“My father was specific about that too. He left it up to me after he was gone, but he didn’t think they should. He wanted me to hear it from him directly, which is why he told me that day. I think it’s why he asked me to come over. He died only a few hours later, while he was having a nap after I left. My sisters are both very traditional and conservative. They’re married. Their husbands are bankers. I don’t think it would ever occur to them that our father would have an affair, or another child. They prefer to believe the illusion of our parents’ marriage. I don’t think they’d want to know the truth, and they might react badly to it. I have more realistic ideas. My own marriage was a disaster, and I know what it feels like to be trapped in a loveless marriage. I don’t blame my father for his involvement with your mother, or the turn it took. In a way I envy him to be able to say so clearly that she was the love of his life, and truly mean it. He had no regrets about her, only about their parting and not staying together. He said he regretted that deeply, and apparently, he missed your entire childhood and was sorry about that too.”
“He said that to me too,” she said softly.
“I don’t think my sisters are open-minded enough to understand that. They have the self-satisfied attitudes of people who are content in their marriages. They’ve been critical of me for getting divorced, and would have been of my father, I suspect. He thought so too. There’s not much to be served in forcing the point with them now, with him gone. If he were still alive, it might be different, so that you could be accepted openly. But now, with him gone, there’s not much in it for you. He set up the bequest for you confidentially, in such a way that they’ll be unaware of it, and I’m under the obligation to follow his wishes and keep it confidential, as his executor. So there’s no cause for jealousy either, and there’s more than enough for everyone.
“Maybe I’ll see it differently with my sisters later, and it’s up to you ultimately. You have a right to contact them if you want to. But given the hard line they’ve taken with me, I would warn you to be cautious with them. I can help you on that front, if you want me to, maybe after the shock of his death has worn off. But what I wanted to do today was meet you and hold a hand out to you as your brother, and share with you the loss of our wonderful father. I’m here to help you in any way I can.”
Tears filled her eyes before she could answer him, and not knowing what else to do, she hugged him, and he held her. He felt sorry for her. He had heard all about the Brussels attack from their father, and about all that she had lost, and the severe injuries she’d sustained. He thought she was still beautiful, but the large square of gauze on her face suggested that all was not entirely well yet, and his father had said as much to him, that she had been severely disfigured in the explosion, as well as losing her mother. But he thought she was still spectacular looking, whatever was under the gauze.
“Thank you, Charles,” she said, when she let go of him.
“Call me Chip.” He smiled at her. “So now you have a big brother.” He realized that she could have been his daughter. She was barely older than his sons. “I’d like you to meet my boys someday, your nephews.” He smiled at her. He understood better now why his father had encouraged him to get divorced, despite his own political ambitions, rather than stay with a woman he no longer loved. He had lived the consequences of that himself, and paid a high price for it. He had never been truly happy again, after he and Marie-Helene split up.
“I don’t know how to thank you. I was afraid you were going to warn me to stay away from all of you, and had found out about me somehow.”
“I only knew because my father told me. But when I saw you yesterday in church, I knew immediately that you were the one. You looked gorgeous, by the way.” He realized that she must have been an incredible model before the explosion. He didn’t follow fashion, so didn’t recognize her name when their father told him. “I come to Paris once in a while. I’ll look you up when I do. And you can call me in New York anytime. Do you know what you’re going to do now?”
“I don’t.” She shook her head. “I keep trying to figure it out. And if he left me anything, I want to do something in his memory, and my mother’s, something that helps people, the way they would have wanted to.”
“Will you be okay, now that you’re not modeling?” He was concerned about her now, as their father had been. She had been through a lot for any human to survive.