The Sins of the Mother

by Danielle Steel

  “So how was it?” Phillip asked Taylor as they drove back to the city on Sunday night.

  “Incredible. You have an amazing family,” she said, and he could see that she meant it.

  “A little crazy maybe, but we all seem to get along. And now that my sister Cass is back, my mother looks really happy.” He was just sorry his grandmother hadn’t lived to see her come home. But he also realized that her death had brought Cass back, that and her baby with Danny. “I really like her boyfriend,” he admitted.

  “So do I. And Andrew is nice too. Your sister really seems to like him.”

  “I think this time she found a good one.” Then he turned to Taylor with a grateful look. “And so did I.” He leaned over and kissed her, and they drove home reviewing the high points of the weekend.

  In her bed that night, Olivia did the same, thinking about all of them and missing them. The house was like a tomb without them. She was glad she’d be seeing Peter the next day.

  Chapter 24

  As promised, Peter arrived shortly after Olivia got home from work, but he looked unusually somber, and Olivia was instantly worried. She had sensed it on the phone two days before and he had denied it. With the recent loss of her mother, reminding them of their mortality, she was suddenly afraid he might be sick.

  They chatted for a few minutes about a worrisome situation that had come up in the office, a fire in their warehouse in New Zealand, and then Olivia couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Peter, are you all right?”

  “Yes, I am,” he said smiling at her, “very much so.”

  “You seem so serious,” she said, and he smiled at her and took her hand in his own.

  “Something unexpected came up this weekend, and I want to talk to you about it, but I didn’t want to do it on the phone.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” he reassured her. He was still a little stunned himself. “Emily has decided to go into rehab. I think the children talked her into it. It’s long overdue, and it would be wonderful for her if she can finally stop drinking. I can honestly say it’s ruined her life, and ours, and impacted the children. We talked about it after the children left on Thanksgiving. She’s very determined. She has the place all picked out, and it’s supposed to be very good. They have a very good success rate, and she’s prepared to stay there as long as it takes.”

  “I’m happy for her,” Olivia said quietly. She knew what an agony his wife’s drinking had been for him. And she was silently wondering what that change was going to do to them. Maybe if his wife got sober, he would want to end their affair. If so, she had no right to object, and she wouldn’t. Emily was his wife after all, and Olivia had no claims on him. He was a married man. She accepted the fact that she had no right to him at all.

  “As it turns out,” Peter went on, “she wants to make a clean slate of it. She’s convinced that one cause of her drinking was her unhappiness in our marriage, and I think she’s right. It’s an addiction, but we were never happy, right from the beginning. We were never suited to each other. She feels now that she wants to cut our losses. She’s filing for divorce. And I agreed. I think it will be a huge blessing for us both.”

  “My lord,” Olivia said, stunned. She had never expected that in a million years. “Well, that is a surprise. Do you really think she’s serious?”

  “Completely. She had already called her lawyer when she told me. And we’re in complete agreement about the divorce and the division of property. I think it will all be taken care of very quickly. And what that means,” he said, looking deep into Olivia’s bright blue eyes, “is that I’m about to be a free man.” And before she could stop him, he was in front of her, down on one knee. She hadn’t seen that since Joe had proposed to her forty-seven years before.

  “Peter, what are you doing?” she asked with a look of astonishment. She hadn’t been prepared for this at all.

  “I’m proposing to you, Olivia,” he said with his deep love for her in his eyes. For the second time in her life, a worthy man was asking for her hand in marriage. “Will you marry me? I would be deeply honored, and I will try to make you happy for the rest of my days.”

  “I’m sure you would,” she said with a lump in her throat. “But Peter, I’m seventy years old. I’m too old to get married.” She had never considered it a remote possibility for them, and she still didn’t now. They had always had their own lives, and there had been no hope of their getting married as long as Emily was alive.

  “As the French say very intelligently, love has no age. Olivia, will you marry me?” he asked again, and she dropped her face into her hands and then looked at him.

  “Peter, I truly love you, but I can’t. I’ve never considered getting married again. I never thought you’d get divorced.”

  “Neither did I,” he said sincerely. And he had never held that hope out to her. He was an honest man. “Emily is giving me a great gift now. We haven’t been in love with each other in years. She knows it as well as I do. And with the hope of being sober, she wants to be free as much as I do. We don’t belong together, we never did. But you and I do. I think we’d be happy together and a very good match.”

  “So do I. But why do we have to get married? Why can’t we just date, and do what we do now? Spend the night together when we can?” He was sitting in a chair, looking at her by then, and had come up off his knees. It hadn’t gone as smoothly as he thought it might. He had expected her to throw herself into his arms, or hoped she would, after all these years of loving each other in secret. She suddenly wondered if her mother had felt this way when Ansel’s wife died, but her mother had said they’d gotten engaged. She didn’t even want to do that. She loved Peter. But she would have felt unfaithful to Joe if she married someone else. And she really didn’t want to be married. She was comfortable now the way things were. He looked infinitely surprised, and sorely disappointed by her answer.

  And he laughed ruefully at what she had just said. “You feel too old to get married. I feel too old to date. I want to be at home in my own bed, with the woman I love. Dating may be exciting, but it’s not for me. It never was.” She knew that he and Emily had married very young, and made a colossal mistake. She didn’t want to make one herself. And she thought getting married would be, for her in any case, although maybe not for Peter. She wondered if he would look for someone else, and the prospect of that hurt, but not enough to force her into marriage.

  “So now what do we do?” Olivia said sadly.

  “I guess we go on as we are,” he said with a look of resignation. “I’m not going to lose you, and I’m not going anywhere. I love you. But I don’t consider this dating. You’re the woman I love. I’ll stay with you as often as you let me. I’ll look for an apartment in the city. Emily thinks we should sell the apartment. I think she’s right—it’s a depressing place, it’s seen too many unhappy times. I’ll get something small, for me. You can stay with me if you like, if you want to spend a night in the city, and I’ll stay here with you whenever you’ll have me.” He was a very reasonable man, and he loved her very much.

  “Peter, I don’t deserve you,” she said beaming at him. “I truly love you. I just don’t want to get married. But if I did, it would be you. I promise you that.” He believed her, and he had the hope that eventually she might change her mind. Olivia knew she wouldn’t. She was sure.

  They talked about his divorce for a few more minutes. It was an amazing development in their lives. And things were going to be so much simpler. They could go out in public, he could escort her places, they might travel together, and they could spend holidays together at last. He was a free man.

  And then, after they had sorted it all out, they wandered into her bedroom. He still couldn’t keep his hands off her after all these years, and they made love, to celebrate not their engagement, as he had hoped, but the freedom of their love.

  Afterward she lay looking at him and gently touched his face, trying to find an explanati
on for herself for why she didn’t want to marry him, even though she loved him.

  “Maybe I just like living in sin better,” she said, and he laughed and pulled her closer to him.

  “You’re an evil woman, Olivia Grayson,” he teased her, and she giggled mischievously, feeling young after making love with him.

  “Yes,” Olivia said happily, “I suppose I am.” It was the only explanation she could come up with for not marrying him. And she found herself wondering if Maribelle would approve of what she’d done. One thing was certain, the world was upside down. Her oldest son was getting divorced and married again, which she was pleased about, Liz “thought” she was having an affair but wasn’t sure, Cass was having a baby out of wedlock with a rock star, and her grandson was gay. And she had just opted to continue living in sin after loving a married man for ten years. The world had certainly changed.

  Chapter 25

  Since all of Olivia’s children and grandchildren had plans for Christmas, and both of Peter’s were going to their in-laws, they agreed to be together for Christmas, quietly in Bedford. They had never before spent a holiday together, and they were looking forward to it. And Olivia knew it would take some of the ache out of missing Maribelle. She still felt her mother’s absence every day, and reached for the phone at least once a day to call her, and then remembered she wasn’t there. She knew she would miss her wisdom and her love forever, and her gentle, sunny ways. Hers had been the legacy they would all cherish for their entire lives. She had given so much to so many.

  But spending Christmas and New Year with Peter seemed like a good idea to Olivia, and Peter was thrilled. He had spent morbidly depressing holidays for years, trying to compensate for an alcoholic wife. She was already in rehab and supposedly doing well, and the divorce was under way.

  Olivia had her Christmas shopping finished early, as she always did, for each of them. She was planning to have dinner with all of her children before they left for Vermont, and Phillip for the Caribbean, to give them their gifts, and now that Peter was free, she was planning to invite him. She had everything organized.

  And in the first week of December, she had her annual mammogram. She always dreaded it, and feared that at her age, lightning could strike at any time. The Russian roulette of life. Her assistant Margaret reminded her of it the day before, and Olivia told herself the morning she went that she had nothing to worry about. Maribelle had never had any problems of the sort—why should she?

  She recognized the technician from previous years, and everything went smoothly. It was never pleasant, but it wasn’t agonizing, and she was reminding herself of how foolish she was to worry about it every year, as she got dressed and the technician came back in the room.

  “Could you come into the office for a few minutes, Mrs. Grayson?” she asked, still holding Olivia’s chart with films from previous years. She went diligently every year.

  “Something wrong?” Olivia felt a chill run down her spine.

  The woman didn’t say yes or no. She just smiled brightly, and said that the doctor wanted to see her for a minute. Olivia’s blood ran cold at the words. This was too much. First she lost her mother, now her health was going to start falling apart. And Maribelle had been in good health for her entire life. Olivia wanted to believe that that was some kind of safe passage for her, but suddenly she wasn’t sure.

  She walked into the doctor’s office, fully dressed as though her clothes were a form of armor to protect her, but she felt vulnerable and scared. He had several films in a light box up on the wall, which showed her left breast frontally and in profile. It just looked like a mass of gray to her. He pointed to a spot she couldn’t see at first, a little darker than the rest.

  “I’m not liking this spot a lot,” he said with a frown. “It could be the beginnings of a small mass. I’d like to do a biopsy.”

  “Now?” She looked horrified and felt like she wanted to run out of the room, but her legs had turned to Jell-O and she wanted to scream, while pretending to be perfectly calm. But she was anything but calm. She was panicked.

  “You could come back tomorrow if you like. But I think we should do it right away.”

  “Do you think it’s cancer?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

  “It could be a small malignancy.” He confirmed her worst fears. Olivia knew that one in eight women got breast cancer, and she was suddenly petrified. What if she was that one?

  “And if it is?”

  “That will depend on what we find. Often with something very early, we can handle it with a lumpectomy and no further treatment. If it’s at a more advanced stage we can talk about chemo and radiation, or hormone therapy. You have no family history of breast cancer from what I see, so hopefully this is very early and a lumpectomy would do it.”

  “You’re sure it’s cancer?” For a woman who ran an empire, she suddenly felt helpless and small.

  “No. That’s why we want the biopsy,” he said firmly. “Does tomorrow work for you?” No, never works for me, she wanted to say, but she knew she had to be responsible, and she was suddenly terrified of facing this alone. She didn’t want to frighten her children, and she thought of calling Peter, but she had just turned down his proposal, she had no right to burden him with the threat of cancer if she didn’t want to be his wife. This wasn’t his problem, it was hers. She nodded at the time the doctor suggested, and left the room in a daze. The technician was waiting for her outside with her sunny smile.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said. Easy for her to say, Olivia thought, it wasn’t her breast. She explained that they would make a small incision under local anesthetic, take out a small section, analyze it, and if necessary, after the results, operate to remove the lump. And she’d be fine. Easy peasy, scary as shit, she thought.

  Olivia went back to her office, feeling as though she’d been hit by a bus. Margaret looked at her when she walked in and thought Olivia looked a little gray.

  “Everything go all right?” she asked her.

  “Perfect.” Olivia smiled a wide, fraudulent smile. She had decided on the way back to the office that she would tell no one, and if she had to have a lumpectomy, she would do it alone. Her children didn’t need a cancer scare after just losing their grandmother. It would be too much for them, she decided, which meant she had to face it alone. She refused to tell Peter, and take advantage of a man she loved but didn’t want to marry.

  She spent a terrible night, wide awake, waiting to go in for the biopsy, and it was not quite as “piece of cake” as the technician had promised. It was terrifying and painful, the anesthetic didn’t work perfectly, and the incision was bigger than she thought. They told her they wanted to get a good sample so they didn’t miss anything. And afterward her breast hurt terribly. She had planned to go to the office, but went home instead, and told her assistant she had stomach flu. She stayed in bed for the rest of the day and felt lousy, and when Peter called and said he wanted to come over that night, she told him she had stomach flu and didn’t want to give it to him. She had never felt so alone in her life. Liz called her, and she listened to all her excitement about Andrew and her book. Olivia felt as though she were hearing her from another planet. She felt distant from everyone and very, very frightened. For the first time, she was aware of her own mortality. Her mother’s death had brought that home to her. And what if she had cancer now? What if she died? Her children would be devastated, but she knew she had to die someday, just not yet. She suddenly wondered if she had made the right decision about Peter, which seemed pathetic. She didn’t want to be with him out of fear or need. She felt weak and small and scared. She almost called him and asked him to be with her, but she didn’t. She forced herself to be brave. They had told her they would call her with the results of the biopsy in five to seven days.

  Olivia was back in the office the day after the biopsy, and it was the longest week of her life. She told Peter she was still sick over the weekend and avoided him, and she spent the days alone, in terror. It
was the following Tuesday when the doctor called. He announced it was “good news,” which sounded debatable to Olivia. It was an early-stage cancer, and if no lymph nodes were involved, and it was contained with clean margins, he was sure that they could get it with a small incision, and get by with a lumpectomy, which he suggested doing as soon as possible. And they would have the results from it in a week, to determine if she needed chemo or radiation, or possibly get by without it. It all sounded like bad news to her. Merry Christmas.

  She agreed to do the surgery on Friday, so she could recover from the procedure over the weekend. And she was seeing the children for their early Christmas dinner a week from Monday, so she had to be in decent shape. The doctor said she would be fine by then, with ten days to recover.

  To make matters worse, Peter wandered into her office and told her he was hoping to spend the weekend with her. He looked elated when he said it. He was so happy about his new freedom, and what it meant to them. He could be with her as often as they wanted.

  “I can’t. I have to work,” she said tersely, not looking up from her desk. She was afraid to look into his eyes, for fear that he would see the terror there. When she finally did look up, she saw that he looked hurt.

  “Are you angry at me?” he asked gently.

  “No, of course not,” she said, forcing herself to smile at him. “I’m sorry. I was distracted. I just haven’t been feeling well. This silly stomach bug I picked up, and now I have a mountain of work to do this weekend. End-of-year sales reports to go over.”