Other than the financial statements, which were very neat and well organized, there was a letter in a sealed envelope. Reading it would be like getting a message from her mother from the grave. It seemed morbid and intimidating, and yet she was hungry to read it, and hear from her mother one last time. She wondered when she had written it and what it would say. Her mother had no deep secrets to reveal that she knew of. She led a quiet, transparent life, so Véronique assumed that it was just a tender goodbye, written long in advance, perhaps at an emotional moment. It would be hard to read but she was eager for it, and decided to read it after Bernard left, so she could savor it when she was alone, and cry if she needed to. She put the sealed envelope on the table next to her hospital bed, to read when he was gone. She put the rest back in the envelope, thanked Bernard for bringing it, and slipped it into a drawer in the night table so it was near at hand.
He stayed for another hour, chatting with her, and it was nice to have company. He was her only visitor. She wished him a good vacation when he finally stood up to go. She lay quietly in bed for a long time afterward, trying to get up the courage to open her mother’s letter. She couldn’t imagine what was in it. She missed her mother more than ever. It was a physical pain that never left her, worse than her wounds from the shrapnel.
Chapter 4
Véronique saw as soon as she opened her mother’s letter that it had been written a year before, on her twenty-first birthday. In her mother’s neat, careful hand, she had said that now that Véronique was an adult, she felt she owed it to Véronique to tell her the truth about her father. And she planned to do so, at an appropriate time, or after her death, if she hadn’t told her yet, which was the case, as it turned out. A shiver ran up her spine as she read the words. The Truth About Her Father. What truth was there to know, other than what her mother had already told her? She reiterated what Véronique already knew, that he was American, and an attorney. He had been sixty-one when she was born, the same year he died, and they hadn’t been married. But in the letter, her mother stunned her with two important details. The reason they hadn’t married was that he already was, to someone else, with three children from that marriage. He had wanted to divorce his wife for years, and especially once he met Marie-Helene, but he had had powerful political aspirations, possibly even a shot at the presidency. In fact, Marie-Helene explained, he had run as a vice presidential candidate, lost the election with his running mate, and had subsequently become a senator. But a scandal, having an affair as a married man, with a love child and a mistress in France, would have ruined him if it had come out, and destroyed his dreams of politics forever. He had spent a considerable amount of time with Marie-Helene in France, and loved it there. And he had been present at Véronique’s birth and stayed for a month after. But in the end, Marie-Helene confessed in the letter that she had stepped aside so as not to stand in his way, and hurt his chances politically. She had ended their relationship so he could pursue his dreams. What shocked Véronique was that he had let her.
The letter went on to say that he had provided a large amount of money for Véronique’s future, to ensure her safety, education, and comfort. He and Marie-Helene had only seen each other once after that, in a secret meeting, but remained in occasional contact. She assumed that Véronique knew about the money by then, since her instructions to Bernard as her executor were that neither the money nor the letter was to be revealed to Véronique until after her mother’s death, just as he had done. He had no knowledge of the contents of the letter, only the financial arrangements, as executor.
The shocker was that Bill had not died when Véronique was an infant. Marie-Helene had left him, for his sake, and had made the ultimate sacrifice herself, of her own happiness and well-being to honor his political dreams. It struck Véronique that he must have been a selfish man to let her mother do that, and heartless to leave them both. The money he had left their daughter was the reward for Marie-Helene’s being entirely selfless. They had agreed to tell Véronique that he had died, when during all this time, he was very much alive. Véronique didn’t know if he still was. Given his age at her birth, he would be eighty-three now, but he had been alive when Marie-Helene wrote the letter a year earlier. He was still a senator at the time, although she knew he suffered from ill health, and was planning to retire. His real name was William Hayes, and he had never tried to see his daughter, although Marie-Helene said he inquired about her from time to time, and never lost touch.