Beautiful(28)

She was gazing out the window, thinking of her mother, when a nurse pushed an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. He was wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, and navy tie, with well-polished shoes, and impeccably groomed white hair. He stood up to greet her with warm eyes, and the smile she recognized instantly. He looked startled when he saw the mask. He held out a hand to her, and clung to hers, and then sat down in a large comfortable chair. He didn’t look ill, but he seemed old and very frail. He was much taller than she was, and she tried to imagine her mother with him. He was so much older, and looked like an elder statesman. Her mother had been vital, almost twenty years younger, and looked young for her age. Véronique had never thought of her as old, even though she’d been forty-two when Véronique was born. Bill had been in his sixties, and looked his age now.

He waited until the nurse left the room, leaned toward Véronique, and spoke to her warmly.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for so long. I think your mother sent me every clipping from your modeling, and all your school photos before that. I have them all locked in a big box in a safe,” he said with a wistful expression. He was studying her face then, and was puzzled by the mask. “I always thought that you look a great deal like my sister, Delia. She died in her twenties in a plane crash. We were very close.” He was still holding her hand, which seemed like a surprisingly affectionate gesture for a first meeting, but there was no one else in the room to see it. “Are you ill?” he asked her gently, pointing to the surgical mask. “You don’t need to worry about me. I’m not afraid of germs. I have a bad heart, but other people’s germs don’t make much difference.”

“I was injured in the blast at the airport,” she said simply, still holding hands with him. “It’s upsetting to see, the scars are still very fresh. We were very close to the bomb when it went off, and I was filled with shrapnel afterward. They got quite a lot out, but not all, and it damaged my face,” she said, and he looked pained hearing it.

“You don’t need to hide it from me,” he said gently. He seemed like a kind person. But if so, how could he have left them? That just didn’t compute for her, and hadn’t since she’d known. “I’ve been to a lot of natural disasters as a senator, and seen a lot of wounded people.” She hesitated and then undid both loops, and put the mask in her lap. He saw both sides of her face at once. The perfect, untouched left side, and the fiercely damaged, scarred right. It allowed him to see what her face was like before, in person now, and what the bomb that had killed her mother had done. “Oh, my dear,” he said sadly. He saw it as a tragedy, but Véronique gazed at him bravely, and then she bowed her head and spoke softly.

“I would give both sides of my face, and all my limbs, if my mother were still alive. She was so wonderful.” He nodded, unable to speak for a moment with tears in his eyes.

“So would I,” he said quietly. “She was much too young to die, and such a good person. She was the love of my life.” He said it without embarrassment and Véronique was surprised that he was so open about it, after hiding it for so long. “I did you both a great injustice. Politics are a powerful aphrodisiac, and a dangerous drug. I wanted to make a bid for the presidency, and your mother knew that. But the right opportunity and the right time never came. Looking back, it wouldn’t have been worth it. I stayed in a loveless marriage, and I gave up the woman I loved, and our child. I stayed in touch with your mother, but we were very careful. We couldn’t see each other. It would have been too dangerous. I gave up a reality for a hope, and your mother never blamed me for it.”

“I think she loved you to the end,” Véronique said softly. She liked him better than she wanted to, and she could see why her mother loved him. He appeared to be a kind, affectionate man, although maybe he had mellowed with illness and age, and he seemed more than willing to acknowledge his mistakes, and regretted them.

“So did I,” he confirmed to their daughter. “It was always my dream to run for president. If I had to do it again, I would have given all that up. Men are foolish at times, and I certainly was. One of my children is running for Congress now. I tried to discourage him. You pay a high price for public life. What about you now? What are you going to do without your mother? You’re living in the apartment?” He had recognized the address on her letter. “You’re not married? You’re too young to be.” He seemed fatherly for a minute. “Do you have a beau?” he asked her, and she smiled.

“No,” and then she was serious again. “The man I was dating died in Brussels with us. And I’m not sure what I’m going to do now,” she admitted, “with this,” she pointed to the right side of her face. “Modeling is over for me. I’m trying to figure out what to do next. I studied literature and art history, but I’m not very interested in that. My mother made me go to the Sorbonne when I started modeling, so I could have a proper job one day. I don’t know what to do. Maybe photography.” She had been thinking about that, but hadn’t done anything about it yet. “I’m still having some surgeries, and I have to go back to Brussels for that.”

“You’re all alone?” he asked, she nodded, and for a minute, she wanted to cry but held back her tears. “I know that Marie-Helene had no living family. Well, now you have me. You know where I am. If you need anything, I want you to call me. I’d come to Paris if I could, but it’s too late now for that.” She had read that his wife had passed away a few months before, and he’d had a heart attack around the same time. But he had his three legitimate children. “Are you seeing friends in New York?”