Blessing in Disguise

by Danielle Steel

  “I can’t nurse them for you, though, Oona. My boobs are fried at the moment.” Xela made a joke of it. But she was in good spirits, she had just had a PET scan and a blood panel and she was cancer free. They celebrated that at dinner with champagne when she told them, and Isabelle looked ecstatic. She had all three of her daughters home, got to meet the twins, and Xela was cancer free. It didn’t get better than that.

  There was lots of guessing about who the mystery guest the next day was going to be, but no one could even remotely imagine who it would be.

  “Someone who wants to give us each a million dollars?” Xela teased, but she didn’t mean it and they all laughed.

  “If they do, I’m getting a breast lift,” Oona announced. “By the time I stop nursing, they’ll be on my knees.”

  “Just don’t get pregnant again right away,” Theo said wisely, and Oona sighed. She knew her husband better than that, and he said he wanted six, and possibly eight, to outdo his parents. She wasn’t finished yet, if she wanted to keep him happy, which was her main goal in life. But at least she had come to New York, despite his grousing. He called her every five minutes to ask what she was doing. She didn’t answer his call during their dinner on Friday, and he started texting her. He kept her on a very short leash.

  They grilled Theo about Geoffrey Bates then, and teased her about him. She insisted again that they were just colleagues and her sisters hooted and jeered and didn’t believe her. And she finally broke down and admitted that they had had dinner a few times, and then confessed they were going away for a weekend in Scotland.

  “I knew it!” Xela shrieked, and they all encouraged Theo. It was the first man they’d known about in Theo’s life in years.

  The girls all stayed up late that night, talking, and Xela spent the night with them. Breakfast on Saturday was as lively as dinner the night before, with the twins being handed around the table, except when Oona had to nurse them, which she did with a shawl over her.

  There was an atmosphere of anticipation, waiting to meet the mystery guest that morning. The girls were still dressing when Charlie and his family arrived promptly at noon, and Isabelle led them into the living room, offered them something to drink, and five minutes later all three girls walked into the room, with Theo and Xela each carrying one of the babies. Isabelle introduced them all to each other and invited them to sit down. The girls were looking the Andersons over with curiosity.

  “I wanted all of you here,” Isabelle said seriously, “because I want to tell you about a piece of my history that I’ve never shared with you.” Theo was staring intently at Charlie as her mother spoke. She’d never met him, but there was something so familiar about him that she couldn’t stop looking at him. They were all smiling uncomfortably at each other, and Charlie looked extremely nervous, while Jaime played with one of the babies and Steve looked bored.

  As they listened, Isabelle told them about the school dance when she was barely fifteen, and what it had led to. Her father’s decision, her own inability to do anything different, or convince her father otherwise, and the baby she had given up that had marked her forever. As the story progressed, her daughters looked at her with amazement at this part of her life that they had never known anything about, no matter how well they thought they knew her. And then Theo understood before the others and realized how much Charlie looked like their mother. Isabelle told them then that she had always wanted to find Charlie, and she had finally had the courage to look for him, and had found him forty-three years later. And she said simply that he was their half-brother and she thought they all deserved to meet. There was dead silence in the room as it sank in. Theo was the first to get up and embrace him, Oona started to cry and went to kiss him, and Xela was next and told him that she had always wanted a brother because her sisters were such a pain in the ass when they were growing up and everyone laughed. There were tears and kissing and hugging, and the girls talked to Pattie and their niece and nephew. There were no recriminations or accusations. There was only compassion and sympathy for what both she and Charlie had been through. And they all took turns hugging their mother and so did Charlie, and realized the courage it had taken for her to tell them.

  The noise level in the living room was enormous, and an hour later, they all moved into the dining room for the lunch Isabelle had ordered. She sat looking at all of them for a moment. And then Charlie turned to Isabelle with a look of disappointment. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Jack who?” the girls asked in unison.

  “My assistant,” Isabelle explained. And with that, Charlie told them his whole story, what a big star he had been and how it had all ended. It gave them a new perspective on him, and Isabelle told Charlie that Jack didn’t work on Saturdays.

  Xela leaned over to her mother then and whispered that she had called the man from the plane, and they had had lunch, and were having dinner the following week.

  “We can just be friends, in case I get sick again,” she said cautiously.

  “What if he got sick? Would you run away?”

  “Of course not.” She looked startled and offended.

  “Then why assume you will, and he’d run out on you?”

  “It’s not that. I don’t want to ruin his life, Mom.”

  “You won’t,” Isabelle said, observing something she thought she would never see in her lifetime, all four of her children at one table.

  Oona showed the Andersons photographs of all her children, and the farm in Tuscany. Theo and Pattie had an interesting conversation about the school she wanted to build adjacent to the hospital. Charlie talked to all of them. Jaime got to hold one of the twins.

  The Andersons stayed until five o’clock and the girls and their mother sat in Isabelle’s office and discussed all of it after they left.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell us, Mom?” Theo looked hurt that she hadn’t.

  “I put it away as my darkest secret a long time ago. I never told anyone, not even your fathers. My father wouldn’t let me talk about it either. It’s not something I was proud of.”

  “He’s a nice person,” Oona said about her new brother. “We must be a little overwhelming for him. I thought he handled it very well.”

  “So did I,” Isabelle said, proud of both branches of her family.

  “Are you planning to see a lot of him?” Theo asked her.

  “Probably not. But I want to stay in touch. Maybe I can be some kind of a mother figure to him now. He’s my son. He’s a little old to come back into the fold, but I don’t want to lose him again.” It sounded reasonable to them, and then Isabelle braced herself, to tell them another secret. She knew she had to. In simple terms, without making it sound too alarming, she told them about the problem with her eyes, and that it was improving for the time being.

  “That’s why I hired an assistant,” she explained. “I can’t spend hours and hours on the computer, and that’s how I broke my wrist, I tripped on the curb. I felt like an idiot.” They were sympathetic and handled it rationally but with concern for her.

  “This family is certainly full of secrets,” Xela commented, and realized that they had been through some major challenges recently. Her breast cancer, her mother’s eyes, the baby their mother had had at fifteen. “Does anyone else have something to confess?” Xela asked and no one volunteered.

  “Well, I don’t want to go home tomorrow, and that’s not a secret,” Oona said, looking sad about it.

  “Why don’t you stay a few more days,” they all suggested, but she didn’t want Gregorio to get upset.

  “He’ll survive it,” Xela said. “You never come home. Enjoy it. And it’s so nice for Mom.”

  “Maybe another day,” she considered. And they talked her into leaving Tuesday, which would mean she had been in New York for four days, which was not overdoing it. She had lots of help at home for her other children. Theo changed
her ticket for her, and Oona sent a text to Gregorio, who sent a flurry of them immediately and ordered her to come home. She said she couldn’t leave her mother, who was having a problem with her vision and had broken her wrist. He couldn’t argue with that.

  They had another boisterous dinner on Saturday night and went to the park together on Sunday. Isabelle couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed her family so much, and Xela’s turning over a new leaf with her sisters made a big difference. She told them all about the preacher from Texas that Jack had introduced them to.

  “What really made a difference, though,” she admitted to them, “was when they told me I had breast cancer. And then the preacher said that forgiveness changes things and he was right. I was angry all my life until then, and having cancer woke me up.”

  “It’s what the French call un mal pour un bien,” Isabelle said gently. “A bad thing happens which leads to a good thing. But the good thing would never have happened without the bad thing first.”

  “A blessing in disguise,” Oona said and they all nodded.

  * * *

  —

  Jack called her on Sunday night to ask her how it had gone. She told him it had been perfect and thanked him for everything he’d done to help set it up and make the arrangements.

  Theo left for London on Monday with considerable teasing about Geoffrey Bates. And Oona went back to Italy on Tuesday and the house was deadly quiet after that. Isabelle was sitting in the kitchen looking depressed the day after Oona left with the twins, and Jack found her there when he got to work.

  “Why don’t you go visit them?” She’d been planning to go to Italy anyway and had postponed it to go to Xela’s radiation treatments with her, and now they were over. “There’s an art fair in Venice in about a month, and another one in Bologna. You could visit Oona, see the fairs, and stop in Paris on the way back. You love it there.” He thought she needed some distraction and fun. She liked the suggestion and thought about it as she went upstairs, and by the end of the day, she had decided he was right. She didn’t need to sit there feeling sorry for herself. All the dates coincided and the fairs she was interested in were happening in May, which was a lovely month to travel.

  “All right,” she told him before he left for the day. “Let’s go to Italy and Paris. Can you get away?”

  “I’ll work it out.” It had gone smoothly before. “I’ll book the tickets on the Internet from home,” he said, smiling at her. He was pleased that things were working out well for her, and he liked his job, even more than working for the senator. And it was so varied. There was always some new surprise afoot.

  He emailed her later that night. He had booked the plane tickets, with a five-day stay in Paris on the way back. And he would take care of the hotels the next day when she told him where she liked to stay. She thanked him and gave him the names of the hotels she preferred in each city. She realized that so far, he had been a blessing in disguise too. If she hadn’t been told that she might go blind, which didn’t seem to be happening, at least not for now, she would never have hired him. And he had definitely improved her quality of life. It was an interesting thought, how sometimes good things came from bad.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The plane took off from Paris to Florence an hour late due to storms in Paris, but the weather was beautiful and sunny when they got there. The car and driver were waiting for them, and this time Jack was staying at the farm with her. They were only staying for four days, and then going on to Bologna and Venice for the art fairs.

  The children were happy to see their grandmother, and the twins had doubled in size in two months. Gregorio said it was because she was nursing and had so much milk. Oona told her mother she had decided to stop in the summer, which seemed long enough to her, with twins. It was all she did now. She hadn’t discussed it with Gregorio yet, but she seemed just a little bit more independent to her mother. She assumed they’d work it out.

  Theo had admitted that she’d had a wonderful time in Scotland with the doctor, and he was coming back to India. Xela was seeing Mark Thompson, the man she had met on the plane, and all her tests were clear, and with luck would stay that way. Isabelle was in touch with Charlie and Pattie every few weeks, just a friendly email, or a call which made him feel part of a larger family. All of her chicks appeared to be in good order, and when she and Jack left for Bologna after a relaxed visit, she looked rested and happy.

  “You certainly came into our lives at a turbulent time,” Isabelle commented to him as she watched the Italian countryside slide by, and he smiled at her.

  “That’s why you hired me,” he reminded her. “I know he’s the most macho guy on the planet and drives like a lunatic, but I actually like Gregorio, and he loves her.”

  “He just loves himself more,” Isabelle responded and Jack laughed.

  “That could be true, but she’s happy with him.”

  “That’s because she accepts doing everything his way. I wish she stood up to him a little more.” But that wasn’t Oona’s personality. She wanted to please him and everyone around her.

  “Maybe she will when she gets older. She’s very young.” And she was very grown up in a way too, a good wife, and an extraordinary mother.

  “He’s a lucky man,” Isabelle said and Jack didn’t disagree.

  They checked out the art fair in Bologna that afternoon, and stayed at the Grand Hotel Majestic in two beautiful rooms, and drove on to Venice the next day. Jack had never been there before. They both loved it.

  “Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is a job. I still pinch myself in the morning when I wake up. I should be paying you,” he teased her, as they walked around Venice, comfortably lost part of the time. She tucked her hand into his arm so she didn’t trip, her eyes were definitely getting better. The shots were working, and she had to have more when they went back.

  They stayed in Venice for four days, drove south to Rome for two days, and then flew to Paris for the last five days of their trip. They had planned it perfectly.

  Isabelle bought four paintings in Paris for old clients and two in Venice for the Caseys’ yacht. The job for them was almost complete, and she had an appointment with a new Russian client when they got back to New York. Jack had become very knowledgeable in the last six months. He learned quickly and read everything she gave him.

  “You’ll be a fine art dealer one day,” she teased him. “You’ll probably leave me and open a gallery,” she said as they walked along the Seine, once they got to Paris. They had dinner at her favorite bistro that night on the rue Saint Dominique. It was an odd arrangement. He worked for her but they were constant companions now. She was uneasy going out without him, and used to him, and their work life spilled over into their private time. She discussed everything with him, and they agreed on most subjects.

  “What are we these days?” he asked her over dinner. “Best friends or work pals or…” He smiled, as he watched her carefully and waited for the answer.

  “Does it need a name?” she said.

  “It might one day, so I don’t get confused and cross boundaries I shouldn’t.” The boundaries between them had been blurred for months. When he scolded her about something, she told him he sounded like Gregorio, and ignored him. “Where do you see yourself five years from now?” he asked her as they shared dessert and she looked surprised at the question. “Or ten?”

  “Hopefully not dead,” she said cynically.

  “Don’t say things like that. You’ll probably live to be ninety and I’ll be long gone.”

  “It’s interesting how we’ve both had several lives. As a basketball star in your case, radio, TV, the senator, now art. Me with the kids, and very different men who influenced my life.” Putnam probably the most among them, and for the longest. Collin and Declan had been so brief. But all three had left her with wonderful children. “Don’t you want children one
day, Jack?” She thought it a shame if he didn’t. He was so good with her, and so nurturing. No one had ever taken care of her as he did. She had always had to fend for herself, and take care of her kids.

  “No,” he answered her honestly. “Parenting is so quick. You blink and they’re gone, and you’re alone again anyway.” She couldn’t deny that. Her girls had all flown and were doing fine without her. It left one to figure out what to do with the years that were left. She was beginning to think about it. She had her work. But what else? “Would you ever be interested in a partnership, Isabelle?” She was surprised by the question.

  “In business?”

  “Not really,” he said quietly as their eyes met. “I had something else in mind. This seems to work surprisingly well, for both of us. I just wondered if…” He wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence, and she smiled at him, touched.

  “Is this a proposition or a proposal?” she whispered across the table.

  “Possibly both,” he whispered back.

  “Interesting…I’ll give it some thought,” she said mysteriously and they left the restaurant a short time later and went back to their hotel. It had been a lovely evening and she was intrigued by what he had said. She asked him a question in the car on the way back. “The age difference doesn’t bother you?”

  “No, would it bother you if it were reversed? You were with a man twenty-seven years older than you, with Putnam.”

  “I was young then.” She smiled at the memory. She had been so desperately in love with him. “And if I turn into a blind old woman?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Then you wouldn’t see how old I was getting. That would be a blessing.” She laughed and they walked through the lobby and went to their rooms, which were side by side. There was a connecting door, which they kept locked. They said good night, and he kissed her on the cheek, and they disappeared into their own rooms. Isabelle stood looking at the connecting door for a while and with the same spirit of adventure and willingness to take risk she’d had at twenty, she silently unlocked it and opened it just a crack. He might never even notice. If he did, what happened next was up to the fates. As she stood looking at the door, it opened slowly, and Jack stood looking at her from the other side.