earned, and richly deserved.

  * * *

  —

  Nadia heard the car pull up to the house on the gravel driveway early Saturday morning and went downstairs to greet her. Rose looked as immaculately put together as always, in white slacks, a crisp white shirt, a trim navy linen blazer, and a straw hat, with the familiar black alligator travel bag. They spoke softly so as not to wake the others. Sylvie and Laure appeared in their nightgowns and threw their arms around her. They walked her to the largest bedroom, which Nadia had saved for her, with its own dressing room and pink marble bathroom. Rose loved coming to the château, and appreciated how simply and elegantly Nadia had helped Nicolas renovate and redecorate it when he had inherited it. It remained true to its original look, with beautiful antique parquet floors, wood paneling and moldings throughout, and she had added just a touch of modern, in order to make it comfortable but not look incongruous. It was a perfect example of a three-hundred-year-old home smoothly brought into the present. It was the ideal showcase for Nadia’s decorating talent.

  “I’ll just take a quick shower and change into jeans,” Rose said, and they left her after she and Nadia hugged again. By the time she joined them in the kitchen in white jeans and a T-shirt and white Hermès sandals, the others were chatting animatedly and having breakfast. She sat down and entered the conversation with a smile, after she hugged each of them, delighted to see her daughters all in one place for a change. The long weekend together had been a great idea and was going well. After their initial discussions about him, Nicolas hadn’t been mentioned again and Nadia was relieved. She wasn’t going to be making any big decisions over the weekend. It was a family reunion, and a vacation, for all of them, Rose as well. She didn’t even mention the September issue, which was a sensitive subject. This was family time, a sacred time for all of them.

  They spent the day at the pool, reading magazines and dozing, exchanging sun creams and sunscreens, while Rose sat under an umbrella on a lounge chair. Athena made a big, healthy salad for lunch, which was perfect, and at the end of the day, they all compared how tan they were, except Venetia, who, with her fair skin, had been happy to lie in the shade under the enormous umbrella with her mother.

  Dinner that night was going to be their last big meal together, and their mother’s only evening meal with them. The others were flying home the next day, and Rose was going to Paris for a day of work and meetings before she went back on Monday night. She made use of the time while she was there. Nadia had gone all out and ordered lobsters and écrevisse for all of them. There was a tin of caviar on the table. Nadia had chilled some of their best white wine and champagne, Athena made another very creative salad, and after the meal they put three flavors of gelato on the table: peach, lemon, and chocolate. The combination of flavors was exquisite after a sumptuous meal. They sat back in their chairs, happy and sated, as Athena poured another round of champagne.

  “Oh God, I’m going to get drunk in front of Mom,” Olivia said, and they all laughed, including Rose.

  “I’ll be asleep on the table before you can do anything outrageous,” Rose assured her, and accepted another glass of Cristal herself. Every aspect of the meal had been perfect. The girls went to bed on their own, tired from a day in the sun and the pool.

  As they relaxed, the conversation turned to their children, what their talents were likely to be, and what their hopes were for them.

  “Will is going to be just like Harley and you,” Venetia said, smiling at her sister, “serious, hardworking, ethical, successful.”

  Olivia looked at her for a minute, and with the benefit of the champagne, she looked pensive. “He won’t be like Harley,” she said, sounding certain.

  “Why shouldn’t he? You both have the same values,” Venetia proceeded innocently, and sipped the champagne.

  “He’s not Harley’s.” The words fell into their midst like an unexploded bomb that lay on the table, ticking loudly.

  “What do you mean?” Athena questioned her, confused by what she’d said.

  “Will is not Harley’s,” Olivia repeated, as her sisters and mother stared at her. “I made a terrible mistake right after we were married. I was in my first job after I’d passed the bar. I got sent as low man on the totem pole on a big case. We had associated with a firm in San Francisco. The case settled, and we all got drunk to celebrate. The associate they had me working with looked like some kind of god. We had fun working together, and I don’t know how it happened or how I could have been so stupid, but we wound up in bed on the last night. I tried to forget about it afterwards, to just erase it from my mind, I felt so guilty about Harley. I wasn’t in love with the guy. We just got drunk and went crazy for a night. Then I found out I was pregnant, and I didn’t know if it was Ha
rley’s or the associate’s. Bernie, his name was Bernie. I didn’t want to have an abortion in case it was Harley’s. I told Harley there was a problem, and I needed an amnio, and had them do a DNA test. I was five months pregnant when I got the results, and found out he wasn’t Harley’s. I really didn’t want an abortion by then. I never told Harley. I did tell Bernie, who had left the firm by then. He signed away any rights and didn’t want any part of it anyway. I’ve never heard from him again. I didn’t tell Harley then and I never will. It would break his heart that his only son, whom he adores, isn’t really his. I’ve got the relinquishment paper in a safe deposit box. I should probably destroy it when Will turns eighteen. And that, my beloved sisters, is my one dark secret. So now you know. Will is not my husband’s son.” There was total silence at the table for several minutes as Olivia’s mother and sisters stared at her in astonishment. She was the last person on earth any of them would have expected that from.

  “Do you think you’d ever tell Harley?” Venetia tried not to look as shocked as she was.

  “Never. Just as I said. It would kill him. He thinks I’m some kind of modern-day saint, ultra-moral woman. He always tells me that my integrity is what he loves most about me. How can I tell him I’ve been lying to him about something as important as that for fifteen years? He’d never trust me again. I’ve never cheated on him except that one night. I felt so guilty that I had robbed him of the opportunity of having a child of his own that even though we had only wanted one child, I talked him into having a second one. We tried to have another baby and we never did. He thought maybe he’d gotten too old, but maybe he never could have children. I didn’t want to get tested to find out. Then he’d know I lied to him, so I said that Will was enough for me. And he is. He’s such a great kid.” The ramifications of what she’d done were so far-reaching and seemed so enormous to all of them that none of them knew what else to say for a few minutes. It wasn’t lost on Nadia that Olivia was the first and the loudest to condemn Nicolas for what he’d done with Pascale, and yet she had done something just as bad, or maybe even worse, lying to her husband about their son’s paternity. Nicolas hadn’t lied about it, Olivia had, and she was pressing her sister to divorce Nicolas. The hypocrisy of her position left Nadia stunned.

  “Well, I think we’d all better forget that immediately and make a pact to bury it now and never discuss it again,” Rose said quietly. “Too many people could get badly hurt if that ever comes out. Olivia, thank you for your faith in us, trusting us with information like that. We can’t ever, ever mention it again.” She looked around the room at all four of her daughters. She passed no judgment on Olivia, and felt sorry for her for the burden she had carried for so long, alone. The wine had loosened her tongue, and she looked both frightened and relieved as she nodded at her mother. “I don’t think Will should ever know, even after his father is gone. They love each other. It wouldn’t be right to interfere with that now. Harley’s a wonderful father, and always has been. That’s all Will ever needs to know.”

  “Thank you, Mom,” Olivia said, grateful that none of them had jumped up and called her a lying whore. For years, she had been afraid she would blurt it out one day. She had taken no drugs when she gave birth, for fear of what she’d say. The agony she’d experienced delivering her ten-pound son naturally had seemed like adequate punishment, and a price she was willing to pay.

  “We all have our secrets, I suppose,” Rose said calmly. The others hadn’t quite recovered yet.

  “I don’t.” Nadia spoke up. “I can’t believe you’ve been so harsh about Nicolas, when you did something even worse yourself,” she said to Olivia, with an edge to her voice.

  “I didn’t make an ass of Harley, or drag some other guy around with me, all over the press. I made a terrible mistake, but I hate what he’s put you through, Naddie. He should be made accountable for it,” Olivia said emotionally.

  “Are you accountable for what you did?” her younger sister asked, looking straight at her. It was a moment of truth between them like no other they had experienced, or probably would again. Olivia had laid her heart bare to them, and Nadia’s was raw. It felt good to Olivia to finally get it off her chest and share it with them. She had regretted it for fifteen years.

  “I feel guilty about it every single day,” she answered. “Every time I look at Will, I remember what I did.”

  “I slept with a married professor when I was in college,” Athena offered to provide some distraction. “I didn’t really feel that guilty. He was kind of a jerk and was sleeping with half the girls in the class.” The others laughed.

  “I have a confession,” their mother said and surprised them all. She was so honest and upstanding, none of them could imagine she had done anything too shocking. “I always thought you should know. Your father didn’t agree with me, and didn’t want me to tell you, so I never did, out of respect for him. I was married once before I met your father, when I was a student at Oxford. He was a very sweet English boy. His parents were horrified, and mine weren’t happy about it either. We snuck off and eloped, and regretted it after. We were completely unprepared for marriage. We were more like two children than adults, we were both nineteen. We got divorced after a year, which was why I left Oxford after only two years and transferred to the Sorbonne. And then I met your father, shortly after I got there, and it didn’t really matter that I was divorced. My life began with Wallace. Nothing that came before mattered to me after that. We started fresh, with a clean slate, and I moved to New York for him when he went back. And we got married very quickly without any fanfare, since I’d been married before. I just thought you should know. My father knew my first husband’s family. He married an Irish girl after the divorce, I think she was his cousin, and they had six kids. I saw him once years later, on the street in Dublin, when I was there for work. He had gotten fat and bald. He didn’t recognize me and I hardly recognized him. Neither of us said hello.” What she shared with them didn’t really shock them, but it was touching somehow, to think of their mother with a past. She had shared it to take the heat off Olivia, and Rose had had a little too much champagne herself.

  “Where did you live with him, Mom?” Athena asked, curious.

  “At Oxford, where we were both studying. We were really like two children. He was studying to be an architect.” There was nothing racy about it. It just sounded like a harmless teenage romance.

  “I think Olivia still wins the prize,” Venetia said with a wry look, and the others laughed. “That was quite an announcement, Ollie. Now you’re going to have me worrying about making a slip if I get drunk at Christmas Eve dinner. Poor Harley.”

  “He doesn’t ever need to know,” Rose said, meeting their eyes, and they nodded. It was an enormous piece of information for Olivia to have shared with them, and it could damage her marriage irreparably and upset her son profoundly if it came out. It was a measure of her trust that she had told them.

  “I feel like I should go out and have an affair, or steal a car or something to stay in the running,” Athena said, and the others laughed. “Actually, I got arrested in college for being drunk and disorderly after a protest about animal testing. I drank so much wine with my buddies, I couldn’t remember what the protest was about. All things considered, I think we’ve all been pretty well behaved. And so has Olivia. That’s a hell of a lesson to have learned,” she said sympathetically.

  “I’ve never looked at another man again, only Harley.” She seemed humbled by her confession, and not quite so bold.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t,” Venetia commented.

  “Maybe now you’ll stay off my back about what I’m going to do about my marriage, and let me figure it out for myself,” Nadia said, still somewhat bothered. Olivia had been so harsh with her advice till then.

  “I’m sorry, Naddie,” Olivia said softly, genuinely contrite. “I’ve always had strong feelings about cheaters because of w
hat I did myself.”

  “I don’t like them much either.” Nadia smiled at her. “But I love you anyway. It was a long time ago. Maybe it’s time you forgave yourself.”

  Olivia shook her head in answer. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”

  “I’m sure Harley would have if he’d known, but he doesn’t need to,” Venetia said sensibly.

  “I’m not so sure he would,” Olivia said. “He’s the most moral person I know. I don’t think he would have understood, and he’d never forgive me for lying to him. Sometimes I think I should tell him one day, just so we have a clean slate, but I don’t want to hurt him, or cheat him and Will of the relationship they share.”

  “It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie,” Rose said. “I’m disappointed that none of you are impressed with my racy youth.” She smiled at them and Venetia laughed.

  “You married the guy, Mom. That’s not racy. And an early marriage doesn’t exactly qualify you for the Scarlet Letter.”

  “I guess not. We felt like Romeo and Juliet because our parents were so unhappy about it, but they didn’t stop us, and we figured out very quickly that we’d made a terrible mistake. I was enormously relieved when we separated. I left for Paris to study at the Sorbonne, and I could put it behind me. And then I left for the States, after I met your father.”

  “I can think of several older people who had early marriages no one ever knew about. And they never talk about them. You pretty much had to get married to have sex in those days, and divorce was considered a disgrace.” Rose nodded when Venetia said it.