Даниэла Стил - The Affair

Things had begun to change when Nadia decided to stay in Paris after junior year. Olivia went to law school then, Venetia had gone to Parsons to study design, got married, and pregnant almost immediately, and Athena moved to L.A. after dropping out of Connecticut College. It had been the slow unraveling of their tight-knit group. They were known everywhere in school and among their friends as the McCarthy Girls, a united front, the four musketeers. Wherever you found one, you rapidly noticed the others. There had been strength in numbers, and joy and fun, and unforgettable adventures. And even now, whenever they were together, there was that same feeling of allegiance and unity, of being allies and knowing that the others would always be there for them. Their mother had called them the four-headed monster whenever they banded together against her. Later, she admitted that they were a force to be reckoned with. There had always been honor codes between them. They never dated the same boys or stole men from each other. They never betrayed each other’s secrets. They never squealed to their parents, or got each other in trouble in school or at home. There had been plenty of papers for school that one of the others had written for them. Olivia had gotten the best English and history grades in high school, Athena had math and science nailed. Venetia was the most creative, and Nadia and Olivia got the best overall grades. If there was a stray dog in the neighborhood, it came home with Athena. She was still doing it. She told Sylvie and Laure all about her latest rescue dogs over dinner, and showed them pictures of the two tiny Chihuahuas, Chiquita and Juanita, riding on the back of Stanley, the mountain dog. The Chihuahuas were wearing little sparkling tutus and looked like dancers on horseback in the circus, which the girls loved.

The girls were sorry that their aunt Venetia hadn’t brought her children with her. They always had a wild time with them, playing tag and hide-and-seek and running around outside. Olivia’s son acted like the elder statesman in the group, and was very circumspect. He was the same age as Venetia’s oldest son, Jack, who climbed trees and gave the younger ones piggyback rides, while Will, Olivia’s boy, would sit quietly and read a book. Venetia’s second son, Seth, and Will played chess sometimes, but her children preferred more athletic pursuits and contact sports, which Will didn’t indulge in. Just as the sisters were different from each other, their children reflected it, and the personalities of the next generation were just as varied. India, Venetia’s youngest, had the face of an angel, and took charge and ran them ragged wherever she was. She had her mother’s spirit, and her father’s irresistible charm. They all agreed that she would be a heartbreaker one day. Sophie and Laure were sweet, well-behaved little girls. And now there would be another child outside the circle, Nadia thought, Nicolas’s child with Pascale. She assumed that Sylvie and Laure would be spending time with him or her in the future, and they would be half sisters to a child none of their cousins would be related to or resemble. Until now, there was a family look among all of them. To some degree, they all looked like siblings, and there was a link between each of them, however slight.

Nadia quietly went upstairs to put the girls to bed while the others were drinking coffee. When she returned, they poured themselves more wine. They exchanged more memories, and then Athena asked Olivia how she liked being on the bench.

“I love it!” she said as her face lit up. “I’ve been jealous of Harley for years. I like it way better than just practicing law. It’s so three-dimensional, and I feel like I’m making a difference. It’s been really exciting.” They knew that Venetia was passionate about her job in fashion, and Athena had fun with her TV show and loved cooking, and Nadia had always loved her interior design work. She had important clients all over Europe, and had done two big apartments in New York and a spectacular vacation home in the Dominican Republic for one of her French clients recently, before the storm hit.

Each of them had been lucky to find their chosen path early on, just as their mother had. Their father had had a distinguished career in investments and was respected in the financial community. Everyone knew and liked Wallace McCarthy. But none of the girls was drawn to the world of finance. He was the perfect balance to Rose, serious and grounded while she was creative. He had been a devoted father, interested in each of them, encouraging them at the start of their careers. He had died young, four years before, at seventy-two. Orphaned while he was in college, he made his family all-important to him once he married Rose and the girls were born. He was ten years older than their mother, and although old-school and traditional, he wasn’t stuffy. He had liked Ben and Nicolas immensely, and eventually got used to Joe and saw his merits, although he was somewhat unorthodox and informal, by their father’s standards. He had always worried that Harley was too old for Olivia, particularly since they married when Olivia was still in law school, and Harley was in his forties. Harley was closer to her parents’ age than to hers, but the marriage had proven solid, and her father had finally given up his objections, and had a good relationship with Harley. As Rose pointed out to her husband, his concerns about his daughters’ choices of men wouldn’t change anything anyway. Olivia had always been headstrong and did what she wanted fearlessly. In Harley’s case, her instincts had been right. She was still happy with him fifteen years later, more now than ever.

The girls had lived well growing up on the Upper East Side of New York in a brownstone their parents had bought before it cost a fortune to buy one. They didn’t live lavishly, but they were more than comfortable and had everything they wanted, went to private schools and the best colleges. They had all gone to Spence, a fancy venerable private girls’ school. Venetia had made her debut, after Athena had refused to. Venetia only did it so she could wear a fabulous white dress and have a Cinderella night at the cotillion. Olivia had objected to the whole concept, politically, at eighteen, and refused. Nadia had made her debut because she knew her parents wanted her to. She knew how much it meant to them, which hadn’t concerned Athena and Olivia.

Nadia hated disappointing her parents, and tried hard not to. She was the most traditional of all of them. Olivia was extremely liberal politically in her teens, and was influential in women’s causes, but grew increasingly conservative with age, and under Harley’s influence. Athena had no politics, except where it affected dogs, and animal testing of any kind, and she was against capital punishment. Olivia was in favor of it now. Venetia got the news of the world filtered through the eyes of Women’s Wear Daily, the influential online trade publication of the fashion world, and the rest she read in Vogue and The Business of Fashion , also online. Nadia liked to read The New York Times, Le Figaro, and The Wall Street Journal when she had time to stay abreast of the news in the States. That way, she could talk intelligently with her clients and knew what was going on. Athena wrote articles for culinary magazines, and the readers loved them. She’d had a Q&A column for years in Gourmet magazine, but now wrote a blog on her website instead, and she posted beautiful photographs of food on her Instagram every day. They were happy, secure, stable women, who were each on the right path for them. And they had made good choices as adults, about their men, their careers, and their lives.

“I don’t know how you have time for that,” Olivia had commented to Athena while she was cutting and chopping things for their dinner that night. She was preparing tiny, delicate fraises des bois for dessert, with crème fraîche, which looked irresistible, and she photographed them for Instagram.