The Affair - Danielle Steel Page 0,43
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