Danielle Steel - Remembrance

“How terrible for you.”

And then Vanessa couldn't help asking the question. “Does she know about me?”

He smiled. “Yes. She knows all about you.” He sighed then. “All that I knew to tell her. Your uncle didn't wish any contact, and the American court had discouraged it. Of course.” He looked troubled. “I can understand … it was a terrible time.” This time there were tears in his eyes. “Vanessa, my brother was a very strange, very sick man.” Vanessa said nothing. Part of her didn't want to hear about him, and another part of her did. It was all part of why she had come. “He was not really evil, but so wrong in his pursuits, his ideas. It was as though he had taken a bad turn in his youth.” He sighed again. “We never really got along. And he was always in trouble … women … drugs … terrible things. His wife before your mother committed suicide.” He stopped abruptly, looking at Vanessa, afraid to go on. “And then of course there was the tragedy that happened in the States.”

“Does Charlotte know?” It was odd asking this stranger questions, and yet she knew that she could, that she had to.

He looked at her quietly. “That her father killed her mother?” He said it so bluntly that Vanessa was shocked. “Yes, she knows. She knows the good about him, and she knows the bad. And she knows everything I knew to tell her about your mother. I wanted her to know it all. She has the right. She has the right to try to understand in her own way. I think she accepts it. It is horrible, and it hurts her, but she never knew either one of them. To her they are only people in a story.” He said it sadly. “It is not as if someone told her that I had killed someone. That would be different, that would tear her apart, but Vasili … your mother … they are only names to her.” He spoke very softly.

Vanessa looked at him and nodded. “Did she have a woman to bring her up?”

He shook his head. “My wife passed away when Charlotte was two. She doesn't remember her. She had my daughters, who are like big sisters to her, and she has had me.” Something sad crossed his face then, but Vanessa couldn't read it. “And you? Did your uncle marry when you were young?” He was looking at her so intently, as though to drink in her face, as though to see something that Vanessa herself didn't know was there. It seemed strange to her at first but she got used to it after a few minutes. There was something extraordinarily compelling about the man.

“No, my uncle only married last year. We were alone while I was growing up.”

“Did you mind?” He seemed curious and she shrugged, thinking over her answers.

“I don't think so. Teddy was like a mother and father rolled into one. I missed my mother, but that was different.”

He spoke very gently. “I think that Charlotte has always been very curious about you. She talked often as a child of her American sister, she used to play games with you, using her imagination, once she wrote you a letter. I still have it somewhere. I used to wonder if you would come back.”

“Have I been here before?” She looked momentarily startled and he nodded.

“A few times with Vasili and your mother. We used to play checkers, you and I.…” His voice drifted off and it was as though she could see something in the distance. She closed her eyes and she began to remember. She could see him, and his wife and his children.… When she opened her eyes, they were filled with tears.

“I remember.”

“You were a wonderful little girl.” And then his face clouded. “I remember when Charlotte was born, I came to London.…”He shook his head and looked at Vanessa squarely. “You went through a great deal. Your mother should never have married Vasili.”

Vanessa nodded agreement, thinking of how strange their lives had been, interwoven, and then broken apart, and then back again.

“And you?” He looked at her with a warm light in his eyes. “You're not married yet?”

“No.” For a moment she looked distant and then she smiled.

“A beautiful girl like you? That's a waste.” He wagged a finger and she laughed, and then she asked him another question.

“Does she look anything like me?”

He looked at her closely, and then shook his head. “Not really. There is a kind of impression. It's more in the way you move, the shape of your body. Not the face, or the eyes, or the hair.” He looked at Vanessa very hard then and she felt his eyes bore through her. “Do you want to see her, Vanessa?”

She was honest with him as her eyes met his. “I don't know. I'm not sure. I want to, but… what then? What will it do, to both of us?”

“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps you will meet as two strangers, and part the same way. Perhaps you will meet as sisters. Or you will grow to be friends. It is difficult to say.” And then, hesitantly, “Vanessa, you should know, she looks a great deal like your mother. If you remember your mother at all, it may upset you to see her.” It was odd to think of it, why should this girl she had never seen look anything like her mother? The whole idea of having a sister was suddenly almost more than Vanessa could understand. She felt suddenly exhausted again as she sat there with Andreas, and he saw all the emotions crossing her face and reached out a hand for hers. “You have time to think it over. She is away for two weeks. On a cruise with some friends.” He looked sheepish. “She is supposed to be in school, but … it's a long story, but she talked me into it. My children say I spoil her rotten, but she's a good girl.”

Vanessa thought about what he had said. “When will she be back?”

“Two weeks from today. She left last night.” Vanessa thought it over with exasperation. If she hadn't lingered in Rome, she could have come to Athens the day before, and it would be over. She would be on her way back to the States by now, with whatever impressions she had gathered and the deed done. Now she would have to wait for fourteen days.

“I suppose I could go somewhere else, and come back.…” She mulled it over and he watched her. When he thought there was no one looking, there was something unbearably sad in his face.

“Wouldn't you like to stay here, in Athens?” He smiled the smile of a host. “You could move into the house, if the hotel is a problem.” But Vanessa smiled and shook her head.

“You're very kind, but it isn't that. I'm just not sure what I'd do sitting here for two weeks. I could go to Paris, I guess.” But she really didn't want to. She wanted to take a look at Charlotte and go home. She had decided that much now, but wait another two weeks?

“Why don't you try waiting here?” He inclined his head in a gentlemanly fashion. “I will do my very best to entertain you.”

“No, really, I couldn't impose on you—”

He interrupted her. “Why not? You have waited sixteen years for this moment. May I not share it with you? May I not help you to live through the fears, to deal with the anticipation, to have someone to talk to?” As he said it she wanted to let him take care of her forever, he had that kind of way about him, a way of giving in every way he could, so that one felt as though one had been given a part of his very soul.

“You must have better things to do.”

“No.” He looked at her very strangely. “I don't. What you are doing is much more important than anything I was attending to when you arrived. Besides,” he said, shrugging easily, “October is a slow month in Athens.” He laughed in his husky way. “Athens is slow all year.” And then he smiled as he asked a question. “And what do you do in New York, Vanessa? Your uncle is a doctor, I believe.”

“He is, and so is his wife. I'm much less respectable than they are.” She smiled at Andreas. “I'm a photographer.”