Precious Gifts (3 page)

Joy texted both Juliette and Timmie that afternoon, and she asked Timmie if she could stay with her. She had just decided to take the red-eye to New York that night. She wanted to go home. Timmie answered her immediately that she could. She lived in the West Village, which was inconvenient for work, but she loved her neighborhood in the old meat-packing district, and she had a rent-stabilized apartment that was a third-floor walk-up, but it was sunny with charm. Joy always liked being at Timmie's better than at Juliette's tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and she wanted to be in the city. She could have gone to her mother's, but it was more relaxed at Timmie's, who made no comments about her life, unlike their mother, whose disappointed look was worse than words. Véronique hated Joy working as a waitress even more than her acting, and the subject always came up. As the youngest in the family, she felt as though they still treated her as though she were fourteen, not twenty-six. She would have to face them all now, and it was strange to think that her father would no longer be there singing her praises and calling her “baby.” Suddenly, she could no longer imagine a world without her father in it, and tears were streaming down her cheeks when she called the airline and booked her seat.

Timmie waited until after she saw her last client to call her mother. It was four in the afternoon by then, but she hadn't wanted to be rushed when she called her, knowing that someone with bigger problems was waiting for her. As she glanced at her watch, she knew that it was ten o'clock at night in France. She hated giving her bad news at night, there was always something more depressing about that, when you had the whole night to lie there and dwell on it, unable to sleep. But she had no choice—she knew she couldn't wait until the next day to tell her. And if Véronique happened to call the nursing home to check on him, as she sometimes did, Timmie didn't want her to learn of his death from a stranger. So she called her at the rented house near St. Tropez. Véronique answered on the second ring on her French cell phone, seeing that the call was from Timmie. They hadn't spoken in several days, and she wasn't surprised to hear from her.

“Hi, darling.” Véronique's voice sounded almost like a young girl's. Both Timmie's parents had always looked younger than their age. Timmie hoped it was an inherited trait. She felt every bit her age, and sometimes older, and as though she were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, especially now, delivering bad news to her mother.

Despite the divorce, Timmie knew how sad her mother would be. Véronique had no family except Paul and her children. Her own mother had died when she was fifteen, and her father when she was twenty-one, which was why she had married Paul so young. It had been a year after she lost her father, and she had been alone in the world then, vulnerable and scared, despite having inherited a very large fortune from both her parents. Her fortune had drawn Paul to her like a beacon when they met, and she had been a beautiful and innocent young girl.

“Hi, Mom,” Timmie said, sounding serious. “I don't have good news.” She wanted to give her some warning of what was coming.

“Your father?” Véronique asked, holding her breath, although she had expected it to happen, and had had the feeling when she saw him in June that it would be the last time, and he had felt it, too. They had been particularly loving to each other that day.

“Arnold called me. He died last night. Arnold said he went peacefully in his sleep.” There was silence at the other end, and then she could hear that her mother was crying. It wasn't a surprise, but it was a huge loss to her anyway. He had never really left her life—he had just stepped into a different role with her, as older brother, father, and friend.

“I'm sorry for you,” her mother said kindly. She remembered how she had felt when she lost her father. He had been heartbroken after her mother's death from leukemia, and had never recovered. He had been an important financier on Wall Street, American, and her mother had been thirty-five years younger and French. He had never expected to lose her, she was the love of his life and so young when she died. It had happened very quickly, three months after she got sick. Véronique's mother, Marie-Laure de Bovay, had been nearly as young when she married Phillip Whitman as Véronique was herself when she married Paul Parker.

Véronique had lived in several places with her parents—Hong Kong, London, Paris. She had learned to speak Chinese as a child and was fluent in French, because of her French mother and their frequent stays in Paris. Her roots in France had pulled at her more strongly in recent years. She was spending more time in Paris and had rented a house in the South of France in the summer, hoping to lure her daughters there for a few weeks, although this year all three had been too busy to come. And she had bought an apartment on the Île St. Louis, on the Quai de Béthune, overlooking the Seine, a few years before. She still owned her parents' home in the seventh arrondissement, on the rue de Varenne, but it had been unoccupied for years, with a caretaker to keep it running and in good repair. It was an exquisite eighteenth-century
hôtel particulier.
She didn't want to give it up, but it made her too sad to go there. The house held too many memories for her. She and Paul had stayed there frequently early in their marriage, but she hadn't spent a night in the Paris house in twenty years, since the divorce. And she didn't need to sell it, so she was keeping it, for the girls.

Véronique's maternal grandfather had been the most respected art dealer in Paris, and her father, Phillip Whitman, had bought most of his Impressionist paintings from him, and then married his daughter. Véronique's parents' marriage had been unusual due to the thirty-five-year age difference between them, but they had adored each other, and Véronique had countless memories of her loving parents, whose deep love affair had included her.

When her father died, Véronique had inherited her mother's sizable, important art collection—some spectacular paintings—and she had her father's enormous fortune, wisely invested, which had grown over the years. At twenty-one, young and alone, Véronique was living between their apartment in New York and the house in Paris that Marie-Laure had inherited from her father and never sold.

Véronique met Paul Parker a few months after her father's death, at a wedding. It had been a whirlwind romance, and they were married a year later, when she was twenty-two. She had followed in her mother's footsteps, marrying a much older man, which seemed right in the circumstances. She needed a father even more than a husband. And marrying her had changed Paul Parker's life forever. Born of aristocratic parents with no money, distant cousins of the Astors, Paul had adapted quickly to her lifestyle, although Véronique was a much simpler, more discreet person than he. Paul was outgoing and flamboyant, elegant and charming. He had lived lavishly on her means—he gave up the small job he had never liked and became a gentleman of leisure as her husband. They had been happy, particularly when the children were born, although it all ended with his affair and her discovery that his dalliances were legion. He could never resist a pretty woman. After ten years the marriage was over, although Véronique still loved him when she divorced him. And Timmie always suspected that she still did, even though she said they were just friends, and Timmie hated being the one to tell her now that he was dead.

“Have you done anything about the funeral?” her mother asked her, and Timmie admitted that she hadn't had time that day. His body was still at the nursing home.

“I wanted to talk to you first.” She knew that her mother would want to make the arrangements, since Paul had no family other than Véronique and his children. Both of them were only children, so there were no cousins or distant relatives to deal with.

“I'll take care of it,” Véronique said quietly. “I'll come home tomorrow. I'll call Frank Campbell's from here.” It was the funeral home on upper Madison Avenue in New York that most people they knew used. She mentioned that she could even call her florist in the morning before she flew home. And they had to write an obituary for
The New York Times.
It occurred to Timmie that there was little to say about her father other than that he'd had a wonderful life, in great part thanks to her mother, who had provided for him well. He'd had a thirty-year vacation because of her.

“I'm sorry, Mom,” Timmie said sincerely. Whatever her feelings about her father, she knew how much her mother loved him.

“It's all right, darling. He wouldn't have wanted to stay the way he was. It was time.”

They talked for a few more minutes then, and Véronique called both her other daughters after she and Timmie hung up. Juliette was crying in her apartment when Véronique called her.

“I'm coming home tomorrow,” Véronique told Juliette. It was nearly midnight in France by then, and they talked for a long time. She was inconsolable, talking about the wonderful father he had been. Véronique didn't contradict her—she knew that Juliette had harbored that fantasy for years. It was Timmie who always called her on it, not her mother. Véronique knew his failings as a father and a husband but had never criticized him to the girls.

She reached Joy while she was packing for the trip. She sounded distracted and numb.

“I'm taking the red-eye tonight,” Joy said to her mother. She was still trying to absorb the fact that she no longer had a father. The news had been a shock. She'd been in denial until then.

And after that Véronique called Timmie again. She was still in her office, completing a dozen different forms for SSI.

“I forgot to ask you if anyone called Bertie,” Véronique said, sounding distressed. He was Paul's son by his first marriage, and he had been eight years old when Paul and Véronique married. His mother had died in a drowning accident when he was four. Véronique had treated him like her own son from the moment they married, but he had always been a challenging child. Bertie looked exactly like his father, but had none of his charm, even as a boy.

It had been no secret, over time, that Paul had married her for her money, although it took Véronique years to understand that, but he had been loving to her as well. Bertie was
only
interested in money, however he could get it, even as a child. Paul had done everything in his life with grace, elegance, and style. But whatever Bertie did came across as conniving. He had been thrown out of some of the best schools in New York for bad behavior, and for stealing. He had been kicked out of Dartmouth for cheating. And after college, he had been involved in dozens of get-rich-quick schemes that were always slightly shady and had never panned out. Now at thirty-eight, he was always broke, “on the verge of making a killing,” according to him, borrowing someone's office or living on someone's couch. He had gone through every penny Véronique had lent him to finance his schemes, and even Paul had given him some money to get on his feet. Bertie always managed to blow it and wind up in the midst of a lawsuit or get fired. He lived his life close to the edge and hand to mouth.

Véronique always explained his bad behavior by saying that he acted that way because he'd lost his mother as a very small child. And she had made every effort to support and help him when he was young and treated him as her own son, even after the divorce. But even she had finally stopped giving him money several years before. He was a bottomless pit. Véronique hadn't seen Bertie in two years, although she felt bad about it. And she rarely heard from him, unless he wanted something.

Bertie was fiercely jealous of his sisters, and had been since they were born. He had taken their allowances when they were children and had grown up to be a profoundly greedy, dishonest person, with no integrity. If there was a choice, he took the low road every time. But no matter how unpleasant he was, he was still Paul's son and had to be informed of his father's death. He had never married, had no children that he knew of, and always had some sleazy woman on his arm. And he hated Timmie even more than the others, so she didn't want to call him. He had tried unsuccessfully to bilk her out of money several times, saying he only needed to borrow it for a few weeks, but she knew him better and wouldn't give him a dime.

He never wanted to believe that his sisters lived on what they earned and had no money to spare. It was a lesson their mother had wanted them to learn. Véronique had been far more generous with Bertie, to try to help him get on his feet, which he never did. But she hadn't wanted the girls to be indolent or behave like heiresses, no matter how much they would inherit from her one day. They would be very rich women once she died, but for now they lived on their salaries, with only occasional help from her, like the loan for Juliette's sandwich shop. Véronique had been far more rigid with them than with her wayward stepson, but she had finally given up on him. He had become an extremely unpleasant person as an adult, and was someone to avoid. But she couldn't avoid him now, and didn't want to. Although he and Paul didn't see eye to eye, he had lost his father, too. And Véronique had always been more compassionate with him even than his father, who had lost patience with him years before. He had burned his father for money, too.

After she hung up with Timmie, Véronique called Bertie on the cell phone number she had for him. She hadn't spoken to him in nearly a year, since his father's stroke. And Bertie had hardly come to see him while he was sick. He always had some excuse and said he was too busy.

Bertie answered immediately and was surprised to hear his stepmother's voice. She told him gently that his father had died, and how sorry she was to give him such bad news.

“I'm not surprised,” he said coolly. “Are you coming back for the funeral?”

She sounded shocked by the question. “Of course.” He had correctly assumed that since it was summer, she was in France.