Chapter 13
The weeks after Stephanie's accident had begun to seem interminable to Olivier.
Her recovery was slow, and the army of people caring for her was constantly underfoot.
The nurses were very professional and took good care of her.
They needed help occasionally to move her and there was always someone around.
The casts on her leg and arm were cumbersome, her shoulder was still painful, and the broken pelvis made it agony for her to sit.
She was only comfortable when she was lying down, and even then she needed painkillers to get through the days and nights.
Two physical therapists came, morning and evening.
And Stephanie's three best friends were still staying in the house and always near at hand.
They had canceled their summer plans and were tireless in their efforts to cheer her up.
They took turns doing the cooking, which made it easier for Olivier since they had to feed the nurses too.
There were always people around washing or feeding Stephanie, reading to her or changing her sheets.
There was a constant babble of conversation.
There were female voices everywhere.
He was living with four women and a stream of daily workers.
He lay down on his bed sometimes just to get a moment of peace.
And it had been a particularly hot summer so far, which made it all seem more oppressive, particularly for Stephanie in her two casts.
She was enjoying the attention, and at times Olivier seemed overwhelmed.
At the same time, he had to run his business, and their sons called him frequently for reports on their mother's condition.
He felt like he was running a hospital, and he was seeing more of Stephanie than he had for twenty years.
He saw her, but they never talked.
And they were never alone, which he thought was just as well.
He felt sorry for the pain she was in, but they had nothing to say to each other.
They never had.
Only his assistant at the office seemed to understand how stressed and tired he was.
He covered it well the rest of the time.
The "Valeries,"
as he called them, since they were always together, were polite and solicitous whenever he saw them.
They were grateful to Olivier for letting them stay with Stephanie.
They were doing most of the cooking, and did it well.
They had hired additional people at the stables to exercise their horses, and their whole focus was on their friend.
And they thanked Olivier repeatedly for letting them stay at the house.
They kept vases of flowers everywhere, and whenever he came home, there were cooking smells in the air.
He was sure that if they hadn't been there, Stephanie would have been seriously depressed.
Of the three, Lizzie seemed to be the most devoted to her, alternately adopting the roles of sister, mother, daughter, and wife, and keeping her spirits buoyed.
She massaged the limbs that weren't broken and read to her for hours sometimes until she fell asleep, and she kept the nurses on their toes, turning her when needed so she didn't get bedsores, and assisting the physical therapists.
Stephanie was determined to make a full recovery, and intended to be back on her horses as soon as she could walk and back on the show circuit soon after.
She hated being an invalid and dependent on everyone around her, but they all contributed to make the process as painless as possible for her.
And Olivier was well aware of how much time and energy it took.
He was grateful they were there.
He could never have done it himself without them.
He came into the room to bring Stephanie her mail one morning, having already eliminated all the bills, which he always paid.
Stephanie contributed a small amount of her own money for the upkeep of her horses, which was considerable.
Olivier had always paid the rest without complaint.
It seemed a small price to pay to keep her happy, and on the road for most of the year with her friends.
The marriage might not have survived if she had been home all the time with nothing to do.
Supporting her life on the show circuit was a way of allowing them to have separate lives, which had been vital to both of them.
Stephanie was missing that now, and so was he.
"How's our star patient today?"
Olivier asked her cheerfully when he came into the room, with a stack of cards sent to her by a variety of people he didn't know.
Their sons called her once a week.
Her recovery was slow, but they knew she was in good hands, with their father and her friends.
"Tired of being flat on my back, and bored out of my mind.
I miss my horses,"
Stephanie said plaintively.
"I'm sure you do."
He had opened the cards for her since she couldn't do it with one hand.
If he hadn't, the others would have done it for her.
"Are we driving you crazy? You're living with a whole army of women,"
she said sympathetically.
"Is the house a mess?"
She hadn't left the room in over a month.
It was too hard, and painful for her, to move her.
"They're keeping it neater than you and I do."
Olivier had nothing but praise for them.
"I can see why some cultures encourage having several wives.
I feel like I have four at the moment,"
he said, and she smiled.
"I'm sure you'll be happy when we all get out of your hair.
Don't feel you have to be around all the time,"
she said.
She had noticed that he was home a lot, and every night.
"The girls can entertain themselves, and we're used to being on the road together."
She hesitated, and watched him looking out the window in an unguarded moment.
He seemed sad.
He was thinking of Amanda and how long it had been since he'd seen her.
It felt like an eternity to him, and he had nothing to look forward to now.
At least Stephanie had her horse shows to go back to.
In his mind, he had nothing without Amanda.
"You don't look happy,"
Stephanie said gently.
"I thought you did for a while, and I figured you had someone new in your life.
You always have a special spark and energy when you do.
I hope I didn't screw that up for you with the accident."
It was the most honest thing she'd ever said to him, and he was surprised.
They were always guarded with each other, and he realized more than ever how little they knew of each other's lives, and even of who they were.
"Did something go wrong?"
Stephanie asked him, and for an instant, he was tempted to be real with her and tell her the truth, but too much time had passed, and there was no bridge between them, especially now that their children were gone.
"No, I'm fine,"
he said.
How could he tell her that he was in love with a woman who had left him because he was married, who didn't want to be the cause of the demise of the marriage and didn't believe he would ever get divorced? And now that she was gone, he was even more aware of how nonexistent the marriage was.
It had been on life support for so many years it was never going to regain consciousness.
It had flatlined right from the beginning, and they should have pulled the plug then, even before they tried to breathe life into it by having children.
He loved their sons, but they had only underlined the differences between him and Stephanie.
And the chasm was too wide to bridge.
He was almost ready to let go now, but he couldn't do it while she was sick.
He wanted to wait to tell her until she recovered.
It didn't seem fair to tell her before that.
He owed her an easy convalescence at least.
He was well aware now of how little he had contributed to her life, other than money.
And that wasn't enough.
"You don't have to hang around for us, you know,"
she reminded him.
"If there's something you want to do for yourself."
"Thank you,"
he said, touched that she had considered him.
"I'm fine for now.
And your friends run a pretty good restaurant.
I'm going to get fat while you get well."
"Yeah, me too.
Veronique is a cordon bleu chef."
Stephanie could barely cook an egg and didn't care.
"Lizzie is better in the saddle than in the kitchen.
If you had to depend on us, you'd starve."
He noticed, as he always did, how deep her affection was for her friends, more even than for him or their children.
She had been lucky to find them over the years.
Their bond was worth more than her marriage.
And each of them brought something to the group.
Together they made a solid whole.
He and Stephanie had nothing that compared to it.
"Can I do anything for you? Anything you need?"
he offered before he left for the day.
She looked as though she were going to say something, but she didn't.
She didn't want to contribute to what appeared to be a melancholy mood.
He looked very down.
She remembered him looking that way when they both figured out early on that they'd made a mistake.
And yet they'd stayed, and trudged on.
She could never have admitted it to her parents.
It would have been the ultimate disgrace to admit that she'd married the wrong man, and even more so if she wanted out.
They were an aristocratic Catholic family, and divorce was unimaginable.
Now her parents were too far gone with Alzheimer's to know.
And she and Olivier were still there.
Having her three best friends made that mistake livable, and she wondered what he had to keep him going.
She had sensed accurately that his new romance had come to an end, and she was sorry for him.
She hoped he found someone else soon.
She of all people knew that people weren't meant to live alone.
It was feasible, but at a high price.
She had done it herself until she met her "girls."
Olivier left for the office then, and Stephanie lay in bed, thinking, for a long time.
She was sorry that she and Olivier weren't better friends and couldn't talk openly, and she was grateful that he didn't object to her close companions in the house.
She would have been lost without them, and they were standing by her now, and so was he.
She had to give him credit for that, and it surprised her.
She had expected him to run for cover when she got hurt.
Instead she felt a closeness to him, and a warmth she hadn't felt in years, and a deep compassion for him and how profoundly unhappy she could sense he was.
And she felt sorrow for him over the person he seemed to have found briefly, and then lost.
She probably wasn't the right one if it ended so quickly.
Stephanie couldn't guess that she herself was the reason for it, and their marriage, even as nonexistent as it was.
Olivier waved to Lizzie as he drove away.
She was skipping rope in the garden to keep in shape.
She had an amazing body, but she felt like a sister to him now.
He had left several more messages for Amanda after Pascal had called him, but she didn't return the calls.
She was true to herself and what she believed, and he was sure he wouldn't hear from her again, nor see her.
She was gone for good.
He just had to learn to live with it, like a severed limb.
He couldn't replace her and didn't want to.
She was unique.
—
Tom had called Amanda after his visit from the police and spoke to her in a growl.
He called her at the gallery and used a menacing tone.
"How dare you say those things to the police about me? You tried to convince them that I broke into your apartment and tried to rape you."
"I didn't try to do anything, Tom.
I raised the possibility about the apartment, and you lied to them about me and told them we were having an affair.
What you did in the car after the movie was disgusting and unforgivable."
"You did it with that French bastard you were sleeping with.
Why not with me? You led me on."
"No, I didn't.
I made it clear to you right from the beginning when you got here that I only wanted to be friends.
And whatever I did or didn't do, nothing justifies that kind of violence and abuse.
You left me with bruises."
"I'm sorry,"
he said in a low voice, and for an instant she thought he was crying, but she wasn't sure.
"I wanted you so badly, I lost control.
I didn't mean to hurt you, Amanda.
It won't happen again.
And I would never break into your home.
I don't climb through second-floor windows and destroy things.
You know me better than that."
It was what Pascal had said too.
He was a monster to have brutalized her physically, but he wasn't crazy.
He wouldn't climb up a building to steal her underwear and destroy her paintings.
That was another person.
"Actually, I don't know you, Tom.
The man you were that night is someone I don't know, and don't want to know."
"You drove me to it.
You know I love you."
"That's not love, Tom.
It's something very different."
His rage had been terrifying.
"I'm sorry,"
he sounded contrite.
"Don't call me again,"
she said, and meant it, and then she hung up.
She had nothing more to say to him.
He texted her seconds later.
"You broke my heart again."
As she read it, a distant memory came back to her, of when he had left NYU to attend Stanford.
He desperately wanted her to continue the relationship with him long-distance, and she wouldn't.
He had been weighing heavily on her for the past few months, and she didn't feel ready for the kind of commitment it would take to maintain a relationship with three thousand miles between them, and she had ended it when he left.
She had spoken to her father about it before she did, and he agreed.
"If you don't feel ready, then don't do it.
Be honest with him, that's always better.
He's young.
He'll get over it."
Her father had been proud of her when she told him she had ended it cleanly.
But she had forgotten that Tom had sent her anguished letters for a few months, begging her to reconsider.
She wasn't dating anyone else yet, but she knew that it was over for her, and she didn't want to be tied to him.
And he was so jealous, she knew he would be constantly accusing her of sleeping with other people, which she never did in the year they were together.
In her entire life, she had never cheated on anyone.
The first few months with Tom had been blissful, but the last six months of their year together had been difficult, with a merry-go-round of accusations, arguments, and the silent treatment.
It was a relief when he left.
It would have been much harder if he stayed, so his transfer to Stanford had been providential, getting her out of the relationship simply and cleanly.
It was only now that she recalled how insistent he had been, and eventually how nasty he had gotten when she refused to commit to him.
Time had erased how unpleasant that had been for a while.
And she assumed that they had all grown up.
He had been married in the meantime, had a dignified career, was a respected attorney at an important firm, but deep inside he was still the angry, needy, rage-filled young man he'd been then, when he didn't get his way.
She recalled that he had been abused by an alcoholic father as a boy, and that his mother had abandoned him and left with another man.
Tom had anger issues that he had never resolved.
They seemed to have gotten worse and Amanda felt sorry for the wife who had divorced him, although she'd stuck it out for fourteen years.
Something about him was unstable, but she agreed with Pascal that he wasn't a burglar or a vandal, although he could have turned out to be a rapist if she hadn't run faster than he did.
Whatever he was, she didn't want to see or hear from him again.
She told Pascal about the call and he was angry about it.
"That bastard needs to leave you alone,"
he said emphatically.
"He swears he didn't break into the apartment."
"I believe him.
I told you that myself.
But that doesn't change the fact that he brutalized you and nearly raped you.
And scared you to death.
Some guys think they can do anything they want to women, either seduce them and convince them to sleep with them or punish them when they don't.
And it was disgusting of him to lie to the police about you to discredit you and get himself off the hook.
The guy is slime."
"He is.
He wasn't that bad in college, but he is now.
I think he has a lot of rage about his ex-wife, and his mother before that.
She abandoned him when he was ten."
"That's not your problem.
He needs therapy to work that out.
You're not his therapist or his punching bag.
And I can't believe you have two men like that at the moment.
I don't think Quinlan will come after you again, but the police still have to find your stalker."
Pascal didn't like the fact that it was taking them so long, but they had warned her that it would.
They had no idea who had broken into her apartment.
They had searched for fingerprints and had found none.
The police said that whoever had vandalized her apartment had worn gloves.
He was no fool, and he had no desire to get caught.
It seemed like just a coincidence now that the stalker had written the word "Bitch"
on one of her paintings, which was what Tom had called her when she didn't want to have sex with him and he'd tried to force her.
She didn't hear from Tom after that, but she still got two or three calls from a blocked number every night, which she didn't pick up.
She didn't want to change her number and lose real calls from friends, so she just didn't answer the calls from blocked numbers at night.
The stalker never called her in the daytime, only very late at night, and often woke her up.
She guessed that he was hoping that if he woke her, she'd be confused and pick up.
She never did.
She couldn't wait for Tom to leave Paris and start his travels soon.
She didn't want to run into him anywhere, or have him show up at the gallery or at home.
She didn't think he would, but if he got drunk some lonely night he might.
The stalker was another story, and special devices the police had recommended to prevent access from her windows hadn't worked.
The intruder had disabled them with a hammer or some other instrument, and he had broken the window and gone in.
She had the alarm on at all times now, whenever she was home and when she went out.
And just in case Tom ever did show up and try to rape her again, before they disappeared completely, she took a selfie of the bruises on her breasts.
They had faded a lot by then, but you could still see them.
—
It was a big day when Stephanie was finally well enough to visit the stables.
Her friends drove her there.
With her arm in a cast and the broken shoulder, she couldn't put a blouse or sweater on, so the nurse draped a blanket over her, and at the stable, she sat in the wheelchair with her leg in the cast, supported, resting and pointing straight out.
It was a menace to pedestrians who didn't see her.
The chair was heavy to maneuver, and even with one of her friends guiding it, they nearly knocked down several people on crowded sidewalks when they took her out.
Lizzie was a menace with the wheelchair.
Stephanie felt as though she'd been reborn when she saw her horses, and her favorite mare came running up to her in the corral.
She nuzzled Stephanie's face with her velvety nose and licked her cheeks.
Stephanie could hardly wait to ride again.
It brought tears to her friends' eyes to see her, not walking yet, but with her face lit up just being there.
It had been Lizzie's idea to take her.
Stephanie talked about her horses constantly, and Lizzie thought it would boost her spirits immeasurably.
And it did.
She was exhausted by the effort, but she looked like a new person after she met with one of her therapists and had Lizzie roll her into the kitchen to have dinner with the others.
Olivier looked shocked to see her there when he got home.
"Well, well, to what do we owe the honor?"
He addressed his wife, and she grinned.
She had come downstairs in the chair lift Olivier had installed for her.
It had worked well, and it had raised her spirits to be able to come to dinner with the others, instead of eating alone in her room on a tray.
"We went to the stables today.
Tillie came galloping over and licked my face.
She didn't leave me for a second until we had to go.
I can't wait to go back."
Olivier smiled his approval and addressed the group.
"Whose idea was that?"
"Lizzie's."
Stephanie spoke up immediately, and Lizzie smiled up at him.
"Good job, Red."
He teased her about her red hair now, and she always came up with the best ideas to boost Stephanie's spirits.
He sat down and had dinner with them, helped them clean up, and then went to his bedroom to make some calls.
He was in a pretty decent mood himself.
His company had signed a big author that day whom they'd been pursuing for a year.
It was a major victory for Olivier.
It reminded him that he needed to get back to having lunches and dinners with his authors.
He hadn't been since he and Amanda had broken up.
He used Stephanie's accident as an excuse.
He didn't have the heart to see anyone, not even the writers he loved.
After he went to his bedroom, Stephanie went back upstairs on the lift and they took the wheelchair up to her bedroom.
She was still flying from her visit to the stables.
Veronique and Valerie went back downstairs then to finish cleaning up the kitchen, and the nurse went to get Stephanie's meds for the night.
Stephanie and Lizzie were alone in her bedroom then, and Lizzie looked like she had something on her mind.
"Is something wrong?"
Stephanie asked her, always concerned about her.
Stephanie normally took the motherly role with Lizzie, but ever since the accident, Lizzie had been the chief caretaker and nurturer.
"No.
I've been thinking ever since all this happened.
I feel sorry for Olivier.
He's a really nice guy, more than I realized before the accident.
He doesn't know what to do to help you, or what to say, but he cares, and he tries all the time.
He keeps trying to come up with therapies or massages or exercise programs that will get you well faster and make you feel better,"
Lizzie said gently.
"And so do you,"
Stephanie said gratefully.
"I know, but I'm not married to you, Steph.
You always say your marriage has been dead for years, that it never should have happened.
Are you sure? I feel like we're all getting in the way of your making it work with him again.
Do you want us to go?"
She looked heartbroken as she said it, and there were tears in her eyes.
"No, I don't,"
Stephanie said in a husky voice, and held Lizzie's hand.
"It's too late for us, for me and Olivier.
It's always been a mistake.
My having the accident doesn't make the marriage viable again, it just gives us the chance to see what a nice man he is.
But he's not ‘my' nice man.
He never was, and never could be.
I need you here,"
she said as she held Lizzie's hand.
"It's rotten of me to say, because he is a nice man, but I don't need him the way I need you."
"Do you think he wants you back, to make it work again?"
Lizzie had begun to think so.
"No.
And even if he did, it would be a disaster in five minutes.
I think we both know that."
"You have kids together, and none of us have children or husbands, or family we're close to.
I don't want to stand in the way, if that's what you want with him."
"It isn't.
I couldn't do it, no matter how nice he is.
We never had chemistry.
I didn't have chemistry with him even in the beginning.
I had no idea what that is.
It's that ephemeral ingredient that makes a relationship work and gets you over the bumps.
I thought chemistry was something that happened in the lab, or the classroom with a bottle of acid with a lot of smoke pouring out of it, like magic.
Chemistry is magic.
Olivier is a lovely man, but he never had that magical ingredient.
You can't fake that, or invent it.
We have great kids, but that's the only good thing we ever had.
I don't want to go back to being his wife again in a real way.
If I did, it would be a fraud.
I did that for too long."
Lizzie nodded and smiled at her, and reached over and hugged her, and then the nurse walked in with Stephanie's meds, and Lizzie went back downstairs to the others.