The Affair - Danielle Steel Page 0,62

knows how you’ll feel then. This doesn’t work for me. We’re lying to the girls. It’s not healthy for anyone. It isn’t for you either. You say you want to come back ‘later,’ so you’re not fully engaged with Pascale, even though you’re having a child. You’re trying to hedge your bets with me, in case it doesn’t work out with her. That’s not who I want to be, in your life, mine, or anyone else’s.”

“You’re starting the divorce?” He looked like he was going to cry, and she wanted to, but she was trying to keep the conversation matter-of-fact and as unemotional as she could.

“I want you to move out and get your own apartment.” She didn’t “want” him to, but she thought it was best if he did. She wanted Pascale to never have happened, but they couldn’t turn the clock back, and she was real, and her baby too. “I want to be legally separated from you. The girls need to know the truth. You pretend to live here but you don’t. It’s confusing all of us.” He nodded. He understood what she was saying. Their life had been a disaster for three months, because of him. It would be almost another three until the baby came. “We can figure out the divorce later, but for now we need to face what’s happening. I’m not really part of your life anymore.” Tears filled her eyes and he moved toward her and reached across her desk, but she backed away. “Don’t. Let’s not make this any harder than it already is.”

“What are we going to tell the girls?” he asked, on the verge of tears himself.

“That’s up to you. What are you going to tell them about Pascale and the baby?” He still hadn’t faced it, as though the day would never come, and his daughters would never know.

“I don’t know. I wish I didn’t have to tell them so soon. They’ve never even met Pascale.” He had handled the whole thing miserably, and she wasn’t going to clean up the mess for him.

“I assume you’re going to live with her,” Nadia said in a strained voice, trying to be gracious about it.

“We haven’t figured it out yet.” They had the house in Ramatuelle until September, and she was having the baby a month later. She was going to stay with her mother in Brittany for the last month, and wanted to give birth there, to be near her mother, so she could take care of the baby. Nicolas had promised to be there for the delivery. But where they would live after that hadn’t been decided. His life was up in the air. The only stability he had was with Nadia, and now she wanted him to move out. “Let me think about it for a few days, and I’ll let you know,” he said in a raw voice, and she nodded.

“You haven’t been around much. I think even if you pretend to sleep here occasionally, the children know something’s up. Maybe not Laure, but definitely Sylvie. I hope you tell them about the baby before someone else does.” He was lucky she hadn’t. She was leaving it to him. Miraculously, no one else had told them. And Nadia didn’t give them access to the internet. They were young enough that his affair with Pascale was the kind of unsavory gossip parents didn’t share with children their age. But sooner or later someone would.

“Why would anyone do something like that?” He looked shocked. “Tell them, I mean. They’re children.”

“It happens. People like to talk about the miseries of others.” He got up and left a few minutes later, and Nadia stood on the terrace, thinking about what she had just done. A page had turned. It had taken three months for her to get there. She had asked him to move out. She wanted to feel proud of herself, and thought she would. But she didn’t. She just felt sad.

* * *

—

Nadia had to go to her office the next day, and their babysitter called while they were having breakfast. She said she had eaten sushi the night before, and was violently ill. The housekeeper was on vacation, and Nadia thought of taking the girls to the office with her, but it was distracting, and she needed to catch up on her work. She had to schedule a meeting with her client in London. She called the wife of the guardian downstairs, and asked