Даниэла Стил - The Affair

“Do you think you’d ever tell Harley?” Venetia tried not to look as shocked as she was.

“Never. Just as I said. It would kill him. He thinks I’m some kind of modern-day saint, ultra-moral woman. He always tells me that my integrity is what he loves most about me. How can I tell him I’ve been lying to him about something as important as that for fifteen years? He’d never trust me again. I’ve never cheated on him except that one night. I felt so guilty that I had robbed him of the opportunity of having a child of his own that even though we had only wanted one child, I talked him into having a second one. We tried to have another baby and we never did. He thought maybe he’d gotten too old, but maybe he never could have children. I didn’t want to get tested to find out. Then he’d know I lied to him, so I said that Will was enough for me. And he is. He’s such a great kid.” The ramifications of what she’d done were so far-reaching and seemed so enormous to all of them that none of them knew what else to say for a few minutes. It wasn’t lost on Nadia that Olivia was the first and the loudest to condemn Nicolas for what he’d done with Pascale, and yet she had done something just as bad, or maybe even worse, lying to her husband about their son’s paternity. Nicolas hadn’t lied about it, Olivia had, and she was pressing her sister to divorce Nicolas. The hypocrisy of her position left Nadia stunned.

“Well, I think we’d all better forget that immediately and make a pact to bury it now and never discuss it again,” Rose said quietly. “Too many people could get badly hurt if that ever comes out. Olivia, thank you for your faith in us, trusting us with information like that. We can’t ever, ever mention it again.” She looked around the room at all four of her daughters. She passed no judgment on Olivia, and felt sorry for her for the burden she had carried for so long, alone. The wine had loosened her tongue, and she looked both frightened and relieved as she nodded at her mother. “I don’t think Will should ever know, even after his father is gone. They love each other. It wouldn’t be right to interfere with that now. Harley’s a wonderful father, and always has been. That’s all Will ever needs to know.”

“Thank you, Mom,” Olivia said, grateful that none of them had jumped up and called her a lying whore. For years, she had been afraid she would blurt it out one day. She had taken no drugs when she gave birth, for fear of what she’d say. The agony she’d experienced delivering her ten-pound son naturally had seemed like adequate punishment, and a price she was willing to pay.

“We all have our secrets, I suppose,” Rose said calmly. The others hadn’t quite recovered yet.

“I don’t.” Nadia spoke up. “I can’t believe you’ve been so harsh about Nicolas, when you did something even worse yourself,” she said to Olivia, with an edge to her voice.

“I didn’t make an ass of Harley, or drag some other guy around with me, all over the press. I made a terrible mistake, but I hate what he’s put you through, Naddie. He should be made accountable for it,” Olivia said emotionally.

“Are you accountable for what you did?” her younger sister asked, looking straight at her. It was a moment of truth between them like no other they had experienced, or probably would again. Olivia had laid her heart bare to them, and Nadia’s was raw. It felt good to Olivia to finally get it off her chest and share it with them. She had regretted it for fifteen years.

“I feel guilty about it every single day,” she answered. “Every time I look at Will, I remember what I did.”

“I slept with a married professor when I was in college,” Athena offered to provide some distraction. “I didn’t really feel that guilty. He was kind of a jerk and was sleeping with half the girls in the class.” The others laughed.

“I have a confession,” their mother said and surprised them all. She was so honest and upstanding, none of them could imagine she had done anything too shocking. “I always thought you should know. Your father didn’t agree with me, and didn’t want me to tell you, so I never did, out of respect for him. I was married once before I met your father, when I was a student at Oxford. He was a very sweet English boy. His parents were horrified, and mine weren’t happy about it either. We snuck off and eloped, and regretted it after. We were completely unprepared for marriage. We were more like two children than adults, we were both nineteen. We got divorced after a year, which was why I left Oxford after only two years and transferred to the Sorbonne. And then I met your father, shortly after I got there, and it didn’t really matter that I was divorced. My life began with Wallace. Nothing that came before mattered to me after that. We started fresh, with a clean slate, and I moved to New York for him when he went back. And we got married very quickly without any fanfare, since I’d been married before. I just thought you should know. My father knew my first husband’s family. He married an Irish girl after the divorce, I think she was his cousin, and they had six kids. I saw him once years later, on the street in Dublin, when I was there for work. He had gotten fat and bald. He didn’t recognize me and I hardly recognized him. Neither of us said hello.” What she shared with them didn’t really shock them, but it was touching somehow, to think of their mother with a past. She had shared it to take the heat off Olivia, and Rose had had a little too much champagne herself.

“Where did you live with him, Mom?” Athena asked, curious.

“At Oxford, where we were both studying. We were really like two children. He was studying to be an architect.” There was nothing racy about it. It just sounded like a harmless teenage romance.

“I think Olivia still wins the prize,” Venetia said with a wry look, and the others laughed. “That was quite an announcement, Ollie. Now you’re going to have me worrying about making a slip if I get drunk at Christmas Eve dinner. Poor Harley.”

“He doesn’t ever need to know,” Rose said, meeting their eyes, and they nodded. It was an enormous piece of information for Olivia to have shared with them, and it could damage her marriage irreparably and upset her son profoundly if it came out. It was a measure of her trust that she had told them.

“I feel like I should go out and have an affair, or steal a car or something to stay in the running,” Athena said, and the others laughed. “Actually, I got arrested in college for being drunk and disorderly after a protest about animal testing. I drank so much wine with my buddies, I couldn’t remember what the protest was about. All things considered, I think we’ve all been pretty well behaved. And so has Olivia. That’s a hell of a lesson to have learned,” she said sympathetically.

“I’ve never looked at another man again, only Harley.” She seemed humbled by her confession, and not quite so bold.

“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Venetia commented.

“Maybe now you’ll stay off my back about what I’m going to do about my marriage, and let me figure it out for myself,” Nadia said, still somewhat bothered. Olivia had been so harsh with her advice till then.

“I’m sorry, Naddie,” Olivia said softly, genuinely contrite. “I’ve always had strong feelings about cheaters because of what I did myself.”

“I don’t like them much either.” Nadia smiled at her. “But I love you anyway. It was a long time ago. Maybe it’s time you forgave yourself.”

Olivia shook her head in answer. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”

“I’m sure Harley would have if he’d known, but he doesn’t need to,” Venetia said sensibly.

“I’m not so sure he would,” Olivia said. “He’s the most moral person I know. I don’t think he would have understood, and he’d never forgive me for lying to him. Sometimes I think I should tell him one day, just so we have a clean slate, but I don’t want to hurt him, or cheat him and Will of the relationship they share.”