Sarah did not find herself anxious to celebrate. She wanted to go home and cry. It was happening again. One of her children was blindly walking into someone else’s trap and absolutely refused to see it. Why couldn’t he have an affair with her? Why did he have to delude himself that this was a girl to marry? It would have been obvious to Helen Keller that she wasn’t. She was beautiful, and incredibly sexy, but her eyes were cold, and everything about her was calculated and planned. There was nothing spontaneous or sincere or warm, or caring about her. And Sarah suspected from the way she looked at him, that she liked him, she wanted him, but she didn’t love him. Everything about the girl suggested that she was a taker and a user. And Julian deluded himself that she was an adorable little girl, and he loved her.
“Well?” he asked happily when Yvonne went to powder her nose at the end of dinner. “Isn’t she terrific? Don’t you love her?” He was so blind, it exhausted her. They all were. She patted his hand, and said she was a beautiful girl, which was true. And the next day, when he picked up some papers from her, she tried to talk about it discreetly.
“I think marriage is a very serious thing,” she began, feeling four hundred years old and incredibly stupid.
“So do I,” he said, looking amused by his mother being so pedantic. It wasn’t like her. Usually she was pretty direct, but she was afraid to be now. She had learned that lesson once, no matter how right she had been, and she didn’t want to lose him. But with Julian, she knew, it was different. Isabelle had been hot-headed and young, and Julian adored his mother, and was less likely to reject her completely. “I think we’re going to be very happy,” he said optimistically, which gave Sarah the opening she needed.
“I’m not as sure. Yvonne is an unusual girl, Julian. She’s had a checkered career, and she’s been taking care of herself for ten years.” She had run away from home at fourteen, she’d explained, and had given up school to model. “She’s a survivor. She’s looking out for herself, maybe more than even for you. I’m not sure she really wants what you do, when you think of marriage.”
“What does that mean? You think she’s after my money?”
“Possibly.”
“You’re wrong.” He looked angry at her. She had no right to do this, as far as he was concerned. But she thought she did, because she was his mother. “She just got half a million dollars from her husband in Berlin.”
“How nice for her,” Sarah said coolly. “And how long were they married?”
“Eight months. She left him because he forced her to have an abortion.”
“Are you sure? The newspapers say that she left him for the son of a Greek shipping tycoon, and he then dumped her for some little French girl. Complicated group of people you run with.”
“She’s a decent girl, and she’s had a tough time. She’s never had anyone to take care of her. Her mother was a whore, and she never even knew her father. He left before she was born, and her mother ditched her when she was thirteen. How can you expect her to have gone to some prissy little finishing school, like my sister?” His sister had made her own mistakes in spite of that, but this girl wasn’t making mistakes. She was making intelligent, calculating decisions. And Julian was one of them. You could see it.
“I hope you’re right. I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”
“You have to let us lead our own lives,” he said angrily. “You can’t tell us what to do.”
“I try not to.”
“I know.” He forced himself to calm down. He really didn’t want to fight with her. But he was sad that she hadn’t been more impressed by Yvonne. He’d been crazy about her from the first moment he saw her. “It’s just that you always think you know what’s right for us, and sometimes you’re wrong.” Though he hated to admit it, not often. But still, he had a right to do what he wanted.
“I hope I’m wrong this time,” she said sadly.
“Will you give us your blessing?” That meant a lot to him. He had always adored her.
“If you want it.” She leaned forward and kissed him, with tears in her eyes. “I love you so much … I don’t ever want you to suffer.”
“I won’t.” He beamed. He left then, and Sarah sat alone in her apartment for a long time, thinking of William, and her children, and wondering miserably why they were all so stupid.
Chapter 28
It was obvious to Emanuelle, too, and the two women stood and laughed together ruefully in a quiet corner. “Why does this keep happening to us?” Sarah said, shaking her head and looking at her old friend, who put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“I told you … every time I look at you, I count my lucky stars that I never had children.” But it wasn’t entirely true. There were times when she envied her, particularly now as she got older.
“They certainly make me wonder sometimes. I don’t understand it. She’s like ice, and he thinks she adores him.”
“I hope he never sees the truth,” Emanuelle said quietly, and she didn’t tell Sarah that he had bought her a thirty-carat canary diamond ring for their wedding, and he had two matching bracelets on order. She was doing very well, and Emanuelle was sure that this was only the beginning.
Isabelle had come to the wedding, too, without Lorenzo this time, and she was full of tales of the store in Rome. Everything was going brilliantly, and she was only annoyed that they had to spend so much money on guards. The situation in Italy, with the terrorists and the Red Brigade, made things difficult. But business was booming. Phillip had even had the grace to admit he’d been wrong, but not the spirit to come to his brother’s wedding. But Julian didn’t mind. All he saw, all he knew, all he wanted was Yvonne. And now he had her.
They were going to Tahiti for their honeymoon. Yvonne had said she’d never been and always wanted to go there. And they were going to stop in Los Angeles on the way home, to see his Aunt Jane, Sarah’s sister. Sarah hadn’t seen her in years, but they still kept in close touch, and Julian always maintained a family spirit. And conveniently, Yvonne wanted to go to Beverly Hills to go shopping.
Sarah saw them off, with the rest of the guests. And Isabelle stayed at the château until New Year’s, which pleased Sarah. They celebrated Xavier’s sixteenth birthday with him, and Isabelle said it seemed difficult to believe that he was so grown-up, she still remembered when he was a baby, which made Sarah laugh.
“Think how I feel when I look at you and Julian and Phillip. It seems like only yesterday when you were all small…” Her mind drifted off for a minute then, as she thought of William and those years. They had been so happy.
“You still miss him, don’t you?” Isabelle asked softly, and Sarah nodded.
“It never goes away. You just learn to live with it.” Like losing Lizzie. She had never stopped loving her, or feeling the loss, she had just learned to live with the pain day by day, until it became a burden she was used to. But Isabelle knew something about that too. The absence of children in her life was a constant pain in her heart, and her hatred for Lorenzo weighed on her whenever she let herself think of it, which lately, was less and less often. Mercifully, she was too busy with the store now to think of much else. And Sarah was thrilled they had opened a store in Rome for Isabelle to run.