Chapter 8
Getting from the hospital to the hotel when they released her at six o’clock proved to be more complicated than Dahlia had expected. She had the hotel send a car and driver for her, and a nurse had shown her how to manage on her crutches without putting her weight down on her right leg. She left the hospital in a wheelchair, holding the crutches, and it took an orderly and the driver to help slide her into the car and put the wheelchair she’d rented in the trunk.
She looked pale with dark circles under her eyes after the accident, and once they got to the hotel, a bellboy took her upstairs in the wheelchair to her suite. She sat, looking around the room, feeling as though she’d left a month before and not the previous day. She hadn’t watched the news in two days, and her driver had told her the fires in Napa had gotten worse. That didn’t seem possible—the smoke seemed to have cleared a little, and there was less of a haze hanging over the city—but he had told her that the wind had changed direction and was blowing it all toward the East Bay. It seemed to shift around the area but didn’t dissipate.
She eased out of the wheelchair and lay down on the couch for a few minutes, trying to get up the energy to put on decent clothes for her meeting with Mark Hamilton. She had returned from the hospital in hospital scrubs that looked like pajamas, with her sliced-open jeans and T-shirt in a plastic bag. Her Hermès sneakers had come off in the accident and disappeared with the mangled car when they put it on a truck and took it to the police lot for further examination. She was wearing hospital slippers, and when she saw herself in the mirror in the suite, she almost screamed. She looked like she’d been shipwrecked or had been sick for a year.
“Oh my God,” she said out loud. She was sorry she’d agreed to let Mark see her, but she needed his help.
She ordered tea from room service and felt better after a cup, and then she went to the bathroom, perched on her crutches, and washed as best she could. She was afraid of falling in the luxurious marble bathroom, which was now a hazard for her. The nurses had shown her how to shower with a garbage bag on her leg, but she was too tired to try it, and she realized she’d have to ask one of the maids to help her. She didn’t want a nurse, but it was a challenge managing alone.
She put a red sweater on. The room was cool with the air conditioning. She got into a short denim skirt and slipped a flat red sandal on one foot. She washed her face, brushed her hair, and put on a bright red Lambert lipstick. Everything was a chore with her cracked ribs, but by seven-thirty, she looked better than she felt, and she looked human again in real clothes. She was too tired to eat, and she still had the headache she’d had since she’d woken up after the anesthetic. They told her it would take several days to recover from the shock of the accident. It had been a major trauma to her system.
She tried to look and act normal when she opened the door to Mark on her crutches. He arrived promptly at eight, and was both worried and relieved when he saw her. At first glance, she looked fresh and beautiful, with her long blond hair pulled back, and the bright lipstick. Her one good leg looked great in the short denim skirt, but when he looked more closely, past the polite smile, he could see how tired and in pain she was, and how shaken up by what had happened. She lowered herself onto the couch, and he took a chair across from her, and stretched out his long legs. He was wearing impeccable jeans, a crisp, perfectly starched white shirt, and dark blue leather Hermès loafers with no socks. He looked more New York than San Francisco.
“Help yourself to whatever you want from the bar.” She pointed to where it was hidden in a handsome upright antique desk. “I’m not much of a hostess.” He wondered if they should have done the meeting by phone, but he wanted to see her, and not entirely for professional reasons. He was grateful for the opportunity but very sorry she was hurt.
“Are you feeling well enough for me to be here?” he asked her honestly, and she smiled.
“It’ll cheer me up. It’s a little weird having gone through all that far from home. I’m trying to figure out how to take a shower without killing myself. I’ll manage, and at least I can call for help if I need it. Thank you for coming to see me. I’m so sorry to bother you with this mess. I didn’t know who to call, and having your card was providential.”
“I want to help you,” he said sincerely. “And I was thinking on the way over, if you’ll allow me to, I want to hire a private investigator.”
She looked puzzled by the suggestion.
“Because we don’t know how honest the other woman is. She may be genuinely hurt just as she says, or she may be out for money. She clearly wasn’t careful if she had her daughter in the front seat and they weren’t wearing seatbelts in all that smoke. And now she may want to make you pay for it.”
“I didn’t check the box for extra insurance,” she confessed mournfully, as he poured himself a glass of chilled white wine and brought her a glass of water and a can of nuts. She was too tired and stressed to eat, or to drink wine.
“Can I get you something else?” he offered, and she shook her head.
“The insurance company is going to pay all her expenses, you can be sure of it, and her daughter’s, and they’ll add a nice amount to it. And if she sounds like she’s going to make trouble, they’ll start offering her larger amounts. It will be a negotiation, and she’ll probably hire a personal injury lawyer who’ll take full advantage of the situation.” He sighed then, wanting to be honest with her.
“After you called me from the hospital, I looked you up on Google. I wanted to see what she would find, just entering your name on a computer. I found you easily, and your family history is fascinating, but if she looks at those photographs and sees you wearing evening gowns and jewelry, she’s liable to want some of that too. That’s why I’m not a big fan of the internet. I think it creates more problems than it solves. If she’s a greedy woman, and wants to make money from this, her lawyer is going to have a field day with you. Rich French business mogul rear-ends single mom, if that’s what she is, and injures her and her thirteen-year-old daughter. And when you go back, ‘flees to Paris to shirk her responsibilities.’ You can see the potential there, and that would only be the beginning. It could be a lot worse, with them swathed in bandages from head to foot, and a picture of you in an evening gown and diamonds.”
“Those pictures you saw are old, by the way.”
“They won’t care. Once they see that, they’ll know you’re having fun in the photo, you’re wealthy and successful, and she’ll want whatever you have. Do I have your permission to hire a private investigator? I want to see what he turns up about this woman. I want her to be squeaky clean like the Virgin Mary, so we know she won’t try to discredit you.” Dahlia liked the way Mark wanted to protect her and thought of everything.
“What’ll I do about their not letting me leave town? I just canceled my meetings in L.A. today. My local rep isn’t happy, but it would be too hard trying to do all that on crutches. And I told her to cancel Dallas too. I’ll have to make a separate trip to cover those cities, and maybe add a few others. I haven’t told my kids about the accident. I’ll do it tomorrow, I don’t want to upset them, and I’ll be fine. I’m just very worried about the legalities, the police investigation, and if this woman is going to try and blame me for something I couldn’t help and had no control over.” Mark was worried about it too. Personal injury cases attracted dishonest people, both clients and attorneys, like bees to honey.
“I think it will all be fine,” he said reassuringly, but he recognized the possibility that the other driver might try and take full advantage of Dahlia, if she was less than honest. He asked Dahlia a few questions and made some notes, and after that he told her how intrigued he was by her business.
“Some of the most famous women of France wore our perfumes,” she said proudly. “Movie stars, and presidents’ wives. I love the historical aspect of it, but at the same time we try to keep it contemporary. My daughter Delphine has made some great New Age contributions to the brand.” She looked proud when she said it. “My mother was never interested in the business. Her generation thought it was vulgar for women to engage in commerce. But I fell in love with it as a child, when my grandfather explained it all to me, and taught me about how they make perfume and how important perfume is to French history. I used to love going to the factory, and I’ve tried to share that with my children.”
“Are they all involved in the business?” he asked her.
“No, two out of four, which isn’t bad. One of my daughters is a television producer, and the youngest is an artist. But my son Charles and my daughter Delphine are very engaged in it. The TV producer is getting married in three and a half weeks. She’ll have my head if I don’t make it home in time. She was worried about the trip. Who could have foreseen this?” She looked dismayed, and he could tell that her children were an important part of her life, in an active way. “Do you have children?” she asked him, curious about him too. It was such serendipity that they had met, and now he was helping her with a major problem.
“Two daughters. One lives in Washington, D.C. She’s an attorney, specializing in international trade, and the other one lives in Virginia, on a horse farm her parents-in-law own. They’re twenty-seven and twenty-nine, and they don’t come out here very often anymore. I go to visit them when I want to see them. Their mother and I divorced when they were very young. She moved back to New York and remarried. It makes it hard to stay current in children’s lives when you only see them for school holidays and summer vacations. Maybe I should have moved back too, to see more of them, but I had a growing law practice here, and I didn’t want to live in New York again. We get along well, but I wasn’t around for every day and weekends. Distance takes a toll.” He looked like he regretted it, and showed her a photo of his daughters on his phone. They were both beautiful, and one of them looked like him with dark hair and brown eyes. The other one was blond and blue-eyed, and Dahlia guessed looked more like his ex-wife.
“You never remarried?” she asked him.
“The first one wasn’t a great experience. Other than my daughters, nothing about it made me want to try again. I got very comfortable with being single, and stayed away from serious relationships for a long time, and I got set in my ways. I had my kids for vacations, and I dated interesting women, but no one I wanted to be married to or stay with long-term. One of them is a senator now. She almost got the vice presidential nomination in the last election. She was in love with her political career, not with me. It suited me for about five years, and then we both moved on.” He didn’t look like he regretted it. “I didn’t want to take a chance on another marriage that didn’t work out. My ex-wife and I are good friends now, at a distance, but we were both very unhappy while we were married. She hated California. She thought San Francisco was too provincial, and she wanted to go back to New York. I didn’t. I never missed it. The life here suited me, and when I want big city excitement, I go to New York or London for a visit. I have several clients there. But none in Paris.” He smiled at her. “My French is terrible. I studied it in high school and never got past ‘bonjour.’ I’m impressed with the way you speak English. I thought you were totally American when I met you.”
“I grew up as both at home, so it was easy.”
“And you never remarried either?”
She shook her head. “When I was young, I never met anyone as exciting as my husband. He was a wild risk-taker, which I thought was terrific then. It would terrify me now. I was never as daring as he was. I was widowed at thirty, with four children under five. I didn’t want an outsider involved with them when they were growing up, and between the family business to run, and four children—they’re the same age as yours—I didn’t have time for anyone. I didn’t want to remarry, and then once they grew up, it felt like too late, and by then all the men I knew were married. Frenchmen don’t usually get divorced. If they’re unhappily married, they just work around it, and have an ‘understanding’ with their wife, and discreet arrangements with other women. And unhappily married Frenchwomen aren’t faithful either as a rule. Most Americans are much more clean-cut and aboveboard about it. If the marriage fails, they get divorced and move on. In France, they move on, but they forget to sever the ties with their wife, and continue living with each other, even if they hardly see each other. That wasn’t what I wanted. Jean-Luc and I had a real marriage, although it was very brief.”
“The French system seems too complicated to me, although I know men who’ve done that here too. I could never see the point of marrying someone in order to cheat on them.” She laughed at the way he described it.
“Most of the good men in France are married and stay married. Sometimes you have to make your peace with it,” she said, thinking of Philippe. “I don’t want to be alone forever, and grow old without companionship, but I don’t want to marry again either.”
“It sounds like you have a lot on your plate,” he said, looking at her. She had beautiful green eyes that were almost emerald.
“The business keeps me busy.” From what he had read online, it was huge.
“It’s interesting that you haven’t taken it public.”
She laughed at the suggestion. “My grandfather would come out of his grave and haunt me if I did. He believed in family-owned businesses. There are still a number of important firms in France that are privately held. Maybe my children will take our business public one day. But I won’t. I prefer to honor our traditions. That must sound very old-fashioned to you.”
“It sounds very noble in a way. I like the idea of traditions being respected, but family-owned enterprises aren’t easy to run, with a lot of personalities involved.”
“It’s probably a blessing that only two of them work for me, and they’re both very easy to get along with. My son is very conservative, involved in the financial end, and my daughter Delphine is very innovative. She keeps us fresh and modern and ahead of the trends. We all bring something to it.”
“I’ll have to wander in the next time I see one of your stores. I’ve seen them all around the world, but I’ve never been in one. They look very elegant.”
“Thank you. We have men’s products too.” She made a mental note to send him some, as a courtesy. She had thought of sending some as a gift to Jeff Allen, but she didn’t think he would use them. He looked like a natural man who would rather have a good bottle of French wine. “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked him, and he shook his head.
“No, I’m an only child.”
“So am I,” she said. “It’s both harder and easier. No competition when you’re a child, but my parents died young, and I missed them terribly. The only family I have are my children.” It explained a little why she was so close to them, and he could tell she was. Much closer than he was to his daughters.
He loved talking to her, but he was afraid to wear her out, after what she’d been through. She was enjoying talking to him too. She couldn’t resist asking him where he’d gone to college, and he said he’d gone to Yale undergraduate and Stanford Law School. His father had been a lawyer too, senior partner of a well-known New York law firm, as Mark was in San Francisco.
“And you?” he asked her.
“Columbia, and Wharton for business school. My father insisted on it. With the company to run one day, he thought I should be prepared. It served me well. My daughter Delphine went to college in the States too. She loved it and then she got married after she graduated and came back to Paris. Her husband is French. The others all went to university in France.”
“I’m the only member of my family who moved to the West. All the others preferred the East, and my daughters did too,” he volunteered. “When I decided to stay in San Francisco, my parents thought I was crazy. My wife thought so too. She studied law but never practiced, which seemed like a waste to me.” He respected Dahlia for the career she had, and how actively she pursued it, but he also knew she paid a price for that. He could see why she’d never remarried. She didn’t have time, between the business and her family.
They had strayed far from his reason for coming to see her and he had enjoyed it thoroughly.
“So do you agree to hiring a private investigator, to find out what we can about the Nicasio woman?” he confirmed, and she nodded.
“I hate to be so cynical, but it seems like a smart thing to do.” She was a businesswoman after all, and realistic about people’s motives. Other people’s greed was not new to her.
“I’ll take care of it tomorrow and get him started. I think we should get some information on her quickly. Have the police given you any idea of when a hearing might be?”
“No, they said they’d be in touch. I was still feeling pretty rough when they came to see me in the hospital this morning. The main thing they wanted to know was who had hit who first.”
“If you hit her car first, before the truck hit you, you could be held responsible for the accident,” he said.
“No, I’m sure the truck hit me first—I remember the impact distinctly—and then I hit her.” She was certain of it.
“The insurance people are going to want to see you soon too. Let me know when you hear from them. I’ll come with you.”
“I feel terrible taking up your time. If you want to assign the case to someone else, I’d understand.”
“I want to see this through for you,” he said with a serious expression. In the wrong hands, he knew it could turn into a nightmare for her and he didn’t want that to happen. Living it had been bad enough, and he was glad she hadn’t been injured more severely. She could have ended up dead, like the driver of the truck. She really had been lucky it wasn’t worse.
It was eleven o’clock when he left, and she was tired, but she felt better mentally. Talking to him had reassured her, and made everything seem more normal and not so terrifying. She could sense that she’d be in good hands if he handled the legal aspects for her. It was kind of him to do so. She expected him to bill her for it, but he could have handed her off to someone else and he hadn’t so far, and it didn’t seem like he was going to.
After he had gone, she sent an email to the local rep and told her she was staying in San Francisco for a while, but didn’t tell her why, just that she wouldn’t be working. She didn’t want to make a big fuss about the accident, and thought it was best to keep quiet, so it wouldn’t wind up in the press and feed any interest in it.
She turned on the news and saw that the fires had gotten worse. The air quality in San Francisco now was equal to that of Beijing. Then she did what Mark had done before he came to see her. She googled his name, and his biographical and professional information came up immediately. He was fifty-eight years old, the senior partner of his own law firm, with twenty-five other lawyers who were partners of the firm. His clients were some of the biggest corporations nationally and in the West, and it listed some of his most illustrious clients. And he had won lawsuits against some mammoth corporations. He was a star in his own field and very impressive. There was very little personal information on it. He had shared much more with her while they talked. And one thing was for sure, if he handled the legal aspects of her situation, she would be in excellent hands.
After she had read about him on Google, she decided to call Philippe. She somehow felt that the accident gave her the right to call him, despite his family vacation, and his wife’s presence. Dahlia had promised to let him know what was happening. The time difference had been wrong to reach him when she left the hospital and got back to the hotel. It was the middle of the night in France. She waited until midnight to call him, which was nine a.m. for him.
He answered the call immediately, and sounded cool when he did.
“I’m just leaving to play tennis with a friend,” he informed her in a businesslike voice. She could tell he wasn’t alone.
“I found a lawyer. He’s the head of a big firm, but he’s doing it to help me.”
“Good, you need one.”
“And I’m back at the hotel.”
“Thank you for keeping me informed,” he said. “Stay in touch.” He was off the line before she could tell him anything else, and she realized when he ended the call that he had never asked her how she felt. His wife was obviously nearby. It was the disadvantage of having a clandestine affair with a married man. She felt rejected after he hung up. She decided to call Delphine then. She knew nothing about the accident, just about the fires. And Dahlia had to explain why she wasn’t in L.A.
Delphine had just gotten to the office and was organizing her day when her mother called. She was happy to hear Dahlia’s voice. She missed her—she had been gone for two weeks, and it was beginning to seem long.
“Are you in L.A. now?” Delphine asked her, sounding cheerful. Dahlia didn’t want to frighten her about the accident, but she needed to say something to explain her change of plans.
“Actually, I’m still in San Francisco,” Dahlia said blithely.
“The airport’s still closed? Shouldn’t you go by car now? You’re going to throw off your whole schedule in Dallas and L.A.”
“I had to cancel that part of the trip,” Dahlia said calmly, as though it was a minor decision. “I ran into a problem. It sounds worse than it is. I had a small accident. I got rear-ended, and I broke my leg. It’s ridiculous and a nuisance, but I’m fine. The cast will be off in six weeks.”
“Oh my God, Mom, how awful. Are you sure you’re okay? Are you coming home now?” Delphine was instantly worried about her.
“No, I need to sort it out with the insurance people and the car rental company. I hired a lawyer to take care of it. I’ll come home as soon as it’s taken care of. It’s just administrative details,” Dahlia said, underplaying it.
“That’s awful. And it’s a shame about L.A.”
“I’ll come back another time,” Dahlia said, minimizing it as much as she could.
“It must have been quite an accident if you broke your leg.”
“It wasn’t pleasant, but I’m fine. The cast is a bit of a bother.” She didn’t mention the concussion at all, nor the cracked ribs.
“When do you think you’ll come home?”
“As soon as I sort it out. They need to determine who was at fault. The other driver got injured too. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.”
“Do you think she’ll sue you?” It was always a concern, particularly in the States.
“Hopefully not, but in the U.S. you never know. That’s why I stayed, to get all of that worked out before I leave, so I’m not dealing with it long distance. It’s much simpler to deal with it while I’m here. I’ll still be home on time. But maybe you could go to Alex’s dress fittings with her.”
“Maman, are you sure you’re all right?” Delphine was suspicious. She knew her mother never liked to cause them concern, and she was sounding very light and breezy for a woman with a broken leg. Delphine used her childhood name for her, which was a sign that she was worried.
“I’m positive. They’re just sticklers here for all the legalities. And it takes a little time to sort out. I’m not going to tell Alex, or she’ll be hysterical about the wedding. Do you mind doing the fittings with her?”
“Of course I mind, she’ll be a monster at the fittings. The Diva unleashed. But I’ll do it for you. Just take care of yourself and come home when you can. I have a meeting in five minutes so I have to go. I’m so sorry about your leg.”
“I’m fine, darling, and thank you.” Delphine got off a minute later to get to her meeting, and Dahlia let out a sigh. She knew Delphine would worry anyway, but at least now she knew about the accident, in a sanitized version that didn’t sound too bad. She didn’t want to tell her that she was worried about a lawsuit, and even charges of negligence. Delphine didn’t need to know any of that. Dahlia knew she would tell Charles, but not Alex or Emma, neither of whom needed to know. Alex would drive her crazy, and Emma would be scared for her. It would just make things harder for Dahlia if they knew. Delphine could handle things at home. She was competent to handle any situation that came up.
—
After the call, Dahlia struggled out of her clothes with the cumbersome cast and lay in bed, thinking about all of it. It was a relief to finally get to bed. In the past two days, she’d been in a horrifying accident that had killed a man, been injured herself, and spent a night in a hospital and an evening with her new lawyer who had the potential to become a friend. She was facing a hearing about the accident, possible charges of negligence, and hopefully not a lawsuit, but it could happen. She had told her daughter about the accident, and had talked to Philippe, who acted like it was a call from a business associate or an acquaintance because his wife was obviously within hearing distance. It made her wonder what she was doing with her life and if she was on the right track or making terrible mistakes. She was always trying to protect her children from reality and soften life’s blows for them. She never told them when she was weak or scared, hurt or felt vulnerable.
She had been involved with a man for six years whose whole life was a lie, and she was lying with him and enabling him. And now she had to face lawyers, judges, and courtrooms for an accident she didn’t cause, and because she pretended to everyone that she was always strong, she would be facing it alone. It was a lot to manage, and sometimes she wondered if it was worth it. She had no one to lean on except herself, no one to stand beside her when things went wrong, or protect her.
She had chosen a hard path after Jean-Luc died, and she was still on it, carrying everything alone, protecting them all, while no one protected her, and all to prove how capable and efficient she was, and how she could keep all the balls in the air for all of them. What if she couldn’t? What if she dropped one, or wasn’t strong for once? Would their world come to an end if she didn’t solve every problem for them? And would hers end if they didn’t need her quite so much?
She didn’t have the answers to the questions, as she fell into a deep sleep, her leg in the cast propped up on pillows, and her head still hurting from the accident. Sometimes it all seemed like too much. It would have been nice not to always have to prove to all of them how strong she was. What if she wasn’t? And somewhere in the darkness, the fires were still raging out of control, and the world was burning.