Pascale looked deeply sympathetic, for him and the kids. “What a terrible thing to do to you and the children.”
“Yeah, it was very rough at first, but it’s worked out pretty well. I guess I really screwed it up for her to do that to our children.” He looked grim as he said it, and she could see that he was still wounded.
“Non!” she said, sounding very French and put up a hand in objection. “That’s not you! That’s a woman with a terrible character flaw, a ‘lack’ in her, to do such a thing to her kids.” She looked outraged. “You did not do that.” She sounded like his mother again and he smiled.
“I don’t know why, but you keep reminding me of my mother.”
“Probably because I’m French.” She smiled at him.
“Anyway, I was very bitter about it for a long time. I guess I still am to some degree. It’s hard to trust anyone after that. I put a lot of walls up. But I had a part in it too. I was a bad husband. I was away too much of the time, and I neglected her and the kids. Oddly, my parents never thought she was right for me. I guess she was the wrong person. I was a little obtuse that it took me eleven years to notice. It makes me sound very stupid now.”
“Or very loving and trusting,” she said generously.
“Anyway, we’re fine now, and I am too.” But she could see that he was still gun-shy and wounded although he was very nice. “We were young, and she was very pretty. It takes a lot more than that to bring up kids.” Pascale had checked him out on the Internet too and was impressed by his career and what he had built on his own from nothing.
They sat outside for a long time until it got chilly, and she didn’t want to overstay her welcome. She finally got up to leave around nine-thirty. It was a warm October night.
“You have an amazing family,” she said to him. “Your children are fantastic.”
“I wish you could have met my parents.” And then as he said it, a word came into his head that his mother had used about them. “They were soulmates. My father said he knew it the first time she stole a potato for him in the camp when she worked in the vegetable garden. She was a very brave woman. They would have killed her for it if they’d caught her.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t meet them.” He nodded and walked her to her car, and as she got in, he looked at her, thinking about the potato.
“Dinner this week?” he asked her cautiously, and she nodded. “I warn you, I’ve been a little bristly for the last seven years.”
“You have good reason to be,” she said quietly and patted his hand, and then she got in her car, waved, and drove off. He walked back into the house slowly.
“She’s nice,” Kendra said as she walked by. “Did you do okay, Dad?”
“I only insulted her twice,” he said, laughing.
“That’s a big improvement.” And then she went back upstairs and he went to his study and thought about Pascale. He felt a connection to her, and somehow the potato had something to do with it, and the look in her eyes that was so familiar, as though they came from the same world.
Chapter 22
Max took Pascale to dinner that week at Jean-Louis, a small French restaurant in Greenwich, and twice the week after, and then she invited him to her small cozy apartment full of French things and made him coq au vin, which his mother used to make too. It was comforting to be with someone European who came from a similar culture even if she wasn’t Jewish, which he didn’t care about. Julie hadn’t been either.
* * *
—
They continued having dinner together once or twice a week, and he invited her to go ice skating with his children when the weather got colder. They had fun with her. They all went to the city together another time, and she became a frequent guest at their home for dinner on weekends. He was enjoying her company and felt at home with her, but he also felt stuck. He had been so burned by Julie that he couldn’t get past that. There was nothing about her that he didn’t like or didn’t trust, except he knew that if he let himself care about her, his heart would be at risk and she could smash it to bits, and she could sense what he was going through. He was a man on a ledge afraid to jump. But she was in no hurry and she enjoyed his company and his kids.
He invited her to their Chanukah celebration and Hélène lit the candles and sang the prayers, and then they had a feast. Hélène talked colleges again with Pascale. She was leaning to Princeton, and had the grades to get in. And Kendra, who worshipped her father, said she would go to Harvard just like him and he reminded her that she’d better get the grades. Pascale gave the children little Chanukah gifts. She had painted designs on some of them herself for the girls, and she bought a tie for Max.
He smiled when he saw it. “My mother used to make all my father’s ties. She was a fantastic seamstress. Much to my chagrin, she made all my clothes until I was about thirteen. They were much nicer than anything my friends had, and I hated it. I wanted scruffy clothes like theirs, not little navy blue suits.” He smiled at the memory. “It’s funny how the things that embarrass us as children become tender memories.”
He invited her to a movie that weekend, and when he took her back to her place, she invited him up for a drink. They lit a fire in the fireplace and she had champagne for him, and they sat in front of the blaze and talked about her childhood in Paris. Her mother had been an art history professor at the Sorbonne, and her father owned a restaurant where he picked up women constantly, and slept with all the waitresses. “I hated him for it. My mother was such a good woman. It’s why I never married. I didn’t want someone like him.” He nodded, thinking about Julie and the marks she had left on him. He had tire tracks on his heart where she had run over him, although he admitted that part of it had been his fault, for forcing her into a mold that didn’t fit her. His parents had been smart enough to see it, and he didn’t want to and had refused to accept reality until she ran away.
“I’ve always wanted to have a relationship like my parents’. Maybe you have to go through something terrible together to have a bond like that. You realize what’s important. I’ve never known two people closer. They were soulmates,” he said, as he had before. He looked into the fire and then turned to look at Pascale. “I feel that way about you sometimes,” he said, feeling safe with her.
“So do I,” she said and he leaned over and kissed her. It had taken him two months to dare to take the risk, but once he did, he couldn’t stop kissing her and she was a passionate woman and neither of them could stop. The floodgates had opened, and he picked her up and carried her into her bedroom and set her down gently on the bed. He looked at her, waiting for her to stop him, questioning if he should stop himself but he didn’t want to. He felt a powerful bond with her and he wanted all of her, her heart and her soul and her mind and her body and everything about her he loved. They made love for hours in her cozy bedroom and lay in each other’s arms totally spent afterward. He still didn’t know what had made her seem so familiar to him when he had seen her at the school. But there was something undeniable between them, a link of some kind. He had never had that with Julie, and he knew as he held Pascale that he could trust this woman, she wasn’t going to hurt him, and he would never hurt her. He wanted to protect her from all harm. She made him feel like a better man.
“I love you, Pascale,” he said and she told him she loved him too. They had had it all in one night, their first kiss, making love, and their admission that they loved each other. He stayed very late, and he didn’t want to leave her now that he had found her. He had never met a woman like her and knew it instinctively. “My mother always said you know when you’ve found the right person. I never understood that. I think I do now.” All the puzzle pieces had quietly slipped into place seamlessly.
* * *
—
Max and Pascale continued to date discreetly through the winter. They went away for the weekend together when the two older girls we
re busy, and the nannies had things to do with the little ones. They stayed at his apartment in New York occasionally. He still owned it, but hadn’t used it in several years. He had an extremely comfortable life and she fit into it perfectly, and they brought out the best in each other.
He was taking the children to Aspen for spring break and he asked her to join them. The children didn’t object when he told them, and he got her her own room so they looked respectable, but he slept in it with her every night. He had learned to ski over the years, but she was a fabulous skier and skied with the children, and they put Daisy and Simon in ski school. They were a nice family together, and by summer the answer seemed obvious to him. He asked her to marry him in June and she hesitated.
“I don’t think I believe in marriage. It never works out the way people hope. I don’t want to spoil what we have.”
“It turns out well sometimes. Look at my parents.”
“But look what they went through to get there.”
“We’ve had our share of bumps before we met each other,” he reminded her. “You had two bad relationships, and I had a bad marriage.” She didn’t disagree.
“Let me think about it.” He was disappointed she was so hesitant, but he respected her wishes. He never again wanted to force someone into what they didn’t want to be or do.
That summer they rented a house in Maine, and she came with them again. Hélène was going into her senior year in high school, and Kendra eighth grade. Daisy was working hard on her dyslexia with Pascale’s help, and Simon looked more like a boy now than a baby. Max still couldn’t understand how Julie could live without seeing her children, how they were growing up, what they were doing, and not being with them every day. He would never understand it.
“There’s a piece of her missing,” Pascale said simply when they talked about it.
“The pieces of her missing are her children,” Max said sternly.
“She doesn’t have room for them. It’s a defect in her,” Pascale insisted. It seemed so obvious to her.
They all hated to go home after the summer vacation, and Pascale seemed like part of the group now. She fit in naturally. It felt strange whenever she wasn’t there.
The night they got back to Greenwich, she stayed to help Max cook dinner on the barbecue and they were laughing about something when she turned to him. “This is silly. I don’t want to go home. I want to be here with all of you, forever. If you still want me.” She looked at him cautiously.
“I thought you’d never say yes,” he said with relief. “Let’s get married soon.” He was fifty-one years old and she was forty-four and he didn’t want to waste any more time. “Can you put up with four kids?”
“They’re our greatest blessing,” she said, smiling at him. They told them the news at dinner that night. It was a natural evolution. She belonged with them now.
“Can I throw roses at you when you marry Daddy?” Daisy wanted to know.
“Of course,” Pascale told her, “and Simon can carry the rings if you promise not to lose them. Kendra will be our bridesmaid, and Hélène is the maid of honor.”
“We need a witness old enough to sign the registry,” Max commented. Hélène was not quite seventeen, which wasn’t old enough. “And a minister or a rabbi to perform the ceremony, and someone to give the bride away.”
“I can give myself away,” she said simply. “And we can find a minister easily if a rabbi won’t do it because I’m not Jewish, and we’ll find someone to sign the registry.” Only minor technical details remained. The big issues were clear.
They got married three weeks later at The Orchards on a beautiful fall day. Pascale wore a white Chanel suit and she had taken the girls shopping for new dresses, Max got Simon slacks and a blazer. Max looked handsome in a new dark blue suit. A minister performed the ceremony, and a Reform rabbi gave a blessing, as Max looked at them. They were a family again. He knew that this time he had found the right woman. All she wanted was a plain gold wedding ring. She said she didn’t need a diamond or an engagement ring. And Daisy got her wish and threw rose petals at them after the ceremony. It was a perfect day. It had taken seven years to find her, after Julie left, and a lifetime before that, but it had been worth the wait. And Max knew with total certainty that Pascale was there to stay, and this time, his parents would approve. He could feel them smiling and happy for him from wherever they were.
Epilogue
“Good Lord! Do we have enough food here?” Max laughed as he walked into the kitchen. Hélène and Pascale were in charge of the dinner. They were celebrating Chanukah and Max’s birthday. He was turning sixty-three. The girls were all bringing their boyfriends home and the house was bursting at the seams, and they had enough food to supply an army. He walked out again and left them to it, and Kendra had just arrived from San Francisco with her boyfriend, Charlie. They had an idea for a startup and wanted to set it up there. She was twenty-five and had just finished Harvard Business School in June. She still wanted to work with her father, which was her lifelong dream, but she wanted to try to get their fledgling startup off the ground first. It was the first time Max had met Charlie and he seemed like a bright boy, and Kendra was crazy about him. He was twenty-six and had gotten his MBA at Harvard with her. They were sweet together. Pascale liked him when she met him too.
Hélène had come home the night before. She had her dream job as an assistant curator at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. She’d spent a year as an intern at the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, and now she was back and loved Washington and the museum. And she was doing what she had promised her grandmother she would do one day, keeping the memories alive so no one would forget. Her boyfriend, David, was thirty-two and Jewish. He was a resident at Georgetown University Hospital, and Pascale had told Max she could hear wedding bells. Hélène was twenty-nine. There was no risk of that with Kendra. She was still much too young and focused on her career to settle down yet.
Daisy had just turned twenty-one and was in her last year at the Conservatory in Paris. Her boyfriend was French and he’d come home with her. Her hair was shocking pink, her boyfriend’s blue, they played in a band on the weekends, and had just made a CD with Daisy playing guitar and Sylvain on drums. She was studying music composition at the Conservatory. Sylvain was twenty-nine and loved her just as she was, and she was thinking about staying in Paris for another year to take advanced courses.
And Simon was in his sophomore year at Harvard at nineteen, and wanted to go to law school after he graduated. He was the most conservative of the group, and he was dating a girl from Greenwich who was at Boston University so they could be close to each other. Every time Max looked at him he could see his father staring back at him, they looked so much alike.
They all came down before dinner, looking handsome and well dressed, and Max could see the family thread in each of them. Hélène looked like her grandmother, Simon like Jakob, Kendra wanted to follow her father’s path in business and learn at the feet of the master, as she put it. Hélène had fulfilled her promise to her grandmother to keep the memories alive and had just gotten permission to do a special exhibit on Buchenwald, with a reunion of the survivors. Simon was going to Harvard like his father, and Daisy felt an irresistible pull toward Paris, and wanted to also study music in Vienna at some point. Each of them were following the footsteps of those before them in some way, and had found good people to travel with them, and Max had found happiness at last with Pascale. They’d been married for eleven years, as long as he’d been married to Julie, but it was so different.
Hélène lit the Chanukah candles as she did every year and they sang the prayers together, their voices raised as they stood together in memory of those who were no longer there, who had suffered, who had learned, who had gone on, and left joy and wisdom and memories behind. Max smiled at his children and held his wife’s hand. He was still handsome and healthy and strong and h
e and Pascale loved each other. They were a family.
Max had followed in his father’s footsteps in his own way, his children would follow in his, and each would forge their own path, in honor of the past, in hope for the future, making new footprints of their own.
To my wonderful children,
Beatie, Trevor, Todd, Nick,
Sam, Victoria, Vanessa,
Maxx, and Zara,
My wish for you is
to honor the past and your history
and those who came before you,
Cherish the present and embrace it,
and be brave,
And have faith in the future,
respect yourselves,
and always be true to yourself,
and may you find your soulmates.
I love you,
Mom/DS
By Danielle Steel
IN HIS FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS • THE GOOD FIGHT • THE CAST • ACCIDENTAL HEROES • FALL FROM GRACE • PAST PERFECT • FAIRYTALE • THE RIGHT TIME • THE DUCHESS • AGAINST ALL ODDS • DANGEROUS GAMES • THE MISTRESS • THE AWARD • RUSHING WATERS • MAGIC • THE APARTMENT • PROPERTY OF A NOBLEWOMAN • BLUE • PRECIOUS GIFTS • UNDERCOVER • COUNTRY • PRODIGAL SON • PEGASUS • A PERFECT LIFE • POWER PLAY • WINNERS • FIRST SIGHT • UNTIL THE END OF TIME • THE SINS OF THE MOTHER • FRIENDS FOREVER • BETRAYAL • HOTEL VENDÔME • HAPPY BIRTHDAY • 44 CHARLES STREET • LEGACY • FAMILY TIES • BIG GIRL • SOUTHERN LIGHTS • MATTERS OF THE HEART • ONE DAY AT A TIME • A GOOD WOMAN • ROGUE • HONOR THYSELF • AMAZING GRACE • BUNGALOW 2 • SISTERS • H.R.H. • COMING OUT • THE HOUSE • TOXIC BACHELORS • MIRACLE • IMPOSSIBLE • ECHOES • SECOND CHANCE • RANSOM • SAFE HARBOUR • JOHNNY ANGEL • DATING GAME • ANSWERED PRAYERS • SUNSET IN ST. TROPEZ • THE COTTAGE • THE KISS • LEAP OF FAITH • LONE EAGLE • JOURNEY • THE HOUSE ON HOPE STREET • THE WEDDING • IRRESISTIBLE FORCES • GRANNY DAN • BITTERSWEET • MIRROR IMAGE • THE KLONE AND I • THE LONG ROAD HOME • THE GHOST • SPECIAL DELIVERY • THE RANCH • SILENT HONOR • MALICE • FIVE DAYS IN PARIS • LIGHTNING • WINGS • THE GIFT • ACCIDENT • VANISHED • MIXED BLESSINGS • JEWELS • NO GREATER LOVE • HEARTBEAT • MESSAGE FROM NAM • DADDY • STAR • ZOYA KALEIDOSCOPE • FINE THINGS • WANDERLUST • SECRETS • FAMILY ALBUM • FULL CIRCLE • CHANGES • THURSTON HOUSE • CROSSINGS • ONCE IN A LIFETIME • A PERFECT STRANGER • REMEMBRANCE • PALOMINO • LOVE: POEMS • THE RING • LOVING • TO LOVE AGAIN • SUMMER’S END • SEASON OF PASSION • THE PROMISE • NOW AND FOREVER • PASSION’S PROMISE • GOING HOME
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